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NetApp SolidFire and Pure Storage architectural comparison

A solidfire competitive comparison

Published September 2017

The FlashArray series from Pure Storage is an all-flash, dual-controller storage solution, based on a traditional active/passive scale-up architecture, where capacity is scaled by adding additional drive shelves to a pair of controllers and performance is scaled by replacing the controllers with more powerful controller models.

Architectures based on storage controller pairs, also referred to as storage node pairs, have been the standard for enterprise block storage for many years. Enterprise familiarity, standard design concepts, and fast time-to-market are some of the key reasons Pure Storage designed its FlashArray off this familiar architecture. Unfortunately, dual-controller, scale-up architectures are not without their caveats, and with all-flash storage, many of those caveats become limitations.