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Dell XtremIO vs NetApp AFF 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
1.0
Organizations reduced costs and improved performance with Pure FlashArray X NVMe, achieving quick ROI and efficient resource management.
Sentiment score
1.0
Dell XtremIO enhances performance, reduces latency, increases efficiency, and improves reliability, leading to faster response times and cost savings.
Sentiment score
6.7
NetApp AFF boosts ROI with improved performance, efficiency, reduced costs, and enhanced productivity through flash technology and reliability.
If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe's technical support is praised for responsiveness, despite occasional follow-up issues, earning high customer satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dell XtremIO support receives mixed reviews, from exemplary technical assistance to variable performance post-Dell merger.
Sentiment score
7.7
NetApp AFF's customer service is praised for responsiveness, though some users highlight delay issues in technical support escalation.
Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
Technical support is good at least through vendors, not directly with the principal.
Infrastructure Specialis at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The support for NetApp AFF is comprehensive—not just the documentation for self-guided reading, but for simple questions, spare parts, or urgent needs, you can have a contract that enables delivery the next business day or within four hours, depending on your process requirements.
Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have communicated with them, and they are effective and responsive.
Presales Manager at Spartec
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers scalable storage with low latency, easy upgrades, though capacity customization and high costs are noted.
Sentiment score
6.9
Dell XtremIO is scalable and integrates well with virtualization but may have initial cost and enterprise-level scalability challenges.
Sentiment score
7.6
NetApp AFF offers scalable, non-disruptive expansion, ideal for various enterprise sizes, despite some cost concerns with controllers.
It is highly scalable.
Sales Director at systemzwo group
It hasn't broken down anytime in the last six to seven years, despite hurricanes, earthquakes, and power outages.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
Dell XtremIO provides very good scalability, allowing for cluster configurations that are easy to scale.
Trainer, Storage Consultant at Oxon
Dell XtremIO's scalability is quite easy;
System Engineer at Exaware
You can add more disks, more disk shelves, or migrate the data seamlessly.
Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would assess the scalability of NetApp AFF as excellent in handling massive data volumes.
Presales Manager at Spartec
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Pure Storage offers exceptional stability and reliability with outstanding support, consistently achieving high user ratings for performance and service.
Sentiment score
8.3
Dell XtremIO is generally stable and reliable, despite earlier issues, with well-regarded performance and effective support for problems.
Sentiment score
8.4
NetApp AFF offers exceptional stability and reliability, with minimal downtime and responsive support, ensuring seamless operation and high availability.
I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.
Project Manager at a government with 11-50 employees
My customer has been using Dell XtremIO since 2017 and has not experienced any failures.
Systems Engineer at Thakral One (Pvt) Ltd
They have always been upgrading very fast and implementing patches to resolve these issues.
Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Pure FlashArray X requires cost-effective improvements in UI, integration, cloud features, multitenancy, analytics, backup, AI, and scalability.
Dell XtremIO faces challenges with volume limits, user interface, replication, upgrades, support response times, and scalability.
NetApp AFF needs improvements in setup, support, integration, performance, flexibility, latency, monitoring, and management for competitive advantage.
We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.
Sales Director at systemzwo group
One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert.
Cloud Architect at DXC Technology
The interface could be simplified for beginners to ease the configuration of special objects in the system.
Trainer, Storage Consultant at Oxon
There is a significant lack of training, support documents, and forums available for Dell XtremIO, making troubleshooting difficult for third-party individuals.
Systems Engineer at Thakral One (Pvt) Ltd
The API to connect with command line or to see performance very clearly could be enhanced, similar to how NetApp works with Grafana and NetApp monitor, which shows you a comprehensive view of the whole picture.
System Engineer at Exaware
The GUI of ONTAP Command Manager could be better, but the CLI is perfect.
Senior System Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Our backup system, Commvault, has an amazing capacity to do compression and deduplication better than NetApp AFF by itself.
Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
IT Manager at Synergy Computers
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers see Pure FlashArray X NVMe as a justified premium investment due to performance and comprehensive licensing.
Dell XtremIO's high pricing is justified by performance and features, offering comprehensive licensing but additional products are needed.
NetApp AFF offers competitive value with features included, often more cost-effective than Oracle and EMC for comparable performance.
While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.
Manager, System Infrastructure & Security at Organik Kimya San. ve Tic. A.S.
The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
I would rate the solution as an eight out of ten in terms of costliness.
Sales Director at systemzwo group
XtremIO offers features that justify a potentially higher price, however, this varies with configuration.
Trainer, Storage Consultant at Oxon
Dell XtremIO is quite expensive compared to other solutions on the market.
Systems Engineer at Thakral One (Pvt) Ltd
NetApp support is cheaper than Dell support.
Senior System Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
While it is not cheap, they have introduced a new series of AFF that are more affordable.
Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The licensing cost of the product is expensive, and when combined with support, it becomes quite costly.
Presales Manager at Spartec
 

Valuable Features

Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers exceptional performance, reliability, scalability, and seamless VMware integration, enhancing workload efficiency and user experience.
Dell XtremIO offers high performance, scalability, and efficient management with deduplication and compression, ideal for complex workloads.
NetApp AFF excels in speed, low latency, and integration, offering efficient storage, high reliability, and scalability for varied needs.
Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability.
Sales Director at systemzwo group
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed.
Manager, System Infrastructure & Security at Organik Kimya San. ve Tic. A.S.
The inline data deduplication feature and compression were useful for me because the performance was very good when I needed to read or write from storage, latency was reduced, storage was extended, and volume replication was supported.
System Engineer at Exaware
Scalability is a significant feature of Dell XtremIO, as it is easy to expand and manage.
Trainer, Storage Consultant at Oxon
The speed and scalability of Dell XtremIO are significant features that improve data storage management.
Systems Engineer at Thakral One (Pvt) Ltd
You can even download the ONTAP simulator and deploy it on your virtualization platform and test almost all features.
Senior System Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Data reduction capabilities such as deduplication, compression, and compaction are standard features included with the license in NetApp AFF.
Presales Manager at Spartec
They have 4:1 data reduction techniques, which is really very high. If you have a size of 100 terabytes, you will get 400 terabytes of usable capacity when applying compression, deduplication, or other data reduction technologies.
IT Manager at Synergy Computers
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
12th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell XtremIO
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
20th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
314
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell XtremIO is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 8.8%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetApp AFF8.8%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe1.4%
Dell XtremIO0.9%
Other88.9%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256
Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades
I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.
AS
System Engineer at Exaware
Has improved data reduction and snapshot efficiency while supporting critical workloads
There are some areas that could be improved with Dell XtremIO. The API to connect with command line or to see performance very clearly could be enhanced, similar to how NetApp works with Grafana and NetApp monitor, which shows you a comprehensive view of the whole picture. The snapshot functionality could work more similarly to Snap Center. If I want to see all the VCenter with the VM, I think it needs the API for this. I do see big differences between Dell and other products. NetApp works very closely with VCenter, and Hitachi also integrates well, but Dell is not very clear and does not proceed well with VCenter integration with Dell. It needs the API, and I need to see all the snapshots. If I want to restore a VM from only a few directories or a few files that I need to restore, it is very difficult. I do see some differences in licensing. For the last few years, the Dell EMC price is acceptable. A few years ago, Dell EMC was expensive, approximately 20 percent more than NetApp. Right now the budget between EMC and NetApp is very closely aligned. Regarding the installation process and deployment of Dell XtremIO, I notice that in Israel, a lot of professional services and engineers who work with Dell EMC have moved to another storage company. I do not know why. Dell EMC does not have enough engineers, system engineers, or professional services engineers to provide service to the old clients, similar to how NetApp or Hitachi do. I think Dell XtremIO is between easy and complicated to deploy; it gives you the whole picture, but I need to go closely to VCenter to connect to VCenter to see the snapshot and to see performance with more dashboards of performance. I also need to connect the switch fiber channel to see all zoning to give me more flexibility to install or configure fiber channel or to see the performance of the fiber channels. I think there should be some fiber channel disconnect adapter or better troubleshooting from hardware for errors.
KennethEtsula - PeerSpot reviewer
Presales Manager at Spartec
Offers seamless installation and efficient data handling with robust support
NetApp AFF provides an all-flash storage solution for unified SAN solutions, supporting both SAN and NAS functionalities. Data reduction capabilities such as deduplication, compression, and compaction are standard features included with the license in NetApp AFF. With the storage efficiency from a NetApp AFF installation, users can manage substantial data running on all-flash. The features such as compaction and compression provide storage efficiency guarantees in an all-flash environment.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
879,422 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
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise242
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...
What do you like most about Dell EMC XtremIO?
The feature I like most about Dell Xtremio is its hardware quality compared to other vendors. It's clear they're cont...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell XtremIO?
Pricing is hard to determine as it depends on the given configuration. XtremIO offers features that justify a potenti...
What needs improvement with Dell XtremIO?
There are some areas that could be improved with Dell XtremIO. The API to connect with command line or to see perform...
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 FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
Dell EMC XtremIO Flash, Dell EMC XtremIO X2, XtremIO, XtremIO X2
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Raiffeisen Bank Bulgaria, Wentworth-Douglas Hospital
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell XtremIO vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.