Dell PowerStore vs NetApp AFF A-Series comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7, while NetApp is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.6. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell PowerStore and NetApp AFF A-Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp AFF A-Series Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp AFF A-Series

January 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 838,713 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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

Read full review

Hamed Mohamed

Adv. Service Manager at ECC Solutions

Straightforward with great snapshots and no complicated configuration

The usage of the system is very straightforward. It is simple and easy to use. It has great snapshots. I can take a million snapshots and also schedule the timing. There is no complicated configuration for queries and calls. You just create a model and go. This generation of the product, overall, has been very nice. It is stable. The solution can scale.

Read full review

Raymond Ciscon

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"I appreciate the performance."

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"The most valuable feature is the encryption in the loop because we can manage data center data from a different perspective, reducing the space used while growing data using the same equipment."

"It provides a big benefit when upgrading a new VMware environment. For example, in a big environment with 10 to 30 ESXs, you can take everything and put that into PowerStore. So, it is cost-effective, which is very important and has been massive for us. You reduce almost 80% from the hardware and work directly from PowerStore. Building hardware, especially in a big VMware environment, is a big issue for my organization."

"The most valuable features of Dell PowerStore are the support for NVMe and SCM, which provides end-to-end performance and high IOPS, minimizing latency. It is a full-fledged storage solution."

"The product's initial deployment phase has been straightforward."

"Currently, the features of replication and deduplication have been very important to us."

"Dell PowerStore is an easy and fast tool to work through our company's data."

"Typically, high-performance and high-availability features, such as application snapshots and remote and local replication, are highly valued."

More Dell PowerStore pros

"NetApp helps us get the fastest output."

"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."

"NetApp's inline deduplication and compression are unmatched compared to other vendors."

"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."

"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 support is fantastic."

"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."

Cons

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

"We need better data deduplication."

"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."

"The software layer has to improve."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The support team should have more people with experience in the solution's installation process, as it is one of the areas where I see certain shortcomings."

"AI will be a challenge and we must manage different kinds of data with more performance and security."

"Dell PowerStore currently only allows us to copy data from our main production system to the disaster recovery site."

"The replication part needs improvement, particularly the integration of RecoverPoint."

"The support is not very good."

"Horizontal scaling has room for improvement."

"Having all the services consolidated makes it hard to scale."

"Dell PowerStore is a good solution overall, but some models could support hypervisors better by allowing for more customization and flexibility for customer needs."

More Dell PowerStore cons

"The solution's ransomware protection could be improved."

"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."

"Pricing could always be lower."

"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."

"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."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Dell PowerStore is not a cheap solution."

"The solution's price was comparable to other products for the use case, size, and setup."

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."

"When we compared it with the other solutions, the pricing of PowerStore was equal. The pricing is good."

"Pricing depends on the model and negotiation. Sometimes we manage to get good discounts, sometimes not."

"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."

"Dell PowerStore is affordable and the license is just a face license which is great."

"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."

More Dell PowerStore pricing and cost advice

Information not available

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

See all answers

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

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp AFF A-Series?

I really don't have a lot of complaints. In the past, there were issues. However, they've really done a great job of ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering NetApp AFF A-Series?

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. Since we're a privately held manufacturing company, we tend to buy the lowest ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp AFF A-Series?

We were able to get pricing that was very similar to what Pure has. And for a lot of situations, the only thing Pure ...

See all answers

Comparisons

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 17% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 13% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 8% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell PowerStore Competitors

NetApp AFF C-Series vs NetApp AFF A-Series

Compared 40% of the time

More NetApp AFF A-Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

February 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore

February 2025

Download Dell PowerStore product report

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

January 2025

Download NetApp AFF A-Series product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

PowerStore

No data available

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

Dell PowerStore stands out for its high performance, flexibility, and easy integration with VMware. It offers notable data compression and deduplication capabilities while providing powerful NVMe support and machine learning to optimize IT operations.

Dell PowerStore is designed to offer a comprehensive approach to IT infrastructure by enhancing performance and simplifying management. It is particularly suitable for companies that require scalable solutions to increase compute or capacity independently. Featuring built-in intelligence, PowerStore allows efficient storage consolidation and reduced footprint, while integration with CloudIQ enhances monitoring and analytics. However, there are areas for improvement, such as stability, enterprise features, and the user interface. Pricing is high, and support responsiveness needs attention. Organizations primarily use PowerStore for VMware environments, storage, and data protection, supporting high-performance databases and VMware workloads. It is utilized in data centers for disaster recovery and hybrid setups.

What are the key features of Dell PowerStore?

Flexibility: Independently scales compute or capacity
High Performance: Offers powerful NVMe support and machine learning
Integration: Easily integrates with VMware
Data Efficiency: Provides data compression and deduplication
Simplified Management: Built-in intelligence for efficient storage management

What benefits should users consider?

Performance Optimization: Enhance IT operations with machine learning
Scalability: Increase compute or storage capacity as needed
Integration Potential: Improve efficiency with VMware and CloudIQ
Data Protection: Reliable for disaster recovery and hybrid environments

In industries like IT, finance, and healthcare, Dell PowerStore supports efficient data management and enhances infrastructure performance. Organizations leverage it to manage extensive data, streamline virtualization processes, and facilitate migration from legacy systems, while integrating cloud and on-premises infrastructures for improved operations.

Dell Technologies

NetApp AFF A-Series is ideal for high-performance storage in enterprise environments. It efficiently handles large-scale data and provides reliable storage for virtual machines, databases, and critical applications.

NetApp AFF A-Series stands out for its speed, reliability, and robust data protection features. Users find its management easy and appreciate the efficiency in handling large workloads. Its seamless integration with cloud services and high data transfer speeds with reduced latency enhance its appeal. Scalability and support for various applications make it a top choice for enterprises. However, there is room for improvement in documentation, technical support response time, and third-party application integration.

What are the standout features of NetApp AFF A-Series?

High Performance: Delivers fast data transfer speeds and reduces latency.
Data Protection: Robust features ensure data integrity and security.
Ease of Management: Simplified administration enhances efficiency.
Cloud Integration: Seamless integration with cloud services.
Scalability: Easily handles growing data and application demands.

What benefits should users look for?

Enhanced Efficiency: Streamlined management processes save time.
Increased Reliability: High reliability ensures continuous operation.
Improved Data Security: Advanced data protection features safeguard information.
Cost-Effective Scaling: Efficiently scales to meet growing storage needs.
Better Cloud Utilization: Leverages cloud capabilities for more flexibility.

NetApp AFF A-Series is implemented across industries to support virtual machines, large databases, and critical applications. It's particularly valuable in financial services for fast transaction processing, in healthcare for managing extensive patient records and imaging data, and in tech companies for supporting development environments and big data analytics.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp AFF A-Series

January 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp AFF A-Series

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp AFF A-Series and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp AFF A-Series report.

See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.

We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.