Dell VPLEX vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

Why PeerSpot?

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 6.6% mindshare in the category. NetApp is ranked #2 in CSDS , with an average rating of 9.5, and holds a 22.8% 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

2,149 Views
1,827 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Read 64 NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP reviews

10,457 Views
418 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, IBM and others in Storage Management.

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

Buyer's Guide

Storage Management

September 2026

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Helped 914,262 peers since 2012

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 (8th), Cloud Backup (28th), 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 6.6%, up 5.1% compared to last year.
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Software Defined Storage, holds 22.8% mindshare, down 28.4% since last year.

Storage Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dell VPLEX	6.6%
NetApp OnCommand Insight	8.0%
SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor	6.9%
Other	78.5%

Storage Management

Cloud Software Defined Storage Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP	22.8%
IBM Spectrum Scale	25.5%
Portworx Enterprise	15.9%
Other	35.8%

Cloud Software Defined Storage

Featured Reviews

Sayed Zuber

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.

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

"Technical support from Dell is quite good."

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

"We have see performance improvement in our databases."

"VPLEX offers a large compatibility matrix and valuable features."

"Dell's technical support is awesome. We received instant support from EMC as long as we had an active contract."

"VPLEX/VE is an amazing feat of engineering."

"The most valuable feature is deduplication, as we have no duplication in the snapshots."

"The support is good, and you don't have to wait long before things get done."

More Dell VPLEX pros

"The inline encryption using SnapMirror has helped us to address concerns over data security in the cloud."

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

"It is a good system; it is very stable as far as what I've been using with it, and I find that support from it is really good as well."

"Even compared to just standard Azure or other solutions available, this solution has allowed for probably 50 percent, or in some cases, higher storage savings."

"One of the most valuable features is its similarity to the physical app, which makes it familiar. It's almost identical to a real NetApp, which means you can run all of the associated NetApp processes and services with it. Otherwise, we would definitely have to deploy some hardware on a site somewhere, which could be a challenge in terms of CapEx."

"The ability for our users to restore data from the Snapshots is very valuable."

"One of the features our customers like is that it can be used from one cloud provider to another. They can use it from Azure to AWS or vice versa. That way, they don't need to use the same provider for backups. If something goes wrong on the primary site, having the same data in another cloud service provider is important."

"It functions and I think in the future it will be a reasonable method of getting NFS in the cloud."

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."

"Cost. This is really expensive."

"The initial setup is complex."

"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."

"VPLEX's engine-based architecture is complex, so the implementation is challenging and takes more time. It's also difficult to fix hardware issues. When an appliance fails, it takes Dell EMC a long time to fix it because spare parts are in short supply."

"The administration is difficult, so we want to add hyper-converged infrastructure."

"Today, it needs a huge effort that is not acceptable during disaster recovery."

More Dell VPLEX cons

"The product is more restricted with underlying cloud."

"We've just been dealing with general pre-requisite infrastructure configuration challenges. Once those are out of the way, it is easy."

"I would like to see them improve the perspective of start and search in the panels. This would allow for better visualization of the contents that are captured in the tool."

"I would like this solution to be brought to all the three major players. Right now it's supported only on AWS and Azure. They should bring it to Google as well, because we would like to have flexibility in choosing the underlying cloud storage provider."

"The only area for improvement would be some guidance in terms of the future products that NetApp is planning on releasing."

"If they could include clustering together multiple physical Cloud Volumes ONTAP devices as an option, that could be helpful."

"I'm very happy with the solution, the only thing that needs improvement is the web services API. It could be a little bit more straightforward. That's my only issue with it. It can get pretty complex."

"Multipathing for iSCSI LUNs is difficult to deal with from the client-side and I'd love to see a single entry point that can be moved around within the cluster to simplify the client configuration."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We struck a great deal with Dell EMC, so for us, VPLEX was not very expensive."

"VPLEX is a little bit expensive in my personal opinion."

"They have a very good price which keeps our customers happy."

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

"If a customer is only using, say, less than 10 terabytes, I don't think CVO would be a good option. A customer using at least 100 or 200 terabytes should get a reasonable price from NetApp."

"Some flexibility around the licensing model would help. The product is licensed based on capacity. Basically, the largest capacity license that you can buy is 368 terabytes. At this point, NetApp is addressing some people's concerns around this."

"The solution's pricing is reasonable."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

14%

Construction Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Healthcare Company

10%

Construction Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

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 14% of the time

IBM SAN Volume Control vs Dell VPLEX

Compared 11% of the time

Huawei OceanStor DJ vs Dell VPLEX

Compared 9% of the time

NetApp OnCommand Insight vs Dell VPLEX

Compared 9% of the time

More Dell VPLEX Competitors

Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 6% 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 3% of the time

CTERA Intelligent Data Platform vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 3% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell VPLEX

September 2026

Download Dell VPLEX product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

September 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, IBM and others in Storage Management. Updated: September 2026.

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