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Dell ECS vs NetApp StorageGRID comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 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

Dell ECS
Ranking in File and Object Storage
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp StorageGRID
Ranking in File and Object Storage
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Dell ECS is 8.2%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp StorageGRID is 5.4%, up from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File and Object Storage
 

Featured Reviews

SamuelThomas - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing efficiently with user-friendly interfaces for monitoring and managing resources
We normally recommend Dell ECS to enterprise customers and government customers Dell ECS is very easy to handle, primarily because the web UI dashboard and everything is very easy to manage for every customer. They can monitor the DPS, access failures, bandwidth, failed requests, and latency.…
Mir Gulzar Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Object-based storage and offers intuitive management tools, making it easy to configure and maintain
The only thing missing is flexibility in configuration to cater to specific customer requirements. Another area of improvement is marketing. NetApp's marketing of StorageGRID isn't optimal. They should present it more effectively, especially in regions like Pakistan. Here, I haven't seen any marketing campaigns from NetApp for StorageGRID or the Solid State Platform (SSP). While StorageGRID is a globally recognized product, I haven't seen any marketing efforts from NetApp in Pakistan. Even competitors are promoting object storage solutions here, but NetApp seems less efficient in selling StorageGRID. There might be one or two customers, but even as a NetApp partner, I'm not aware of any major sales. I've been trained on StorageGRID, and it is a good product. I'm unsure why it hasn't gained traction in Pakistan compared to other countries. So, I just recommend improving the marketing campaigns in Pakistan. I'm pretty confident that if we have one example of successful StorageGRID implementation in Pakistan, other customers will follow suit.

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 for me is off-site storage."
"It's definitely good for unstructured data. In earlier days, we had Centera, so for the DR it's really good. It has load balancing facility, and we're using it with the Kemp Load Balancer."
"I would rate scalability ten out of ten since you buy what you want."
"It is a stable solution."
"What I like best about this product is that it is a complete solution, both hardware, and software, by the same vendor."
"It's my understanding that the initial setup is straightforward."
"Dell ECS is a cost-effective solution that provides ease of use and availability."
"Dell ECS is a very stable solution and most of the S3 APIs are supported."
"It has improved our operational efficiency through time consumption and logistics by 40 to 50 percent. Everything that had to do with our legacy tape solution has been improved and is now more efficient."
"The ability to get to the StorageGRID from anywhere on my network. The solution is remote. You don't have to be at a physical location."
"Right now, we have an older StorageGRID. I like that we can grow it."
"It has awesome scalability. We consume it with storage appliance nodes, then we just plug and play as we need more."
"The management portals have most significantly improved our data retrieval times. They've made it much easier to restore data compared to our previous methods."
"The speed of the disks removed the bottleneck from our storage."
"The most valuable feature is tiering."
"The technical support is good."
 

Cons

"The major weakness in the solution is that there is no cloud version for Dell ECS."
"The setup is very complex."
"Dell EMC ECS could improve by having Relational Database Services(RDS) to review progress. Additionally, if the training was provided it would be a benefit, it would be good for our engineers."
"However, hardware failures can impact the cluster, making it read-only."
"They could provide centralized reports."
"They need to ensure that the system will work if a site goes down."
"We have concerns about the write performance. We would also like it to be easier to scale out, to add more boxes to the system. And we want improved performance, to use a next-generation NFS service."
"Dell ECS is not fully compatible with S3, as it supports around ninety percent of S3 APIs, which can be improved. Additionally, sometimes there is an issue with memory where it hangs, and they can improve garbage collection, which takes up a lot of space during cleanup."
"The product's continual innovation and enhancement in integration capabilities with other NetApp solutions could be better."
"Improvements need to be made in the support area."
"There was a small amount of confusion when working with StorageGRID and Active Directory for access. We had to do things three to four times resulting in our engineer troubleshooting a couple of things. The location of the menu, along with what is inside the menu: configurations, settings, etc., is not straightforward to users. Most users are Windows-based. So, when make logical changes to the menu which are not similar to Windows, users and administrators get confused."
"We want to move towards Azure in the cloud. Right now, the system is all physical."
"I just recommend improving the marketing campaigns in Pakistan."
"The redundancy and reliability are great, but I also see room for improvement there. I would like to see more efficiency in the storage and dedupe/compression solutions."
"It has its quirks here and there, but it is an older NetApp system."
"Beyond the initial setup, this product is a little bit difficult to configure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution. There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product."
"If I remember correctly, Dell ECS is an appliance, so if you buy Dell ECS, you also have to buy the hardware, while IBM is standalone software, so you can buy IBM as software only without needing to buy the hardware. On a scale of one to five, I'm rating the pricing for Dell ECS a four."
"We initially purchased all of the licenses at the same time."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"It is an inexpensive product."
"The charges for this solution are made in blocks of models, which are purchased depending on what features an organization requires."
"Dell ECS is a cost-effective solution."
"The product is quite expensive."
"We save money on storage costs from this solution since it allows us to have a source of revenue from customers consuming the service."
"The pricing is quite flexible and depends on the specific customer requirements. The initial cost is primarily based on the desired capacity, so it's not a fixed price."
"Our licensing is in INR it was around 25 lakhs, which is roughly two million."
"While we have been able to save money on storage costs, it could be better."
"The licensing that the S3 service provides them from a FabricPool standpoint is more attractive than the licensing from AWS or Azure."
"NetApp is not known for being the cheapest storage option on the market. Almost all of the other storage options we looked at were less expensive than StorageGRID. The price is one thing to criticize, which is what we hear internally and from customers as well. They find the cost of the terabytes in this class of storage a little bit higher than expected."
"Buying the solution is expensive, but it saves you money down the line when you factor in the logistics of not having to buy tapes."
"The pricing of StorageGRID falls within the typical range for enterprise-grade solutions and is comparable to other vendors such as Dell, NetApp, and Pure Storage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
20%
Computer Software Company
17%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC ECS?
The price is reasonable given the abundance of features, including managing, control, host resources, dockers, and containers. The node agent includes monitoring processes and managing the system.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC ECS?
There is a need to improve the infrastructure, particularly for SUSE Linux experts. The deployment is not easy, and some expertise is required to configure the virtual data center and replication g...
What do you like most about NetApp StorageGRID?
The management portals have most significantly improved our data retrieval times. They've made it much easier to restore data compared to our previous methods.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp StorageGRID?
I rate the product pricing around five out of ten—it's negotiable, depending on the circumstances.
What needs improvement with NetApp StorageGRID?
The product's continual innovation and enhancement in integration capabilities with other NetApp solutions could be better.
 

Also Known As

EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, EMC Elastic Cloud Storage
Storage GRID
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Atos
ASE, DARZ GmbH
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell ECS vs. NetApp StorageGRID and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.