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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
93
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Storage Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerPath is 15.9%, down from 16.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ONTAP is 20.2%, down from 37.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Storage Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp ONTAP20.2%
Dell PowerPath15.9%
Other63.9%
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

"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."
"The solution offers load balancing, which is great, the overall functionality has been really good, the setup is really easy, and we have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."
"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."
"The product is very reliable."
"The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."
"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."
"In the last four or five years, we have not had any issues."
"Our administrative effort is lower; DR is much easier now, as it is essentially just flipping a few switches and we have replicated data up in our DR data center."
"From a service level perspective, we can restore it from a snapshot in a very short period of time, whereas traditional backups from some of our larger databases could take many hours to recover."
"The moment you start using it is when the magic happens."
"Its ease of use, for the most part, through the interfaces is valuable."
"It has the ability to bring up disaster recovery quickly."
"The solution has helped our organization reduce its overall cost of storage by allowing us to have multiple sites using the multi-tenant security model, segregated from each other, while at the same time using the same resources."
"It is reliable, fast, and always available when needed."
"The product allowsfor the centralization of large environments."
 

Cons

"The technical support is good but they are not available all the time."
"While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."
"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 solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."
"If there is an operating system that is discontinued, PowerPath will now also stop the support for that operating system; for example, in the case of Solaris."
"We are always looking for more security enhancements and ways to continue to provide security encryption, whether it's data in rest or security in transit. We would also like to have more enhanced encryption beyond the regular TLS and 256-bit."
"The way you attach, move, migrate, and access LUNs is complicated, and if you do not know how to do it, it can be a great problem for your IT environment."
"With our current use case, we will need something faster. E.g., if you have a huge scale, having SSD-based backup is better."
"They could lower prices so my management doesn't complain about cost."
"The additional features I would like to see in ONTAP, and NetApp in general would probably be the single pane of glass software."
"One area where they could improve NetApp ONTAP is their ability to migrate to and from different enterprise storage."
"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 a technology and fill the gap of storing media files onto the cloud, it would give them an advantage."
"There is a lot a lot of functional integration that we look forward to for improvements. I'm learning where they're going and I'm very interested to see those improvements and how they can help us."
 

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."
"There are no additional costs associated with the product."
"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."
"ONTAP has helped our organization reduce its overall cost of storage (somewhere in the high millions)."
"We have seen ROI as we can fit a lot more storage in one rack."
"I rate NetApp ONTAP's pricing a seven out of ten."
"ONTAP is expensive, but most storage systems are now-a-days and everything is included with the license - there are no additional fees."
"The price could be a little bit cheaper, but you get what you pay for."
"The product costs an arm and leg; it's expensive."
"The pricing for NetApp ONTAP is moderate."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Transportation Company
15%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

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 Business10
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.
916,197 professionals have used our research since 2012.