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Dell PowerStore vs NetApp AFF A-Series comparison

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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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
220
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerStore
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
188
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), NAS (2nd), Enterprise SAN (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
NetApp AFF A-Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
20th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise SAN (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.5%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 10.8%, down from 17.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF A-Series is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerStore10.8%
Everpure FlashArray7.5%
NetApp AFF A-Series0.8%
Other80.9%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2304864 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vmware Windows Senior Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Resilience has supported proactive management and secured audit readiness across multiple sites
The resilience in Dell PowerStore benefits my company from an auditing perspective because we know we have that resilience in place. I see Dell PowerStore playing a bigger role in the future because we are starting to use it more, and that is pushing it. The biggest return on investment for me when using Dell PowerStore is scalability. Scalability is key. I can amplify that scalability is the biggest return on investment because we have redundancy between two sites; if something goes down, we have to manage it, but we want to do it proactively.
Raymond Ciscon - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at MacLean-Fogg Company
Gives us the foundation to grow efficiently
We're a manufacturer. All of our ERP software is dependent upon fast performance and connection to this hardware. So when there was an issue years ago when something was wrong or slow, that prompted us to say, "Can we check storage? Can we check the network?" Ever since we've gone up to all-flash FAS systems, there's never any questions about performance when it comes to storage. There's been a huge leap from spinning disks to SSDs. I'm hoping with the next update, we'll go to NVMe and we'll have similar experiences. Last year, we refreshed the SAN at our headquarters. We signed a Keystone agreement with the ability to pay for storage as a service at an excellent price point yet still have the hardware on-prem. I manage the hardware, and, for me, it's the best of both worlds. We've just come up with a situation where, finally, after some time, we're going to need to buy some additional storage. In previous situations like this, it usually meant the purchase of an additional shelf at a large price. Now we have Keystone, and we're locked in at that price per tebibyte. We just have to say that we want to add 25 tebibytes and they take care of it. It's worked out really well. We work ISO 27001 certified. Since I manage the enterprise storage, we use SnapMirror, and we're currently using Veeam for backups. Thanks to what this tool provides, we are able to get through that portion of our certification without a problem. No changes, no rectifying. It's very slick. Our company's goals include maintaining a level of consistency. We're never going to be on the bleeding edge. We're never going to have the super fastest abilities. We want something that works, is easier for us to manage, and has a better growth path. For us, in the past, in the need for additional disk space, if we didn't do the sizing right in the first place, buying additional disks was incredibly expensive. Now, with Keystone, that's no longer an issue, and that's what we like.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It makes things ten times easier."
"The first set up we had was really straight forward and simple."
"The most valuable feature is test performance. It helps us store large amounts of data along with providing us faster retrieval of data."
"Because we were able to afford to go all flash, we don't manage the tiers, we're not moving data up, and we're not waiting for overnight cycles."
"This solution has improved our organization in the way that in the past we had reports that were taking up to two hours and after switching to SSD storage the overall processing power dropped to half an hour."
"I like the performance. Performance-wise, it accommodates the needs of highly-critical servers. It is reliable."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is its high stability level."
"The most important feature of any storage array is its reliability, measured by its uptime."
"The solution's most valuable features are its form factor and switching to NVMe."
"Its flexibility is valuable because we have had some moments where we had to adapt, and it has been quite flexible."
"To growth and business success, Dell PowerStore contributes definitely because the appliances have these expansion enclosures and scale-up and scale-out work pretty well with Dell PowerStore, up to a certain degree."
"The compression is excellent."
"If I were giving advice to another company looking at Dell PowerStore, I would say that you cannot go wrong with Dell, as the sales and support teams are always top notch."
"Overall, I rate Dell PowerStore a ten out of ten."
"The feature of integrated AI and machine learning enhances the usage and operations of the storage, making it one of the key features of Dell PowerStore."
"The platform's reliability and built-in replication between disk systems have made our customers happy. It has worked consistently well over the years."
"NetApp's inline deduplication and compression are unmatched compared to other vendors."
"NetApp's hot and cold storage are its most valuable features. We currently use the A series. Immutable snapshots are another advanced security feature that is positive."
"NetApp AFF A-Series is faster and more robust compared to the all-flash storage of NetApp."
"NetApp support is fantastic."
"We've reduced downtime. Without all of NetApp's benefits, we would have had to reconfigure parts of storage that would have required downtime. We have dramatically reduced our downtime through successive generations of NetApp, allowing us to get Five 9s availability."
"The amazing thing is that whenever we have come up with an issue where we need to get something done, and it wasn't necessarily available, they could do things for us, usually within the next revision of the software."
"MetroCluster is the best product on the market. It synchronizes the storage. NetApp's update packages are a huge advantage because the firmware and server updates are in one package."
"The deduplication and compression options from NetApp AFF A-Series are good to use for efficient storage capacity."
 

Cons

"One thing I'd like to see in a future release is integration between their main storage array and what they call their FlashBlade product; to be able to snapshot directly from the primary array into multiple different backup copies on FlashBlade."
"I would like to see more detailed reporting on the data. However, it would be nice to know what are the exact VMs usage after deduplication and/or what that VMs actual latency and bandwidth is, outside of VMware."
"In Pure Storage FlashArray, the area with room for improvement is local MFA login."
"It can go down from time to time, but it's been pretty solid so far."
"The internal garbage collection process has been fixed recently in some OS updates so it is more efficient but that could be just a little better."
"A three wave application or multi wave application synchronization would be an improvement."
"The price of this solution could be improved."
"Pure Storage can improve FlashArray by providing more logging visibility to customers. Currently, there is no log visibility."
"From the price perspective, I think it should be less expensive to better position it against vendors such as IBM or Hitachi, since sometimes it is hard to sell it due to higher pricing."
"Customer service is good, though if you are running into some issues where you have to chase after them or they do not understand what is going on, overall it is pretty good."
"We are looking for the Dell PowerStore to become more mature to maximize our use cases."
"The pricing point must have better positioning."
"I would like to see additional features or functionalities for the Metro in Dell PowerStore, especially because there are a few workloads still not supported."
"If I could improve anything about Dell PowerStore, there are a couple of in-the-weeds features that I would want to see, such as the size of snapshots to know when we can expire some of them."
"It's also only supported with a limited amount of switches."
"It could be improved to be cheaper for us."
"NetApp is shifting to the cloud and adopting AI, but it is not improving its core technology to deliver faster storage. We're still waiting to see if it improves speed with solutions like the 90 series."
"We have several problems with the limitations of NetApp systems in terms of volume shares. We have a brick in a 700 or a controller, and we sometimes make small volumes, but Kubernetes container volumes don't allow us."
"I really don't have a lot of complaints. In the past, there were issues, however, they've really done a great job of reaching out."
"It would be helpful if our partner organized a yearly session with my team to discuss the new feature sets on our current solutions and other ways NetApp can help us. Perhaps we are missing some information to help us make the right decision."
"The solution's ransomware protection could be improved."
"Pricing could always be lower."
"NetApp AFF A-Series should work on cost. The solutions, especially enterprise-level storage, should be more affordable to improve their appeal to businesses."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was less expensive than some of the alternatives. It's not as though it was a premium price to get that kind of quality. It's a very competitive product from a price perspective..."
"The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."
"We have a seen a reduction in TCO. It is definitely a cost-effective solution for us. We have seen ROI."
"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."
"Because the price is a bit higher than other products, the data reduction equalizes the price with amount of the data reduction."
"No storage device is cheap, but Pure Storage is fairly priced and offers what you pay for. You get all the licenses in the future when you purchase a license."
"The price is reasonable."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)."
"The software features are included in the pricing without any additional purchase requirements."
"The price of Dell EMC PowerStore could be better, it is a bit expensive."
"There are no separate licenses required as all the basic licenses are included in the bundle."
"PowerStore's pricing is reasonable."
"It is easy to work with Dell from the licensing perspective."
"Dell PowerStore is not a cheap solution."
"It is very expensive though when you get to this point of using the 3000 with a client. They will start to think about using another vendor. There are a lot of solutions similar to PowerStore in regards to networking capacity and their prices are very cheap compared to PowerStore."
"Licensing is very simple. Everything is included in the basic license. There are no concerns about having to pay to add a feature. Everything is there."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise156
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business61
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise92
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Large Enterprise8
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated managem...
What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell of...
What needs improvement with NetApp AFF A-Series?
NetApp is doing great with cloud integration; however, there may be room for improvement in integrating with existing...
What advice do you have for others considering NetApp AFF A-Series?
It would be great to see some automation from NetApp. I rate NetApp AFF A-Series a nine out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp AFF A-Series?
With respect to pricing, NetApp can be competitive but hasn't been explored to a large extent.
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
PowerStore
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
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Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp AFF A-Series and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
894,830 professionals have used our research since 2012.