DDN EXA5 vs Oracle ZFS comparison

DataDirect Networks and Oracle are both solutions in the File System Software category. DataDirect Networks is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.0, while Oracle is ranked #4 with an average rating of 9.0. DataDirect Networks holds a 4.1% mindshare in FSS, compared to Oracle’s 7.9% mindshare. Additionally, 50% of DataDirect Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

DDN EXA5

Read 1 DDN EXA5 review

198 Views
194 Comparison Views

50% willing to recommend

Oracle ZFS

Read 6 Oracle ZFS reviews

643 Views
630 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

DDN EXA5

Oracle ZFS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between DDN EXA5 and Oracle ZFS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Nasuni, CTERA, Panzura and others in File System Software.

To learn more, read our detailed File System Software Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

File System Software

January 2026

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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

DDN EXA5

Ranking in File System Software

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Oracle ZFS

Ranking in File System Software

4th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the File System Software category, the mindshare of DDN EXA5 is 4.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle ZFS is 7.9%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File System Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Oracle ZFS	7.9%
DDN EXA5	4.1%
Other	88.0%

File System Software

Featured Reviews

reviewer2544219

Chief Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Enhancing AI cluster training with reliable performance and good customer service

This is for AI training cluster. The customer is using DDN as a default de facto standard for their AI cluster DDN is one of the storages actually supporting by NVIDIA Superport. The customer is using NVIDIA Superport, which helps in terms of scalability. The DDN Exascaler uses a parallel file…

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David Kotey

IT Infrastructure Manager at National Investment Bank

Efficient setup and seamless performance ensure an outstanding experience

Everything in Oracle ZFS is great and it's easy to use, making it very user-friendly. I have used Oracle ZFS Snapshot and Rollback capabilities, and everything has worked well. The Snapshot and Rollback features in Oracle ZFS are awesome - that's one word to describe it. It's cool, very easy, and stress-free. Without doing benchmarks with other products, I can rate data compression in Oracle ZFS about an eight or nine out of ten, and I have noticed some deduplication and indexing features. Regarding how Oracle ZFS handles demanding workloads, such as online transaction processing and complex query executions, most of these aspects depend on your configuration setup. For instance, if you are using virtualization and have enterprise solutions on these servers, you can route or place database servers on SSDs or flash disks to enable better throughput from these systems. You can run your operating system on flash disks, or alternatively save ordinary data on SATA disks, depending on where you place your valuable data. The structure will affect performance, so if you plan it properly, you can achieve the best performance, even if the systems are aging or if you don't have the compute power, you can still balance it.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The performance is outstanding, and customers are very happy with it."

"The DDN Exascaler uses a parallel file system, Lustre, which is proven for HPC and AI workloads."

"It is not necessarily for the fastest storage or cluster storage, but just for pure storage, it's really hard to beat. It's just been around as long as anything else."

"The replication capability and data security have been the most valuable features."

"Oracle ZFS is very fast and it is efficient. It has outperformed any hardware array controller that I've ever come across. With Oracle ZFS on my NAS, which is running five, four terabyte drives, when I've had a drive failure and changed one out, it'll rebuild that array in two hours, or maybe less. When you think you're rebuilding almost four terabytes of data redundancy, that's pretty good using an old AMD Turion hardware, that's nothing to complain about."

"Everything in Oracle ZFS is great and it's easy to use, making it very user-friendly."

Cons

"There are challenges with the operation cost and upgrading process, which is disruptive, especially with the node."

"ZFS is great for just mass storage, but if you're trying to make fast storage – something like a SAN-type delivery network where you wanted to do any type of RAM disc over the network – it falls flat. ZFS does not do that. It is kind of limiting."

"Oracle ZFS does what I've asked it to do, and it has done it very efficiently. The only time I'm running into issues is with Proxmox. If I run ZFS drives, I find my RAM usage is very high. However, I don't have that problem with the TrueNAS system, where I'm running an old N36 Turion with four gigabytes of RAM, and that's running 24/7. There have been no issues with such a low-powered environment there, it works fine, but with Proxmox it seems to go slow."

"When retrieving data from the replication of remote sites, it does not give you immediate results. The RPO and RTO rates could be improved."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

19%

Healthcare Company

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	1

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DDN EXA5?

The cost is higher compared to other offerings, but the performance is good. The challenge in comparison to other offerings is that DDN is a little bit expensive.

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What needs improvement with DDN EXA5?

There are challenges with the operation cost and upgrading process, which is disruptive, especially with the node. Some customers have moved away due to these operational issues.

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What is your primary use case for DDN EXA5?

This is for AI training cluster. The customer is using DDN as a default de facto standard for their AI cluster.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Oracle ZFS?

From my experience, we consumers will only ask for one thing from Oracle ZFS: cost improvements. Regarding the cost, making it 50 percent less would be beneficial, as it cannot be free.

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What is your primary use case for Oracle ZFS?

Our main use case for Oracle ZFS is that it's just normal storage for the entire infrastructure, so we have our systems connected to it.

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What advice do you have for others considering Oracle ZFS?

Oracle ZFS is easy to scale; you can just get the modules and add them to increase the capacity, and that's it. It's just seamless. To summarize, I can advise those who want to use Oracle ZFS to co...

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Comparisons

No data available

Cohesity SpanFS vs Oracle ZFS

Compared 27% of the time

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Compared 23% of the time

Nasuni vs Oracle ZFS

Compared 19% of the time

Panzura CloudFS vs Oracle ZFS

Compared 14% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

File System Software

January 2026

Download DDN EXA5 product report

Buyer's Guide

Oracle ZFS

January 2026

Download Oracle ZFS product report

Also Known As

EXA5

ZFS

Overview

Applications are evolving to meet the needs of an automated and connected society. The onslaught of data and
the need to move it, store it and process it is quickly overwhelming current infrastructure.

Regain control of your data, streamline workflows and deliver the ultimate performance to reduce time to
discovery and unlock new ways to innovate.

DataDirect Networks

Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance delivers leading performance and superior efficiency in enterprise-class network-attached storage (NAS) environments, accelerating business functions, and reducing complexity. This first application-engineered storage system provides unique integration points with Oracle Database which automate storage tuning and data lifecycle management, reduce capacity requirements, and lower TCO.

Oracle

Sample Customers

ICR, Recursion, Toyota Technical Development Corporation (TTDC), Deluxe, Buff Dubs

Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., Hospital AlemÊo Oswaldo Cruz, DB Schenker Rail, Asia Commercial Bank, First Alliance Bank Zambia Limited, Ricoh Company Ltd., CyberSolutions Inc., NARA INSTITUTE of SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY, SunGard Availability Services, B&H PhotoVideo,

Find out what your peers are saying about Nasuni, CTERA, Panzura and others in File System Software. Updated: January 2026.

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