Dell PowerPath vs NetApp ONTAP comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the Storage Software category. Dell Technologies is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.8, while NetApp is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. Dell Technologies holds a 11.5% mindshare in SS, compared to NetApp’s 42.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Dell PowerPath

Read 8 Dell PowerPath reviews

204 Views
58 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetApp ONTAP

Read 80 NetApp ONTAP reviews

809 Views
238 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Dell PowerPath

NetApp ONTAP

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell PowerPath and NetApp ONTAP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Storage Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP

April 2025

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Helped 848,716 peers since 2012

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 PowerPath

Ranking in Storage Software

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetApp ONTAP

Ranking in Storage Software

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Storage Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerPath is 11.5%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ONTAP is 42.4%, up from 42.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Storage Software

Featured Reviews

Derrick Brockel

Senior Manager of Operations at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

A resilient and reliable solution that has many load-balancing technologies and provides high availability

People who want to buy the solution must create a scorecard of Dell PowerPath against other products. They must run database tests. They must consider factors like pricing, performance, ease of use, visibility, and reliability. They must also run tests to understand which product recovers faster. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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Christopher Cagayan

IT Server and Storage Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

A solution that comes with several valuable features and excellent SAN storage

NetApp ONTAP is scalable. They have two types of scalability, "scale up" and "scale out." With "scale up," you can get up to petabytes of data if you have the money to buy those servers and add them to the system. And "scale out" also, you can buy additional controllers, up to 12 nodes, which is pretty good when you are a big company. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. NetApp is one of our organization's main storage systems. Every application is scattered on all of our NetApp devices. Applications won't run without it because they need to pull data from NetApp ONTAP.

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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

"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."

"It provides a high availability and will increase the performance of any server or operating system."

"The product is very reliable."

"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that disaster recovery scenarios are very good and easy to use in Dell PowerPath since it is available in a simplified form."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is migration without disruptions."

"The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."

"The user interface is good."

"When it accesses regular files, it does so as an NFS workload, which retrieves data quickly."

"One of the things I find most valuable is the way they do the Snapshots, taking incrementals at points in time... Often someone will say, "Hey, I deleted this thing yesterday, can you get this back for me?" It's good that we have all those incremental Snapshots at different points in time that we can refer back to, to get them whatever they need."

"Previously we didn't have DR, but ever since we purchased the NetApp server, we are able to use Snap Mirror and then create DR scenarios, so that's been a huge benefit. This solution has helped reduce the overall cost of storage space in our organization by allowing us to use one data center, instead of two, and then allowing us to replicate the data; so that saves us money to buy more storage. We have been able to save space by using this solution."

"The compression works well. We get a 3:1 ratio."

"Scalability is perfectly fine. Right now I only have the two nodes and one shelf. I'll be able to easily upgrade additional shelves. They gave me plenty of cabling when I got the unit so all I have to do is disconnect and reconnect the cabling and that's it."

"Scalability is awesome with a cluster node, not only can you scale up, but you can also scale out."

"Queries are being completed in less time. For example, we have seen a three times improvement when it comes to running a query. If query used to take an hour, now it takes 10 to 20 minutes."

"You can add storage capacity on the fly with Clustered ONTAP. You can add nodes and increase the entire horsepower of ONTAP."

More NetApp ONTAP pros

Cons

"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."

"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"Although PowerPath is very mature and has been on the market for more than 15 years there are still a lot of bugs that have been profiled with PowerPath, specifically, during any OS upgrade."

"While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective."

"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."

"The solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."

"Customers do not choose PowerPath unless they have Unix or Linux."

"The technical support is good but they are not available all the time."

"The GUI of NetApp ONTAP is an area with certain shortcomings that need to be considered for improvement."

"The technical support hasn't been that great. A couple of times we have had to call support and it took a long time to get somebody on the phone, it took a long time for someone to call us back. That's the only downside, the support."

"cDot only scales to 24 notes so scalability should be better, bigger, but we are one of the only customers that are facing this problem."

"There is a lot a lot of functional integration that we look forward to for improvements. I'm learning where they're going and I'm very interested to see those improvements and how they can help us."

"I could see the GUI being a little bit more refined, the presentation layer being a little stronger, a little less sluggish."

"I would like to have deduplication and SSD features in the product."

"It's very expensive."

"It should release more cloud-centric products as compared to some of its competitors. We would like it to have the ability to run or manage a solution in the cloud. This would allow us to migrate our data on-premise to off-premise in cloud solutions."

More NetApp ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no additional costs associated with the product."

"The solution is expensive."

"Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution."

"The price of the solution is fair."

"The product is a little bit expensive."

"I rate the product's price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is affordable, and ten is really expensive. Dell PowerPath is an expensive tool."

"Additional costs exist if you want a license for a feature like SnapMirror."

"I rate NetApp ONTAP's pricing a seven out of ten."

"While it is going to cost a lot of money, their technologies is worth it."

"It's not an all inclusive model. You have the option to purchase modules to make the entire ecosystem coherent. I would like the option to pay one price and get everything all inclusive, like OnCommand."

"If you start narrowing down NetApp versus price point, then comparing it to the feature set and take away all the bloat that other companies will try to add on, there is no other option. It comes down to just NetApp."

"There could be improvements, its proprietary software so it can be pricey."

"NetApp ONTAP is a pricey product, but you pay for what you get. I rate NetApp ONTAP a five out of ten for its pricing."

"Depending on the licensing you choose the price varies. For our company and our needs, the cost is very fair."

More NetApp ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

12%

Healthcare Company

12%

Retailer

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

21%

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell PowerPath?

The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerPath?

The product is a little bit expensive. It is a little pricey because it provides multipathing with other OSs. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell PowerPath?

The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR. When we use 3PAR storage, we have to use another technology to load balance. The product must be integrated with other products l...

See all answers

How does Azure NetApp Files compare to NetApp ONTAP?

Azure NetApp Files is a Microsoft Azure file storage service built on NetApp technology. The platform combines the file capabilities of Azure and NetApp to move critical file-based applications to ...

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp ONTAP?

We do not face any glitches or downtime.

See all answers

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

Regarding pricing, if I am an enterprise, there's something called a license agreement that happens between platinum customers and NetApp ONTAP, where they offer the best pricing. However, as a new...

See all answers

Comparisons

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell PowerPath

Compared 46% of the time

More Dell PowerPath Competitors

DataCore SANsymphony vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 46% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 18% of the time

Cloudian HyperStore vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 11% of the time

More NetApp ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerPath

April 2025

Download Dell PowerPath product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp ONTAP

April 2025

Download NetApp ONTAP product report

Also Known As

PowerPath

No data available

Overview

EMC PowerPath: Host-based software for automated data path management, failover and recovery, and optimized load balancing. PowerPath automates, standardizes, and optimizes data paths in physical and virtual environments as well as cloud deployments to deliver high availability and performance.

AUTOMATE FAILOVER/RECOVERY

PowerPath automates data path failover and recovery to ensure applications are always available and remain operational.

OPTIMIZE LOAD BALANCING

Adjust I/O paths constantly to leverage all available data paths and to monitor and rebalance the dynamic environment for the best application performance.

STANDARDIZE PATH MANAGEMENT

Simplify and standardize data path management across heterogeneous physical and virtual environments as well as cloud deployments.

Dell Technologies

NetApp is the data authority for hybrid cloud. We provide a full range of hybrid cloud data services that simplify management of applications and data across cloud and on-premises environments to accelerate digital transformation. Together with our partners, we empower global organizations to unleash the full potential of their data to expand customer touchpoints, foster greater innovation and optimize their operations.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Healthcare Residential Service Company

1&1 IONOS, Acıbadem Healthcare Group, Adder Technologies, Aero Vodochody Aerospace

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP

April 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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