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Dell VPLEX vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

 

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 (3rd), Cloud Backup (29th), Public Cloud Storage Services (13th), 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 4.7%, down 8.2% compared to last year.
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Software Defined Storage, holds 26.3% mindshare, down 28.7% since last year.
Storage Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dell VPLEX4.7%
NetApp OnCommand Insight6.5%
Dell Storage Resource Manager (SRM)5.8%
Other83.0%
Storage Management
Cloud Software Defined Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP26.3%
Portworx Enterprise27.0%
IBM Spectrum Scale26.8%
Other19.900000000000006%
Cloud Software Defined Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sayed Zuber - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Storage And Backup Engineer at OMNIdata Trading, Lda.
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.
Punit Waghela - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist at Softcell Technologies Limited
Offers advanced features with notable emphasis on innovation
The best features of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP include deduplication, compaction, and autonomous ransomware technology that native cloud storage solutions in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud do not support. Moreover, NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP allows the use of multiple protocols including NFS, CIFS, and iSCSI, whereas native options may only support NFS and iSCSI. Customers already using on-premises NetApp storage such as FAS, AFF, or ASA can experience the same functionality on the cloud with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, which adds significant value. For data protection, customers can take advantage of the Snapshot technology available with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP. This technology facilitates data recovery by allowing snapshots to be stored either on the same storage or on a disaster recovery (DR) storage. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP helps us to take snapshots and store them on the same storage, with options for migration or replication of those snapshots to different storage, including on-premises DR storage or other cloud storage, providing excellent disaster recovery capabilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Mobility enables us to carry out an internal migration of data."
"The most valuable feature is deduplication, as we have no duplication in the snapshots."
"The solution works well. It's 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."
"The capacity to migrate machines onto VPLEX is great — it's very clean. We can migrate machines and add arrays easily."
"The best feature of VPLEX storage is its ability to consolidate storage. It also provides the highest RPO and RTOs for replication technology. VPLEX enables application mobility."
"Dell's technical support is awesome. We received instant support from EMC as long as we had an active contract."
"Storage virtualization and geographic resilience for Metro Sans, plus a great performance improvement."
"NetApp's Integration with AWS has helped us because we had a tough time transferring data when we used an ONTAP competitor as our storage partner. They don't have integration with AWS tools, so we had to figure it out on our own. ONTAP has built-in integration and allows us to replicate a copy to our second data center."
"The ability for our users to restore data from the Snapshots is very valuable."
"This solution has made everything easier to do."
"ONTAP's snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are pretty useful in recovering your data from a time in a snapshot. That's pretty useful for when you have an event where a disaster struck and then you need to recover all your data. It's pretty helpful and pretty fast in those terms."
"ONTAP is great for helping you migrate on-premise workflows to cloud environments."
"The solution’s unified file and block-storage access across our infrastructure is invaluable. Without it, we can't do what we do."
"The good thing about NetApp is the features that are available on the cloud are also available on-premises."
"If you have a larger amount of data than normal in cloud, it is easy to provision and maintain. Waiting for the delivery of the controller, the configuration of enclosures, etc., all this stuff is eliminated compared to using on-premise."
 

Cons

"With Dell VPLEX, there are some bugs with Broadcom."
"Dell VPLEX should improve its integration and user interface and be easier to configure."
"I would like to have site-to-site replication capability for applications."
"There can be delays in getting performance reports."
"Today, it needs a huge effort that is not acceptable during disaster recovery."
"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 initial setup is complex."
"The price is a problem with EMC due to the fact that it's more expensive than the other vendors."
"Only AWS and Azure public clouds are currently available from China, and I would like to see support for Aliyun (Alibaba Cloud)."
"The key feature, that we'd like to see in that is the ability to sync between regions within the AWS and Azure regions. We could use the cloud sync service, but we'd really like that native functionality within the cloud volume service."
"We want to be able to add more than six disks in aggregate, but there is a limit of the number of disks in aggregate. In GCP, they provide less by limiting the sixth disk in aggregate. In Azure, the same solution provides 12 disks in an aggregate versus GCP where it is just half that amount. They should bump up the disk in aggregate requirement so we don't have to migrate the aggregate from one to another when the capacities are full."
"One difficulty is that it has no SAP HANA certification. The asset performance restrictions create challenges with the infrastructure underneath: The disks and stuff like that often have lower latencies than SAP HANA itself has to have."
"I would like to see better integration with Active IQ."
"It would be fantastic if NetApp could offer a solution that's as user-friendly as Google Drive for seamless cloud storage integration."
"The support is good in general but the initial, front-line support could be improved. Because I have already been using the product for so long, when I call support I would rather talk to somebody who is a little bit more advanced or senior, rather than talking to the first-level support. Usually, it takes some time to reach out to their senior support."
"I would like to see something from NetApp about backups. I know that NetApp offers some backup for Office 365, but I would like to see something from NetApp for more backup solutions."
 

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 give us a good price for CVO licenses. It is one of the reasons that we went with the product."
"We purchased the product directly from NetApp."
"The cost is quite high."
"In addition to the standard licensing fees, there are fees for Azure, the VMs themselves and for data transfer."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good, but it was a test system, not a real purchase."
"Cloud is cloud. It's still expensive. Any good solution comes with a price tag. That's where we are looking to see how well we can manage our data in the cloud by trying to optimize the costs."
"The pricing of this solution is definitely higher than what the typical Azure Files and AWS solutions charge, but given the features and the stability NetApp has provided, we are okay with it. We are not complaining about the pricing."
"The AWS consumer-based pricing model makes it easy for developers to use their credit cards to spin up virtual servers immediately."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Healthcare Company
10%
Insurance Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
 

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 do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.
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.
 

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 Dell Technologies, NetApp, Broadcom and others in Storage Management. Updated: February 2026.
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