We performed a comparison between Dell PowerStore and NetApp AFF based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"The speed is one of the most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray."
"The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"The solution is very reliable."
"We find the ease of usability and setup valuable."
"Support has been helpful."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are management and administration user-friendliness, provisioning, and performance."
"The compression and deduplication features help to make the best use of the capacity."
"The code upgrades are very smooth."
"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."
"Currently, the features of replication and deduplication have been very important to us."
"Has a great mapping feature."
"For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance."
"The solution is very easy to implement."
"The supportability of SCME drives for faster data access from the PowerStore and is the most valuable feature."
"The solution's technical support is excellent. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"You can add compute and capacity independently. We have sized the solution based on our current needs, but in the future we can choose to increase capacity if we grow our activity in the market. And if we have more business in our monetary system, we can increase compute. The ability to choose what we increase is a good feature."
"It simplifies data management for NAS environments with its ease of management, ease of share creation, and Active IQ feature. These features are good overall. It helps us manage data quickly and sufficiently. Also, compression features, like dedupe, give us a good ratio."
"The speed is great. That's probably number one in terms of features we appreciate."
"I like the ability to snapshot, and the cloning features are valuable to us as well. I like that I can quickly and efficiently snapshot the data and move it to wherever I need to locally or in the cloud. Also, I know that when I take the snapshot that all of the data will be there and that it will be usable when I need to use it."
"It is a stable solution."
"Snapshots, snap clones, backups, flexibility, and agility are valuable features. I like that NetApp AFF is easy to use. We can automate everything for our backups and use cases. It's fast and simple, and provides storage to all of our VMware ESX hosts. It expands easily as well."
"NetApp is like a one-point central management. For example, one can put everything on the right version and control the whole environment from one software solution."
"The speed of data retrieval is the most valuable feature. We mostly use it for our SAP database and we are getting good IO from the hard drive."
"It impacts customer retention because of its overall ease. When you are running a business, where time is a factor, that is the biggest selling point. Things happen really rapidly, when they happen, and being able to say, "Yeah, we can get this up and running in a day, if you want," or even less time in some cases. Sometimes, that can be what makes or breaks our case."
"Pricing could be better in comparison to other solutions."
"Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."
"The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality."
"Areas for improvement would be the financial operations. In the next release, I would like to see a NAS protocol included."
"We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform. The idea is that they would run a basic NFS or CIF share from the controllers. FlashBlade is the powerhouse for File and Object storage, but if you don't need all that power, a lightweight file function would make FlashArrays more versatile."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better."
"Larger capacity and more storage ports would be the two things I'd like to see."
"CIFS and SMB Shares cannot be mounted directly."
"The support is not very good."
"Could be improved by including a synchronizing feature for the file systems."
"Reporting is an area that could be improved. It's very simplistic sometimes, and some of the very technical guys on my team want to see more of the details and be able to massage the report a little bit better."
"During the installation phase, the licensing part was not straightforward. It was very difficult for the technicians, who are not trained Dell EMC technicians, to do the licensing because the information on their website is not straightforward... Eventually, I had to pass this task to our business partner and they did it for us."
"It was very new when we first deployed it a year ago. Even the upgrade processes and knowing what to expect, as well as documentation, could be more robust."
"We would consider this solution if the pricing is competitive with other options, as it offers a very good solution. However, the current price is slightly higher than the competition."
"Dell PowerStore is a good solution overall, but some models could support hypervisors better by allowing for more customization and flexibility for customer needs."
"There is no Synchronize replication feature on the storage."
"After the three-year prepay, the extended warranty is a little expensive."
"For ONTAP, in general, the deduplication ratio and Snapshot limitation are areas that need improvement. There is a global limitation on the number of Snapshots or clones that can be spun off of a particular Snapshot. If those limitations are increased, it might be helpful."
"NetApp AFF could improve SAN storage because it feels as if it was not put together at the beginning, it functions as an afterthought. Additionally, the cloud features could be more mature."
"We would like to have a feature that automatically moves volumes between aggregates, based on the performance. We normally need to do this manually."
"The user interface should be more user-friendly, and the configuration could be more accessible."
"The initial setup has a lot more steps in it than are probably necessary for a base deployment, unlike other vendors where it's more straightforward. It could be a little bit more streamlined."
"The NetApp support could be better."
"The size of NetApp could be better. They're always about 40 pounds without the hard drives in them, so it would be great if there's a way to make them smaller yet keep the functionality. That would reduce the physical footprint."
Dell PowerStore is ranked 1st in All-Flash Storage with 35 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 27 reviews. Dell PowerStore is rated 8.4, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell PowerStore writes "Saves us power and floor space, and we can quickly assign new data stores for our developers' VMs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Provides us with quick options when restoring things for customers". Dell PowerStore is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Dell PowerMax NVMe, HPE Nimble Storage and HPE Primera, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Dell Unity XT, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and VMware vSAN. See our Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp AFF report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors and best NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays vendors.
We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
