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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
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
22nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
312
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell XtremIO is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 9.4%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Stanislaw Jagielski - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient and straightforward setup boosts data management capabilities
Scalability is a significant feature of Dell XtremIO, as it is easy to expand and manage. It provides a lot of features suited for complex systems, such as scalability and the ability to define multi-domain systems, which are beneficial for data management and storage separation. It is efficient from the customer's point of view, offering deduplication at both the volume and file levels. The configuration and setup are straightforward, provided one has knowledge in setting up network infrastructure like VLANs. It is easy to install, use, and configure, making it a reliable product.
Ian Rousom - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible with great support and high-speed multi-protocol storage
Keystone offers flexible consumption models that go beyond just how much capacity at such and such a speed, et cetera. We don't always know what the profile of that data will be. However, if we can quickly agree on terms that meet our needs and make NetApp still reasonably profitable, we can confidently deploy, see how things go and adjust. That kind of service delivery model, that customer service model has sped things up and made contract negotiations much easier. It frankly made the owners of the system more confident. We've experienced faster time to market. It's hard for us to find and retain infrastructure staff. We're in a business where the firm fixed price contract reigns supreme, and so we can't always just offer someone more money. However, if they can dedicate their time to learning one company's portfolio and learning it really well, but be useful in a bunch of different places, they will do well. We've seen that in a lot of different places. We've been able to hire younger people and retain them, moving them from program to program based on their understanding of the solution its skill set, and its portability. It's been useful for high-speed multi-protocol storage in places with ever-increasing density. We have limits on how much power and cooling and rack space we have, and yet they've delivered every time. We needed a storage company that had mastery of multi-protocol, and this solution stands out. They especially stand out as a secure provider. We require solutions that we can run ourselves, that we can air gap since so much of what we do is either classified or very sensitive or cannot live in a public ecosystem. For us, the issue consuming AI has been the trust of the models given to us by third parties. We can't necessarily trust their provenance, what fed them, what originally trained them, or what gave them their worldview, for lack of a better term. We can't simply just trust that at face value since we know nothing about where it came from or what inferences it might make. We must assume that some AI inferences were made deliberately to damage or hurt national security systems. So the models that we start with tend to be very, very primitive, crude, and not well trained, so we have to train them much longer and not always with the availability of cloud that has inexhaustible capacity. A partner who understands this and provides consistency at all scales is very important.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"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. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"Ease of management, aside from the serious performance, is the best feature."
"Scalability is a significant feature of Dell XtremIO, as it is easy to expand and manage."
"The program is very stable."
"Deduplication and cloning capability"
"Initially, we faced numerous issues with our analytical systems. However, we saw performance improvement after the implementation of the solution."
"The speed and scalability of Dell XtremIO are significant features that improve data storage management."
"The speed and scalability of Dell XtremIO are significant features that improve data storage management."
"A valuable feature of XtremIO is that, in terms of administration, it's simple and manageable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is data protection and snapshot technology for backup."
"We have SQL clusters across the United States. It has sped up our IOPS and made it a lot easier for users."
"At the file level, the protocols they support are easy to use. This improves resiliency and helps us run the environment."
"We have a comprehensive solution that could accommodate anything. We can fly it earlier and get them in the air testing and prototyping much faster than they could have with other solutions."
"The scale up version of it is the most valuable feature. You can go to 24 nodes, which is very cool."
"Things that have been really useful, of course, are the clustering features and being able to stay online during failovers and code upgrades; and just being able to seamlessly do all sorts of movement of data without having to disrupt end-users' ability to get to those files. And we can take advantage of new shelves, new hardware, upgrade in place. It's kind of magic when it comes to doing those sorts of things."
"We just migrated two petabytes of data storage from IBM over to NetApp All Flash. Some of the performance improvement that we've seen is 100 times I/O and microsecond latency."
"The ease of use for setting up our basic shares such as NFS and CIFS is valuable. It takes a couple of clicks to set up things like object shares."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."
"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"Ease of use is key in the converged and hyper-converged world that requires administrators to have both hypervisor and storage skills."
"One thing that should be improved is the reporting and monitoring tools. It should use real time monitoring for storage, IOPS, latency, etc."
"The product is highly expensive. Additionally, there is a significant lack of training, support documents, and forums available for Dell XtremIO, making troubleshooting difficult for third-party individuals."
"If you are looking at flash storage solutions, XtremIO doesn't offer any unique features. Most of my customers are migrating their workload from XtremIO to other formats because of this."
"Scalability could be better."
"They can improve the product by providing an HTML5-based interface instead of the Java GUI based application."
"XtremIO needs to be lower priced. It also needs better endpoints and scalability."
"XtremIO is coming to its end of life."
"There is room for improvement in terms of support. I have noticed that if I sometimes call their customer care for a particular issue, they will give me another number and ask me to call that other team. It would be better if they could do a warm transfer. That would save customers time from calling all the numbers again and speaking to another team."
"Better stability, not releasing features until they are fully functional, or at least giving us a software train that doesn't add them until they are fully functional and proven."
"There are no RDMA capabilities in CIFS (SMB) and NFS protocols."
"There is no direct storage attachment available. Most configurations require additional switches for data access."
"Customer support is a hot-button issue, so we definitely need better customer support. We get some support from our vendor that helps. If the C-Series had a more user-friendly GUI, that would help us get our LUNs built and data storage connected faster."
"The procurement process could be improved. It takes a long time for us to receive stuff. The product is good. It's not the product, it's just that it takes forever to get it. It's not our reseller's problem; it's usually held up at NetApp."
"We would like to have NVMe on FabricPool working because it broke our backups. We enabled FabricPool to do the tiering from our AFFs to our Webscale but it sort of broke our Cobalt backups."
"In terms of improvements, they could have a couple more things that are usually done through the command line."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."
"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"The initial purchase price was good but when you need to upgrade, it's a different story."
"Pricing and licensing are in line with other products from other manufacturers. You get what you pay for."
"The license for XtremIO is in the box, so you don't have to buy anything."
"Licensing is approximately $200,000 per year."
"The price of the solution should be reduced. The price matches the price of a VMAX service but it does not have the capability of a VMAX service. However, the prices of Dell EMC XtremIO can be reduceable."
"It is costly but worth it."
"The licensing cost is on a yearly subscription basis, which can be expensive but is necessary for ongoing support and services. The pricing could be improved to make it more accessible."
"It is great when a product can deliver high-end performance capabilities while offering a very competitive price point."
"NetApp is getting too expensive."
"The list price of AFF is too expensive... they need to be careful with the pricing of the new NVMe disks. They are way too expensive."
"The total cost of ownership has decreased a great deal. As far as percentages, it's hard to gauge, but we did have quite a few personnel staying up, making sure batches ran well every night. Now, batches are being done by 8:00 in the evening, so we don't have to do that anymore. When you start adding the employee hours that we have for people working in the off-hours, and it is not an issue anymore, I suspect TCO might have gone down 25 percent."
"It definitely reduces costs because it simply takes less power to run these systems. While the SSDs don't take power, they are in general very big right now. So, the running cost has decreased for a lot of our customers."
"I am comfortable with the pricing, which is fair compared to others."
"The solution is moderately priced."
"I do not deal with pricing, but the pricing of NetApp and Dell seems pretty close. NetApp support is cheaper than Dell support."
"The pricing is good."
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Comparison Review

it_user186357 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Educational Organization
14%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
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?
The interface could be simplified for beginners to ease the configuration of special objects in the system. While the...
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: July 2025.
862,499 professionals have used our research since 2012.