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Dell PowerPath vs NetApp ONTAP comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 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 PowerPath
Ranking in Storage Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp ONTAP
Ranking in Storage Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Storage Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerPath is 16.5%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ONTAP is 37.7%, down from 43.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Storage Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetApp ONTAP37.7%
Dell PowerPath16.5%
Other45.8%
Storage Software
 

Featured Reviews

Derrick Brockel - PeerSpot reviewer
A resilient and reliable solution that has many load-balancing technologies and provides high availability
People who want to buy the solution must create a scorecard of Dell PowerPath against other products. They must run database tests. They must consider factors like pricing, performance, ease of use, visibility, and reliability. They must also run tests to understand which product recovers faster. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
Naveen Radhwani - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good performance, stability, and complete data security
Our upcoming investments would be prioritized around a hybrid cloud solution because we ourselves promote the cloud in the market. We are the premium service provider for AWS, so we have that inclination toward cloud computing. From the experience that we had during the pandemic, we are looking for some kind of hybrid solution for our environment. NetApp should focus on a hybrid cloud solution because none of the media houses are opting for cloud storage. The files are quite heavy, and it becomes quite difficult to maintain them on the cloud. If NetApp can provide such technology and fill the gap of storing media files in the cloud, it would give them an advantage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is very reliable."
"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that disaster recovery scenarios are very good and easy to use in Dell PowerPath since it is available in a simplified form."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is migration without disruptions."
"The user interface is good."
"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."
"The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."
"It provides a high availability and will increase the performance of any server or operating system."
"The fact that NetApp ONTAP supports NVMe over TCP is a significant advantage."
"There is a faster release cycle now. Also, they are doing all types of cool stuff in their cloud volumes, replication, and tiering."
"The compression works well. We get a 3:1 ratio."
"We can recover data quickly. We are able to failover to remote sites. We can do that within minutes."
"Our organization is short-staffed, and ONTAP's ease of storage management is well-suited to our small team."
"Scalability is good. Now that we have the ability to add more nodes to the cluster, it's better. It allows us to grill our clusters allowing them to be larger and faster, without having to buy a whole new system."
"We over-allocate our aggregates and it still works, it's great, it's fun. We dedupe everywhere, we get huge savings. We went back and deduped the whole thing again, we could get more, so that's what we do. We go back and look to see if there's an option we can set and do it from the beginning, but still 13 terabytes, that's a lot of dedupe savings. Sometimes we get 50% or more in our savings, so we love dedupe."
"We bought it for a couple reasons. One, it took advantage of our existing storage because we could front-end that storage. It also allowed us, through native replication, to set up a DR site, which we're working towards. And three, that DR site, in 2020, is going to the cloud. NetApp has a nice solution for that. And our production in 2022 may actually go to the cloud. So all that is already in place, no additional tools. You can use the same SnapMirror and SnapVault technology to get there."
 

Cons

"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."
"While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective."
"Customers do not choose PowerPath unless they have Unix or Linux."
"Although PowerPath is very mature and has been on the market for more than 15 years there are still a lot of bugs that have been profiled with PowerPath, specifically, during any OS upgrade."
"The technical support is good but they are not available all the time."
"The solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."
"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The lack of an API is a big thing for us that needs to be improved. It needs proper API support."
"I would like to have deduplication and SSD features in the product."
"The additional features I would like to see in ONTAP, and NetApp in general would probably be the single pane of glass software. Over the years that's probably the biggest area that we've struggled with. NetApp has had a lot of good products, but a lot of them haven't necessarily seamlessly integrated with each other and you have to go to multiple management consoles to manage their software or their hardware. From a customer point of view, I think that single pane of glass where you could just add modules and enable functionality would be the most beneficial thing that NetApp could add."
"The price could be lower."
"We would like to have additional cloud integration and the ability to Snapshot directly to Amazon. This would help us reduce costs, provide us additional disaster recovery, and give us a site that's not owned by us."
"They could expand what is possible to do with automation as there are gaps in the Ansible module coverage they have."
"It is not as good as we need from a performance perspective. At the moment, we are always running out of CPU on the controllers, even the high-end solutions."
"The rate of technology could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is fair."
"There are no additional costs associated with the product."
"Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution."
"I rate the product's price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is affordable, and ten is really expensive. Dell PowerPath is an expensive tool."
"The product is a little bit expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"NetApp ONTAP is moderately priced."
"The licensing prices are really high."
"It helps us save money using compression and deduplication."
"The price could be a little bit cheaper, but you get what you pay for."
"We have seen ROI, especially with the deduplication. We have a high ratio of deduplication and are way past 70 percent of our VDI, as we have almost 400TBs on our VDI. We have been able to save at least a quarter of a petabyte of space."
"NetApp ONTAP is a pricey product, but you pay for what you get. I rate NetApp ONTAP a five out of ten for its pricing."
"It is cost-effective for the benefits you get."
"When you purchase NetApp for the first time they will provide you with the standard license, or a premium license, and even a standard bundle solution license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Healthcare Company
16%
Transportation Company
16%
Retailer
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
University
7%
Performing Arts
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise66
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell PowerPath?
The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerPath?
The product is a little bit expensive. It is a little pricey because it provides multipathing with other OSs. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.
What needs improvement with Dell PowerPath?
The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR. When we use 3PAR storage, we have to use another technology to load balance. The product must be integrated with other products l...
How does Azure NetApp Files compare to NetApp ONTAP?
Azure NetApp Files is a Microsoft Azure file storage service built on NetApp technology. The platform combines the file capabilities of Azure and NetApp to move critical file-based applications to ...
What do you like most about NetApp ONTAP?
We do not face any glitches or downtime.
 

Also Known As

PowerPath
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Healthcare Residential Service Company
1&1 IONOS, Acıbadem Healthcare Group, Adder Technologies, Aero Vodochody Aerospace
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,469 professionals have used our research since 2012.