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NEC D3 series vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

 

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

NEC D3 series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
18th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (4th), NAS (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of NEC D3 series is 1.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 11.0%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp FAS Series11.0%
NEC D3 series1.8%
Other87.2%
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1369971 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of IT at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
Stable, performs well, and the technical support is good
We use this storage solution to host our ERP, CRM, file server, databases, and lots of other things The performance is better than with our previous version. We are not satisfied with the cost of licensing and would like to have a better price to performance ratio. We have had contract-related…
Srikanth Purushothaman - PeerSpot reviewer
DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems
Has supported long-term data protection and backup while requiring better part availability and pricing options
For monitoring purposes, we normally use flash access storage exclusively. We utilize a hybrid system because we need performance, combining NL-SAS for the volume and SAS flash to use as a fast cache system that provides more IOPS. We normally implement RAID 10, which we prefer over RAID 6's n plus 2 combinations. We utilize it for data redundancy, even with write intensity on. Regarding the unified storage architecture for NetApp FAS Series, we normally opt for exclusivity unless budget constraints exist. Our IOPS are very high, reaching somewhere about 50k to 150k or 1.150k. The high performance ensures minimal latency. An advantage we've seen with NetApp FAS Series is that snapshots provide very rapid backup and fast recovery. We basically use snapshots for data protection as first-level protection, with deduplication between the two storages serving as second-level protection.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support from NEC is very good."
"The performance is better than with our previous version."
"At the moment, we use NetApp SnapMirror to replicate data to another filer at an offsite location for backup. So, I like this feature."
"NetApp's cloud-based PaaS has been a massive help for unstructured data."
"Ability to use mirroring and SnapVault have made backup no longer necessary."
"I like that the NetApp FAS Series can use both SAN and NAS at the same time, and that's what most customers are looking for."
"I would advise them to go with NetApp because it's unified storage, it supports both NAS and SAN environments, so whether you're doing block storage or you're doing file storage, it is a good solution."
"It’s top-notch support, very responsive and highly knowledgeable, very attentive to us as we have a monthly meeting with our TAM."
"I have found NetApp FAS Series to be stable."
"It's a stable product. No issues there."
 

Cons

"We are not satisfied with the cost of licensing and would like to have a better price to performance ratio."
"We are not satisfied with the cost of licensing and would like to have a better price to performance ratio."
"Needs to add wizards for newer, inexperienced users."
"The only improvement to this solution that I can propose is for NetApp to make the price more attractive."
"One of the issues that we have had with NetApp in upgrading over the years is that migrating data from one system to another is one-way only."
"If our customer needs a high-performance storage solution then we don't recommend this product."
"I have not given the FAS a perfect rating because the All Flash Array is probably going to beat it down, in terms of performance."
"I miss their old support structure. We used to be able to call up and get an answer pretty quickly, but now it’s more arduous."
"Its operating system is very cumbersome. However, after you set it up, it runs pretty smoothly. Its file system is not very dynamic. It is very static."
"I’ve found that I use command line more often than I thought needed. Some things should be done in the GUI, and command-line switches can be overwhelming and take up a lot of time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I've sold arrays for as little $20,000 USD and as high as $300,000 USD."
"The product's pricing is reasonable."
"The product is on the expensive side."
"If we want a ransomware solution with the product or other extended features, we need to pay an extra cost."
"The process for going to cluster mode is expensive."
"It is expensive."
"Cost effective storage for all performance levels (including all-flash)."
"We have considered upgrading to an All-Flash solution but when we evaluated the cost-benefit we discovered that we don't have enough money to invest in it. To maintain the same technology with All-Flash would be too expensive for us."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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?
I do not handle the pricing part of NetApp FAS Series since it is managed by the sales team.
What needs improvement with NetApp FAS Series?
There is room for improvement when it comes to response time and first-level support quality. If a new feature needs to be added, it takes some time because it is altogether a new development; othe...
 

Also Known As

D3 series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tsukuba Science City, Hokkaido Telecommunication Network Co. Inc, PHP Institute
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 NetApp, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM and others in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network). Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.