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ExaGrid EX Series vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

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

ExaGrid EX Series
Ranking in Deduplication Software
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in Deduplication Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
NAS (3rd), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Deduplication Software category, the mindshare of ExaGrid EX Series is 7.4%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 3.7%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Deduplication Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetApp FAS Series3.7%
ExaGrid EX Series7.4%
Other88.9%
Deduplication Software
 

Featured Reviews

Rastislav Maniak - PeerSpot reviewer
Improves backup and recovery time and integration with other products is good
The tool reduces storage footprint. However, clients are now storing data for longer durations with increasing requirements to retain backups for longer periods, particularly as a defense against ransomware attacks. As a result, the retention zone with duplicated data is experiencing more demand, leading to space constraints. This necessitates using higher-end, more expensive models to address the issue. I was asking about the mutual appliance, which would provide the same features as the integrated client without the hardware. This would allow it to be used in the public cloud, which I heard might be available soon. However, the private cloud is not reliable.
Arnaud Salmon - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good performance and
Once, I've been in a program, but they stopped supporting protocols like HTTP, STP, and that kind of stuff. All of the DIP supports at the beginning were kind of support when it was just Python and just five storage. And it happened a few times that the customer required the STP and HTTP protocol for storage. And I was surprised I couldn't do it anymore with NetApp. So, it would be beneficial for them to support both kinds of protocols. The only little black points that I would put on top of NetApp FAS Series. There is room for improvement in deployment and configuration processes. The thing with ONTAP is that we have a lot of layers, from the raw disks to the volumes we present to servers and configure. There are quite a lot of things to configure. Probably NetApp should ease the way to install that. In NetApp products, such as ONTAP and FAS, a solid understanding of storage is still necessary to handle configurations in larger systems. It's not the same with Pure Storage or Huawei. Even someone less familiar with storage could manage it, making it more accessible.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool has improved backup and recovery times. One of the key features contributing to this improvement is the landing zone and deduplication retention zone. When data is in the landing zone, the process is fast, ensuring smooth backup and recovery operations at high speeds. However, the process becomes slower for long-term backups moved to the retention zone due to fragmentation. So, if the data is older than a few days, the speed may be limited, especially for non-deduplicated data in the landing zone."
"It is a solid and a quite simple solution, which is a good combination. The customers like the simplicity and its scale-out capacity. They like the support pricing, and even the extension capacity pricing, a fixed price, which the executive is offering in Czech market."
"The most valuable features of the solution are deduplication and landing zone."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use and data deduplication. It's extremely easy to use and does a very good job of data deduplication and compression."
"The solution easily integrates with the backup targets, such as Veeam."
"One of the main features is the landing zone, it is a particular space where the information is not duplicated."
"The migration of the volume on the cluster is very useful and easy to use."
"The solution is stable."
"Adaptive balancing is a valuable feature."
"The solution is easy to use."
"It gives us the performance we need and the reliability we need to make sure that our systems have the uptime that our internal customers demand."
"Good for NAS and unified solutions."
"The solution is stable."
"The product is user-friendly and helps to evaluate the performance of each node. It ensures that if one node encounters an issue, the system can immediately redistribute the workload without interruptions. This setup provides uninterrupted operation for our systems."
 

Cons

"When speaking about a scale-out, you want to have better equipment. You cannot just add a disc to the foreign equipment. You have to buy another one and put it together, like parallel."
"I would like for them to develop direct cloud integration with a third-party cloud. Direct integration with AWS and other cloud providers."
"The one place where we are sometimes losing the opportunity with ExaGrid is that a few customers still require a fiber channel connectivity, which is not always possible."
"The solution could improve by switching to a flash-type solution rather than the spinning drives that they currently use. However, we have not had any failure with the spinning drives. The flash-type drives are more up-to-date and are something that is in their roadmap."
"The product's documentation can be made more precise."
"The tool reduces storage footprint. However, clients are now storing data for longer durations with increasing requirements to retain backups for longer periods, particularly as a defense against ransomware attacks. As a result, the retention zone with duplicated data is experiencing more demand, leading to space constraints. This necessitates using higher-end, more expensive models to address the issue."
"I would like to see NetApp add incident support."
"Technical support needs to be improved, as there are no longer partners in our country."
"The product must support more drives."
"Cluster mode needs to be more ubiquitous."
"Replication should ideally be part of the ONTAP base bundle."
"One area that needs improvement is the hyper-converged solution. Although NetApp has a solution, compared to Nutanix, it falls short."
"Needs to ​add wizards for newer, inexperienced users."
"We're supposed to have used NetApp FAS Series for replication, but then one of the nodes failed, and then it's taken us some time to bring it up."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In comparison to other solutions, it's affordable. They're all too expensive."
"My company had to pay 1,60,000 EUR for the system we use, and the payment was made just once for the system and five years of full support."
"The current agreement has 21 terabytes of free space and it cost approximately $35,000."
"I rate ExaGrid EX Series' pricing eight to nine out of ten."
"The previous solutions I have used both included the Backup Software and the Appliance making it hard to compare to this solution. However, overall the solution is reasonably priced for the features you receive. ExaGrid EX Series is priced better than HP, Dell, and possibly Commvault which I have compared in the past."
"It is a one-time license charge for NetApp FAS Series to run and we pay annually for upgrades and support."
"I've sold arrays for as little $20,000 USD and as high as $300,000 USD."
"it’s not an inexpensive solution and it may not be for the cost-sensitive customer."
"NetApp FAS Series could be less expensive."
"The product is on the expensive side."
"It's not cheap, but at the same time, it's also inexpensive. It's somewhere in between."
"We are on a perpetual license."
"In general, I find NetApp to be very expensive. That's the main issue I have with them. So it's a drawback in terms of pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ExaGrid EX Series?
The tool has improved backup and recovery times. One of the key features contributing to this improvement is the landing zone and deduplication retention zone. When data is in the landing zone, the...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ExaGrid EX Series?
I rate ExaGrid EX Series' pricing eight to nine out of ten.
What needs improvement with ExaGrid EX Series?
The tool reduces storage footprint. However, clients are now storing data for longer durations with increasing requirements to retain backups for longer periods, particularly as a defense against r...
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

EX Series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NCI Group, North Attleborough Public School, North Kingstown School Department, NPS Pharmaceuticals, Prudential Douglas Elliman, Rathbone Brothers PLC, Rio Hondo College, Ruder Finn, Sarah Lawrence College
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 ExaGrid EX Series vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.