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Dell PowerPath vs NetApp ONTAP comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the Storage Software category. Dell Technologies is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.0, while NetApp is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6. Dell Technologies holds a 15.4% mindshare in SS, compared to NetApp’s 27.8% 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
  • 509 Views
  • 310 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
NetApp ONTAP
Read 92 NetApp ONTAP reviews
  • 1,506 Views
  • 1,130 Comparison Views
98% willing to recommend
 

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.

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To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP Report (Updated: December 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP
December 2025
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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
8
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
92
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Storage Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerPath is 15.4%, up from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ONTAP is 27.8%, down from 44.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Storage Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetApp ONTAP27.8%
Dell PowerPath15.4%
Other56.8%
Storage Software
 

Featured Reviews

Derrick Brockel - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Read full review
BK
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 product is very reliable."
"It provides a high availability and will increase the performance of any server or operating system."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is migration without disruptions."
"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."
"The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."
"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."
"We can do upgrades without taking it down. We have had nodes fail and people just kept working."
"What I appreciate the most about the product is its resiliency."
"They have very good tech support who always answers our questions and troubleshoots our issues. They're great."
"Scalability is awesome with a cluster node, not only can you scale up, but you can also scale out."
"It's much easier and faster to deploy our storage with ONTAP than some of the other solutions that we have."
"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."
"The stability of our ONTAP system has been awesome over the last four to five years, particularly with the software. The controls have been excellent as well. We recently went through a view of all of our systems and found a number of them had been up, over three years without any sort of reboots or downtime. We have been very happy with the stability of the systems."
"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."
More NetApp ONTAP pros
 

Cons

"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."
"Customers do not choose PowerPath unless they have Unix or Linux."
"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."
"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 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."
"While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective."
"I wish tech support would be better. I wish I could talk to somebody more easily and qualified, because this is way it is supposed to be.."
"They need centralized controls."
"It takes them a few seconds to do a failover. I hope they can reduce this to milliseconds or at least drive it down to less than two seconds. Some of their competitors are already doing this."
"One of the challenges we have is the ability to tag data with ownership for internal billing and chargeback. We have to utilize some third-party tools for that. It would be good if they were integrated with NetApp ONTAP. Everything else is pretty good."
"The additional features I would like to see in ONTAP, and NetApp in general would probably be the single pane of glass software. Over the years that's probably the biggest area that we've struggled with. NetApp has had a lot of good products, but a lot of them haven't necessarily seamlessly integrated with each other and you have to go to multiple management consoles to manage their software or their hardware. From a customer point of view, I think that single pane of glass where you could just add modules and enable functionality would be the most beneficial thing that NetApp could add."
"There is room for improvement in the stability. They have been trying to become simpler, and as a result, there have been road bumps along the way. I have personally experienced this."
"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."
"The rate of technology could be improved."
More NetApp ONTAP cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The product is a little bit expensive."
"The price of the solution is fair."
"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."
"There are no additional costs associated with the product."
"We have seen ROI as we can fit a lot more storage in one rack."
"Because of the dedupe technologies and Data ONTAP servers, we have saved 20% on hardware. This is a lot of money for us."
"ONTAP is expensive, but most storage systems are now-a-days and everything is included with the license - there are no additional fees."
"NetApp provided the features required within our cost limit."
"Additional costs exist if you want a license for a feature like SnapMirror."
"Because of its manageability, we have fewer people managing it."
"The pricing for NetApp ONTAP is moderate."
"We receive the best support for a lower price point."
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
8%
Manufacturing Company
22%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Transportation Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise66
 

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 ...
See all answers
What do you like most about NetApp ONTAP?
We do not face any glitches or downtime.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp ONTAP?
It is cost-effective for the benefits you get.
See all answers
 

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Compared 35% of the time
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Compared 12% of the time
Cloudian HyperStore vs NetApp ONTAP Logo
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Compared 9% of the time
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StorONE Storage-as-a-Service vs NetApp ONTAP
Compared 9% of the time
QoreStor vs NetApp ONTAP Logo
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Compared 8% of the time
More NetApp ONTAP Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Dell PowerPath
January 2026
Dell PowerPath reportDownload Dell PowerPath product report
Buyer's Guide
NetApp ONTAP
January 2026
NetApp ONTAP reportDownload 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
December 2025
Free Report: Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP
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