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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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
1.0
Organizations reduced costs and improved performance with Pure FlashArray X NVMe, achieving quick ROI and efficient resource management.
Sentiment score
9.3
Dell SC Series offers cost-effective virtualization, ease of management, and significant savings through flash disks, boosting ROI and user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.7
NetApp AFF enhances performance and storage efficiency with cost savings, better response times, and reduced downtime, proving ROI.
By opting for the gold subscription every three years, you get a free upgrade to the latest controller release.
If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.
Users were very happy when I bought it, as it significantly lowered disk response times.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe's technical support is praised for responsiveness, despite occasional follow-up issues, earning high customer satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dell SC Series support is highly rated for its responsiveness, knowledgeable staff, and effective issue resolution globally.
Sentiment score
8.2
NetApp AFF's customer service is praised for responsiveness and resolution speed, though response times and consistency can vary.
With Pure FlashArray X NVMe, we need to escalate the issue and get an account manager for its resolution.
We also had one outage where a controller of one of the products had failed and had to be replaced on-site.
Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.
Advanced support offers instant replacement without delays.
Compared to other companies, Dell SC Series offers one of the best support experiences in my career.
The support for NetApp AFF is comprehensive—not just the documentation for self-guided reading, but for simple questions, spare parts, or urgent needs, you can have a contract that enables delivery the next business day or within four hours, depending on your process requirements.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers scalable storage with low latency, easy upgrades, though capacity customization and high costs are noted.
Sentiment score
6.1
Dell SC Series offers flexible, scalable storage for businesses of all sizes, though some note cost and controller limitations.
Sentiment score
7.8
NetApp AFF offers scalable, adaptable storage solutions, easily expanding without disruption, though cost and physical limits present challenges.
You cannot increase capacity if latency is present.
It is highly scalable.
It is suitable for both medium-sized and enterprise businesses.
You can add more disks, more disk shelves, or migrate the data seamlessly.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Pure Storage offers exceptional stability and reliability with outstanding support, consistently achieving high user ratings for performance and service.
Sentiment score
8.9
Dell SC Series is stable, cost-effective, with minimal downtime and maintenance, praised for replication and reliable performance despite setup complexities.
Sentiment score
8.4
NetApp AFF is highly stable, reliable, and handles tasks without disruption, with minor bugs resolved quickly.
During the eight years, there have been no problems such as hardware failure or stopping.
I would rate the stability of the solution as a ten out of ten.
I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.
In storages, stability is the most important aspect, even before performance.
They have always been upgrading very fast and implementing patches to resolve these issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Pure FlashArray X requires cost-effective improvements in UI, integration, cloud features, multitenancy, analytics, backup, AI, and scalability.
Dell SC Series needs improved user-friendliness, technical support, integration, scalability, and features like compression, automation, and cloud compatibility.
NetApp AFF users seek easier setup, enhanced management, lower latency, better support, improved documentation, and cost-effective, scalable solutions.
Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe.
We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.
I'm eagerly anticipating the roadmap's promise of introducing multiple controllers, which could significantly boost scalability and resilience.
Dell PowerStore, which supports NVMe over TCP, is different and not very affordable.
In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage.
The GUI of ONTAP Command Manager could be better, but the CLI is perfect.
Our backup system, Commvault, has an amazing capacity to do compression and deduplication better than NetApp AFF by itself.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers see Pure FlashArray X NVMe as a justified premium investment due to performance and comprehensive licensing.
Dell SC Series offers competitive and scalable enterprise storage, with varied pricing and discounts for partnering users.
NetApp AFF pricing varies widely, viewed as expensive yet cost-effective, with negotiation impacting affordability and overall value justifying costs.
While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.
The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.
Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products.
Sometimes Dell offers better performance for less money.
NetApp support is cheaper than Dell support.
While it is not cheap, they have introduced a new series of AFF that are more affordable.
 

Valuable Features

Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers exceptional performance, reliability, scalability, and seamless VMware integration, enhancing workload efficiency and user experience.
Dell SC Series provides performance, auto-tiering, and replication with ease of management, scalability, high availability, and strong support.
NetApp AFF excels with efficiency, seamless ONTAP integration, ease of use, high availability, low latency, and real-time replication.
Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator.
The platform's robust features include excellent sustainability tracking, and a comprehensive dashboard offering insights into IOPS, bandwidth, performance, and virtual activities.
Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.
The storage also lowered the response time of disks across the entire farm, making it a great product for operational efficiency.
I can mix and match the drives, using older mechanical devices and the latest SFP drives in a single solution with different enclosures.
You can even download the ONTAP simulator and deploy it on your virtualization platform and test almost all features.
Two important features that NetApp AFF has are the performance and the capacity to save data against attacks in general or hardware failure.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell SC Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
17th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays (2nd)
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
312
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 0.8%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 9.4%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades
I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.
RafaelGamaluis - PeerSpot reviewer
User interface offers clarity and detailed information while technical support consistently delivers
The best features of Dell SC Series are stability and replication. The replication solution is excellent, and they have a solution named Live Migration. It is a robust platform. The interface and the GUI (graphical user interface) for administrating the Compellent are exceptional, with abundant information that is very clear. The management capabilities are excellent, and the stability of our storage hardware is remarkable.
Ian Rousom - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible with great support and high-speed multi-protocol storage
Keystone offers flexible consumption models that go beyond just how much capacity at such and such a speed, et cetera. We don't always know what the profile of that data will be. However, if we can quickly agree on terms that meet our needs and make NetApp still reasonably profitable, we can confidently deploy, see how things go and adjust. That kind of service delivery model, that customer service model has sped things up and made contract negotiations much easier. It frankly made the owners of the system more confident. We've experienced faster time to market. It's hard for us to find and retain infrastructure staff. We're in a business where the firm fixed price contract reigns supreme, and so we can't always just offer someone more money. However, if they can dedicate their time to learning one company's portfolio and learning it really well, but be useful in a bunch of different places, they will do well. We've seen that in a lot of different places. We've been able to hire younger people and retain them, moving them from program to program based on their understanding of the solution its skill set, and its portability. It's been useful for high-speed multi-protocol storage in places with ever-increasing density. We have limits on how much power and cooling and rack space we have, and yet they've delivered every time. We needed a storage company that had mastery of multi-protocol, and this solution stands out. They especially stand out as a secure provider. We require solutions that we can run ourselves, that we can air gap since so much of what we do is either classified or very sensitive or cannot live in a public ecosystem. For us, the issue consuming AI has been the trust of the models given to us by third parties. We can't necessarily trust their provenance, what fed them, what originally trained them, or what gave them their worldview, for lack of a better term. We can't simply just trust that at face value since we know nothing about where it came from or what inferences it might make. We must assume that some AI inferences were made deliberately to damage or hurt national security systems. So the models that we start with tend to be very, very primitive, crude, and not well trained, so we have to train them much longer and not always with the availability of cloud that has inexhaustible capacity. A partner who understands this and provides consistency at all scales is very important.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
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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
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

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?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
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?
In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage. If I want...
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: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.