


NetApp AFF and Dell PowerStore compete in the enterprise storage category. Based on the comparisons, NetApp AFF holds an advantage due to its comprehensive feature set and established support network.
Features: NetApp AFF provides clustered Data ONTAP for flexibility, real-time metrics, and low latency, which are crucial for storage performance. It excels in deduplication and all-flash efficiency, offering high IOPS. Dell PowerStore integrates well with VMware, offering efficient data deduplication and compression, alongside built-in intelligence for IT operations.
Room for Improvement: NetApp AFF users wish for enhanced deduplication and simpler migrations, with performance monitoring improvements. Cost is often a concern. Dell PowerStore users highlight the need for better NAS functionality, improved synchronization, and more cybersecurity features.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both NetApp AFF and Dell PowerStore suit on-premises deployment and hybrid setups. NetApp offers strong customer service, though its initial setup can be complex. Dell PowerStore is appreciated for ease of setup but could improve in networking processes.
Pricing and ROI: NetApp AFF is expensive but offers high ROI for data-intensive operations, though competitive solutions are sometimes more budget-friendly. Dell PowerStore has competitive pricing and strong deduplication guarantees, providing a cost-effective solution for some models.
If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.
If you purchase storage with 300 terabytes, you can easily achieve one petabyte of effective capacity.
It's been trouble-free the entire time, with very high performance, as it has been designed and built properly.
We have seen a return on our investment in Dell PowerStore; definitely our cost per terabyte has been very good compared to some of the other vendors that we would have been using previously, and our performance benchmarks have exceeded what we were expecting.
Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.
Technical support is good at least through vendors, not directly with the principal.
I would rate the technical support of Dell PowerStore between nine and ten out of ten.
They're responsive, knowledgeable, and have a quick turnaround.
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Dell support as a ten, focusing on that aspect alone, because it's what allows me to sleep at night.
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.
I have communicated with them, and they are effective and responsive.
It is highly scalable.
It hasn't broken down anytime in the last six to seven years, despite hurricanes, earthquakes, and power outages.
The solution's scalability is a ten out of ten.
It scales up and scales out both ways, and as our data keeps growing, it is very easy to just keep attaching and keep growing.
Scaling up can be done from a single enclosure that already has two controllers to a maximum of four storage units with up to eight controllers, and a massive amount of storage can be added.
You can add more disks, more disk shelves, or migrate the data seamlessly.
I would assess the scalability of NetApp AFF as excellent in handling massive data volumes.
I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.
When I removed all the cables, it failed over within five minutes.
It's quite stable and reliable in general.
There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze.
They have always been upgrading very fast and implementing patches to resolve these issues.
We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.
One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware.
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.
Something needs to be done with the caching to ensure that if some issue occurs, there needs to be an ability to disable caching during maintenance to make it static, safe, and good.
Pricing must also be considered, as Dell PowerStore is quite expensive compared to competitors in the market like HPE Alletra, Huawei Dorado, or Hitachi storage, for example.
The main reason why people move to Pure Storage is because it's simplified.
The GUI of ONTAP Command Manager could be better, but the CLI is perfect.
Our backup system, Commvault, has an amazing capacity to do compression and deduplication better than NetApp AFF by itself.
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.
While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.
The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.
I would rate the solution as an eight out of ten in terms of costliness.
Likely the cost is $400,000 whereas IBM may be $250,000.
Based on my experience, the cost of Dell PowerStore for around 500 GB of capacity is very competitive compared to any other platform in the market.
I asked for a new quotation on a server, and it is quite expensive; it is really expensive.
NetApp support is cheaper than Dell support.
While it is not cheap, they have introduced a new series of AFF that are more affordable.
The licensing cost of the product is expensive, and when combined with support, it becomes quite costly.
Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.
The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability.
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed.
This includes storage sharing, adding servers to the service, and the wireless host connection on the network side.
Dell PowerStore offers good integration capabilities, especially since it helps with backup, which is an important aspect.
In terms of whether my company could reduce the power consumption with Dell PowerStore, I would say that my company had a use case with a customer around three weeks ago where their old Dell EMC VNX Storage System used to draw about 2500 watts compared to Dell PowerStore which drew about 800 watts, which is a really a big saving looking at the twenty-four hours and seven days of usage of the system.
You can even download the ONTAP simulator and deploy it on your virtualization platform and test almost all features.
Data reduction capabilities such as deduplication, compression, and compaction are standard features included with the license in NetApp AFF.
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.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Dell PowerStore | 14.7% |
| NetApp AFF | 8.8% |
| Pure FlashArray X NVMe | 1.4% |
| Other | 75.1% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 15 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 11 |
| Large Enterprise | 12 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 49 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 33 |
| Large Enterprise | 74 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 45 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 47 |
| Large Enterprise | 242 |
Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.
Dell PowerStore is a scalable, high-performance platform supporting both modern and traditional workloads, enhancing IT operations with AI-driven automation and advanced data reduction features.
Designed for flexibility, Dell PowerStore integrates seamlessly with VMware, providing robust security and high IOPS. Users benefit from fast NVMe storage, intelligent data management, and scalable performance to handle diverse workload demands. However, improvements are needed in replication, enterprise functionalities, and UI complexity. Stability and support issues highlight the need for enhanced monitoring and pricing strategies.
What are the key features of Dell PowerStore?
What benefits does Dell PowerStore offer?
In industries like finance, healthcare, and IT, Dell PowerStore is critical for VMware virtualization, high-performance databases, and backup storage. It supports hosting virtual machines, mirroring storage, and handling SAP and Oracle databases effectively. Its role in hybrid and on-premises setups showcases its adaptability and integration capabilities for mission-critical tasks.
The NetApp A-Series and C-Series are AFF storage arrays that deliver high performance, scalability, and simplified data management for a wide range of workloads. They are designed for organizations that need to improve the performance and agility of their applications, while also reducing costs and complexity.
NetApp A-Series and C-Series feature a scale-out architecture that can be scaled to meet the needs of your growing business. They also support a wide range of built-in data protection and data security features, including snapshots, replication, disaster recovery, and autonomous ransomware protection.
AFF A-Series all-flash systems deliver industry-leading performance, density, scalability, security, and network connectivity.
AFF C-Series systems are suited for large-capacity deployment as an affordable way to modernize your data center to all flash and also connect to the cloud.
NetApp AFF Benefits
NetApp AFF Features
Reviews from Real Users
NetApp AFF stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its high performance and simplicity. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:
PeerSpot user and Storage Administrator, Daniel Rúnar Friðþjófsson, comments “AFF has helped to simplify our infrastructure, while still getting very high performance for our business-critical applications. Having all these things working well on one solution is really good. We run this as the backbone for both Hyper-V and VMware as well as an archive location for Rubrik. So, it is great having one solution that can do it all.
Because of the ease of it all, you have a highly tunable, high-performance storage system that alleviates a lot of problems. With its ease of management, you can quickly get your work done and go onto the next thing on your list.”
Additionally, Mohan Reddy, Sr. Technology Architect at a Pharma/Biotech company comments on how “NetApp's ONTAP data management software has also made tasks simpler for us. There's no question about that. It has helped us run operations very quickly, saving us a lot of time. Before ONTAP, we used to spend a long time doing regular operations, but with the latest version of the tool, our day-to-day operations are much quicker and easier.”
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