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NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs VAST Data comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
232
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
29th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VAST Data
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
28th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (18th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 6.6%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 1.5%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VAST Data is 3.0%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray6.6%
VAST Data3.0%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays1.5%
Other88.9%
All-Flash Storage
 

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.
Tayo Olubanke - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at GCET
Offers flexibility and top-notch technology
You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.
Alan Powers - PeerSpot reviewer
HPC CTO at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Stability-wise, a device that has been up and running for years
The failover capability and resiliency are some of the solution's valuable features. The big thing is resilience because it has richer coding in it, so multiple devices can't fail. Also, one can still access a number of CBoxes that can allow one to access their file system. Once a device fails, it fails the transparency of the end-user, and it just starts using another resource. The encryption capability, the snapshots, along with a whole bunch of features make the tool valuable. VAST Data keeps adding more and more features all the time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The connections are a lot faster than what we had in the past. One InfiniBand does what we did on all of our Fibre Channels."
"If it's financially viable for you and you can afford it, it's worth it."
"Pure Storage FlashArray offers numerous valuable features, such as low latency and high throughput."
"I would recommend Pure Storage FlashArray to other users because, first, the speed that I get with Pure Storage FlashArray is not remotely possible with any other product at this price range, and second, the support is absolutely fantastic."
"We have looked at all of the platforms, and to see what Pure was able to do within a PoC environment meant that we never turned back our PoC environment."
"Pure Storage is an amazing solution."
"We tested our VDI environment on this array and it performed flawlessly and boosted the user experience."
"Their support is top-notch, and their NPS scores reflect this."
"Having the option of such high-speed storage in the data center is what makes it valuable."
"We found all of those things in NetApp."
"Compared to Dell Unity XT, what I see as an advantage in NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is the fact that it is more scalable...The performance of the product is good."
"The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our databases, and what's great about this solution is that it speeds up our data store because it is a cheap solution for flash performances."
"It's still worth purchasing as the support is good and also the performance is very good."
"If I were advising a colleague at another company who is researching this kind of solution, I would say take a good look at it because we haven't had any issues."
"We use it for our VDI environment, and have not had any complaints with it."
"The replication and mirroring features are very good."
"This has been one of the most reliable storage systems that I have ever used."
"The solution is useful for machine learning and scientific applications, including computer simulations."
 

Cons

"We would like more extended historical data to help with some of the capacity planning. This is something that we are asking for all the time. E.g., what was the historical performance of this particular volume? So, we would like more historicals."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve in the area of cryptographic information in the consoles. The user-friendliness could improve. The Pure Storage FlashArray team should come and log into the system with their maintenance credentials and then pull out the information as evidence of cryptography."
"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."
"It would be beneficial to have a health check command that can be run from the CLI to ensure that all hardware components are functioning properly rather than having to enable remote access and connect to support for a health check."
"It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups."
"What it needs to do is work a little closer with solutions, like VMware, so it understands the particular workloads that are on it. Today, it does not understand the applications which are running against it."
"I would like to migrate to the cloud in the future and know how that would actually work with this product."
"In the next version of this program, I would like to see increased security, higher encryption, and faster throughput."
"The solution should really build out a more hyper-converged product."
"We need a center related to NetApp in Egypt so that we can deal with them directly."
"They could improve overall scalability through performance. Denser capacity, which is doable, it is what the competition is doing."
"I would like to have the ability to replicate data between All Flash and other NetApp storage systems."
"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."
"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."
"Better integration with other brands is important so we would like to see it easier to integrate."
"Nonetheless, there are a couple of other things that NetApp hasn't done right."
"The read/write ratio is an area in the solution with some flaws and needs improvement."
"The write performance could be improved because it is less than half of the read performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
"There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"Pure Storage is expensive. It comes with features, so you get what you pay for. It is expensive compared to our old storage systems, but from the amount of human effort that you have to pay to babysit a storage system, it reduces that. I don't know if the TCO is reduced, but it's not a concern for us."
"The solution is expensive."
"It's a good price point and it's a solid product for the price."
"While it comes with a higher price tag, this investment often translates to significant improvements in performance."
"We consume it as a service, and that's actually something we really like, or at least I really like from the technical perspective. That's because it means there is no hassle when we need to upgrade arrays to add capacity. We just interact directly with technical counterparts, and we say, "Hey, we're filling up," and they say, "All right, here's another data pack." They ship it in, and we install it. So, the as-a-service model has worked very well. Given the outstanding data reduction rates, it has improved our profitability because we're selling allocated volumes as part of the cloud service or recovering those costs from our tenants. It is very efficient, but that has offset the premium price. It started out that way, but over time, as we've added capacity, the price per gig has gone down a lot because we have a lot of it."
"One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to renew the license."
"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."
"The pricing of the solution is expensive, considering the initial investment required...At the end of the product's life cycle, it could get cheaper, but the initial investment in NetApp makes it one of the most expensive solutions."
"The price point for EF is considerably lower than the alternatives."
"Cheaper pricing is always good. NetApp has been doing everything the right way. They've been figuring out things really well, going in the right direction."
"The cost of our license is approximately $200,000 over three years for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. There can be additional costs for storage. For example, if you want to have eight terabytes."
"They provide licenses upon purchase, so there's no need for additional licenses. Regarding additional expenses apart from the standard licensing fees, such as for support or maintenance, there aren't any. Updates take around twenty to thirty minutes, including rebooting the systems, and we haven't faced any problems with the NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We utilize various other storages like Fujitsu, IBM, and Dalian SIP, but the NetApp EF-Series stands out as we've had no issues throughout the entire year of usage."
"Its cost-effectiveness is a major selling point. Compared to other storage vendors, the EF-Series offers excellent value for its price. It's truly a leading product in the industry."
"We acquired VAST Data as a one-time, capital purchase."
"Price-wise, VAST Data is not the cheapest, not the most expensive one."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise160
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

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.
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation
Norwest Venture Partners, General Dynamics Information Technology, Ginkgo Bioworks
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. VAST Data and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.