Dell VPLEX vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

The compared Dell Technologies and NetApp solutions aren't in the same category. Dell Technologies is ranked #4 in SM , with an average rating of 7.0, and holds a 6.8% mindshare in the category. NetApp is ranked #2 in CSDS , with an average rating of 9.5, and holds a 23.1% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Dell VPLEX

Read 19 Dell VPLEX reviews

1,929 Views
1,640 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Read 64 NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP reviews

9,473 Views
474 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Dell VPLEX

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell VPLEX and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp, Dell Technologies, SolarWinds and others in Storage Management.

To learn more, read our detailed Storage Management Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Storage Management

August 2026

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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

Ranking in other categories

Storage Management (4th)

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (3rd), Cloud Storage (9th), Cloud Backup (27th), 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 6.8%, up 6.7% compared to last year.
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Software Defined Storage, holds 23.1% mindshare, down 29.4% since last year.

Storage Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dell VPLEX	6.8%
NetApp OnCommand Insight	8.4%
SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor	7.2%
Other	77.6%

Storage Management

Cloud Software Defined Storage Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP	23.1%
IBM Spectrum Scale	25.9%
Portworx Enterprise	16.6%
Other	34.400000000000006%

Cloud Software Defined Storage

Featured Reviews

Shailendra Choudhary

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Has supported enterprise projects consistently but pricing remains a challenge for broader adoption

We are system integrators and resell the HCI solution. We have worked with Dell VPLEX for approximately two to three years. We have been in several RFCs, and Dell VPLEX is implemented in the enterprise segment only. The solution is expensive and requires more budget, so people in the SMB segment do not prefer it. We typically recommend Dell VPLEX for customers who already work with other Dell products.

Read full review

reviewer5948293

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.

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

"With the help of EMC VPLEX we simplified the architecture and improved the response time."

"We have see performance improvement in our databases."

"Mobility enables us to carry out an internal migration of data."

"The capacity to migrate machines onto VPLEX is great — it's very clean. We can migrate machines and add arrays easily."

"Due to the large number of models and different brands it is a very good solution to virtualize volumes."

"It’s a great product; very reliable."

"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."

More Dell VPLEX pros

"Replication to the cloud is the most valuable feature. Deduplication and compression are also very important to us. We are in the process of adopting to the cloud. We are going to AWS and we are trying to do a safety technician call out with integration to the cloud. NetApp allows us to move some of the volume to the cloud, at the same time that we continue providing the cloud services that we have on premises."

"For the price, the quality of the hardware, the quality of the support, the features it offers, I'm thrilled with NetApp."

"It is much easier to control data since we can run queries across all our platforms with just one solution. Not only that, we can also monitor all the platforms with Active IQ, where we can see all the alerts, messages, and space consumption through a single application. This is regardless if the data is on-prem or AWS. It is much more efficient."

"I would recommend NetApp any day, at any time, because there's so much hard work in it."

"First and foremost, test the use cases where you need availability and performance as the key drivers for a solution; in those scenarios, NetApp is way ahead compared to what the competitors offer."

"We are definitely in the process of reducing our footprint on our secondary data center and all those snapshots technically reduce tape backup. That's from the protection perspective, but as far as files, it's much easier to use and manage and it's faster, too."

"I highly recommend that customers using native cloud storage from hyperscalers transition to NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP as it offers numerous features and functionalities such as inline deduplication, compression, compaction, autonomous ransomware protection, snapshot technology, and flex cache that are unavailable with other hyperscalers."

"The good thing about NetApp is the features that are available on the cloud are also available on-premises."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"Due to the bug with Broadcom, we have had a massive crisis on VPLEX. This little bug has caused roughly one thousand machines to go down."

"Initial setup was a little bit complex when connecting to VMAX."

"VPLEX hardware migration to spare equipment in case of major disruption needs a huge effort that is not acceptable during disaster recovery."

"The solution is expensive and requires more budget, so people in the SMB segment do not prefer it."

"Much room for improvement exists."

"These are all pretty trivial for larger customers but VNXe as a main production storage array running a workload important enough to give it a multi-site stretched vSphere cluster is something I think is unlikely to be present in those customers."

"We experienced increases in latency in accesses to disks and some bugs on engines."

"The price is a problem with EMC due to the fact that it's more expensive than the other vendors."

More Dell VPLEX cons

"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP should improve its support."

"It's limited. We're trying to figure out better methods as we need to scale out more."

"The cost needs improvement."

"It definitely needs improvement with respect to clustering and with respect to more collaborative integrations with Azure. Right now, we have very limited functionalities with Azure, except for storage. If CVO could be integrated with Azure that would help. When there is any sort of maintenance happening in the cloud, it disrupts the service in Cloud Volumes ONTAP."

"There is room for improvement in tier one support, especially with potential language barriers and communication challenges."

"Some of the licensing is a little kludgy. We just created an HA environment in Azure and their licensing for SVMs per node is a little kludgy. They're working on it right now."

"The product is more restricted with underlying cloud."

"It needs better reporting. Right now, we had to put everything one to the other just to figure out what could be the issue."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

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 AWS consumer-based pricing model makes it easy for developers to use their credit cards to spin up virtual servers immediately."

"It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees."

"We find the pricing to be favorable due to the educational sector we belong to."

"I know the licensing is a bit on the high-end. That's when we had to downsize our MetroCluster disks and just migrate to disks that were half used. We migrated into those just to reduce maintenance costs."

"Our licensing costs are folded into the hardware purchases and I have never differentiated between the two."

"If we wanted to use the AWS solution, we would have to manage two or three different platforms and pay more money than what we should have to pay, as some of the features don't even exist. If we wanted to, we could use AWS cloning, but it is useless because it uses more space, is more expensive, and takes more time."

"Make sure you investigate what your requirements are going to cost you using the native cloud solutions versus what NetApp is going to cost you, to make sure you have a business case to go with NetApp."

"Our licensing is based on a yearly subscription. That is an additional cost, but because of the storage efficiencies that the NetApp gives, even with the additional cost of the NetApp license, you still end up saving money versus straight Azure native for storage. It's definitely worth it."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

13%

Outsourcing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Healthcare Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Construction Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	53

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...

See all answers

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, ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

I use NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP mostly in customer companies.

See all answers

Comparisons

SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor vs Dell VPLEX

Compared 13% of the time

IBM SAN Volume Control vs Dell VPLEX

Compared 12% of the time

Huawei OceanStor DJ vs Dell VPLEX

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp OnCommand Insight vs Dell VPLEX

Compared 9% of the time

Huawei Data Management Engine (DME) vs Dell VPLEX

Compared 9% of the time

More Dell VPLEX Competitors

Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 7% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 5% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon FSx vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 4% of the time

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 3% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell VPLEX

August 2026

Download Dell VPLEX product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

July 2026

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

No data available

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

Overview

Dell VPLEX enhances storage management by offering virtualization, seamless data migration, and data center mirroring, making it ideal for enterprise applications needing high availability and data security.

Dell VPLEX stands out with its ability to integrate with multiple storage back-end systems, providing transparent data movement and deduplication. Its metro and geo-clustering capabilities ensure high availability, making it suitable for enterprise applications requiring maximum uptime. Supporting online migrations without disruptions, it offers high RPO and RTO for replication. However, it faces challenges in storage tiering, administration ease, and reducing costs, with users seeking better replication capabilities, cloud integration, and a web-based interface. Its licensing model and hardware dependencies can raise expenses, and configurations may be complex due to outdated technologies.

What are Dell VPLEX's Key Features?

Storage Virtualization: Abstracts physical storage into virtual resources.
Seamless Data Migration: Supports online migrations without disruptions.
Mirroring: Offers data mirroring across multiple data centers.
High Availability: Features metro and geo-clustering capabilities.
Integration: Works with diverse storage back-end systems.

What Benefits and ROI Can Users Expect?

Enhanced Data Security: Provides high RPO and RTO for replication.
Operational Efficiency: Reduces downtime with transparent data movement.
Geographical Resilience: Supports multi-data center redundancy management.
Cost Management: Potential for reduced costs with efficient data management.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Dell VPLEX is crucial for centralized storage in VMware environments and databases, helping manage redundancy and virtualization. They implement it as a front-end appliance, enabling connectivity between servers and storage appliances, facilitating seamless multi-vendor environment operations.

Dell Technologies

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is an efficient storage management solution for managing and storing data in the cloud. It offers seamless integration with cloud providers, advanced data replication capabilities, and high data protection. With reliable performance, it is ideal for industries like healthcare and finance.

NetApp

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: August 2026.

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