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Dell SC Series vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (15th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell SC Series
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays (3rd), All-Flash Storage (18th)
NetApp FAS Series
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (4th), NAS (3rd), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
Steven McClendon - PeerSpot reviewer
Superior platform with excellent snapshots and cost-saving auto-tiering
I'm a big fan of the SC Series platform. Its feature set is superior to some of the other platforms. The snapshots on SC are excellent, allowing for multiple snapshot schedules for any one system. The auto-tiering functionality intelligently moves new data to the highest performance tier and then progresses it down to less expensive tiers over time, providing cost savings for customers.
Paweł Jabłoński - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for VMs with replication a feature, but need upgraded SSDs
We use this solution. I configured and updated it. Of course, I was also a user of applications that store data on that storage. We already have an SSD solution. So, rather than planning to go with an SSD solution, we are focusing on expanding it. If a company wants to deploy something new, it should choose a product with SSD, and NVMe disks. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"I appreciate the performance."
"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"Performance-wise it's high speed. It's also more stable and scalable."
"A valuable feature is the performance of the auto-tiering. It will move hot data up to your fastest Tier 1 or move your slow data down. Data progression is what it's called. With the auto-tiering you can have multiple tiers, you can have your Tier 1 be either spinning or flash, all the way down to 7.2K. It will change the RAID on the fly so your writes come in at RAID 10. After they sit for a while, they get converted to RAID 5, then they'll cool off and move down the tiers. Your performance is kept going, while the cold data is moved to your slow, non-performance tiers."
"This solution is easy to use."
"The product offers good performance and is quite powerful."
"Easy management of volumes: You can create volumes and easily assign them to VMware clusters, increasing their size."
"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've found the stability to be very good."
"It has good dedupe and compression. Also, the built-in data migration capabilities are pretty good, as is the federation. When we started migrating the workloads from different storage platforms, like NetApp and XtremeIO, it helped us in moving to that direction."
"The most valuable features are the NAS features and NetApp's excellent support."
"NetApp's cloud-based PaaS has been a massive help for unstructured data."
"It offers data compression and people management."
"The most valuable feature for us is the combining of HA and SnapMirror."
"The new FAS series is a good fit for some customers. We have good performance and capacity, even though it is full flash."
"It has integrated snapshot and backup capability."
"Other products lose performance over time, but NetApp OS is speed-optimized."
"Has rock solid reliability and is easy to use."
 

Cons

"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"Technical support should respond more quickly because the turnaround time is very high."
"Dell could improve the upgrading process."
"In some customer cases, customers experienced more performance or latency."
"It's not very efficient anymore. There are better products out there."
"The cost of the solution could be better."
"I don't think the solution is very scalable."
"The connection should be better integrated with the network to offer a better view of the system."
"This product should be a lot more user-friendly."
"NetApp systems are somewhat more complex, though not excessively so. If you're transitioning from a Windows server environment to NetApp, get training or education; otherwise, you might struggle with this solution."
"Needs to improve the adaptive storage quality of service."
"The NetApp FAS Series is not as high-performing and is not as fast. Its speed needs improvement, but this could only be done if it's an all-flash solution."
"The biggest issue we face is parts delivery. There's no local warehouse in Myanmar, so if a customer encounters a technical problem like an IMEI issue, they have to wait a long time for replacement parts."
"We have some experience with older equipment end-of-life. For example, when warranty support stops or updates stop – it can be frustrating. Not all clients can buy a new filer every year or two, and NetApp ending support a bit quickly can be a concern."
"NetApp FAS Series could improve by being more secure."
"NetApp FAS Series should improve its price, which is expensive."
"Regarding the stability of NetApp FAS Series, I would rate it seven or seven point five because there are frequent panic messages."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
"It's absolutely affordable. Again, not having to do a forklift upgrade like some of the others have had to do in the past, it's very affordable for our customers and they continue to buy."
"The scalability seems a bit more expensive than even buying a brand new one so far. That has been kind of a drawback."
"The maintenance is usually pretty good. It's not like some of the others where they increase it in the fourth, fifth, or sixth years."
"Pricing depends on varying life cycles."
"We have found it to be affordable. Comparing the cost with other hardware, it seems to be right in line with the compute and the storage that we get with it."
"The SC Series was priced fairly. I wouldn't call it either expensive or cheap because we had a very tight budget, so if they were able to fit in that type of budget, they met our expectations."
"Always keep in mind, this is not just a enclosure with disks is a complete SAN as a service. There is software, license, and storage in one single solution."
"We have the basic license for the use of this solution and it is a permanent license. The overall cost could be less, it is expensive."
"The price of the NetApp FAS Series is reasonable and it provides value for the money with the feature sets. NetApp FAS Series are competing with Huawei storage which has an office and does aggressive marketing with a discount. However, we found that if our customers do a technology refresh they are happy with the performance of the NetApp FAS Series."
"The tool is expensive."
"The only area that could be improved is to lower prices for their All Flash FAS."
"It is expensive."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive. We pay a one-time purchase price."
"It is a moderately low-priced platform."
"The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is reasonable for its performance."
"The price it not low, but comparing features to other vendors, the price can be balanced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
21%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
55%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
What do you like most about Dell SC Series?
I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell SC Series?
Cost considerations are crucial when choosing between solutions like Dell and NetApp. Sometimes Dell offers better pe...
What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?
In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage. If I want...
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 be...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
SC Series Storage, Compellent
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric
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 SC Series vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.