Dell PowerStore vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the NAS category. Dell Technologies is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6, while NetApp is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.8. Additionally, 95% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 2024

NetApp FAS Series and Dell PowerStore are in the competitive storage solutions category, with each offering unique strengths. NetApp appears stronger with features like multiprotocol support and high availability, while Dell PowerStore has advantages in machine learning and VMware integration.

Features: NetApp FAS Series provides flexibility with hybrid cloud solutions and a robust framework supporting various protocols. It includes powerful data management tools like SnapMirror and FlexClone. Dell PowerStore features end-to-end NVMe storage and integration with VMware. It utilizes machine learning for resource optimization, offering performance-driven design.

Room for Improvement: NetApp FAS Series could improve user experience with better documentation and management interfaces, and enhance deduplication processes. Concerns about pricing are also noted. Dell PowerStore could benefit from improved data replication capabilities, consistent technical support, and better VMware integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both solutions are mainly deployed on-premises with increasing hybrid and private cloud implementations. Customers generally report positive technical support experiences for both NetApp and Dell, despite occasional service delays. NetApp is recognized for knowledgeable support, while Dell is appreciated for consistent service delivery.

Pricing and ROI: NetApp FAS Series offers competitive pricing, though some users find it costly when considering features and support. Dell PowerStore is recognized as cost-efficient within the NVMe market but may have a higher initial expense. Both solutions promise good ROI regarding performance and functionality for various enterprise storage needs.

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

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp FAS Series

January 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 830,726 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

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

Reliable and feature-rich solution that meets our diverse storage needs effectively

We are incredibly satisfied with the product's performance and flexibility. The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes. The platform's robust features include excellent sustainability tracking, and a comprehensive dashboard offering insights into IOPS, bandwidth, performance, and virtual activities. This not only streamlines our operations but also provides a clear and detailed overview of our storage environment. Additionally, it has multiple controllers, letting us balance the load smoothly.

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

Paweł Jabłoński

IT Infrastructure Manager at Bricoman Wilanów

Used for VMs with replication a feature, but need upgraded SSDs

We use this solution. I configured and updated it. Of course, I was also a user of applications that store data on that storage. We already have an SSD solution. So, rather than planning to go with an SSD solution, we are focusing on expanding it. If a company wants to deploy something new, it should choose a product with SSD, and NVMe disks. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

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

"The latency is good."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."

"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."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution for me is the deduplication part, especially since most of the servers in our organization are Windows-based servers."

"Reliable, with comprehensive features and a well-established support base."

"The product's initial setup phase was very easy."

"The deduplication functionality provided by the solution is fairly good. The speed offered by the product is enough for our organization."

"The simplicity and ease of use have been very valuable features. I have a very small team, and only half of the team is well versed in the HP product. Whereas if I bring PowerStore in, everyone can learn it because it will be new on the floor."

"The latency and the security are the most valuable features of Dell PowerStore."

"Dell PowerStore's valuable feature stems from an area named Metro Volume, which is quite simple to implement. The feature works fast and is good."

"You can add compute and capacity independently. We have sized the solution based on our current needs, but in the future we can choose to increase capacity if we grow our activity in the market. And if we have more business in our monetary system, we can increase compute. The ability to choose what we increase is a good feature."

More Dell PowerStore pros

"Snapshot, deduplication, and compression features are valuable."

"It is very flexible. It integrates well with the public cloud and other components, so everything can be API driven. Therefore, it is very easy to automate it."

"Flexible and reliable storage solution with multiple features such as cloning, replication, and deduplication. Data migration can be done without any performance implications on the production systems."

"The initial setup was so straightforward. It was well-documented."

"The product is flexible."

"The new FAS series is a good fit for some customers. We have good performance and capacity, even though it is full flash."

"The most valuable feature is SnapMirror."

"Data consolidation and visualization."

More NetApp FAS Series pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"The software layer has to improve."

"It is on the expensive side."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"I have not seen anything specific. The only thing I can think of that needs improvement is the price."

"It was very new when we first deployed it a year ago. Even the upgrade processes and knowing what to expect, as well as documentation, could be more robust."

"We have not seen an ROI and it would be good to have an ROI calculator made available by Dell."

"You cannot delegate permissions."

"There is an issue with Dell PowerStore related to future expansions which are software-related."

"Monitoring is an area of concern in the product where improvements are required."

"Reporting is an area that could be improved. It's very simplistic sometimes, and some of the very technical guys on my team want to see more of the details and be able to massage the report a little bit better."

"Dell PowerStore should offer more cybersecurity and warehouse data security."

More Dell PowerStore cons

"The AutoSupport could be improved to be more proactive in certain cases."

"For long term partnership in Myanmar, the local warehouse should be built in Myanmar that's something I'd like to see. We have some issues with supply so there is sometimes a delay in getting the hardware."

"It lacks automatic tiering, When you use data, some of it goes cold. It is not hot data, so the system should automatically move that data to the SATA, while the hot data is kept on tier-one, the SaaS or SSD drives."

"NetApp is costly when compared to Dell."

"Replication should ideally be part of the ONTAP base bundle."

"Cluster mode needs to be more ubiquitous."

"It's hard to find in-person training that fits our schedule in our area. They offer a lot of online training, but we need somewhere to go because we can't really get away from the office."

"We are not able to connect to the support of NetApp from Sudan. We have to go through many agents for support, which makes it difficult."

More NetApp FAS Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

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

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

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

"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."

"The product is expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Dell PowerStore is more expensive than Dell EMC Unity All Flash. Dell PowerStore's performance metrics were way higher than what Dell EMC Unity All Flash offered."

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

"I rate the price of Dell PowerStore a seven out of ten."

"Dealing with the licensing part of the product is very simple, especially considering the fact that we don't have many licenses associated with the tool."

"There are no separate licenses required as all the basic licenses are included in the bundle."

"We purchased it with a five-year warranty."

"With compression, we were able to have a solution within our company's budget. We include a clause in the contract with Dell that states if the compression ratio is not met, we will adjust the workload accordingly."

"There's still a cap on the upgrade path, where you can consume all the engines within the frame before you have to go to another frame... Normally, we exceed the IOPS on the frames before we can ever exhaust the storage, so anything they can do to help us avoid stranded storage capacity, capacity that we couldn't get to, would be beneficial."

More Dell PowerStore pricing and cost advice

"Low-priced product, but pricing could still be made more attractive."

"It is a moderately low-priced platform."

"The product's pricing is reasonable."

"We are on a perpetual license."

"The price it not low, but comparing features to other vendors, the price can be balanced."

"In general, I find NetApp to be very expensive. That's the main issue I have with them. So it's a drawback in terms of pricing."

"The price, compared to competitors, is quite high."

"We have considered upgrading to an All-Flash solution but when we evaluated the cost-benefit we discovered that we don't have enough money to invest in it. To maintain the same technology with All-Flash would be too expensive for us."

More NetApp FAS Series pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which NAS solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

830,726 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

19%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Educational Organization

62%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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?

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

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

Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?

Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp FAS Series?

Flexibility in data replication.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?

Cost is a big factor in our decision-making process. When we're buying storage, the first thing we look at is how muc...

See all answers

Comparisons

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 19% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 12% 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

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 24% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 11% of the time

HPE MSA vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 7% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 6% of the time

More NetApp FAS Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

December 2024

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore

January 2025

Download Dell PowerStore product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp FAS Series

December 2024

Download NetApp FAS Series product report

Also Known As

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

PowerStore

No data available

Learn More

Pure Storage

Dell Technologies

NetApp

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.

Dell EMC PowerStore is a midrange next-generation data storage solution. It is designed with a data-centric, intelligent, and adaptable infrastructure and helps consolidate storage and virtual server environments. The Dell EMC PowerStore platform includes two major configurations, including PowerStore T and PowerStore X. Dell EMC PowerStore enables you to deploy the appliance and consolidate data and applications and supports both flash and SCM Optane devices.

Dell EMC PowerStore Offers:

Value
Flexibility
Simplicity

Dell EMC PowerStore Features

Some of the most powerful Dell EMC PowerStore features include:

Data-centric design: Dell EMC PowerStore is designed to optimize system performance, scalability, and storage efficiency to support any workload.
Intelligent automation: Intelligent automation helps simplify management as well as optimize system resources. Through a programmable infrastructure, it also enables you to easily monitor, analyze, and troubleshoot the environment.
Adaptable architecture: Because it has an adaptable architecture, Dell EMC PowerStore is able to provide speed and application mobility and offer flexible deployment models.
Scalability: Dell EMC PowerStore can be scaled up and scaled out.
Data-in-place upgrades: By providing data-in-place upgrades, you gain a modernized infrastructure without any downtime involved and without impacting applications.

Dell EMC PowerStore Benefits

Some of the benefits of using Dell EMC PowerStore include:

Flexible deployment: Dell EMC PowerStore is made to modernize the core, edge, and cloud without disruption, leading to flexible deployment.
Pay-per-use: Dell EMC PowerStore offers a range of flexible purchase options.
Any workload: Because Dell EMC PowerStore is designed to leverage next-gen innovations, it can work with any workload.
Programmable infrastructure: Dell EMC PowerStore streamlines application development and also automates storage workflows through integration with VMware and a broad ecosystem of leading management and orchestration frameworks, enabling you to provision services directly from the application tool sets that you use most frequently.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Dell EMC PowerStore users who are currently using the solution.

PeerSpot user Maurizio D., who is a CTO at Universita' degli Studi di Pisa, says it "Gives us flexibility, performance, and ease of use. It also has some very good compression capabilities. We were looking for a solution that was easy to install in our VMware environment, that was flexible. PowerStore X is a type of a VMware cluster that you install inside your environment. If you have a VMware environment, like we have in production, it's easy to install and use."

Another PeerSpot user, Jorg L., who is an IT Administrator at a construction company, mentions "For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance."

"The administration tools take advantage of machine learning and make recommendations to the admins, and that makes the administration easier," says a Chief Information Officer at a computer software company. He also comments that “Overall, we've benefited from the dedupe, compression, and replication, the advanced technology, of this frame. It's all better than what we had in the previous generation of XtremIO appliances, and above what we were getting in the Dell EMC Unitys.”

NetApp FAS series is an enterprise-level storage system that provides a wide variety of data management services, including data protection, block and file storage, and data management.

NetApp FAS is designed to be highly scalable, allowing your organization to grow storage capacity on demand. NetApp FAS also supports multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel, as well as various storage architectures, including SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network-Attached Storage).

The FAS series has multiple data protection and data management features, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication, to help secure your data and manage it more efficiently. The system integrates with other NetApp products and solutions, to create a unified data management platform. The system can be deployed on-premise, on multi-cloud environments, or hybrid.

NetApp FAS Series Benefits and Features

NetApp FAS series provides its users with several key benefits and features, including:

Scalability: NetApp FAS series is easy to scale, allowing organizations to rapidly grow their storage capacity according to demand.

Security: Protect and manage your data with various data protection and data management tools, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication.

Seamless integration: Integrate with other NetApp products and solutions to ensure a unified data management platform across on-premise, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.

Reduced costs: Consolidation of multiple storage boxes greatly reduces the data center footprint. From a management point of view, with NetApp FAS you manage a single storage box instead of multiple storage boxes.
Compatibility: Forward and backward compatibility ensures that you don’t have to trade in existing controllers. New controllers can always integrate with previously released controllers.

Multi-protocol support: Support for multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel.

High performance and availability: The solution has high input and output per second performance and ensures that critical data remains accessible in the event of a hardware failure.
Intuitive interface: The FAS series has a user-friendly interface and management dashboard, making it easy to manage your storage systems. With unified management, you can quickly run a single protocol on your entire system
Data cloning and replication: Easily clone databases of any size. Clones occupy a very, very small footprint on the storage until they are severed from the main database. Replications carried out by the system are fast and require very little bandwidth.

Reviews from Real Users

NetApp FAS Series stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its speed, reliability, and a wide variety of features.

Adriano S., IT project and infrastructure service manager, writes, “The replication feature is noteworthy because it's faster than most and it uses little bandwidth. Then there's the friendly interface that the equipment offers. With this interface, it is very easy to manage.”

Temitope O., a NetApp product manager at Hiperdist Ltd, says, “I like the unified management feature because sometimes you end up running a single protocol on the entire system. You rather have a system for a particular protocol and another system for other protocols, especially in a big environment like mine.”

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp FAS Series

January 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp FAS Series

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

DOWNLOAD NOW

830,726 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp FAS Series report.

See our list of best NAS vendors and best All-Flash Storage vendors.

We monitor all NAS 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.