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Dell SC Series vs NetApp AFF comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (7th)
Dell SC Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
27th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays (3rd)
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
310
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 0.9%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 10.7%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

SajithEruvangai - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Steven McClendon - PeerSpot reviewer
Superior platform with excellent snapshots and cost-saving auto-tiering
I'm a big fan of the SC Series platform. Its feature set is superior to some of the other platforms. The snapshots on SC are excellent, allowing for multiple snapshot schedules for any one system. The auto-tiering functionality intelligently moves new data to the highest performance tier and then progresses it down to less expensive tiers over time, providing cost savings for customers.
Anna Sofo - PeerSpot reviewer
Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency
I like NetApp AFF's deduplication. The solution's AutoSupport feature is efficient and effective because customers are notified of potential issues before they experience problems with NetApp. The support is sold based on metro clusters, so they guarantee the client's business continuity. NetApp has an Active IQ app that allows you to get information on your smartphone.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."
"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."
"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"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."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"The flexibility of this solution has been valuable for our business."
"It was very easy to install, maintain, and provides excellent manageability."
"The most valuable features are the with back-end dedupe, and the thin nodes. For a 20TB or 60TB, we're using almost a one-to-two ratio."
"The interface is easy to use which makes the product user-friendly."
"One time, we had a drive fail and we were notified before we even saw it on the device."
"It is just as stable as any other high-end solution."
"Customers are most impressed with SC's provisioning because you don't need to buy a large amount of storage upfront. It's pay-as-you-grow. It also has solid compression and duplication features."
"We see very low latency with very high IOPS for mixed workloads."
"The tool has lowered latency."
"​It supports our virtualization, our VMware environment."
"NetApp is like a one-point central management. For example, one can put everything on the right version and control the whole environment from one software solution."
"Organizations can reduce data storage footprint and lower power and cooling costs, helping to adopt "Green IT.""
"The Active IQ feature is a productive mechanism that automatically collects reports and users' statuses."
"The most valuable feature is the support. If we have any issues, we can call into NetApp and their support is really good."
"It's very stable. It's always there when we need it. With the Dual Controller, if one drops out, the other one comes right online. We don't use any iSCSI so there is a little bit of a latency break but, over the NFS, we don't notice that switch-on. We can do maintenance in the middle of the day, literally rip a whole controller out of the chassis, and do what we need to do with it."
"High availability"
 

Cons

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"Snapshots in VMware. You can’t do snapshots since the storage itself does that. Therefore, some apps (Veeam, for example) don’t work well with this kind of tiering storage."
"The SC Series doesn't support NVMe storage."
"This product should be a lot more user-friendly."
"If Dell SC Series wasn't being phased out, adding an NVMe tier and secure snapshots like those on the PowerStore platform would be beneficial."
"The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series."
"The cost of the solution could be better."
"I would like to see higher compression, dedupe, faster I/O, and bigger drives."
"One option I would like to see is, when you're up on the view-screen, to be able to incorporate getting to what HPE call the iLO, the Integrated Lights-Out. To be able to get that instead of having to go back and trying to find IP addresses and re-institute those would be good. It would be good to be able to that put on the initial splash screen."
"We have had customers asking about S3 support for a while now. I heard that is coming in one of the next versions. So, I would like to see S3 targeted support on the FAS system."
"Their customer support can be better. When we have an outage, we need to wait until it is escalated to L3 which takes a lot of time."
"In future releases, I would like to see the ability to automatically mount SMB shares and file systems."
"I would like to see the ability to include more applications from applications to managed storage. If we can have more applications or more interface in more applications, that would be great."
"I think adding more features to make it more cloud enabled will help us with cloud tiering and simplify the whole cloud operations when it's integrating with our on-prem AFF products. That is one area where we would like to see more improvements from NetApp."
"NetApp AFF is a highly expensive solution, and its pricing should be reduced."
"We'd like to see data move faster."
"It would be great if they had a single pane of glass or a single dashboard where all the NetApp ecosystem storages could be viewed and monitored simply. That would help my Operations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"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."
"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"It is one of the most cost effective systems for us. We have been able to run it longer than most, getting the most benefit and money out of it."
"The SC Series was priced fairly. I wouldn't call it either expensive or cheap because we had a very tight budget, so if they were able to fit in that type of budget, they met our expectations."
"We have the basic license for the use of this solution and it is a permanent license. The overall cost could be less, it is expensive."
"We have reviewed many platforms over the years. It is probably the best solution for its value."
"There are costs involving the solution, vendor fees and product safety which are additional."
"The scalability seems a bit more expensive than even buying a brand new one so far. That has been kind of a drawback."
"It's absolutely affordable. Again, not having to do a forklift upgrade like some of the others have had to do in the past, it's very affordable for our customers and they continue to buy."
"We have found it to be affordable. Comparing the cost with other hardware, it seems to be right in line with the compute and the storage that we get with it."
"We would like it to be free."
"The price of NetApp is very expensive, but we don't know how much Pure is, so we can't compare."
"NetApp AFF is somewhat pricey. If they weren't as pricey, that would be a big deal for us."
"Our TCO has increased by 15 to 18 percent."
"All features are included in the license, whereas with an EMC solution, you have to pay separately for extra terabytes."
"Our total cost of ownership (TCO) has decreased by 40 percent."
"We benefited from implementing all-flash by reducing our data center footprint. We took it from 30 racks to just over five. This is one of the biggest savings for us."
"We have used the solution’s thin provisioning to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. We use thin provisioning on all of our flash arrays at this point. It gives us the choice to be able to overprovision and take advantage of compression, compaction, and thin provisioning all at the same time. We can get more out of the purchases that we make."
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Comparison Review

it_user186357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 28, 2015
NetApp vs. XtremIO
Is there another storage platform as feature rich as NetApp FAS? I think it is fair to say that NetApp FAS running Clustered Data ONTAP is a very feature rich platform – the move to the clustered version of ONTAP has brought many next-generation features including Scale-out and Non-disruptive…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
64%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

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.
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive.
What do you like most about Dell SC Series?
I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell SC Series?
Cost considerations are crucial when choosing between solutions like Dell and NetApp. Sometimes Dell offers better pe...
What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?
If Dell SC Series could have supported the protocol NVMe over TCP, that would have been great. It does not. Additiona...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
Well, Is one thing NetApp Storage has vs other brand is the mix of protocol CIFS with NFS booth working together in t...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended c...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matt...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
SC Series Storage, Compellent
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
830,633 professionals have used our research since 2012.