No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Hitachi VSP 5000 Series vs NetApp AFF comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
232
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
Hitachi VSP 5000 Series
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (14th)
NetApp AFF
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
315
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Patrick Ammann - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Administrator at Post CH AG
Provides reliable performance but could benefit from better deduplication management and intuitive admin tools
Regarding the NVMe over Fabrics feature of Hitachi VSP 5000 Series, we tested it, but there was no admin tool available for configuration until about a year ago. This was problematic for us, so we decided not to use it until we have the proper management tools. The main difficulty with this feature is that it's not supported for GAD devices, so Global-Active Devices are not supported with NVMe. That's basically what all our ESX platform is based on. We believe we would get the most benefit if we could use it in the ESX platform, but it's not supported yet. The deduplication impacts the quality of block storage that system administrators were accustomed to, resulting in increased service time due to the high CPU usage. The whole deduplication should be handled better in the next Plattform, should not have such a high impact on contoller CPU usage. The admin tools, called Ops Center Suite, have been inadequate for years, which Hitachi acknowledges. We had to find other vendors to provide a simple, fast GUI to provision storage. There are limitations, such as a storage pool only having 1024 pool volumes, which means the storage pool is maximum three petabyte in space. This requires building multiple storage pools, resulting in multiple pools where you have to keep some space as reserve. Having more than one storage pool forces you to have multiple times some percentage of storage capacity as a reserve, that you paid for but can't use it.
Mir Gulzar Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Synergy Computers
Unified storage has delivered efficient AI analytics and low latency for critical workloads
There might be some lag or response time with respect to support cases, but even then I will rate it 8.5 out of 10. All of this is the same for all product ranges, whether E-series, NetApp AFF, or FAS series, because they are very efficient to respond. The only reason I rated it 8.5 is because the warehouse for spare parts, when a problem comes, a spare is needed to replace it, for example, a disk. In Pakistan, they have only one warehouse in Karachi. This warehouse manages all the problems when a problem comes. They ship the part based on the customer use case and customer service request. That is the only reason I rate it 8.5 because they have only one warehouse in Pakistan, which is in Karachi. For example, if a problem comes in Islamabad, it will take time to deliver the spare because the part will be shipped from Karachi to Islamabad, which will take around maybe a day. Other OEMs have their warehouses in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi also. In terms of part replacement requirements, they are very efficient in that area because they have warehouses in multiple cities of Pakistan.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We are very happy with the data deduplication and compression ratio that we have on the platform."
"It reduces space and the polar consumption. It also accelerates the application."
"Everpure FlashArray has helped my customers reduce downtime; I cannot tell you how much downtime, but definitely one hundred percent."
"It simplifies storage."
"It simplifies building out the storage."
"If you're interested in using this solution, I recommend that you do the same — see if you like it."
"Cost, racial per terabyte, and speed is why we chose PureStorage. It was no brainer."
"I can personally state that the Pure Storage Flash Systems are the best built and Pure has the utmost professional customer care."
"One of the best features of the Hitachi VSP 5000 Series is the stability of the product."
"The most valuable features are the performance and the storage efficiency, due to the compression and deduplication... The efficiency is very important because we can buy fewer disks for more data."
"The solution is great; the company is fantastic to work with."
"Before this solution, we had a lot of performance issues, and with this tool, we were able to nail them down to at least 20-30% performance gain."
"The mirroring of two different sites is great."
"The stability is solid; it doesn't fail on us, which is exactly what we want, and we have been dependent on NetApp for almost a decade now."
"I would definitely recommend AFF."
"It's helping us achieve our budget constraints while allowing us to work in other areas."
"We value NetApp's ransomware protection the most."
 

Cons

"They have a product, FlashBlade, which is their object storage integration, and that's something that we haven't integrated with yet. This might be an area for additional focus as it would play into scalability, because the very nature of object storage is that it's infinitely scalable."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see automated copy data management for SQL Server."
"Regarding documentation, it would be helpful if we could have access to the root passwords for administrative tasks."
"A year ago they promised that they would be able to read through the database encryption with more metric and they have not delivered on that patch, which is significant because it gives us back so much more storage room. We want to be able to read through the encryption."
"We would like to see more development on their Copy Automation Tool (CAT) for Oracle, as well as better integration for our customers running Oracle VM."
"With scalability, I have run into a little problem with our last upgrade. There were some undocumented limitations to the number of drives that our controller could run on. So, instead of putting in a new data pack as we had anticipated, we had to keep adding and removing to get up to the capacity that we needed to be. What should have been a one day process (or a few hours) turned into a month and a half process."
"The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution. Right now, you have to click and schedule an appointment with Pure Storage to be able to upgrade. I would love for it to automatically download, install, and fall-over every controller as it updates."
"The whole deduplication should be handled better in the next platform and should not have such a high impact on controller CPU usage."
"It would be helpful if the compatibility matrix was a bit better."
"We'd like to see them implement more subscription services into the base support model."
"They need to decrease the latency and to improve the transmission in PNE STE using compression."
"Occasionally there are struggles getting to the right people but, once you do, they know what they're talking about."
"Our initial setup involved a lot of development."
"We have been seeing some challenges around the application layer implementation. We are having some teething problems now with the cooperation between the application layer and backups to things, like SnapCenter. This may be a question of product maturity."
"They still have to reduce in price when compared to their competitors."
"I do not like the NetApp GUI. For example, the GUI of ONTAP Command Manager could be better, but the CLI is perfect. With every new version and upgrade, they change things, which makes it messy, and I am not good at working with that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of Pure Storage is all-inclusive. It is very fair, and very easy. In comparison, Dell EMC has licensing that needs to be added if you wan to work in a complex environment or in specific functionalities."
"While it comes with a higher price tag, this investment often translates to significant improvements in performance."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is a really cool concept. As long as we maintain our subscription, we will get new controllers every three years and really never have a forklift upgrade like we currently are doing. Just that future-proofing is an ease off of my mind to know that I won't have to do what I'm dong right now again."
"Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
"I would rate the pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of ten. It is expensive but not too much."
"The pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray is reasonable."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
Information not available
"I find the pricing to be reasonable, particularly with the recent inclusion of features like snap locking and ransomware protection within the ONTAP license instead of having them as separate licenses."
"There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost. The cost is very high compared to other devices."
"Our total cost of ownership (TCO) has decreased by 40 percent."
"I am able to store two times more data than what I'm purchasing, which affects the way funds are being utilized."
"The entry point for potential customers, who are looking at coming onboard for flash systems, it may be a bit expensive. It would be good if the price comes down."
"One of the reasons we like this solution is that all of the features are included with the one license."
"We have used the solution’s thin provisioning to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. We use thin provisioning on all of our flash arrays at this point. It gives us the choice to be able to overprovision and take advantage of compression, compaction, and thin provisioning all at the same time. We can get more out of the purchases that we make."
"Obviously depending on the price point, NetApp is obviously a little more expensive than your generic Dell SAN solution or whatever."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays solutions are best for your needs.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user186357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect with 51-200 employees
Jan 28, 2015
NetApp vs. XtremIO
Is there another storage platform as feature rich as NetApp FAS? I think it is fair to say that NetApp FAS running Clustered Data ONTAP is a very feature rich platform – the move to the clustered version of ONTAP has brought many next-generation features including Scale-out and Non-disruptive…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise160
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise242
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hitachi VSP 5000 Series?
The cost of the solution is always too expensive, though it's difficult to make a direct comparison as all competitor...
What needs improvement with Hitachi VSP 5000 Series?
Regarding the NVMe over Fabrics feature of Hitachi VSP 5000 Series, we tested it, but there was no admin tool availab...
What is your primary use case for Hitachi VSP 5000 Series?
My main use cases for Hitachi VSP 5000 Series are basically all the block storage, mainly DBs and ESX.
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
Well, Is one thing NetApp Storage has vs other brand is the mix of protocol CIFS with NFS booth working together in t...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended c...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matt...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Nutanix and others in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays. Updated: September 2026.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.