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Dell PowerProtect Data Domain vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.9
Dell PowerProtect Data Domain offers efficient cost-saving storage solutions, fast recovery, and reliability for large organizations despite initial costs.
Sentiment score
5.8
NetApp FAS Series offers strong ROI with VMware integration, reducing costs through efficiency, consolidation, and strong service value.
One is less floor space in the data center and the ability to pack more data into the backup storage on Dell PowerProtect Data Domain as compared to the traditional backup storage.
Vice President - Information Technology Systems Engineering at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The best part is the compression and deduplication feature.
Lead Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
I find it cost-effective, and it does bring the return on investment.
lead at Boston Scientific
If you have the configuration well maintained and configured, you should have good efficiency and compression for the clients and for yourself.
System Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Dell PowerProtect Data Domain support is praised for quick, knowledgeable service, despite occasional delays and regional inconsistencies.
Sentiment score
7.3
NetApp FAS Series' support is generally praised for knowledge and responsiveness, though some note variability in service quality.
We feel that we are working with people who understand the technology and the historical patterns of this environment, and when we raise a support request, we have no doubt because it seems that we are working with a product engineer.
System Administrator at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
They respond within 24 hours of case submission, which is crucial for maintaining the solution.
Sr System Expert at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
I have dedicated support from Dell for Vietnam, and they are responsive.
Information Technology Technician at Lac Viet Computing
Sometimes, the support was inadequate because the initial architecture was poorly defined.
Pre-Sales Director France, Belgium and Luxembourg at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
We are also using it ourselves for the SAN and CIFS protocol.
System Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
They often provide basic solutions, such as suggesting a failover or a power cycle, which are not the sophisticated solutions we expect from a vendor.
Senior Cloud System Engineer at Atos Poland
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
Dell PowerProtect Data Domain offers scalable enterprise storage with flexible expansion, efficient deduplication, but may need additional licensing.
Sentiment score
7.4
NetApp FAS Series offers impressive scalability and efficient data handling, with considerations for cost and planning for expansion.
The scalability depends on the IT department's strategy.
Sr System Expert at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Dell PowerProtect Data Domain is very scalable; it expands easily with new enclosures.
Storage Engineer at Comtrade Group
Dell PowerProtect Data Domain can scale up horizontally to meet the growing needs of our organization.
lead at Boston Scientific
We normally avoid current versions and use versions that have been running for at least two months in client usage before updating drivers.
DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems
NetApp FAS Series is scalable, and it is possible, but you need to pay.
System Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The NetApp FAS Series is scalable and offers numerous solutions, but only if customers are willing to invest in the shelves.
Senior Cloud System Engineer at Atos Poland
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Dell PowerProtect Data Domain is highly stable, reliable, with minimal issues and strong performance, earning high stability ratings.
Sentiment score
8.0
NetApp FAS Series is highly reliable with minimal downtime, praised for redundancy and continuous operation despite occasional issues.
We have never encountered issues such as data corruption with these systems.
Storage Engineer at Comtrade Group
I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with it.
IT Infrastructure and Telecom TL at a construction company with 51-200 employees
I have been using it for up to three years with no upgrading or downtime.
Data Protection Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
When panic occurs on the node, it reboots itself, and we have experienced numerous hardware-related issues.
Senior Cloud System Engineer at Atos Poland
Most things are tailor-made, and we avoid downtimes even with primitive CLI commands.
DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerProtect Data Domain faces high costs, complex setup, and improvement needs in integration, support, and feature optimization.
NetApp FAS Series needs better performance, integration, monitoring, pricing, usability, and support to enhance competitiveness and user experience.
Local support must be available in the country.
Head Of Systems Group at NCCPL
We can leverage writing NAS level backup into Dell PowerProtect Data Domain rather than utilizing any other software tools such as Networker.
Vice President - Information Technology Systems Engineering at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Dell PowerProtect Data Domain represents the fastest and most reliable solution, ensuring great integration with backup software.
Storage Engineer at Comtrade Group
Storage companies should create encrypted storage solutions between the OS and storage to protect against ransomware attacks.
DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems
Nutanix leads the business in this approach, and I feel that NetApp is missing some aspects, such as CPU, GPU, and RAM, in its AI portfolio.
Pre-Sales Director France, Belgium and Luxembourg at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
There is an opportunity there for NetApp with Cloud Volumes ONTAP.
Technological Consultant at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerProtect Data Domain is costly, but performance and deduplication often justify its price despite higher costs than competitors.
NetApp FAS Series is seen as high-cost but justified by features and performance, with negotiable pricing and discounts.
It is almost four times the earlier price.
Head of Sales and Operations at New Horizon Computers
For small clients, it is very expensive.
Specialist Senior N2 at Entelgy
The pricing has become higher since July, and the license costs are more expensive compared to the past.
Technical manager at Advanced Computer Technology (ACT)
The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable.
System Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerProtect Data Domain offers exceptional deduplication, compression, reliability, scalability, cloud integration, and disaster recovery performance in data management.
NetApp FAS Series provides reliable, flexible storage management with high availability, supporting SAN/NAS protocols and VMware integration for cost-effectiveness.
The most valuable feature of Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is its deduplication capability.
Technical manager at Advanced Computer Technology (ACT)
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is highly consistent, durable, easy to install, scalable, and compatible with any software today.
Head of Sales and Operations at New Horizon Computers
The most beneficial features in the product are compatibility, which is the most valuable function.
Head Of Systems Group at NCCPL
While NVMe disks are expensive and require three disks for parity calculations, hard drives in NetApp FAS Series are inexpensive, making it more cost-efficient per GB, even with RAID tech implementation.
Senior Cloud System Engineer at Atos Poland
Our IOPS are very high, reaching somewhere about 50k to 150k or 1.150k.
DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems
One important feature for customers is its ease of use and continuity, enabling seamless usage across on-premise and cloud environments.
Pre-Sales Director France, Belgium and Luxembourg at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerProtect Data Domain
Ranking in Deduplication Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
Disk Based Backup Systems (1st)
NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in Deduplication Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
NAS (3rd), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Deduplication Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerProtect Data Domain is 25.4%, down from 29.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 4.0%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Deduplication Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dell PowerProtect Data Domain25.4%
NetApp FAS Series4.0%
Other70.6%
Deduplication Software
 

Q&A Highlights

DR
Sr. Information Officer at Merino Industries Ltd (Merino Group)
Jun 01, 2022
 

Featured Reviews

Branko Cirovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Engineer at Comtrade Group
Provides seamless backup integration and long-term reliability for enterprise data protection
The price is quite high; this product is not considered cheap. Additionally, if you use higher availability boxes, they also come at a premium price. However, they provide business continuity, which is the main reason why companies invest in this solution. Tape is slow; when restoring several virtual machines or databases amounting to several terabytes, Dell PowerProtect Data Domain represents the fastest and most reliable solution, ensuring great integration with backup software. If a customer has limited budget constraints, they may opt for cheaper external storage comprised of just a bunch of disks and utilize it for backup, as backup is not a business-critical service. However, I see great value in Dell PowerProtect Data Domain because it is fully automated, features great integration with backup software, and provides good value for money. I would rate software support as a ten, while I would give hardware support a seven. I never give any product a perfect score; I think Dell PowerProtect Data Domain deserves a nine. The only minor problems are the certificate issue and the price. These certificate issues are quite rare and mainly arise when we forget to restart and upgrade the box for several years.
Srikanth Purushothaman - PeerSpot reviewer
DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems
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.
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Answers from the Community

DR
Sr. Information Officer at Merino Industries Ltd (Merino Group)
Jun 1, 2022
Jun 1, 2022
I think they are different types of storage for different purposes. If you are looking for a storage where to put backups data you can think Data Domain is the perfect choice because it is its main use (most or all the backup softwares have plugins in ordere to manage data domains). If you are looking for a primary storage (where to put your servers' data) then you can look to Netapp FAS and Pu...
2 out of 3 answers
GL
Responsabile Data Management DC Area Nord Ovest at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
May 31, 2022
I think they are different types of storage for different purposes. If you are looking for a storage where to put backups data you can think Data Domain is the perfect choice because it is its main use (most or all the backup softwares have plugins in ordere to manage data domains). If you are looking for a primary storage (where to put your servers' data) then you can look to Netapp FAS and Purestorage. The latter are flash natives so it's simpler to manage and configure. If you look at the Netapp FAS you can also choose storages with HDDs with less performance (and a cheaper price). 
MS
President/CDS at Comcast Business
May 31, 2022
@Dhruba Roy, your question conflates very different kinds of storage.  PowerProtect DD is Dell's latest version of Data Domain. It is ONLY useful as target storage for backups. Nothing else, not even archiving. If that is what you want, it does what it's supposed to do. Albeit, it's a bit pricey and underperforming.  There are much faster, cheaper, and more advanced backup target storage. Especially when measuring restore performance. I would suggest you take a hard look at a variety of backup target storage vendors including, Infinidat InfiniGuard, ExaGrid, Quantum, StorONE, iXsystems, and many more. Most backup target storage is all HDD although some are hybrid SSD and HDD. NetApp FAS is a general-purpose storage system for blocks and files. It can be all HDD, hybrid HDD and SSD, or all SSD (all-flash FAS or AFF). It's a solid all around storage system with NetApp pioneered capabilities, but expensive as a backup storage target.  Pure Storage FlashArray//X or //C are block all-flash storage arrays. Their FlashBlades are all flash file and object storage systems. Good performers but overkill and way too expensive for backup target storage. I think you need to define what it is you really need. Of the 3 vendors you asked about, I am going to repeat myself, PowerProtect DD is ONLY useful as a target storage for backups. The other two can do so, but are really not priced nor designed specifically for backup target storage.  If general purpose storage is what you need NetApp and PureStorage are good possibilities among many others.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise37
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
My use cases for it involve primarily backing up the on-premises servers, and besides that, we also provision CIFS shares and NFS exports on Dell PowerProtect Data Domain.
What do you like most about Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
The product, a disk backup solution, improves our data application tasks. We used tape libraries with Dev drives in legacy architectures, resulting in slow backups compared to modern drives like NV...
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

DataDomain, Dell EMC Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

The US Army, City of Houston, Lloyds TSB, TiVo, Teck, Ingram Entertainment, The New York Mets
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 PowerProtect Data Domain vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.