Pure Storage FlashBlade Reviews

Our primary use case of this solution is for the massively scalable flash storage that's close by on our on-premise service.

This solution has improved how our organization functions in the way that it has essentially made us not have to think about storage. That's probably the biggest selling point. Storage is boring and you don't want to think about it. From that point of view, it's provided a lot of benefits. It ticks the big boxes. It's fast, it's scalable, it's essentially zero-touch maintenance. All of those get us eighty, ninety percent of the way.

The biggest feedback is that none of the teams have noticed. I'm not getting negative feedback which is a big improvement from where we were.

Primarily, most of the features that we've used work out of the box. It's fairly simple if you just roll it out. We integrated it with our kubernetes cluster fairly painlessly but, also the flip side of that is that's where the pain point is coming from because we need a bit more control over it. That's been the frustrating aspect of it, but for the most part, it was plug and play.

The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us.

Regarding stability, I have no questions so far. We did a hardware upgrade of an older system and it just kept on ticking. I was quite impressed by the zero downtime.

We haven't pushed it to its limits. We're only at one FlashBlade so far. Being able to dynamically scale it as we added more storage was simply enough. I have no reason to believe it wouldn't be as painless when we scale up to multiple FlashBlades.

We've only had to use their technical support during run of the mill maintenance events like upgrading the firmware and exchanging the box. It was very helpful during the big upgrade. I had them on video call so we could do it in real time while we were in the data center.

We were just using a very homebrew, on-premise, traditional NAS-style storage solution that was quite a few years out of date already. We took the opportunity then to upgrade our infrastructure completely. 
The other solution we looked at was a startup that uses NBME fabric as their solution, but it's not zero touch. You have to configure a lot, you have to take a lot of care of it, so it just didn't appeal from that perspective. That's still why I think Pure Storage ultimately won our business just because it works out of the box.

The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there.

We implemented it ourselves.

I would rate this solution a solid eight to nine, it does tick all of the major boxes. Our main concern is just with the little customizations that we need.

If someone is considering this solution I would say that for the gap in the market that Pure Storage is going to fill, essentially updating NAS to the 2018s, they excel at that. If you have an existing solution that isn't performing then Pure Storage makes perfect sense to drop into a lot of enterprises.

We have been using it for data center consolidation. It is our primary source for data center applications: production, development, and test. 

It creates a much smaller footprint. Previously, we had a large data center with 30 racks with 12 racks of storage, and we are now down to one. So, a huge electric savings along with freeing our data center ports.

The most valuable feature is its  ease of use. We went from six different storage vendors down to one. The training for the operations staff and others that had to deal with this on a provisioning standpoint was much easier to do. The process was seamless and very easy to learn.

It has absolutely simplified our storage because the dashboards on the consoles show a clear understanding of where you are, and it is also very easy to provision. This been a big help for our teams.

I am very happy with the latency, availability, and reduction rates.

On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge.

We are looking at Pure Storage's capabilities to move off-premise into the cloud.

Stability has been rock solid.

Scalability has not been an issue. Performance has been great. It is just the capacity and dedupe part, which is a little light.

We used technical support during the install process, and they were helpful.

We switched to Pure Storage as a decision to get away from Dell EMC.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was very easy to set the IP addresses up and the rest of the initial parameters up, then go.

Our consultants did the installation with the help of Pure Storage's technical support.

We have mainly seen a reduction in TCO because of operational efficiencies. It used to take us a lot longer to get servers and storage provisioned. Now, the speed of the disk, plus the ease of use, has made great improvements.

We used a reseller for the purchase.

We were in a build a new data center mode, and Pure Storage was one of three option that we considered. Then, it became our final option.

The other options were HPE 3PAR Flash Storage and Dell EMC XtremIO Flash. While all three solutions are comparable in price, we chose Pure Storage because of politics. 

It works quite well for us, and I would recommend it.

From a standpoint of pure performance, it's moving. We've been very happy with it. 

Our primary use case of this solution is for the database masking and testing. 

We have an improved the lifecycle of database testing and has improved QA in the space that we use it for. 

Storage has been simplified for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does. 

It's good to have a good way to back up high-performance type arrays like this,
especially if we could back it up on the back end versus the front side where things are impacted.

As a Pure Storage platform, the cost-benefit is hugely based on the deduplication and capacity. Otherwise, we would have had to have a bunch of arrays to support that capacity. The physical footprint of the array, the capacity that it's using, and the high performance are all things that we have seen benefit from.

The most valuable features would be the IOPS performance and the ease of management. 

In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready. 

We can add a bunch of compute, we could forever compute, but the array at some point comes to a screeching halt. I think if there's a way to make the flash array go wider that would be the better way to go in the long run.

We have had this solution for two years and we haven't had any issues with it. 

Salability does have its limits but we haven't had any limit or scalability issues in the area we use it.

We considered building our own solution but at some point, we realized that there was a higher risk to that. We ended up choosing Pure Storage because they could prove that other customers had successful implementations with minimal issues that was a huge plus. 

The initial setup was as easy as it can get. 

We used a reseller for the deployment called Trace 3. The consulting and integration of the whole solution was done by them and then turned over to my team. There was an issue that we didn't know how that was happening. It was more of an application team problem that they didn't come to us before starting all of that. 

In terms of performance analytics, due to our own fault, we tend to use a lot of capacity faster than we think. Because of our slow internal processing, we can't add capacity fast enough when we need it. We know it is capable of easily adding capacity.

I would rate this solution a nine and a half and I would definitely recommend this solution to a colleague at another company. It's very stable, efficient and it performs very well. 

This solution is deployed in our on-premises lab.

We are running VMware on Pure for improved performance. We have seen an increase in performance. We are using the VMware integrations developed by Pure to some extent, but I do not have specific details.

The most valuable feature of this solution is performance.

I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution. 

This solution is pretty stable. Since they are using it for a performance lab, it has to be very stable. 

Our scale is not that big because we have one array. It is not our primary source.

We have not engaged with technical support for this solution.

Performance needs are what caused us to replace our existing solution.

The implementation was done by somebody in our lab.

We qualified with NetApp and have evaluated other solutions, but this is the one that we chose. 

My advice for anybody considering this solution is to go by the business needs, as opposed to just choosing the fastest solution. In our area, we needed the fastest, which is why we bought it. However, there are other deployments within our company where we don't use Pure because we don't need the performance. Other options make sense. Base your decision on the value, and what makes sense.

This is a nice product.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

It is our storage solution.

It improves our organization by making the management much easier to access and not as time consuming. It has made the management easy and simple.

We use it to monitor latency. The solution corrects the latency and makes it easier.

For space requirements, it helps expand what we are trying to use it for on the network, which is all positive.

It does a great job of capacity planning for us.

The management is its most valuable feature.

The predictive performance analytics are pretty good.

The simplicity of the solution is great.

The stability is pretty good.

The scalability is pretty good.

The technical support is pretty fast. Everything is good with the technical support.

We use Nimble. We found out that Nimble had a lot of latency issues, so we decided to switch to Pure Storage. Ever since then, everything has been running a lot more smoothly.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We will be upgrading our controllers soon.

We used a consultant with our deployment. The experience was pretty good.

It reducing our total cost of ownership by 10 percent.

I have not seen ROI.

Through past experience, we all decided that Pure Storage was a better fit for our environment.

The interface is a lot better than most other storage solutions. We have Nimble, as well, and I prefer the whole layout of Pure Storage over any other storage solution.

While Nimble is definite good, I would recommend Pure Storage because it is a pretty good system.

We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it.

I would rate it as a nine (out of ten). Altogether, it is a pretty good system. Everything is well setup: The management, interface, and everything else are all pretty good.

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime. 

Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups.

I have been using the product since 2022. 

Pure Storage FlashBlade is fairly stable. 

My company has three storage engineers using the product. 

Pure Storage FlashBlade's deployment is straightforward. It took about six months to deploy the solution across five data centers. For deployment and maintenance, we needed three engineers from our team and two from the partner company. 

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten. It would be best if you are ready with the upgrade process. 

Our use cases vary but usually we use the solution for cloud-based solutions. We use it for containers, which provide security on premises for our customers to test environments. Most of our customers are medium to large enterprises based in Bulgaria where we are located. We are resellers, distributors and system integrators. We have a partnership with FlashBlade. 

I think the most valuable part of the solution would be the seamless integration. The fact that they all use the same platform for connectivity, regardless of the physical position of the place. From the customer's perspective, this is the easiest product that I've tested, it's seamless.

It's difficult to find something that could be improved. The new version of the Purity operational system will be released this week and we've been told a lot of improvements have been made so we'll have to wait a few days and see what they're talking about.

I've been using this solution for a year. 

This is a stable solution. 

It's very easy to scale out and to scale up. 

The technical support is good. I've been to the support center in Ireland. I've been doing this kind of work for 10 years and this is the best support line I've ever encountered. Very little maintenance is required although every solution requires troubleshooting if something is not running right. Usually the system reports any issues before they occur and sometimes the customer doesn't even know that he or she has a problem. The support line responds very swiftly, within 30 or 40 minutes. It's all automated.

The initial setup is quite straightforward. It's takes about half an hour to deploy. Everything is usually web based and very thoroughly described. The company I currently work for is a reseller and system integrator so we usually do the integration. If the customer would like to do it, they can do it themselves. They're usually quite surprised at how easy it is to deploy. 

This solution is on the more expensive side but it's usual for niche products with a lot of compatibility and features, so the price is right.

There is a 30-day trial period for the product and there is no penalty for the customer if they don't like it. We rarely have issues with it. 

I would rate this solution a 10 out of 10. 

It is for our enterprise. The product is fantastic. 

We have an Evergreen Storage subscription.

Our latency has gone down.

We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to.

Speed is its most valuable feature.

The compression is amazing.

The support needs improvement.

I would rate the technical support as a five (out of ten). They need to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it.

My previous solution was EOL.

The initial setup was straightforward because Pure Storage set it up for us.

We have undergone an upgrade of our controllers, and the process was okay.

We did use a company for the deployment, and our experience was fantastic. We ended up buying the company.

I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional.

NetApp and Isilon were also on the shortlist.

The compression is true and does happen.