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Dell PowerPath vs NetApp ONTAP comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
7.2
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Storage Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerPath is 15.5%, down from 16.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ONTAP is 20.1%, down from 37.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Storage Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp ONTAP20.1%
Dell PowerPath15.5%
Other64.4%
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."
"The user interface is good."
"In the last four or five years, we have not had any issues."
"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."
"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."
"It provides a high availability and will increase the performance of any server or operating system."
"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."
"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."
"The technical support is great. It's the best I've ever encountered. I can email and have everything resolved at three in the morning within half an hour. I have had some late night calls to their guys techs, and it's been phenomenal."
"We've seen return on investment for ONTAP specifically on the performance recently. Where we had our file storage solution sitting on a hybrid storage solution and we were having continuous performance issues, as our workloads went up we were able to put in an 8300 all-flash array. Since we've put that in, we've been under one-millisecond latency, and that's allowed us to not have delays in some of our EDI transactions. Our end customer integrates and interfaces with that technology. Fewer outages equal more business, more profit, more revenue, and immediate ROI. We've been really happy with the new All Flash hardware solutions."
"It is very easy to scale, so we started with a four-node cluster and added it to a six-node cluster. We've also done some other modifications in between."
"NetApp ONTAP enables us to deliver services to customers predictably, which is crucial in our line of business."
"It is easy to migrate data from one storage array to another storage array using SnapMirror technologies."
"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."
"What I appreciate the most about the product is its resiliency."
"Overall I think it is still a really good environment and using NetApp has been a really good solution for us."
 

Cons

"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"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."
"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."
"The solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."
"The technical support is good but they are not available all the time."
"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."
"They could make the access a bit easier."
"I would like the ability to perform backups in the cloud. That way you don't have to worry about building the data center. Everything's already in the cloud."
"You really need OnCommand to do a lot of cool stuff with NetApp, and they make it hard to get."
"It doesn't scale horizontally since there are a limited number of shelves."
"The setup can be a bit complex, depending on the environment."
"Scalability is a bit of a question. If we're only doing file-based storage, scalability is fantastic. If we are doing block-based storage through iSCSI or Fibre Channel, there are some significant limitations in the number of volumes and clients that you can put on a single data ONTAP cluster."
"However, if the integration with legacy applications was simpler, it would be great."
"I wish tech support would be better. I wish I could talk to somebody more easily and qualified, because this is the way it is supposed to be."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no additional costs associated with the product."
"Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"The price of the solution is fair."
"The product is a little bit 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."
"ONTAP has helped our organization reduce its overall cost of storage (somewhere in the high millions)."
"This solution helped our organization reduce our overall cost of storage. Because idle data which was residing on high cost tiers, once we sifted the ONTAP, we were able to scale and place it where it should be, then offload the data which was unnecessary to different locations."
"We receive the best support for a lower price point."
"While it is going to cost a lot of money, their technologies is worth it."
"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's very expensive."
"The licensing prices are really high."
"We have a wholesale contract with NetApp. We also have NetApp ONTAP On-Demand activation for certain things. We also have some preferential pricing for licenses. The licensing that I see here doesn't apply to other clients in the field. NetApp is expensive, but so are the competitors, making it hard to ascertain precise retail value. However, based on my perspective, NetApp pricing appears competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Transportation Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

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 Enterprise69
 

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?
I have encountered a couple of issues with data deduplication and compression. If there were an option to set up those items separately, it would make it easier to configure and monitor those aspects.
 

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 2026.
914,262 professionals have used our research since 2012.