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Equalum vs NetApp Snapshot comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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

Equalum
Ranking in Data Replication
16th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (54th), Cloud Data Integration (27th)
NetApp Snapshot
Ranking in Data Replication
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Replication category, the mindshare of Equalum is 0.9%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Snapshot is 22.9%, down from 23.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Replication
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1525674 - PeerSpot reviewer
Frees staff to focus on data workflow and on what can be done with data, and away from the details of the technology
There are areas they can do better in, like most software companies that are still relatively young. They need to expand their capabilities in some of the targets, as well as source connectors, and native connectors for a number of large data sources and databases. That's a huge challenge for every company in this area, not just Equalum. If I had the wherewithal to create a tool that could allow for all that connectivity, it would be massive, out-of-the-box. There are all the updates every month. An open source changes constantly, so compatibility for these sources or targets is not easy. And a lot of targets are proprietary and they actually don't want you to connect with them in real time. They want to keep that connectivity for their own competitive tool. What happens is that a customer will say, "Okay, I've got Oracle, and I've got MariaDB, and I've got SQL Server over here, and I've got something else over there. And I want to aggregate that, and put it into Google Cloud Platform." Having connectors to all of those is extremely difficult, as is maintaining them. So there are major challenges to keeping connectivity to those data sources, especially at a CDC level, because you've got to maintain your connectors. And every change that's made with a new version that comes out means they've got to upgrade their version of the connector. It's a real challenge in the industry. But one good thing about Equalum is that they're up for the challenge. If there's a customer opportunity, they will develop and make sure that they update a connector to meet the needs of the customer. They'll also look at custom development of connectors, based on the customer opportunity. It's a work in progress. Everybody in the space is in the same boat. And it's not just ETL tools. It's everybody in the Big Data space. It's a challenge. The other area for improvement, for Equalum, is their documentation of the product. But that comes with being a certain size and having a marketing team of 30 or 40 people and growing as an organization. They're getting there and I believe they know what the deficiencies are. Maintaining and driving a channel business, like Equalum is doing, is really quite a different business model than the direct-sales model. It requires a tremendous amount of documentation, marketing information, and educational information. It's not easy.
AjayKumar13 - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently complete large database snapshots quickly for reliable backup
The most valuable feature of NetApp Snapshot ( /products/netapp-snapshot-reviews ) is its ability to complete a sixty-terabyte database snapshot in less than three minutes. This efficiency means we do not have to manage tape backups, which are time-consuming, and it uses less storage as snapshots are compressed. NetApp Snapshot is also easy to restore or copy to another location for disaster recovery. Overall, it has helped us meet our service level agreements due to its performance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"All our architectural use cases are on a single platform, not multiple platforms. You don't have to dump into different modules because it is the same module everywhere."
"It's got it all, from end-to-end. It's the glue. There are a lot of other products out there, good products, but there's always a little bit of something missing from the other products. Equalum did its research well and understood the requirements of large enterprise and governments in terms of one tool to rule them all, from a data migration integration perspective."
"Equalum is real-time. If you are moving from an overnight process to a real-time process, there is always a difference in what reports and analytics show compared to what our operational system shows. Some of our organizations, especially finance, don't want those differences to be shown. Therefore, going to a real-time environment makes the data in one place match the data in another place. Data accuracy is almost instantaneous with this tool."
"The main impact for Oracle LogMiner is the performance. Performance is drastically reduced if you use the solution’s Oracle Binary Log Parser. So, if we have 60 million records, initially it used to take a minute. Now, it takes a second to do synchronization from the source and target tables."
"I found two features in Equalum that I consider the most valuable. One is that Equalum is a no-code tool. You can do your activities on its graphical interface, which doesn't require complex knowledge of extracting, changing, or loading data. Another feature of Equalum that I like the most is that it monitors the data transfers and tells you if there's any issue so that you can quickly check and correct it. Equalum also tells you where the problem lies, for example, if it's a hardware or communication issue."
"Equalum provides a single platform for core architectural use cases, including CDC replication, streaming ETL, and batch ETL. That is important to our clients because there is no other single-focus product that covers these areas in that much detail, and with this many features on the platform. The fact that they are single-minded and focused on CDC and ETL makes this such a rich solution. Other solutions cover these things a little bit in their multi-function products, but they don't go as deep."
"Equalum has resulted in system performance improvements in our organization. Now, I am ingressing data off of multiple S3 sources, doing data processing, and formatting a schema. This would usually take me a couple of days, but now it takes me hours."
"It's a really powerful platform in terms of the combination of technologies they've developed and integrated together, out-of-the-box. The combination of Kafka and Spark is, we believe, quite unique, combined with CDC capabilities. And then, of course, there are the performance aspects. As an overall package, it's a very powerful data integration, migration, and replication tool."
"This mature product is the leader in the backup industry with unique features and capabilities for users with advanced backup needs."
"NetApp Snapshot's most valuable features are the snapshot capabilities, you can take snaps of shared directories, files, and VMs."
"It has a user-friendly interface."
"This is a very mature product that does exactly what it needs to in taking temporary pictures of data states."
"It centralizes your data."
"You never have to worry about protecting your virtual machines."
"From a functional standpoint, it's been, pretty much bulletproof. I have never gone to a snapshot and not been able to do what I needed to do."
"The most valuable features of NetApp Snapshot are the integration with other vendors and customization."
 

Cons

"There is not enough proven integration with other vendors. That is what needs to be worked on. Equalum hasn't tested anything between vendors, which worries our clients. We need more proven vendor integration. It is an expensive product and it needs to support a multi-vendor approach."
"Their UI could use some work. Also, they could make it just a little faster to get around their user interface. It could be a bit more intuitive with things like keyboard shortcuts."
"They need to expand their capabilities in some of the targets, as well as source connectors, and native connectors for a number of large data sources and databases. That's a huge challenge for every company in this area, not just Equalum."
"The deployment of their flows needs improvement. It doesn't work with a typical Git branching and CI/CD deployment strategy."
"I should be able to see only my project versus somebody else's garbage. That is something that would be good in future. Right now, the security is by tenants, but I would like to have it by project, e.g., this project has this source and flows in these streams, and I have access to this on this site."
"If you need to use the basic features of Equalum, for example, you don't even need data integration, then many competitors in the market can give you basic features. For instance, if you need batch ETL, you can pick among solutions in the market that have been around longer than Equalum. What needs improvement in Equalum is replication, as it could be faster. Equalum also needs better integration with specific databases such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server."
"Right now, they have a good notification system, but it is in bulk. For example, if I have five projects running and I put a notification, the notification comes back to me for all five projects. I would like the notification to come back only for one project."
"I would like to see cloud features added to the next release of this solution."
"The solution should have a snapshot mode using AI to decide when to create the snapshot, depending on the workload."
"NetApp needs to take a look at their pricing in comparison to the competition and make the appropriate change to attract more customers and gain in market share."
"The licensing cost could be improved."
"There should be an alarm or notification in the NetApp management console if you're frequently deleting data or using a volume for backups."
"Not a perfect ten because there is one point off to give it room for improvement."
"The solution needs to ensure it has higher availability or business continuity."
"NetApp Snapshot usually takes a lot of space on the volume, requiring manual removal. It should be more automated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Equalum licensing costs vary, but I won't be able to give information on its fees."
"They have a very simple approach to licensing. They don't get tied up with different types of connectivity to different databases. If you need more connectors or if you need more CPU, you just add on. It's component-based pricing."
"Equalum is rather expensive compared to its competitors. So, you have to make up that cost in time savings, and we usually do that. If we are saving money, it is because we are reducing our development time."
"Equalum was reasonably priced. It is not like those million dollar tools, such as Informatica."
"As soon as you have more than six users, Equalum is lower in cost [than Talend] and if the group gets bigger, it's quite a big delta. If more users want to use it, you don't end up with an increase in licensing costs, so that makes it very easy. And if you need more licenses or more sources, it's a very simple upgrade methodology."
"NetApp Snapshot is expensive since you need to buy an additional premium license for it which is an extra cost over the payments made for NetApp...The license works during the entire life cycle of NetApp Snapshot."
"It's not too expensive."
"The price of this solution is fair."
"The price of NetApp Snapshot depends on the use case. They charge by how much data you need, the capability, and for snap licenses."
"If there is a way to save more on the number of snapshots, it should be included in the next release."
"Snapshot is free and comes with the NetApp storage software. It's purely free of cost."
"As far as their licensing costs, the licensing is paid on a yearly basis. The organization pays for the licensing based on the software and the capacity that they choose."
"The price of the solution is reasonable but could improve. However, if you are in a country that has a poor currency then the price will be considered expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
23%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Why should I use Equalum instead of LogMiner?
You'd want to use the Equalium Oracle Binary Log Parser because it's just better than the LogMiner. Sure, LogMiner is made by Oracle and probably the team knows some insight to make it efficient th...
Is Equalum compatible with all databases?
I'm using Equalum's data replication software for Oracle because that's the one database it's designed for. While it may sound limiting, when you find out how many solutions it can provide for you ...
Can I use Equalum for free?
No, it's not free but you can benefit from a free trial, though. There's an option to try their platform for a limited amount of time, so that may be useful to help you decide if you want to contin...
What method of data replication does NetApp Snapshot use?
Here's a breakdown of how the data replication by NetApp Snapshot works: it's through the snapshot replication method. What does that mean? Well, in simple words, the software creates copies of dat...
What is the storage scale of NetApp Snapshot?
Last time I checked, the NetApp Snapshot data replication software could go up to 255 snapshot copies. I'm not sure how familiar you are with similar software, but that's a pretty good number. It g...
Will NetApp Snapshot recover data in an emergency?
Well yes, the snapshots that NetApp Snapshot creates are your backup. But then there's also their feature for advanced backup. This allows you to copy backups to offline locations and also make arc...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SIEMENS, GSK, Wal-Mart, T Systems
Mazda
Find out what your peers are saying about Equalum vs. NetApp Snapshot and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.