We performed a comparison between Dell SC Series 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."We like the speed. It's very low latency. In virtualization, you can mask lots of problems, and even in code you can mask lots of problems, with low latency. It's just pure speed and low latency."
"Our storage phones home. It is smart and intelligent in that aspect, which has been huge for us. We don't have to be storage administrators."
"It is noticeably easier to manage than other appliances that we have."
"The product cheaper compared to other solutions concerning the technology that they are using."
"This solution is very scalable."
"The console is simple to use. It has good performance. It is easy to install, understand, and manage, with a good ratio of deduplication and compression. It is doing its job."
"The code upgrades are very smooth."
"I use all the features of this solution and I find them to be easy to use and functional, such as the compression and capacity to expand."
"Everything is sub-5 MS for us. What I've found is that, with all-flash, when an app from my business is slow, I pretty much know it's them and not me. It leads to a performance conversation that has really hit an interesting threshold point where we are better than what they need. So now we get to have that "refactoring your application" conversation a lot quicker because now the performance on the infrastructure side isn't in question anymore."
"It has been one of the most stable products in our data center."
"Easy management of volumes: You can create volumes and easily assign them to VMware clusters, increasing their size."
"Customers are most impressed with SC's provisioning because you don't need to buy a large amount of storage upfront. It's pay-as-you-grow. It also has solid compression and duplication features."
"With auto-tiering, it's easier to understand than most arrays, knowing that all of your writes go to the tier that you specify, with easy-to-create storage profiles."
"I think that Dell EMC is one of the best technical support services in Ukraine."
"Technical support is very good. I do use it from time to time and it's always excellent."
"I've found the stability to be very good."
"The business copy solution has become faster using SnapMirror."
"It scales well, probably more so than the FAS. Because of the storage density with the SSDs, we can't buy enough SSDs to max one out."
"If you need a replacement part, they will provide it."
"The technical support is fantastic. No one else is like their team. We're happy with them."
"The most valuable feature of NetApp AFF for us is its ability to manage multiple IP spaces for our customers in a shared environment."
"The most valuable feature is speed."
"High availability"
"The most valuable feature is the ability to do QoS."
"I would like to have support available in Spanish."
"There are scenarios with very specific functionality around VMware integration particularly to do with the way we'd like to manage LUNs in VMware. The tools are pretty good but there's room for improvement there."
"We do have an issue with the vCenter integration. Pure Storage says it has a lot of free space, but vCenter says its completely full. This is because their dedupes are saved as space, but Vcenter still detects the disk as completely full. So, we do have an issue with that."
"I would like to see data tiering to AWS."
"I would like to get a weekly report of how our storage has been used, and if there is any storage sitting there not being used."
"We've had it in place for about a year and a half and have had zero complaints, other than that box-to-box replication is not encrypted."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better."
"I would like to have an easy way to determine the cost per VM so that I can present a solution to our customers."
"Technical support should respond more quickly because the turnaround time is very high."
"The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series."
"One option I would like to see is, when you're up on the view-screen, to be able to incorporate getting to what HPE call the iLO, the Integrated Lights-Out. To be able to get that instead of having to go back and trying to find IP addresses and re-institute those would be good. It would be good to be able to that put on the initial splash screen."
"While the scalability is good, there are certain limitations."
"The lower model, the 3000, should have duplication. It doesn't right now. It's only from 5000 that this is offered, but it depends on the performance. It could be they don't offer it on lower models because the duplication is too much of a burden to the performance."
"Overall, I'd like to see more synergy between Dell EMC's higher-tier platforms and their mid-tier platforms. What I have said, constantly, to my partners at Dell EMC is that the clear articulation of the path is really important to us. In that vein, what I'd also like to see is, with the migration strategy that's built into this product, a lot more attention paid to Dell's - in particular - legacy platforms and how we get from some of our legacy EMC platforms onto this platform with a straight-through migration and scaling strategy, not host-based migrations and not piecemeal... Dell EMC would do well to focus more on my ability to skip a generation, rather than having me take individual hops because I can't greenfield my way into a software-defined data center fast enough. This journey of multiple hops is not helpful."
"We had times that we needed a file service solution. We've used FluidFS, but it's a solution that is being transitioned out."
"I don't think the solution is very scalable."
"We have had issues with CIFS presentations and outages, so if that was removed, we could do seamless upgrades without affecting CIFS presentations. That would be an advantage. That's about the only improvement I can think of."
"We would like to have a feature that automatically moves volumes between aggregates, based on the performance. We normally need to do this manually."
"I would like to see better tutorials available, beyond the basics, that cover subjects like MetroCluster and automation."
"The price of NVMe storage is very expensive."
"The Bezels need improvement."
"It would be better if they just improved the performance of the system."
"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."
"I would like to see the ability to include more applications from applications to managed storage. If we can have more applications or more interface in more applications, that would be great."
Dell SC Series is ranked 24th in All-Flash Storage with 49 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews. Dell SC Series is rated 8.4, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell SC Series writes "Automated architecture that proactively optimizes your database ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". Dell SC Series is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Huawei OceanStor and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN and NetApp FAS Series. See our Dell SC Series vs. NetApp AFF report.
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