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Dell VPLEX vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Dell VPLEX
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Storage Management (4th)
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (2nd), Cloud Storage (7th), Cloud Backup (25th), Public Cloud Storage Services (11th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Management and Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Dell VPLEX is designed for Storage Management and holds a mindshare of 6.9%, up 5.1% compared to last year.
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Software Defined Storage, holds 22.9% mindshare, down 26.3% since last year.
Storage Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell VPLEX6.9%
NetApp OnCommand Insight8.6%
SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor7.6%
Other76.9%
Storage Management
Cloud Software Defined Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP22.9%
IBM Spectrum Scale25.4%
Portworx Enterprise15.8%
Other35.900000000000006%
Cloud Software Defined Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sayed Zuber - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Storage And Backup Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
It's an excellent solution for data mobility and disaster recovery, but the CLI can be difficult for beginners
Dell VPLEX currently requires Flash Player to access the GUI. It would be better to have a web-based HTML management interface. The encryption could also be improved. When the host writes data, it goes from VPLEX back to the physical storage. The physical storage device will do encryption or use an algorithm called Data Address Encryption. If there are vulnerabilities between the host and the storage device, you can lose your data. I suggest encrypting the data before it is sent from the host to the storage. I would also recommend using the NVM protocol in VPLEX. It still has Flash Player and a local SATA disk built into the Flash Player. You need to Flash the disk to SAS and then SATA. The NVM protocol is better.
SB
Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Offers performance control and cloud integration while supporting data management with granular flexibility
The scalability of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is interesting. We have thought about it, but we haven't used it. I think the scalability is something you scale up rather than respond to peak demand. It wouldn't help with outages either; the scaling is manual, and there are no processes we've used to automate that for unexpected scenarios. We like the scalability; it's enough for what we're planning to use, but we haven't used any advanced features. The standard platform is NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, which is their cloud service. In fact, that's probably the most experience I have with NetApp. I've experienced it on-premise, but kind of secondhand.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Due to the large number of models and different brands it is a very good solution to virtualize volumes."
"The solution works well. It's very reliable."
"VPLEX/VE is an amazing feat of engineering."
"With the help of EMC VPLEX we simplified the architecture and improved the response time."
"Its mirroring capabilities allow for data to be mirrored across two different data centers, so if one center were to crash or fail, the other center could take over and keep everything running smoothly."
"Storage virtualization and geographic resilience for Metro Sans, plus a great performance improvement."
"With VPLEX, we are able to automate this process where failovers between sites now occur automatically."
"For a new application setup, it worked like a charm."
"In terms of administration, the portal which provides the dashboard view is an excellent tool for operations. It gives you volume divisions, usage rates, which division is using how much data, and more. The operations portal is fantastic for the support team."
"The most valuable features are that it's reliable, simple, and performs well."
"CVO gives us the ability to access data as quickly as possible, which is critical because of the mission set we handle. Some things cannot wait. For example, we tried having the data in the cloud itself, but it took too long for us to retrieve it from cold or deep storage. If we have it ONTAP or on-prem, it's so much easier to pull it within minutes."
"Its scalability is very good."
"One of the features of this tool is the ease of use, in addition to the control access and the dynamics with which it is structured."
"The solution's high-availability features are cost-effective for us because we are able to use the cloud benefits to reduce the cost of DR."
"This solution has made everything easier to do."
"The solution provides us unified storage, no matter what kind of data we have."
 

Cons

"The licensing model for enterprise storage (EMC VMAX) and integrating the solution into the actual storage frames instead of a separate product."
"Maybe setup a one-to-many cluster, instead of just a 1-to-1."
"The solution is expensive and requires more budget, so people in the SMB segment do not prefer it."
"Cost. This is really expensive."
"It needs to improve the thin reclaim on certain arrays."
"Dell VPLEX should improve its integration and user interface and be easier to configure."
"There can be delays in getting performance reports."
"We experienced increases in latency in accesses to disks and some bugs on engines."
"The dashboard is a little bit clunky. I like to see it a little bit more on the simplistic side. I would like to be able to create my own widgets and customize what I want to see a little bit more versus what is currently there. That would be helpful so that when I log in, I go straight to my widget or my board without going to multiple places to get to what I need to find or build."
"The DR has room for improvement. For example, we now have NetApp in Western Europe and we would like to back up the information to another region. It's impossible. We need to bring up an additional NetApp in that other region and create a Cloud Manager automation to copy the data... I would prefer it to be a more integrated solution like it was in the NetApp solution about a year ago. I would like to see something like AltaVault but in the cloud."
"I would like NetApp to come up with an easier setup for the solution."
"I would want more visibility and data analytics where we can see anomalies within the shares within the GUI."
"The encryption and deduplication features still have a lot of room for improvement."
"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP does have a bit of initial complexity for users who are new to the system."
"It's limited. We're trying to figure out better methods as we need to scale out more."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see the Azure NetApp Files have the capability of doing SnapMirrors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"VPLEX is a little bit expensive in my personal opinion."
"We struck a great deal with Dell EMC, so for us, VPLEX was not very expensive."
"The standard pricing is online. Pricing depends. If you're using the PayGo model, then it's just the normal costs on the Microsoft page. If you're using Bring Your Own License, which is what we're doing, then you get with your sales contact at NetApp and start figuring out what price is the best, in the end, for your company."
"The AWS consumer-based pricing model makes it easy for developers to use their credit cards to spin up virtual servers immediately."
"It is not a cheap solution because we need to pay for the license and pay for Azure resources as well."
"The pricing could be improved. It is a good product, but it is very expensive for me."
"For enterprise customers, it's a very cost effective. But in the SMB segment, yeah, pricing is a little bit challenge for your time."
"Once we deploy the pay as you go model, we cannot convert this product as a BYOL model. This is a concern that we have."
"We find the pricing to be favorable due to the educational sector we belong to."
"Our licensing costs are folded into the hardware purchases and I have never differentiated between the two."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
10%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise53
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Dell VPLEX?
Some of the products are very easy to implement, while others are more difficult, and our team seeks support help when required. Regarding the integration part, the delivery team handles all integr...
What is your primary use case for Dell VPLEX?
We are implementing Cohesity, Hitachi, Dell, and Nutanix, VMware, vSAN; multiple products. We have recently started working with Cohesity because there was not much presence in India for Cohesity, ...
What advice do you have for others considering Dell VPLEX?
Hitachi Systems Microclinic has been renamed to Hitachi Systems India Private Limited. The email address has been changed to shailendra.chaudhry.hd at hitachi-systems.com from shailendra_singh.chau...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is actually quite reasonable in price compared to other native cloud storage options. For example, a customer using 100 TB of AWS storage would not benefit from deduplica...
What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
It would be nice to see technology supporting the Elastic Fabric Adapter on Amazon AWS, therefore getting RDMA technology for more low-latency connections.
What is your primary use case for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
I use NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP mostly in customer companies.
 

Also Known As

No data available
ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Kindred Healthcare, Regis Aged Care, WeBank SpA, Panduit, Munson Healthcare
1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp, Dell Technologies, SolarWinds and others in Storage Management. Updated: September 2026.
915,383 professionals have used our research since 2012.