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Dell PowerPath vs NetApp ONTAP comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp ONTAP
Ranking in Storage Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Storage Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerPath is 15.5%, down from 16.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ONTAP is 20.1%, down from 37.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Storage Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp ONTAP20.1%
Dell PowerPath15.5%
Other64.4%
Storage Software
 

Featured Reviews

Derrick Brockel - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
BK
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."
"The user interface is good."
"In the last four or five years, we have not had any issues."
"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."
"The solution offers load balancing, which is great, the overall functionality has been really good, the setup is really easy, and we have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."
"This multipathing software has certain features which we normally don't have on native multipathing software, especially in terms of load balancing and the way it captures the IO metrics and boosts the performance of different operating systems."
"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 product is very reliable."
"The most valuable feature is the throughput. You tend to get to your data very quickly. That's why we decided, eventually, to move into NetApp, because of the speed. Also, as a support engineer, this solution is easy to use, compared with SAN storage."
"The fact that NetApp ONTAP supports NVMe over TCP is a significant advantage."
"There is a faster release cycle now. Also, they are doing all types of cool stuff in their cloud volumes, replication, and tiering."
"What I appreciate the most about the product is its resiliency."
"Snapshot and SnapMirror technologies make it easier to replicate data to disaster recovery scenarios."
"Ease of use is the most valuable feature for us."
"As an architect, I design things using NetApp ONTAP, and I see benefits overall since it integrates into many more ecosystems in IT than any other product."
"There are more than one features that I appreciate, but what I appreciate the most about it is the ease of management of the volumes."
 

Cons

"The solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."
"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 technical support is good but they are not available all the time."
"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."
"If there is an operating system that is discontinued, PowerPath will now also stop the support for that operating system; for example, in the case of Solaris."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective."
"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."
"Technical support is hit or miss sometimes. Level 1 support is not very good."
"One area where they could improve NetApp ONTAP is their ability to migrate to and from different enterprise storage."
"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."
"They could lower prices so my management doesn't complain about cost."
"However, if the integration with legacy applications was simpler, it would be great."
"Technical support is not in person nowadays. We have to wait a long time to get an engineer."
"The way you attach, move, migrate, and access LUNs is complicated, and if you do not know how to do it, it can be a great problem for your IT environment."
"Currently, there are limitations with Windows for this product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution."
"The product is a little bit expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"There are no additional costs associated with the product."
"The price of the solution is fair."
"If you start narrowing down NetApp versus price point, then comparing it to the feature set and take away all the bloat that other companies will try to add on, there is no other option. It comes down to just NetApp."
"ONTAP is expensive, but most storage systems are now-a-days and everything is included with the license - there are no additional fees."
"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."
"Because of the dedupe technologies and Data ONTAP servers, we have saved 20% on hardware. This is a lot of money for us."
"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 have seen ROI, especially with the deduplication. We have a high ratio of deduplication and are way past 70 percent of our VDI, as we have almost 400TBs on our VDI. We have been able to save at least a quarter of a petabyte of space."
"In the past, you didn't have to buy separate products. They were mostly included with the purchase. In the end, it's more expensive to buy it separate than together. If you are going to need it, one package at the beginning is cheaper."
"There are specific workloads where some vendors provide better value, but in general, NetApp has done a far better on price than other vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Transportation Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

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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 ...
What needs improvement with NetApp ONTAP?
I have encountered a couple of issues with data deduplication and compression. If there were an option to set up those items separately, it would make it easier to configure and monitor those aspects.
 

Also Known As

PowerPath
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Healthcare Residential Service Company
1&1 IONOS, Acıbadem Healthcare Group, Adder Technologies, Aero Vodochody Aerospace
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.