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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
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
19
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
109
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (3rd), NAS (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of Dell EqualLogic PS series is 2.7%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 15.2%, down from 17.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetApp FAS Series15.2%
Dell EqualLogic PS series2.7%
Other82.1%
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

HansThilen - PeerSpot reviewer
A highly scalable and astoundingly stable solution offering its users an extremely good technical support
Regarding an area to improve, I would say that from Dell EqualLogic family, I can't buy Dell EqualLogic PS series. I can't buy any more solutions provided by EqualLogic, so the solution will have to make certain improvements in the future. Since we can't buy anything from EqualLogic in our company, we plan to move to another solution. 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.
Srikanth Purushothaman - PeerSpot reviewer
Has supported long-term data protection and backup while requiring better part availability and pricing options
For monitoring purposes, we normally use flash access storage exclusively. We utilize a hybrid system because we need performance, combining NL-SAS for the volume and SAS flash to use as a fast cache system that provides more IOPS. We normally implement RAID 10, which we prefer over RAID 6's n plus 2 combinations. We utilize it for data redundancy, even with write intensity on. Regarding the unified storage architecture for NetApp FAS Series, we normally opt for exclusivity unless budget constraints exist. Our IOPS are very high, reaching somewhere about 50k to 150k or 1.150k. The high performance ensures minimal latency. An advantage we've seen with NetApp FAS Series is that snapshots provide very rapid backup and fast recovery. We basically use snapshots for data protection as first-level protection, with deduplication between the two storages serving as second-level protection.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has been working well overall."
"The technical support for the solution was really good."
"The most valuable feature of Dell EqualLogic PS series auto tiering by using this feature, the customer can get higher performance on a valuable budget."
"The technical support is very good."
"It is extremely reliable."
"You can always trust it. It is stable."
"The technical support for EqualLogic has been universally outstanding."
"Technical support, when we had access to it, was very good."
"The tool's most valuable features are ease of use, ease of access, expandability, availability, and performance. NVMe drives have improved their performance."
"It allows our Windows and Unix teams to have a centralized point to share data between the two."
"It offers data compression and people management."
"End-users like that they can rely on the Snapshot technology so they can do their restores themselves."
"The most valuable features are compression and dedupe."
"Reliable storage solution with an easy setup. It has high availability and makes single file restoration easy. It also has good stability and scalability."
"A reliable and easily managed storage system is a key performance factor. The system also has more features than we require."
"It's a stable product. No issues there."
 

Cons

"The product is reaching the end-of-lifecycle."
"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."
"There is no inline deduplication capability."
"Synchronous replication uses space inefficiently."
"Dell EqualLogic PS series could improve by providing fiber channel connectivity. Fiber channel connectivity is not supported, which is a requirement of advanced applications, such as SAP HANA. SAP HANA recommends fiber channel connectivity, but the Dell EqualLogic PS series is only an ISCSI data storage."
"Why is it not possible for both controllers to be simultaneously active (load balancing)?"
"There is no option for mixing RAID types in one device."
"6510 and 6610 have two iSCSI connections in each controller. Why do 6110xxx members have only one, and why do the same members have the possibility of having an active iSCSI interface in the passive controller? It could make a lot of noise with a failover."
"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."
"Installation of the additional switches and ETP could be improved."
"They should add new features to the product."
"We are not able to connect to the support of NetApp from Sudan. We have to go through many agents for support, which makes it difficult."
"NetApp could improve costs while making the solution more straightforward to use and deploy."
"Technical support needs to be improved, as there are no longer partners in our country."
"It lacks automatic tiering, When you use data, some of it goes cold. It is not hot data, so the system should automatically move that data to the SATA, while the hot data is kept on tier-one, the SaaS or SSD drives."
"Currently, the newest release is not HCI friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"All features are out of the box. The license will be in the virtual, OS, or application layer."
"There are annual maintenance costs beyond the original licensing period."
"Dell EqualLogic PS series can improve its scale-out feature. Sometimes the customer has a limited budget for storage expansion. When they want to expand their capacity, they need to buy a complete controller plus storage capacity, which sometimes is out of their budget. If Dell EqualLogic PS series support could scale up the environment in which only hard drive extension controllers should be supported, then customers can expand within a lower budget."
"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."
"Initial packages include all upgrades and services."
"Licensing is pretty straightforward."
"​It is a fair price."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive. We pay a one-time purchase price."
"The product is on the expensive side."
"When we need to implement a less expensive solution we use Huawei. NetApp FAS Series is a little bit expensive compared to the average of the market."
"We are on a perpetual license."
"NetApp FAS Series could be less expensive."
"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."
"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 focus on storage only, which is really good; it works."
"The solution’s cost is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise57
 

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?
An improvement that could be made is to have a storage solution with all SSD hard disks, as we currently have a Dell EqualLogic PS series with traditional hard disks. It's not simple to replace a h...
What is your primary use case for Dell EqualLogic PS series?
Dell EqualLogic PS series is the storage of our server, which serves our use case. The deployment of Dell EqualLogic PS series takes about five days.
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: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.