We performed a comparison between NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) came out ahead of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. The two solutions have similar deployment difficulty, price range, and support quality, but NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays has fewer valuable features, according to its users.
"The latency is good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"The in-line dedupe, and the compaction saves us a lot of space because most of our AFFs house VMware VMDK files."
"There are two compression technologies available within it, and they are valuable because they allow for significantly higher data storage capacity and the retention of a larger number of snapshots on the system."
"Other manufacturers claim simplicity. In fact, frankly, they do have an advantage in that regard, however, they don't have the functionality. If you were to compare one of those products to NetApp, head to head from a feature perspective, NetApp would wind up in the top 10."
"We reduced our floor space by reducing 44 racks units to four rack units. It has helped us with our data center economies of scale. It reduces our support costs too, which is great."
"The valuable features are the fabric pool. We are taking our cold data and pumping it straight into an estuary bucket. Also, efficiency. We're getting about two and a half times upwards of data efficiency through compaction, compression, deduplication, and it's size. When we refreshed from two or three racks of spinning discs down into 5U of rack space, it not only saved us a whole heap of costs in our data center environment but also it's nice to be green. The power savings alone equated to be about 50 tons of CO2 a year that we no longer emit. It's a big game changer."
"We found AFF systems very competitive in terms of performance, storage efficiency, feature richness, and scalability."
"Setup was simple and easy."
"We have SQL clusters across the United States. It has sped up our IOPS and made it a lot easier for users."
"The speed is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"Rapid deployment, easy integration management and cloning of areas."
"The main advantage of this solution is performance."
"The management of it is very simple. that is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the performance of the database access."
"Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market."
"The management software is very good."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"It is on the expensive side."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"We need better data deduplication."
"To be more competitive in the industry, they can develop deduplication, compression, and smarter features in the same array instead of all-flash."
"I would like it to be an IP as our network is mainly IP-based."
"I don't work on the technical side of things, so it's hard for me to highlight areas of improvement, but maybe the price could be a little better."
"It would be very useful if we could do the NFS to CIFS file transfer, but it is not supported at this time."
"In the current atmosphere, private cloud is improving. NetApp AFF needs to provide flexibility in terms of hardware and capital expense."
"The scaling needs improvement. NetApp is limited for scaling options."
"NetApp should have a local presence in Pakistan."
"NetApp AFF is a highly expensive solution, and its pricing should be reduced."
"The dashboard could be simplified."
"We need a center related to NetApp in Egypt so that we can deal with them directly."
"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."
"NetApp could improve the speed of the rebuilding rate."
"As far as the manageability, being able to port between the two and have to do less training in-house from a customer point of view, that would be the part to improve."
"The initial setup phase of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is not straightforward and needs improvement."
"I’d like to see bigger, faster, better hardware, of course. I think that is the way the hardware is trending anyway; bigger, faster CPU, better software, fewer bugs, all that stuff. T"
"We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily."
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NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 281 reviews while NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is ranked 23rd in All-Flash Storage with 38 reviews. NetApp AFF is rated 9.0, while NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays writes "A storage solution that offers great stability, resilience, and support". NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Pure Storage FlashArray and VMware vSAN, whereas NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Huawei OceanStor Dorado, HPE Primera and IBM FlashSystem. See our NetApp AFF vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report.
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