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NetApp FAS Series vs Qumulo comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 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

NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in NAS
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (4th), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (1st)
Qumulo
Ranking in NAS
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (21st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 10.8%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qumulo is 5.2%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp FAS Series10.8%
Qumulo5.2%
Other84.0%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

Srikanth Purushothaman - PeerSpot reviewer
DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems
Has supported long-term data protection and backup while requiring better part availability and pricing options
For monitoring purposes, we normally use flash access storage exclusively. We utilize a hybrid system because we need performance, combining NL-SAS for the volume and SAS flash to use as a fast cache system that provides more IOPS. We normally implement RAID 10, which we prefer over RAID 6's n plus 2 combinations. We utilize it for data redundancy, even with write intensity on. Regarding the unified storage architecture for NetApp FAS Series, we normally opt for exclusivity unless budget constraints exist. Our IOPS are very high, reaching somewhere about 50k to 150k or 1.150k. The high performance ensures minimal latency. An advantage we've seen with NetApp FAS Series is that snapshots provide very rapid backup and fast recovery. We basically use snapshots for data protection as first-level protection, with deduplication between the two storages serving as second-level protection.
VinceVitro - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Storage Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Useful data sharing, simple cluster scaling, and excellent support
One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most important features are SnapVault, Snapshots, and SnapMirror."
"It allows our Windows and Unix teams to have a centralized point to share data between the two."
"You can use different protocols at the same time. Monitoring is also very easy in NetApp FAS Series. There is a free tool for monitoring."
"Good for NAS and unified solutions."
"Good bang for the buck."
"The new FAS series is a good fit for some customers. We have good performance and capacity, even though it is full flash."
"It’s a decently mature product that has a lot of documentation and standards and is something to be relied on."
"Snap mirror as it gives us a way to snap to our two disaster recovery sites to instantaneously bring up VMs Dedupe helps us to save a lot on OS files for VMs"
"The data protection algorithm to protect the data between the nodes has been the most valuable feature."
"The ratio of total operational cost to complexity versus feature set is very good."
"The data protection algorithm to protect the data between the nodes has been the most valuable feature. The integration with backup platforms such as Veeam and Veritas has also been valuable."
"The most valuable features of Qumulo are its rolling updates and all-day availability."
"It is a very stable product. I never faced any issues."
"The most valuable feature of Qumulo is the ability to share files and reliability."
"The feature that I like most is the analytics part of the file system."
"The most valuable feature is real-time analytics."
 

Cons

"I think this kind of infrastructure is mostly obsolete."
"The performance needs to be improved."
"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."
"We see a lot of bugs in roll outs, and sometimes I think the first GA are late-beta deployments."
"Sometimes there are bugs with firmware upgrades."
"Our major issue with FAS was not having one pane of glass with all products attached to it."
"The adoption of flash by NetApp has also been lagging behind the trendsetters, like TMS, Nimble, and others."
"NetApp systems are somewhat more complex, though not excessively so. If you're transitioning from a Windows server environment to NetApp, get training or education; otherwise, you might struggle with this solution."
"The price of the software is a bit expensive, so a reduction in cost would make it more competitive."
"One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential."
"The price of the software is a bit expensive, so a reduction in cost would make it more competitive."
"The solution could improve availability and improve data protection or data services such as compression of deduplication."
"The solution could improve availability and improve data protection or data services such as compression of deduplication. In a future release, we'd like to have more cloud API integrations."
"The support for iMac and protocols should be improved, not all features are available."
"Qumulo should continue to expand automation and orchestration capabilities."
"In the future, I would like to see non-disruptive updates."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable because they also have deduplication, compression, and inline compression. They focus on storage only, which is really good; it works."
"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."
"The tool is expensive."
"The solution’s cost is reasonable."
"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."
"The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is reasonable for its performance."
"In general, I find NetApp to be very expensive. That's the main issue I have with them. So it's a drawback in terms of pricing."
"The price of Qumulo is reasonable."
"The price of the solution is in the middle range compared to others. We look at the price per terabyte."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise58
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

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?
I do not handle the pricing part of NetApp FAS Series since it is managed by the sales team.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College
County of Riverside Sheriff Department, Hyundai Mobis Automotive North America, University of Arizona, UCSD - San Diego Supercomputer Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, Sinclair Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Kaiser Permanente, Deluxe Creative, Vexcel Imaging, University of Florida, The Madison Square Garden Company, Arizona State University, Cinesite, San Diego Padres Baseball, Johns Hopkins University - School of Medicine, IHME, EllieMae, Washington State University.
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp FAS Series vs. Qumulo and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,789 professionals have used our research since 2012.