Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs NetApp AFF comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Huawei OceanStor Dorado 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.
To learn more, read our detailed Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs. NetApp AFF Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The performance of the storage is just unbelievable.""Having an intuitive user interface to get things running is great.""FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy.""We also like the compactness, the small footprint. It takes up very little space in a data center and uses little power.""With Pure Storage, we don't see any latency or IOPS. It has been a very seamless integration.""Pure gives us better compression, it's easier to manage, a lot less hands-on.""As soon as we introduced our first Pure Storage FlashArray, the first benefit was at least twice the performance increase. Our production databases simply ran twice as fast with no other change.""The initial setup was very straightforward and very quick. It was up and running in our data center within 24 hours of receiving it."

More Pure Storage FlashArray Pros →

"The platform's most valuable features are reliability, intelligence, and fast performance speed.""The majority of our customers find this solution simple to use.""The deduplication features and the graphical user interface (GUI) of the solution are the most valuable to me.""The solution’s overall security is good.""The primary factors that make Huawei OceanStor Dorado Series highly valuable to us are its competitive pricing, exceptional performance, and stability.""The most valuable feature of this solution is the overall simplicity.""The product offers good performance.""It is very easy to use."

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado Pros →

"It is a stable 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.""The most valuable features of the solution are speed, performance, and reliability.""Organizations can reduce data storage footprint and lower power and cooling costs, helping to adopt "Green IT."""The most valuable feature of NetApp AFF for us is its ability to manage multiple IP spaces for our customers in a shared environment.""Setting up storage for an application (storage provisioning) is quick and easy. Maybe a quarter of the time is now spent getting the application up and running, or even less.""Easier to manage with the clustered system and everything with the newest ONTAP 9.""NetApp tech support is so good. Their tech support has always been so stable and the people are so good in case of any failure or any good feature that needs to be updated or features that supposedly can help with performance to improve some performance. NetApp support is one of the best that I deal with."

More NetApp AFF Pros →

Cons
"There's always an opportunity for new feature functionality.""Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features.""The support for NFS protocols right out-of-the-box need improvement. I'm used to other storage vendors who have NFS support right out-of-the-box, and Pure Storage doesn't seem to have anything.""Pure Storage FlashArray could improve some aspects. There are certain features that are good and there are some features that I see some issues with at the technical level. Those issues are related to replication. They need to resolve those issues, which I have already highlighted to the Pure team. Additionally, there are some issues in the active cluster that could improve.""Self-backup is the only feature lacking in this solution.""In some cases, we get into very in-depth conversations around movement of specific data and, what's more, chunk sizes. The documentation lacked any description or information on that.""Pricing could be better in comparison to other solutions.""The time-to-market could be better at times, but I think that's true for all vendors of hardware."

More Pure Storage FlashArray Cons →

"The technology and the features need improvement.""This solution does not support VMware VVols 2.0.""Huawei OceanStor Dorado's biggest weakness is its lack of cloud integration.""An area of this product that has room for improvement is the NAS capability.""It should have easy connectivity with the AIX, however, I've found that with AIX, it has some issues and due to this, we need to remove the exact fiber card sometimes and then plug it in again so that it can connect with the AIX systems.""The speeds of the disks themselves need to be faster. The disks are not flash. When we opened our hard drive from the inclusion, I saw a converter, and it's not entirely flash.""The built-in reporting tools need some enhancement.""If they implement a backup solution directly into the OceanStor then it will be a valuable feature."

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado Cons →

"Stability could be improved.""I don't work on the technical side of things, so it's hard for me to highlight areas of improvement, but maybe the price could be a little better.""The upgrade process could be a lot quicker, but it's still good as it is. The failovers and things like that are harder than expected.""On the roadmap, NetApp is improving the solution's storage efficiency, compression algorithms to achieve more space savings, and the management interfaces. We are looking forward to these feature additions in the next release.""Customer service is one area of the product line where I would love to see improvement. I have had several vendor experiences with NetApp where I faced challenges in the initial call trying to navigate the requirements of the service level expectation. Their response could be better improved. However, the final result is great. It is just the initial support level where improvement would help to effectively solve problems.""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 currently use some thin provisioning for our planning system, but we will probably move away from thin provisioning because our Solaris planning system actually has some issues with the thin provisioning and way Solaris handles it, since Solaris uses a ZFS file system. The ZFS file system doesn't like the thin provisioning changing things and it brings systems down, which is bad.""Technical support could use some improvement."

More NetApp AFF Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
  • "There is always room for negotiation."
  • "The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."
  • "It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
  • "For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
  • "We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)."
  • "It is a cheaper solution."
  • "Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
  • More Pure Storage FlashArray Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The pricing is very competitive."
  • "There are lots of features included with this solution and some of them require additional licensing, such as creating high availability storage using a cluster."
  • "There are some costs in addition to the standard licensing fees, depending on the requirements."
  • "This product is not too expensive, and the price is competitive on the market."
  • "We usually recommend our customers choose advanced licensing and enterprise companies are more inclined to choose this solution because it is more cost-effective than competitors."
  • "The price of the solution is competitive compared to others, such as Dell EMC and Hitachi. I believe the reason they are providing a discount is they want to increase their penetration into the market."
  • "Huawei has very good pricing. They have some promotions that can be taken advantage of at certain times of the year, such as the end of December. They are providing aggressive pricing. In the Pakistan market, they are ready to beat any vendor in Pakistan because they want to grab the market."
  • "The price of Huawei OceanStor Dorado is very inexpensive, it cost approximately $5 per gigabyte."
  • More Huawei OceanStor Dorado Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It's expensive but we think over time all the prices are going to go down."
  • "Once we did get into the NetApp ecosystem, we realized that the cost effectiveness was greater than we originally thought."
  • "Obviously depending on the price point, NetApp is obviously a little more expensive than your generic Dell SAN solution or whatever."
  • "Other vendors may come in at a cheaper price point, but you will pay in the end with management costs and downtime."
  • "The entry point for potential customers, who are looking at coming onboard for flash systems, it may be a bit expensive. It would be good if the price comes down."
  • "It is pretty expensive compared to other solutions. I would give it a seven or eight out of 10 in price (where 10 is expensive) compared to similar solutions."
  • "NetApp is getting too expensive."
  • "ATTO bridges add to the total cost of the system."
  • More NetApp AFF Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Is there another storage platform as feature rich as NetApp FAS? I think it is fair to say that NetApp FAS running Clustered Data ONTAP is a very feature rich platform – the move to the clustered version of ONTAP has brought many next-generation features including Scale-out and Non-disruptive Operations. As a benchmark let’s compare FAS to EMC’s solutions – I fully appreciate that EMC has taken a best of breed approach, but my feeling is that for most non-enterprise customers this is not a sustainable strategy – customers want simplicity and ease of use, and you are not going to get that by deploying four different storage platforms to meet your needs. I have chosen EMC because they are the overall market share leader and they have the broadest set of storage products available – so let’s compare FAS with VNX, VPLEX, XtremIO, Isilon and Data Domain: NetApp FAS supports All-Disk, Hybrid Flash and All-Flash data stores - that meet the needs of any kind of application workload The VNX is a very good All-Disk and Hybrid Flash array and XtremIO is a very good All-Flash array, but you need two completely different products to provide the functionality. NetApp FAS eliminates silos and provides seamless scalability - to address Server Virtualisation, Virtual Desktop, Database and File storage needs in one scale-up and scale-out solution, that can start small and grow large VNX is optimal for general Server Virtualisation and Databases and XtremIO excels when it comes to large scale… Read more →
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure… more »
    Top Answer:We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
    Top Answer:We have customers who use a three-year or five-year license. We also have customers who use Evergreen.
    Top Answer:The most valuable features of the solution are SmartMigration, HyperReplication, HyperSnap, HyperCopy, HyperClone… more »
    Top Answer:The pricing is not cheap, but it's attractive. And the pricing is flexible, too. I would rate the pricing an eight out… more »
    Top Answer:Other Huawei mid-end storages, like 5600 and 5500, are very easy to use. Engineers with two to three years of experience… more »
    Top Answer:Well, Is one thing NetApp Storage has vs other brand is the mix of protocol CIFS with NFS booth working together in the… more »
    Top Answer:This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended cost… more »
    Top Answer:The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matters… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    OceanStor Dorado V3 All-Flash Storage System
    NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray is the world’s first enterprise-class storage array that runs exclusively on the nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) protocol for memory access and storage. It represents a totally state-of-the-art type of storage technology. It offers users shared accelerated storage that delivers cutting-edge features in the realms of performance, simplicity, and consolidation. Pure Storage is fresh and modern today and will be for the next decade. Without forklift upgrades or planned downtime, Pure Storage takes the work out of storage ownership and delivers unprecedented customer satisfaction.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is built with simplicity and reliability in mind. The solution can be implemented and optimized in hours, as opposed to other similar solutions that can take days. It has no moving parts, which removes areas where it could potentially be vulnerable to suffering errors. It is highly stable and gives users the ability to manage system shutdowns in a way that  prevents data loss.

    Benefits of Pure Storage FlashArray

    Some of the benefits of using Pure Storage FlashArray include:

    • A much higher level of speed than similar pieces of technology. Pure Storage FlashArray maximizes the speed at which data can be transferred while at the same time minimizing system latencies that might slow the transfer down. Additionally, it offers users quick memory read and data access speeds.

    • A higher bang for your buck in terms of the storage capabilities you get for the money you pay. They are smaller in size than more standard storage technologies, but they offer flash memory, which enables users to store larger amounts of data than the current standard.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Pure Storage FlashArray is a highly effective piece of storage technology which stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its overall robustness and the value that it offers by way of its reliability and ease of use. It provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with this solution. Pure Storage FlashArray’s reliability and ease of use make it a highly valuable solution. 

    PeerSpot user Prabakaran K., a technical consultant at Injazat Data Systems, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."

    PeerSpot user Jason D., a cloud solutions architect at a tech services company, notes three features that make this solution valuable when he writes, "We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."

    Huawei's OceanStor Dorado V3 all-flash storage is the ideal choice for enterprises' mission-critical business. It is the industry's first commercial use of NVMe all-flash storage, and it delivers high-performing, reliable, and efficient storage services.

    The NetApp A-Series and C-Series are AFF storage arrays that deliver high performance, scalability, and simplified data management for a wide range of workloads. They are designed for organizations that need to improve the performance and agility of their applications, while also reducing costs and complexity.

    NetApp A-Series and C-Series feature a scale-out architecture that can be scaled to meet the needs of your growing business. They also support a wide range of built-in data protection and data security features, including snapshots, replication, disaster recovery, and autonomous ransomware protection.

    AFF A-Series all-flash systems deliver industry-leading performance, density, scalability, security, and network connectivity.

    AFF C-Series systems are suited for large-capacity deployment as an affordable way to modernize your data center to all flash and also connect to the cloud.

    NetApp AFF Benefits

    • Speed up your critical applications with lightning-fast end-to-end NVMe enterprise all-flash arrays.
    • Increase Performance: AFF A-Series systems deliver industry-leading performance proven by SPC-1 and SPEC SFS industry benchmarks, making them ideal for demanding, highly transactional applications such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB databases, VDI, and server virtualization.
    • Save up to 95% of rack space and up to 85% of power and cooling cost over hybrid flash storage.
    • Reduce cost with guaranteed storage efficiency.
    • Realize even greater savings by tiering cold data to the cloud easily.
    • Simplify Operations on premises or in the cloud: Eliminate fragmented and redundant toolsets and combine visibility and manageability of storage instances with data services in a unified control plane across the hybrid cloud.

    NetApp AFF Features

    • Expand capacity with nondisruptive scaling in a cluster without silos or data migration.
    • Manage data with the ultimate flexibility of unified support across different storage media and protocols, on premises or in the cloud.
    • Scale performance with technology innovations of NVMe/FC and NVMe/TCP connectivity.
    • Safeguard your data with best-in-class data security, ransomware protection, multifactor admin access, secure multitenant shared storage, and in-flight and at-rest encryption.
    • Simplify backup and recovery with built-in application-consistent data protection.
    • Achieve business continuity and fast disaster recovery with zero data loss and zero downtime.
    • Scale out to 24 nodes, 367PB of effective capacity, and 4 million IOPS non-disruptively.

    Reviews from Real Users

    NetApp AFF stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its high performance and simplicity. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    PeerSpot user and Storage Administrator, Daniel Rúnar Friðþjófsson, comments “AFF has helped to simplify our infrastructure, while still getting very high performance for our business-critical applications. Having all these things working well on one solution is really good. We run this as the backbone for both Hyper-V and VMware as well as an archive location for Rubrik. So, it is great having one solution that can do it all.

    Because of the ease of it all, you have a highly tunable, high-performance storage system that alleviates a lot of problems. With its ease of management, you can quickly get your work done and go onto the next thing on your list.”

    Additionally, Mohan Reddy, Sr. Technology Architect at a Pharma/Biotech company comments on how “NetApp's ONTAP data management software has also made tasks simpler for us. There's no question about that. It has helped us run operations very quickly, saving us a lot of time. Before ONTAP, we used to spend a long time doing regular operations, but with the latest version of the tool, our day-to-day operations are much quicker and easier.”

    Sample Customers
    Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
    Telecom Italia, Hi3G Sweden, KPN
    DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization32%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm25%
    Computer Software Company25%
    Comms Service Provider25%
    Construction Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company15%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization60%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Financial Services Firm3%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise57%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise42%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business50%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise23%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise59%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business12%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise73%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business10%
    Midsize Enterprise65%
    Large Enterprise25%
    Buyer's Guide
    Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs. NetApp AFF
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Huawei OceanStor Dorado is ranked 11th in All-Flash Storage with 30 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews. Huawei OceanStor Dorado is rated 8.4, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Huawei OceanStor Dorado writes "Good performance and simple to deploy and manage". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". Huawei OceanStor Dorado is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Huawei OceanStor, IBM FlashSystem, Dell PowerMax NVMe and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series and VMware vSAN. See our Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs. NetApp AFF report.

    See our list of best All-Flash Storage 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.