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 8.8, while NetApp is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. Dell Technologies holds a 11.5% mindshare in SS, compared to NetApp’s 42.4% 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

204 Views
58 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetApp ONTAP

Read 78 NetApp ONTAP reviews

809 Views
238 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Dell PowerPath

NetApp ONTAP

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell PowerPath and NetApp ONTAP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Storage Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP

March 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 845,406 peers since 2012

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

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

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Storage Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerPath is 11.5%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ONTAP is 42.4%, up from 42.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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.

Read full review

Christopher Cagayan

IT Server and Storage Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

A solution that comes with several valuable features and excellent SAN storage

NetApp ONTAP is scalable. They have two types of scalability, "scale up" and "scale out." With "scale up," you can get up to petabytes of data if you have the money to buy those servers and add them to the system. And "scale out" also, you can buy additional controllers, up to 12 nodes, which is pretty good when you are a big company. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. NetApp is one of our organization's main storage systems. Every application is scattered on all of our NetApp devices. Applications won't run without it because they need to pull data from NetApp ONTAP.

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

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

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

"The product is very reliable."

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

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

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

"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."

"We have been able to save about 10 to 15% on space using the space consumption features."

"Previously we didn't have DR, but ever since we purchased the NetApp server, we are able to use Snap Mirror and then create DR scenarios, so that's been a huge benefit. This solution has helped reduce the overall cost of storage space in our organization by allowing us to use one data center, instead of two, and then allowing us to replicate the data; so that saves us money to buy more storage. We have been able to save space by using this solution."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

"We can recover data quickly. We are able to failover to remote sites. We can do that within minutes."

"I love the replication technologies which keep a customer out of risk. At any time, we can do a seamless failover/failback, and have the latest data on it. The SnapVault is another excellent feature. It's used for remote disk-based backups so we don't need to depend on tape backups with their long restore times."

"It has the ability to bring up disaster recovery quickly."

"Efficiencies such as Flash Cache and Flash Pool allow us to make better use of slower, cheaper storage and have some faster storage sitting up front taking a lot of the caching and the reading. The way that has been optimized for the NetApp platform is better than the competitors. It has reduced our cost of storage because we're buying cheaper storage for the bulk capacity, which is really effective."

"We've seen return on investment for ONTAP specifically on the performance recently. Where we had our file storage solution sitting on a hybrid storage solution and we were having continuous performance issues, as our workloads went up we were able to put in an 8300 all-flash array. Since we've put that in, we've been under one-millisecond latency, and that's allowed us to not have delays in some of our EDI transactions. Our end customer integrates and interfaces with that technology. Fewer outages equal more business, more profit, more revenue, and immediate ROI. We've been really happy with the new All Flash hardware solutions."

More NetApp ONTAP pros

Cons

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Going forward, I want to see a simplified deployment and more straightforward recommendations on what is required for it."

"We're at 9.3 so when we go to 9.5 we would like the synchronous SnapMirror because our users would like that, especially the ones that do the conveyor belt of data. We'd like that."

"The only thing that they have to improve in NetApp is that they're still relying on padding each node in active/active in CDOT. That has to go away. They should look at the scalability on a platform level. The computer will have that one file system with multiple nodes on it. If even one node fails, any node in that cluster could take over the functionalities. But today, it absolutely relies on that active-active uncoupling it. That needs to be improved in such a way that it would be one namespace. If this node goes down, any node in the cluster should take over and run that environment."

"I would like to see more in the public cloud space around things like object storage. A bit more granularity around how that gets deployed would be nice, but other than that I think they've got it nailed."

"There is room for improvement in areas related to hardware constraints—for example, more storage efficiency, especially in terms of deduplication."

"cDot only scales to 24 notes so scalability should be better, bigger, but we are one of the only customers that are facing this problem."

"NetApp ONTAP has similar areas of improvement as NetApp Private Storage regarding decreasing the error rate, improving the GUI, technical support and stability, and reducing the price."

"The technical support hasn't been that great. A couple of times we have had to call support and it took a long time to get somebody on the phone, it took a long time for someone to call us back. That's the only downside, the support."

More NetApp ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The price of the solution is fair."

"The product is a little bit expensive."

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

"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 solution is expensive."

"They could reduce the price."

"The data compression and deduplication have kept us from buying more disks these past three years."

"ONTAP is expensive, but most storage systems are now-a-days and everything is included with the license - there are no additional fees."

"It's very expensive."

"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."

"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."

"NetApp ONTAP is a pricey product, but you pay for what you get. I rate NetApp ONTAP a five out of ten for its pricing."

"We received a super deal for our new machine, so we were happy with the price."

More NetApp ONTAP pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Storage Software solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

13%

Healthcare Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Retailer

11%

Manufacturing Company

20%

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell PowerPath?

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

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerPath?

The product is a little bit expensive. It is a little pricey because it provides multipathing with other OSs. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell PowerPath?

The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR. When we use 3PAR storage, we have to use another technology to load balance. The product must be integrated with other products l...

See all answers

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?

NetApp provided the features required within our cost limit.

See all answers

Comparisons

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell PowerPath

Compared 40% of the time

More Dell PowerPath Competitors

DataCore SANsymphony vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 55% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 19% of the time

More NetApp ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerPath

March 2025

Download Dell PowerPath product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp ONTAP

March 2025

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

March 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP report.

See our list of best Storage Software vendors.

We monitor all Storage Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.