Dell PowerPath vs NetApp ONTAP comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the Storage Software category. Dell Technologies is ranked #3, while NetApp is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. Dell Technologies holds a 16.1% mindshare in SS, compared to NetApp’s 25.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Dell PowerPath

Read 8 Dell PowerPath reviews

559 Views
363 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetApp ONTAP

Read 93 NetApp ONTAP reviews

1,728 Views
1,331 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Dell PowerPath

NetApp ONTAP

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

Dell PowerPath and NetApp ONTAP compete in the storage management solutions category. NetApp ONTAP has an upper hand due to its advanced features, despite pricing and support leaning towards Dell PowerPath.

Features: Dell PowerPath provides reliable multipathing, load balancing, and efficient data migration capabilities. NetApp ONTAP offers comprehensive data management, advanced monitoring, and seamless data replication across systems.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerPath could enhance its monitoring tools and expand support for non-EMC storage systems. Additional automation features would be beneficial. NetApp ONTAP could improve deployment ease by simplifying initial setup and providing better integration with non-NetApp environments. Faster support response times and enhanced migration tools would also be advantageous.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerPath is praised for its straightforward implementation and effective customer support, facilitating quick integration into existing systems. NetApp ONTAP, while more complex, offers extensive customization options, necessitating longer initial setup. Its support is effective but less accessible than Dell's.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerPath provides a cost-effective solution with affordable initial fees and rapid ROI, ideal for budget-conscious businesses. NetApp ONTAP offers long-term value through its robust features and scalability, justifying the higher initial investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP

February 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

Dell PowerPath

Ranking in Storage Software

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetApp ONTAP

Ranking in Storage Software

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Storage Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerPath is 16.1%, up from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ONTAP is 25.5%, down from 43.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Storage Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
NetApp ONTAP	25.5%
Dell PowerPath	16.1%
Other	58.4%

Storage Software

Featured Reviews

Derrick Brockel

Senior Manager of Operations at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

A resilient and reliable solution that has many load-balancing technologies and provides high availability

People who want to buy the solution must create a scorecard of Dell PowerPath against other products. They must run database tests. They must consider factors like pricing, performance, ease of use, visibility, and reliability. They must also run tests to understand which product recovers faster. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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Best Kifi

Senior Storage Engineer at Shell

Data management and availability improve operations, but cost and support need attention

For snapshots, there should be something similar to a recycle bin. When someone mistakenly deletes a snapshot, it should be stored for about two days before disappearing from the system. Regarding storage optimization, when purchasing a 10 terabyte disk, after formatting, you can only use approximately 8 terabytes. They should improve this so users can utilize 90% instead of 80% of the disk space. The support response needs improvement, especially for P1 cases. When critical cases are raised, they should ensure they call the customer and follow up properly. Comparing NetApp ONTAP to other solutions such as EMC, the cost of contract renewals and warranties is relatively expensive. They should extend their renewal window beyond the current six months to one year options. A longer warranty period of two years for new systems, controllers, or filers would be beneficial. Overall, they should reduce subscription costs for businesses.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is migration without disruptions."

"It provides a high availability and will increase the performance of any server or operating system."

"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."

"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that disaster recovery scenarios are very good and easy to use in Dell PowerPath since it is available in a simplified form."

"The user interface is good."

"The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."

"The product is very reliable."

"Its usability, scalability, and dependability are very good."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is to be able to do multiple clusters on one pane of glass. We used to have to log on to each cluster per NetApp to view statistics on it or the logs if something was wrong. But now we can use ONTAP to view all the clusters and it shows us if something is full of space or not."

"Scalability is awesome with a cluster node, not only can you scale up, but you can also scale out."

"The most valuable features of NetApp ONTAP are its data redundancy, performance, storage catering, snapshot technology, and NetApp Insight."

"We can do upgrades without taking it down. We have had nodes fail and people just kept working."

"Their SAN storage is great."

"In terms of stability, I would rate NetApp ONTAP a ten out of ten because I have experienced nearly zero downtime over the complete year."

"We do not face any glitches or downtime."

More NetApp ONTAP pros

Cons

"While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective."

"Customers do not choose PowerPath unless they have Unix or Linux."

"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."

"Although PowerPath is very mature and has been on the market for more than 15 years there are still a lot of bugs that have been profiled with PowerPath, specifically, during any OS upgrade."

"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."

"The technical support is good but they are not available all the time."

"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"The solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."

"Scalability is a bit of a question. If we're only doing file-based storage, scalability is fantastic. If we are doing block-based storage through iSCSI or Fibre Channel, there are some significant limitations in the number of volumes and clients that you can put on a single data ONTAP cluster."

"There's a feature called multi-tenant approval. Currently, it's one size fits all. I cannot specify that one person is allowed to work on certain volumes, a second person on different volumes, and a third one on everything. It's all or nothing, so I would prefer it to be more precise regarding who could do what on which volume."

"We would like to have additional cloud integration and the ability to Snapshot directly to Amazon. This would help us reduce costs, provide us additional disaster recovery, and give us a site that's not owned by us."

"One of the things that we were looking at being able to do a FlexGroup NFSv4. Right now, 9.4 goes up to NFSv3, but if we could get the NFSv4 solution on a 9.4, or a future release, that would be awesome."

"Technical support is hit or miss sometimes. Level 1 support is not very good. Level 2 and Level 3 (the escalation support) are very good. They are knowledgeable people, but sometimes you get some hiccup in the Level 1 support. After you pass Level 1, it is smooth sailing. There is a lot of room for improvement."

"I would like to see Synchronize Snap mode in the next release."

"We are always looking for more security enhancements and ways to continue to provide security encryption, whether it's data in rest or security in transit. We would also like to have more enhanced encryption beyond the regular TLS and 256-bit."

"NetApp ONTAP could be improved with additional features to help handle the backup of more than 10 to 15 devices simultaneously."

More NetApp ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is a little bit expensive."

"The solution is expensive."

"There are no additional costs associated with the product."

"Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution."

"I rate the product's price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is affordable, and ten is really expensive. Dell PowerPath is an expensive tool."

"The price of the solution is fair."

"We have been able to save about 3TB to 5TB of storage. We still need to do more on the compression bit, then provisioning, to save more going forward."

"The licensing prices are really high."

"The product is a bit expensive."

"The price could be a little bit cheaper, but you get what you pay for."

"ONTAP has helped us reduce the cost of storage by a lot. We were using IBM XIVs and were paying high costs, except for the maintenance. Now, we are on all-flash and we pay less than what we used to pay."

"While it is going to cost a lot of money, their technologies is worth it."

"This solution helped our organization reduce our overall cost of storage. Because idle data which was residing on high cost tiers, once we sifted the ONTAP, we were able to scale and place it where it should be, then offload the data which was unnecessary to different locations."

"We save a lot because of the deduplication and compression."

More NetApp ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Transportation Company

17%

Retailer

13%

Healthcare Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

21%

Marketing Services Firm

11%

University

Transportation Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	67

Questions from the Community

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Earn 20 points

How does Azure NetApp Files compare to NetApp ONTAP?

Azure NetApp Files is a Microsoft Azure file storage service built on NetApp technology. The platform combines the file capabilities of Azure and NetApp to move critical file-based applications to ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp ONTAP?

It is cost-effective for the benefits you get.

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What needs improvement with NetApp ONTAP?

For me, it is an ideal solution. There isn't any area that needs urgent improvements because the interface is very intuitive, and the solution is robust. However, if the integration with legacy app...

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Compared 11% of the time

QoreStor vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 9% of the time

StorONE Storage-as-a-Service vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerPath

February 2026

Download Dell PowerPath product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp ONTAP

January 2026

Download NetApp ONTAP product report

Also Known As

PowerPath

No data available

Overview

EMC PowerPath: Host-based software for automated data path management, failover and recovery, and optimized load balancing. PowerPath automates, standardizes, and optimizes data paths in physical and virtual environments as well as cloud deployments to deliver high availability and performance.

AUTOMATE FAILOVER/RECOVERY

PowerPath automates data path failover and recovery to ensure applications are always available and remain operational.

OPTIMIZE LOAD BALANCING

Adjust I/O paths constantly to leverage all available data paths and to monitor and rebalance the dynamic environment for the best application performance.

STANDARDIZE PATH MANAGEMENT

Simplify and standardize data path management across heterogeneous physical and virtual environments as well as cloud deployments.

Dell Technologies

NetApp is the data authority for hybrid cloud. We provide a full range of hybrid cloud data services that simplify management of applications and data across cloud and on-premises environments to accelerate digital transformation. Together with our partners, we empower global organizations to unleash the full potential of their data to expand customer touchpoints, foster greater innovation and optimize their operations.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Healthcare Residential Service Company

1&1 IONOS, Acıbadem Healthcare Group, Adder Technologies, Aero Vodochody Aerospace

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP

February 2026

Free Report: Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP

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