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Dell EqualLogic PS series vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

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

Dell EqualLogic PS series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (4th), NAS (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of Dell EqualLogic PS series is 1.9%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 18.5%, up from 16.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

Abdul Rehman Abid - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful auto tiering, excellent support, and highly reliable
The initial setup of the Dell EqualLogic PS series is simple. The physical connectivity and rack mounting time depend on the size of the deployment. For example, if we have five of the Dell EqualLogic PS series we can mount and do the cabling within two hours. The initial configuration can be done within an hour. The estimated time to deploy from start to finish in this scenario is four to five hours maximum. One person can do most of the deployment, such as configuration, but a helper is needed to do the mounting of the cables.
Paweł Jabłoński - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for VMs with replication a feature, but need upgraded SSDs
We use this solution. I configured and updated it. Of course, I was also a user of applications that store data on that storage. We already have an SSD solution. So, rather than planning to go with an SSD solution, we are focusing on expanding it. If a company wants to deploy something new, it should choose a product with SSD, and NVMe disks. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The technical support for EqualLogic has been universally outstanding."
"You can always trust it. It is stable."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The technical support for the solution was really good."
"Technical support, when we had access to it, was very good."
"The product is very stable."
"Dell's technical support is very good."
"Its high availability. It has a lot of redundancy and good management software as well as good alerting."
"The replication feature is noteworthy because it's faster than most and it uses little bandwidth. Then there's the friendly interface that the equipment offers. With this interface, it is very easy to manage."
"You can use different protocols at the same time. Monitoring is also very easy in NetApp FAS Series. There is a free tool for monitoring."
"They are very satisfied with NetApp and continue to use NetApp and upgrade to new solutions."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its absolute reliability."
"It's enabled us to allow admins across the IT organization to more easily manage their own subset of data within our organization."
"It is very flexible. It integrates well with the public cloud and other components, so everything can be API driven. Therefore, it is very easy to automate it."
"The product is user-friendly and helps to evaluate the performance of each node. It ensures that if one node encounters an issue, the system can immediately redistribute the workload without interruptions. This setup provides uninterrupted operation for our systems."
"It is very easy to expand disks and manage CIFS."
 

Cons

"It is at the end of support and no longer supported. We have to move our VMware to another storage platform, and we have decided to use Dell PowerStore. We like Dell's products, and it is a new platform with a lot of features."
"The replication efficiency needs to be improved."
"The searchable online documentation is missing.​"
"There is no option for mixing RAID types in one device."
"I can't buy any more solutions provided by EqualLogic...Since I can't buy it anymore, I don't receive any updates on the solution. Also, this is the last year in which one can buy support for the solution."
"If I need to have more space or more capacity, I need to replace the product. It would be ideal if we could scale without replacing the box itself."
"The performance isn't as good as, for example, Nimble."
"Dell EqualLogic PS series could improve the performance because in our hybrid configuration the read speed is faster than the write speed."
"They should add new features to the product."
"The NetApp FAS Series is not as high-performing and is not as fast. Its speed needs improvement, but this could only be done if it's an all-flash solution."
"A big problem with physical appliances is that updating them can be a bit burdensome."
"NetApp could improve costs while making the solution more straightforward to use and deploy."
"We no longer have OEM support in South Africa which is not helpful, it can be difficult. They should add an office back to the country because it was better."
"We're supposed to have used NetApp FAS Series for replication, but then one of the nodes failed, and then it's taken us some time to bring it up."
"Its operating system is very cumbersome. However, after you set it up, it runs pretty smoothly. Its file system is not very dynamic. It is very static."
"Cluster mode needs to be more ubiquitous."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are annual maintenance costs beyond the original licensing period."
"Price-wise, the solution is cheap. I rate it a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"It seemed expensive at first, but the durability lowered the cost of ownership dramatically over time."
"I didn't buy it. It was another person seven years ago. So, I don't really know, but all storage platforms cost a lot of money. It is probably in the mid-range, but you get what you pay for."
"​It is a fair price."
"All features are out of the box. The license will be in the virtual, OS, or application layer."
"Initial packages include all upgrades and services."
"Licensing is pretty straightforward."
"The solution is more expensive than other vendors."
"It's not cheap, but at the same time, it's also inexpensive. It's somewhere in between."
"It is a one-time license charge for NetApp FAS Series to run and we pay annually for upgrades and support."
"The price, compared to competitors, is quite high."
"We purchased it for four years, and it wasn't expensive. It was reasonable. Every company has a different agreement with NetApp. We got everything we wanted with all the bells and whistles and all the features and functionalities."
"We have considered upgrading to an All-Flash solution but when we evaluated the cost-benefit we discovered that we don't have enough money to invest in it. To maintain the same technology with All-Flash would be too expensive for us."
"If we want a ransomware solution with the product or other extended features, we need to pay an extra cost."
"NetApp FAS Series is a reasonably high-priced solution, partially because we select the configuration that duplicates the entire system."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
55%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell EqualLogic PS series?
The technical support for the solution was really good.
What needs improvement with Dell EqualLogic PS series?
The main issue was that when there were new storage solutions technologies available on the market, Dell EqualLogic PS Series was not compatible with the latest products. Right now, we have a stora...
What is your primary use case for Dell EqualLogic PS series?
I used the solution in my company since we had a virtual infrastructure, which served as our storage array with ESXi connections, which are also integrated with VMware solutions.
Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?
Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?
The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable because they also have deduplication, compression, and inline compression. They fo...
 

Also Known As

EqualLogic PS series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FAW Foundry, AW Engineering, Unimat, eLongNet Information Technology, BDO Brasil, Odyssey Space Research
Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell EqualLogic PS series vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.