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ExaGrid EX Series vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

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

ExaGrid EX Series
Ranking in Deduplication Software
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in Deduplication Software
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
NAS (3rd), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Deduplication Software category, the mindshare of ExaGrid EX Series is 9.5%, up from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 3.2%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Deduplication Software
 

Featured Reviews

Daan Lieshout - PeerSpot reviewer
With great features like deduplication and landing zone, the tool also provides stability and scalability
Speed-wise, ExaGrid is much faster than the other solutions in the market. When you choose between or from several different manufacturers, you need to understand a little bit about how the product exactly works and why its speed can be so high while being able to compare it to other solutions, allowing you to know of the backup window if you ever need it. You have to understand how it works and the product's preferences, even though the price may be slightly higher. Learning about the solution is not at all a problem, but when you open a console, you see so many things, and in the beginning you don't understand it all. Later on, it becomes more usable when you start understanding it. In general, ExaGrid provides you with a lot more information than any other system in the market. It is difficult to say what is additionally required in the solution because, presently, it has a lot of things like immutability, anti-hacking, and retention. The solution does put efforts towards improvement. The product's interface provides you with a proper overview of the deduplication rate and the status of how many storage systems you are left with through a visual screen, which is more than enough. When you go deeper, you can access all the enhanced consoles. The product can easily be integrated with third-party products because ExaGrid has all its best practice documents for integrating it with many other products. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.
Paweł Jabłoński - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for VMs with replication a feature, but need upgraded SSDs
We use this solution. I configured and updated it. Of course, I was also a user of applications that store data on that storage. We already have an SSD solution. So, rather than planning to go with an SSD solution, we are focusing on expanding it. If a company wants to deploy something new, it should choose a product with SSD, and NVMe disks. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the main features is the landing zone, it is a particular space where the information is not duplicated."
"The tool has improved backup and recovery times. One of the key features contributing to this improvement is the landing zone and deduplication retention zone. When data is in the landing zone, the process is fast, ensuring smooth backup and recovery operations at high speeds. However, the process becomes slower for long-term backups moved to the retention zone due to fragmentation. So, if the data is older than a few days, the speed may be limited, especially for non-deduplicated data in the landing zone."
"The most valuable features of the solution are deduplication and landing zone."
"The solution easily integrates with the backup targets, such as Veeam."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use and data deduplication. It's extremely easy to use and does a very good job of data deduplication and compression."
"It is a solid and a quite simple solution, which is a good combination. The customers like the simplicity and its scale-out capacity. They like the support pricing, and even the extension capacity pricing, a fixed price, which the executive is offering in Czech market."
"The solution is easy to use."
"Other products lose performance over time, but NetApp OS is speed-optimized."
"For us, the greatest aspect of the solution is the fact that it just runs. It is amazingly resilient. That's very important to us, because we are basically, with some exceptions, have a 24/7 operation."
"Ability to use mirroring and SnapVault have made backup no longer necessary."
"The most valuable feature is SnapMirror."
"Good for NAS and unified solutions."
"The most valuable features are compression and dedupe."
"The support is very good."
 

Cons

"I would like for them to develop direct cloud integration with a third-party cloud. Direct integration with AWS and other cloud providers."
"The tool reduces storage footprint. However, clients are now storing data for longer durations with increasing requirements to retain backups for longer periods, particularly as a defense against ransomware attacks. As a result, the retention zone with duplicated data is experiencing more demand, leading to space constraints. This necessitates using higher-end, more expensive models to address the issue."
"The product's documentation can be made more precise."
"The solution could improve by switching to a flash-type solution rather than the spinning drives that they currently use. However, we have not had any failure with the spinning drives. The flash-type drives are more up-to-date and are something that is in their roadmap."
"The one place where we are sometimes losing the opportunity with ExaGrid is that a few customers still require a fiber channel connectivity, which is not always possible."
"When speaking about a scale-out, you want to have better equipment. You cannot just add a disc to the foreign equipment. You have to buy another one and put it together, like parallel."
"A big problem with physical appliances is that updating them can be a bit burdensome."
"It may need more flexibility to fight with other competing arrays."
"When we were going through all the MFA hardening and the anti-ransomware setup, I gave some feedback to our executive. The MFA process for getting that set up on the AFF systems was cumbersome compared to some of our other systems."
"Needs to improve the adaptive storage quality of service."
"The high cost of the product is an area of concern, so from an improvement perspective, the tool needs to be made cheaper."
"There are some technical limitations, but it would be great to have in-line deduplication and in-line compression for the FAS series as well."
"I’ve found that I use command line more often than I thought needed. Some things should be done in the GUI, and command-line switches can be overwhelming and take up a lot of time."
"As I see it, there could be more interfaces, more cache, etc."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In comparison to other solutions, it's affordable. They're all too expensive."
"The previous solutions I have used both included the Backup Software and the Appliance making it hard to compare to this solution. However, overall the solution is reasonably priced for the features you receive. ExaGrid EX Series is priced better than HP, Dell, and possibly Commvault which I have compared in the past."
"I rate ExaGrid EX Series' pricing eight to nine out of ten."
"The current agreement has 21 terabytes of free space and it cost approximately $35,000."
"My company had to pay 1,60,000 EUR for the system we use, and the payment was made just once for the system and five years of full support."
"The licensing cost is on yearly basis."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive. We pay a one-time purchase price."
"NetApp FAS Series could be less expensive."
"When we need to implement a less expensive solution we use Huawei. NetApp FAS Series is a little bit expensive compared to the average of the market."
"It's not cheap, but at the same time, it's also inexpensive. It's somewhere in between."
"The product is on the expensive side."
"The price it not low, but comparing features to other vendors, the price can be balanced."
"It is a one-time license charge for NetApp FAS Series to run and we pay annually for upgrades and support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
7%
Educational Organization
62%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ExaGrid EX Series?
The tool has improved backup and recovery times. One of the key features contributing to this improvement is the landing zone and deduplication retention zone. When data is in the landing zone, the...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ExaGrid EX Series?
I rate ExaGrid EX Series' pricing eight to nine out of ten.
What needs improvement with ExaGrid EX Series?
The tool reduces storage footprint. However, clients are now storing data for longer durations with increasing requirements to retain backups for longer periods, particularly as a defense against r...
Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?
Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?
Cost is a big factor in our decision-making process. When we're buying storage, the first thing we look at is how much we're paying per gigabyte. Cost has been the driving factor when choosing this...
 

Also Known As

EX Series
No data available
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

NCI Group, North Attleborough Public School, North Kingstown School Department, NPS Pharmaceuticals, Prudential Douglas Elliman, Rathbone Brothers PLC, Rio Hondo College, Ruder Finn, Sarah Lawrence College
Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College
Find out what your peers are saying about ExaGrid EX Series vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.