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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 July 2025, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of Dell EqualLogic PS series is 2.3%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 17.7%, up from 16.9% 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

"Dell EqualLogic PS series is a highly stable solution."
"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."
"​It has contributed to the implementation of virtualization and all its benefits.​"
"The solution can scale."
"Its high availability. It has a lot of redundancy and good management software as well as good alerting."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The initial setup was so straightforward. It was well-documented."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Has rock solid reliability and is easy to use."
"The solution is easy to use."
"NetApp FAS Series is simple to set up."
"Better performance and lower costs."
"Snapshot, deduplication, and compression features are valuable."
"The most valuable feature is SnapMirror."
 

Cons

"The performance isn't as good as, for example, Nimble."
"There is no option for mixing RAID types in one device."
"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."
"6510 and 6610 have two iSCSI connections in each controller. Why do 6110xxx members have only one, and why do the same members have the possibility of having an active iSCSI interface in the passive controller? It could make a lot of noise with a failover."
"It is at the end of support and no longer supported. We have to move our VMware to another storage platform, and we have decided to use Dell PowerStore. We like Dell's products, and it is a new platform with a lot of features."
"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."
"Why is it not possible for both controllers to be simultaneously active (load balancing)?"
"The user interface could be improved to have better graphics and the performance analyzer could be better."
"Needs more SAN support."
"The high cost of the product is an area of concern, so from an improvement perspective, the tool needs to be made cheaper."
"It's hard to find in-person training that fits our schedule in our area. They offer a lot of online training, but we need somewhere to go because we can't really get away from the office."
"It may need more flexibility to fight with other competing arrays."
"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."
"It's not a cheap system. It is very expensive. The pricing has been ridiculous every time that we had to renew the support."
"I would like to see NetApp add incident support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"All features are out of the box. The license will be in the virtual, OS, or application layer."
"Initial packages include all upgrades and services."
"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 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."
"It seemed expensive at first, but the durability lowered the cost of ownership dramatically over time."
"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."
"Licensing is pretty straightforward."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive. We pay a one-time purchase price."
"The solution’s cost is reasonable."
"NetApp FAS Series could be less expensive."
"The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is reasonable for its performance."
"The scalability is pretty good, but it's too expensive."
"The licensing cost is on yearly basis."
"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."
"We are on a perpetual license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
26%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

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?
The main issue was that when there were new storage solutions technologies available on the market, Dell EqualLogic PS Series was not compatible with the latest products. Right now, we have a stora...
What is your primary use case for Dell EqualLogic PS series?
I used the solution in my company since we had a virtual infrastructure, which served as our storage array with ESXi connections, which are also integrated with VMware solutions.
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: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.