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Dell EqualLogic PS series vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 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

Dell EqualLogic PS series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (3rd), NAS (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of Dell EqualLogic PS series is 2.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 17.6%, up from 17.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

Abdul Rehman Abid - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful auto tiering, excellent support, and highly reliable
The initial setup of the Dell EqualLogic PS series is simple. The physical connectivity and rack mounting time depend on the size of the deployment. For example, if we have five of the Dell EqualLogic PS series we can mount and do the cabling within two hours. The initial configuration can be done within an hour. The estimated time to deploy from start to finish in this scenario is four to five hours maximum. One person can do most of the deployment, such as configuration, but a helper is needed to do the mounting of the cables.
Arnaud Salmon - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good performance and
Once, I've been in a program, but they stopped supporting protocols like HTTP, STP, and that kind of stuff. All of the DIP supports at the beginning were kind of support when it was just Python and just five storage. And it happened a few times that the customer required the STP and HTTP protocol for storage. And I was surprised I couldn't do it anymore with NetApp. So, it would be beneficial for them to support both kinds of protocols. The only little black points that I would put on top of NetApp FAS Series. There is room for improvement in deployment and configuration processes. The thing with ONTAP is that we have a lot of layers, from the raw disks to the volumes we present to servers and configure. There are quite a lot of things to configure. Probably NetApp should ease the way to install that. In NetApp products, such as ONTAP and FAS, a solid understanding of storage is still necessary to handle configurations in larger systems. It's not the same with Pure Storage or Huawei. Even someone less familiar with storage could manage it, making it more accessible.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The technical support for the solution was really good."
"We were attracted by the flexibility of being able to put in a new shelf whenever we needed to, to expand."
"The technical support is very good."
"Technical support, when we had access to it, was very good."
"The most valuable feature of Dell EqualLogic PS series auto tiering by using this feature, the customer can get higher performance on a valuable budget."
"You can always trust it. It is stable."
"If you have one datacenter fail, the VMs will start to run inside the other data center."
"The product is very stable."
"The product is user-friendly and helps to evaluate the performance of each node. It ensures that if one node encounters an issue, the system can immediately redistribute the workload without interruptions. This setup provides uninterrupted operation for our systems."
"The new FAS series is a good fit for some customers. We have good performance and capacity, even though it is full flash."
"NetApp FAS is highly stable and reliable, especially under a heavy load. That is what I like most about the NetApp."
"The most valuable feature is SnapMirror."
"Better performance and lower costs."
"It changed the way we do Disaster Recovery (DR) around NetApp replication."
"The biggest advantage that makes NetApp FAS Series better is that we can use RAID technology on the storage."
"It's an easy product to use that is stable and has good performance."
 

Cons

"There is no option for mixing RAID types in one device."
"We need more space and we can't get any."
"I can't buy any more solutions provided by EqualLogic...Since I can't buy it anymore, I don't receive any updates on the solution. Also, this is the last year in which one can buy support for the solution."
"The product is reaching the end-of-lifecycle."
"Dell EqualLogic PS series could improve the performance because in our hybrid configuration the read speed is faster than the write speed."
"Individual file recovery would be a nice additional feature."
"The searchable online documentation is missing.​"
"Dell EqualLogic PS series could improve by providing fiber channel connectivity. Fiber channel connectivity is not supported, which is a requirement of advanced applications, such as SAP HANA. SAP HANA recommends fiber channel connectivity, but the Dell EqualLogic PS series is only an ISCSI data storage."
"With scalability, we feel the system is limited."
"The product should improve its user experience."
"The solution's configuration is not flexible."
"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."
"Dedicated storage efficiency accelerators could improve the overall performance of the system."
"We're supposed to have used NetApp FAS Series for replication, but then one of the nodes failed, and then it's taken us some time to bring it up."
"They should add new features to the product."
"Its licensing cost can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Initial packages include all upgrades and services."
"All features are out of the box. The license will be in the virtual, OS, or application layer."
"Licensing is pretty straightforward."
"I don't think I would say that the product is less expensive...The product's price is not an issue for our company, considering the relationship we have with Dell and the customer support we receive."
"Price-wise, the solution is cheap. I rate it a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"I didn't buy it. It was another person seven years ago. So, I don't really know, but all storage platforms cost a lot of money. It is probably in the mid-range, but you get what you pay for."
"It seemed expensive at first, but the durability lowered the cost of ownership dramatically over time."
"Dell EqualLogic PS series can improve its scale-out feature. Sometimes the customer has a limited budget for storage expansion. When they want to expand their capacity, they need to buy a complete controller plus storage capacity, which sometimes is out of their budget. If Dell EqualLogic PS series support could scale up the environment in which only hard drive extension controllers should be supported, then customers can expand within a lower budget."
"The product's pricing is reasonable."
"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."
"NetApp FAS Series is a reasonably high-priced solution, partially because we select the configuration that duplicates the entire system."
"We have considered upgrading to an All-Flash solution but when we evaluated the cost-benefit we discovered that we don't have enough money to invest in it. To maintain the same technology with All-Flash would be too expensive for us."
"The licensing cost is on yearly basis."
"Most storage vendors also have software, or licensing bundles, which may offer the required licenses considerably cheaper, but do also maybe offer licenses, which are not needed."
"The product is on the expensive side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell EqualLogic PS series?
The technical support for the solution was really good.
What needs improvement with Dell EqualLogic PS series?
An improvement that could be made is to have a storage solution with all SSD hard disks, as we currently have a Dell EqualLogic PS series with traditional hard disks. It's not simple to replace a h...
What is your primary use case for Dell EqualLogic PS series?
Dell EqualLogic PS series is the storage of our server, which serves our use case. The deployment of Dell EqualLogic PS series takes about five days.
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?
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 fo...
 

Also Known As

EqualLogic PS series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FAW Foundry, AW Engineering, Unimat, eLongNet Information Technology, BDO Brasil, Odyssey Space Research
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 Dell EqualLogic PS series vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.