No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Dell PowerPath vs NetApp ONTAP comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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
93
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Storage Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerPath is 16.5%, up from 15.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ONTAP is 20.5%, down from 35.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Storage Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp ONTAP20.5%
Dell PowerPath16.5%
Other63.0%
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

"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 product is very reliable."
"The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."
"The user interface is good."
"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."
"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."
"In the last four or five years, we have not had any issues."
"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 initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"CIFS and NFS protocols have delivered the most value. NetApp ONTAP offers very reliable CIFS and NFS protocols."
"We saw the benefits of NetApp ONTAP almost immediately; snapshots are amazing, the auto-grow on the volumes and SnapMirror are also notable features, and there are so many things that make it a good product."
"Its ease of use, for the most part, through the interfaces is valuable."
"ONTAP has really reduced our costs because we learned that we could use our storage with fewer machines and drive down data center costs."
"In terms of performance and reliability, NetApp ONTAP is fantastic; if you look at it, and if you go with NetApp now, everything you will get as compared to other storage, NetApp is extremely stable and reliable storage."
"SnapMirror is a good solution, because we can take our production data and replicate it over to our DR data center with minimal administrative effort, which is huge."
 

Cons

"The technical support is good but they are not available all the time."
"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'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 solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."
"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."
"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."
"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."
"Because most of us were new to the product, the initial setup was a bit cumbersome. Once we were trained, it was fine."
"There is room for improvement in areas related to hardware constraints—for example, more storage efficiency, especially in terms of deduplication."
"I would like to see FlexGroup volumes come to parity in terms of software features with Flex volumes. It seems like FlexGroup volumes have massive scalability, but their features set is not the same as Flex volumes, so we are currently unable to use it."
"Currently, there are limitations with Windows for this product."
"They use a lot of PowerShell for managing things and there are still a few things that you can't do through PowerShell cmdlets that you can do in the native CLI. It would be nice if they got more of those added in."
"The config could be a little easier. It's not entirely difficult, but it could be a somewhat easier. I have seen other vendors make it easier."
"ONTAP tech support needs some improvement, but it has improved quite a bit."
"Being able to scale out at cost-effective capabilities doesn't compare to some of our other storage solutions, but it is coming along. NetApp ONTAP could improve its scalability."
 

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 solution is expensive."
"The product is a little bit expensive."
"There are no additional costs associated with the product."
"The price of the solution is fair."
"NetApp is streamlined, reducing costs."
"It is cost-effective for the benefits you get."
"This solution has helped our organization reduce our overall cost of storage. We're part of the NetApp OnDemand, where we lease it. Also, it doesn't take as many people to administer the solution as some other products."
"There are specific workloads where some vendors provide better value, but in general, NetApp has done a far better on price than other vendors."
"They could reduce the price."
"We have a wholesale contract with NetApp. We also have NetApp ONTAP On-Demand activation for certain things. We also have some preferential pricing for licenses. The licensing that I see here doesn't apply to other clients in the field. NetApp is expensive, but so are the competitors, making it hard to ascertain precise retail value. However, based on my perspective, NetApp pricing appears competitive."
"Because of its manageability, we have fewer people managing it."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Storage Software solutions are best for your needs.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Transportation Company
15%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

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 Business10
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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 ...
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: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.