We performed a comparison between Dell SC Series and NetApp AFF 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."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."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"The latency is good."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The setup and installation is much simpler now, because Dell has standardized the configure process."
"This solution is easy to use."
"It had many features, like a snapshot, replication, on-the-file RAID levels, mix-and-match files, those kinds of things."
"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."
"We see very low latency with very high IOPS for mixed workloads."
"One of the most valuable features is the capability to switch between all-flash to hybrid, which have have actually done for one of our arrays. We started with the hybrid, with the limited if I'm not mistaken, and then over a period of time, we swapped all the hybrids with the SSDs. This was one of the big features because it gave us the capability to not stick with just one kind of media. Secondly, since it has sorted clustering, we were able to bring in the newer boxes and have it all clustered together. These were the two main features that we really looked into, which benefited our use case from an expansion/growth perspective. Another valuable feature is the ease of management."
"Its leading feature is the price-performance ratio, which is very good."
"The interface is easy to use which makes the product user-friendly."
"Easier to manage with the clustered system and everything with the newest ONTAP 9."
"The biggest benefit of NetApp AFF is the performance."
"The most valuable features of the solution are speed, performance, and reliability."
"It simplifies data management for NAS environments with its ease of management, ease of share creation, and Active IQ feature. These features are good overall. It helps us manage data quickly and sufficiently. Also, compression features, like dedupe, give us a good ratio."
"The valuable features are the fabric pool. We are taking our cold data and pumping it straight into an estuary bucket. Also, efficiency. We're getting about two and a half times upwards of data efficiency through compaction, compression, deduplication, and it's size. When we refreshed from two or three racks of spinning discs down into 5U of rack space, it not only saved us a whole heap of costs in our data center environment but also it's nice to be green. The power savings alone equated to be about 50 tons of CO2 a year that we no longer emit. It's a big game changer."
"The benefits of being on AFF are the phenomenal speed at which we're able to ingest data and index it, and the IOPS."
"Storage is very reliable. You don't have to do much maintenance."
"The performance is the most valuable feature."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"It is on the expensive side."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"We had times that we needed a file service solution. We've used FluidFS, but it's a solution that is being transitioned out."
"It's not very efficient anymore. There are better products out there."
"In terms of additional features, I would like to see some kind of I/O meter, to indicate what we are using in terms of performance. I would like to see automation with that, where it would give me the trends. I want to know those things easily, to help me know where issues are going to occur."
"The lower model, the 3000, should have duplication. It doesn't right now. It's only from 5000 that this is offered, but it depends on the performance. It could be they don't offer it on lower models because the duplication is too much of a burden to the performance."
"We have seen some degraded throughput with mixed workloads. We have been working with Dell EMC to correct some of these latency issues."
"The lack of reporting would be the main issue."
"This solution could be improved if overall performance was improved and operated with a higher speed and supported a higher volume of RAM."
"The connection should be better integrated with the network to offer a better view of the system."
"On the roadmap, NetApp is improving the solution's storage efficiency, compression algorithms to achieve more space savings, and the management interfaces. We are looking forward to these feature additions in the next release."
"It's a little behind on security. It's starting to get into multi-factor authentication, they just started to introduce it but not for all products."
"Its integration could be improved."
"Tech support is a place where there is room to improve the product experience. The response time when they are busy is not very good."
"One of the areas that the product can improve is definitely in the user interface. We don't use it for SAN, but we've looked at using it for SAN and the SAN workflows are really problematic for my admins, and they just don't like doing SAN provisioning on that app. That really needs to change if we're going to adopt it and actually consider it to be a strong competitor versus some of the other options out there."
"The bad part about having scalability is the expense. It is currently extremely expensive, to be able to scale so fast on flash."
"The initial setup has a lot more steps in it than are probably necessary for a base deployment, unlike other vendors where it's more straightforward. It could be a little bit more streamlined."
"A graphical user interface displaying efficiency metrics, such as compression and deduplication rates, would be a great addition."
Dell SC Series is ranked 24th in All-Flash Storage with 49 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 281 reviews. Dell SC Series is rated 8.4, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell SC Series writes "Automated architecture that proactively optimizes your database ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". Dell SC Series is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Huawei OceanStor and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Pure Storage FlashArray and VMware vSAN. See our Dell SC Series vs. NetApp AFF report.
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