NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs ScaleIO [EOL] comparison

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NetApp and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Additionally, 95% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and ScaleIO [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind, Nutanix, Red Hat and others in Software Defined Storage (SDS).

To learn more, read our detailed Software Defined Storage (SDS) Report (Updated: October 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

October 2026

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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

Everpure FlashArray

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV

Technical Lead at Wipro Limited

Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades

The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.

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reviewer5948293

Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Offers performance control and cloud integration while supporting data management with granular flexibility

The scalability of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is interesting. We have thought about it, but we haven't used it. I think the scalability is something you scale up rather than respond to peak demand. It wouldn't help with outages either; the scaling is manual, and there are no processes we've used to automate that for unexpected scenarios. We like the scalability; it's enough for what we're planning to use, but we haven't used any advanced features. The standard platform is NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, which is their cloud service. In fact, that's probably the most experience I have with NetApp. I've experienced it on-premise, but kind of secondhand.

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SunilKumar

Manager at Securetech

Meets our customers' needs but they should move towards high-level scaling

I the product already has scalability features, but in terms of size maybe they could do more to work with parent storage and move to high-level scaling. That area, I feel, is a place where there could be some more options in this solution. It would be a way to improve the scalability in another direction, maybe options to scale out rather than just up. So far we have done very few installations. So maybe in the coming days, weeks and months, we would be able to come up with some additional features that are needed, but right now the product has the competitive features that our clients need.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is replication."

"Even if it costs a little bit more, you do get more for what you pay."

"The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray."

"As we needed to grow in capacity, we were able to do so without increasing footprint by replacing smaller devices with larger ones."

"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are the management view of the solutions, ease of provision, and deprovision, it is fantastic."

"Data reduction and compression. Sub millisecond latency."

"We have perfect run through times and latency."

"The biggest return on investment for us is not having to do a swap out of the arrays every five years."

More Everpure FlashArray pros

"The feature which I like the most is that it has the capabilities that the traditional storage system offers. It provides all the functionality. The deduplication and compression work exactly like ONTAP's traditional storage. So people who have experience with that find it very easy to manage."

"We're able to use the SnapMirror function and SnapMirror data from our on-prem environment into Azure. That is super-helpful. SnapMirror allows you to take data that exists on one NetApp, on a physical NetApp storage platform, and copy it over to another NetApp storage platform. It's a solid, proven technology, so we don't worry about whether data is getting lost or corrupted during the SnapMirror."

"It's very easy to set up, and within 40 minutes, you can apply storage notes in Azure."

"Los resultados son sorprendentes en términos de funcionalidad y defensa contra terceros."

"Multiprotocol is the most valuable because Amazon was not able to provide us with access to the same data from Linux and from Windows clients. That was our value proposition for CVO, Cloud Volumes ONTAP."

"The initial setup was straightforward. We started with a small pilot and we then moved to production with no downtime at all."

"ONTAP made us less reliant on in-house hardware."

"We calculated that we are saving $1,000,000 across three years."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

"Automatic rebalancing is the feature saving administration time, and also auto rebuilding."

"We are using it as the primary virtualization storage (both for internal corporate users and external customers) for VMware and Hyper-V virtualization platforms."

"Comparing other products that are competing with Dell EMC (Enhanced Memory Controller), Dell seems to us to always come out on the high-side."

"The ScaleIO UI: EMC has been working with storage for a long time; therefore, they know how to clearly present any important data, including data flow and each drive's IOPS/bandwidth, and allow the user to easily monitor bottlenecks and problems, especially the rebuild and rebalance status of child objects."

Cons

"The capability from Pure as far as sharing out files and things of that nature is a little bit lacking."

"The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers."

"In the configuration, which we brought in or tested it in, it has a very limited config as far as the array goes. That said, it still did more than our anticipation."

"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."

"Automation could be simplified."

"Pure Storage will have issues with positioning in the near future since its a relatively new company. For now, customers need a PoC to trust using the solution, as it can't stand on its brand name alone. They need to improve Pure Storage's marketing."

"Reports of performance and LUN utilization could be improved."

"I would like to see box-to-box encryption on replication included in the next release."

More Everpure FlashArray cons

"We've just been dealing with general pre-requisite infrastructure configuration challenges. Once those are out of the way, it is easy."

"The solution could be better when we're connecting to our S3 side of the house. Right now, it doesn't see it, and I'm not sure why."

"I have used technical support and it's mediocre."

"The integration wizard requires a bit of streamlining. There are small things that misconfigure or repeat the deployment that will create errors, specifically in Azure."

"The key feature, that we'd like to see in that is the ability to sync between regions within the AWS and Azure regions. We could use the cloud sync service, but we'd really like that native functionality within the cloud volume service."

"Cloud Volumes ONTAP's interface could use an overhaul. Sometimes you have to dig around in Cloud Manager a little bit to find certain things. The layout could be more intuitive."

"Something we would like to see is the ability to better manage the setup and tie it to our configuration management database. We manage our whole IT infrastructure out of that database."

"It does not have tutorials in languages such as French, German, Spanish."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

"There is room for improvement in the area of horizontal scaling."

"It would be nice to set minimum IOPS per volume, besides just the maximum, to be able to satisfy this demand from customers out-of-the-box, not by calculating number of disks, etc."

"I think ScaleIO already has some features for scalability as it is part of the reason for the product, but in terms of size, maybe they should try to address parent storage."

"Ecosystem around the product: There is no built-in system for viewing history data, such as volume IOPS. We have to provide graphing by Prometheus and Grafana, which would be a good new feature in ScaleIO."

"If they could introduce a write cache feature, the product would be perfect overall."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have 16 or 18 arrays. We like to do the three-year support model so that we get Evergreen and therefore, we get free upgrades. We pay around more than 1.5 million dollars."

"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."

"It is not the cheapest one out there. We're paying yearly, but I'm not 100% sure."

"I don't know the exact cost but it's around $1,000."

"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."

"In the beginning, we saw that the price is not very good. When we made some compilations about the deduplication and the compression and what the equipment does, including the differentiation of upper management of the storage, the price was not so bad. However, in the beginning, the price was very difficult to justify."

"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. So, every year, we renew. We could do a three-year contract, but right now, we only do a one-year."

"The pricing of Pure Storage is all-inclusive. It is very fair, and very easy. In comparison, Dell EMC has licensing that needs to be added if you wan to work in a complex environment or in specific functionalities."

More Everpure FlashArray pricing and cost advice

"Make sure you investigate what your requirements are going to cost you using the native cloud solutions versus what NetApp is going to cost you, to make sure you have a business case to go with NetApp."

"Cloud is cloud. It's still expensive. Any good solution comes with a price tag. That's where we are looking to see how well we can manage our data in the cloud by trying to optimize the costs."

"The solution's pricing is reasonable."

"It is not a cheap solution because we need to pay for the license and pay for Azure resources as well."

"I know the licensing is a bit on the high-end. That's when we had to downsize our MetroCluster disks and just migrate to disks that were half used. We migrated into those just to reduce maintenance costs."

"In addition to the standard licensing fees, there are fees for Azure, the VMs themselves and for data transfer."

"The pricing of this solution is definitely higher than what the typical Azure Files and AWS solutions charge, but given the features and the stability NetApp has provided, we are okay with it. We are not complaining about the pricing."

"Our licensing is based on a yearly subscription. That is an additional cost, but because of the storage efficiencies that the NetApp gives, even with the additional cost of the NetApp license, you still end up saving money versus straight Azure native for storage. It's definitely worth it."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Outsourcing Company

Construction Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	73
Midsize Enterprise	38
Large Enterprise	160

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	53

No data available

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?

Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?

When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?

The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is actually quite reasonable in price compared to other native cloud storage options. For ...

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What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

It would be nice to see technology supporting the Elastic Fabric Adapter on Amazon AWS, therefore getting RDMA techno...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

I use NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP mostly in customer companies.

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray

October 2026

Download Everpure FlashArray product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

October 2026

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

October 2026

Download ScaleIO [EOL] product report

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

EMC ScaleIO

Overview

The FlashArray family delivers consistent, high-performance data services across block, file, and object workloads. As part of the Everpure Platform, it provides the foundation for a unified data plane, enabling applications to reliably access, protect, and manage data across environments with simplicity and predictability. With built-in capabilities such as inline data reduction, snapshots, replication, and ransomware resilience, FlashArray ensures efficient operations, protected data, and consistent application uptime.

As the foundation of the (unified) data plane, FlashArray enables policy-driven automation, monitoring, and centralized management while integrating across cloud and on-premises environments. Built on an Evergreen architecture, it supports non-disruptive upgrades and continuous performance improvements over time while simplifying operations at scale.

What Key Features Does FlashArray Offer?

Simplicity and Speed: Easy management and rapid performance enhancements.
Data Reduction: Effective deduplication and compression.
Flash Architecture: Seamless upgrades and outstanding resilience.
VMware Integration: Excellent compatibility with virtualization platforms.
Predictive Analytics: Strong insights for proactive management.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Reliability: Proactive support with minimal downtime.
Efficiency: Reduced storage footprint and enhanced data management.
Performance: Faster processing speeds and low latency.
User Experience: Simplified management with Evergreen model.

In industries like finance, banking, and healthcare, FlashArray supports high-performance storage needs focusing on virtualization and database environments. Employed for VMware workloads, disaster recovery, and storage provisioning, it ensures application performance in private or hybrid cloud setups while enhancing management of virtualized environments.

Everpure (formerly Pure Storage)

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is an efficient storage management solution for managing and storing data in the cloud. It offers seamless integration with cloud providers, advanced data replication capabilities, and high data protection. With reliable performance, it is ideal for industries like healthcare and finance.

NetApp

ScaleIO is purposely designed to be an enterprise-grade scale-out software-defined storage solution. It applies the principles of server virtualization to standard x86 server flash and hybrid media, turning them into high performance, sharable, pools of storage. Whether your block storage needs are for traditional, modern or cloud workloads, ScaleIO has you covered.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas

1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard

Check Point Software Technologies, Blue Central, Deltares, Sentinel Technologies, The Binding Site Group, Swisscom, Itrica

Buyer's Guide

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October 2026

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