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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
93
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Storage Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerPath is 15.7%, up from 14.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ONTAP is 20.5%, down from 41.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Storage Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp ONTAP20.5%
Dell PowerPath15.7%
Other63.8%
Storage Software
 

Featured Reviews

Derrick Brockel - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager of Operations at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
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.
BK
Senior Storage Engineer at Shell
Data management and availability improve operations, but cost and support need attention
For snapshots, there should be something similar to a recycle bin. When someone mistakenly deletes a snapshot, it should be stored for about two days before disappearing from the system. Regarding storage optimization, when purchasing a 10 terabyte disk, after formatting, you can only use approximately 8 terabytes. They should improve this so users can utilize 90% instead of 80% of the disk space. The support response needs improvement, especially for P1 cases. When critical cases are raised, they should ensure they call the customer and follow up properly. Comparing NetApp ONTAP to other solutions such as EMC, the cost of contract renewals and warranties is relatively expensive. They should extend their renewal window beyond the current six months to one year options. A longer warranty period of two years for new systems, controllers, or filers would be beneficial. Overall, they should reduce subscription costs for businesses.

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 improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."
"This multipathing software has certain features which we normally don't have on native multipathing software, especially in terms of load balancing and the way it captures the IO metrics and boosts the performance of different operating systems."
"The user interface is good."
"The user interface is good."
"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."
"In the last four or five years, we have not had any issues."
"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."
"I would rate this solution a ten because of what NetApp provides us from a quality layout. The partnership that they provide us and their assistance is very important and the work that they communicate with us on a regular basis is outstanding."
"Stability and performance have been great."
"The impact of NetApp ONTAP technology on the way I do business is significant because, unlike traditional file systems, it has different features that enable it to operate as an operating system, providing a broader scope of control and allowing different types of network storage, whether it's file shares such as SMB, NFS, or iSCSI block for low-latency use cases."
"It is reliable, fast, and always available when needed."
"For our product requirement and our users' requirements, it is one of the perfect network storage solutions we are using; it's reliable, synchronous, and we are not losing any data when using it."
"The deduplication and compression features have helped us save storage costs, and we have been able to save about 10 to 15% on space using the space consumption features."
"In terms of performance and reliability, NetApp ONTAP is fantastic; if you look at it, and if you go with NetApp now, everything you will get as compared to other storage, NetApp is extremely stable and reliable storage."
"We are saving more disk space which saves us more money."
 

Cons

"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"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 product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."
"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."
"The technical support is good but they are not available all the time."
"Customers do not choose PowerPath unless they have Unix or Linux."
"While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective."
"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 initial installation could've been quite easy, but there was a lot of miscommunications with professional services and there are a lot of details that they didn't quite provide which caused a very complicated installation."
"The toughest thing that we have right now is a cabling issue. There are so many that you need to connect."
"If you do the initial setup manually, it is a bit difficult for someone who doesn't know."
"They could focus on making it more user-friendly. Currently, many users need a certain level of NetApp knowledge to operate it effectively, often relying on command-line interfaces that demand IT or technology skills."
"The GUI of NetApp ONTAP is an area with certain shortcomings that need to be considered for improvement."
"The initial UI integration could be quite a lot better."
"Scalability has been less of an issue. Unfortunately, NetApp does forklift upgrades; this is probably the biggest negative that I have with NetApp as a whole."
"It should be easier to put in tech support cases. They should streamline the online support and chat."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution."
"The price of the solution is fair."
"There are no additional costs associated with the product."
"It's not an all inclusive model. You have the option to purchase modules to make the entire ecosystem coherent. I would like the option to pay one price and get everything all inclusive, like OnCommand."
"Depending on the licensing you choose the price varies. For our company and our needs, the cost is very fair."
"I rate NetApp ONTAP's pricing a seven out of ten."
"NetApp provided the features required within our cost limit."
"ONTAP has helped our organization reduce its overall cost of storage (somewhere in the high millions)."
"While it is going to cost a lot of money, their technologies is worth it."
"The product is a bit expensive."
"It helps us save money using compression and deduplication."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Transportation Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise68
 

Questions from the Community

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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 needs improvement with NetApp ONTAP?
File level restoration could be improved. Currently, NetApp ONTAP provides volume level restore, but file level restore is somewhat difficult to execute. If NetApp were to provide an option for fil...
 

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: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.