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 14.6% mindshare in SS, compared to NetApp’s 41.8% 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

228 Views
71 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetApp ONTAP

Read 90 NetApp ONTAP reviews

837 Views
249 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Dell PowerPath

NetApp ONTAP

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerPath vs. NetApp ONTAP

April 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

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 May 2025, in the Storage Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerPath is 14.6%, up from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ONTAP is 41.8%, down from 42.7% 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.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The user interface is good."

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

"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."

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

"The product is very reliable."

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

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

"They always have new solutions for their customers. They also have good integration with other partners like Microsoft, VMware, and Oracle."

"They have very good tech support who always answers our questions and troubleshoots our issues. They're great."

"We are able to minimize the storage hardware. The compression and deduplication have helped reduce our overall cost of storage."

"CIFS and NFS protocols have delivered the most value. NetApp ONTAP offers very reliable CIFS and NFS protocols."

"You can scale the product up or out."

"I would rate this solution a ten because of what NetApp provides us from a quality layout. The partnership that they provide us and their assistance is very important and the work that they communicate with us on a regular basis is outstanding."

"With the NetApp Data ONTAP Cluster, we get some features that are particularly helpful. For example, we can always add to and remove nodes from the cluster. The ability to move volumes online from the storage side, from one aggregate to another aggregate, or from one node to another node, keeps up the performance which helps us a lot."

"The specific feature of NetApp ONTAP that I have found most valuable is SnapMirror. The feature that allows me to replicate volumes from one site to another and the possibility to reuse all the storage appliances by aggregating them into one cluster are also valuable."

More NetApp ONTAP pros

Cons

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"Technical support is not in person nowadays. We have to wait a long time to get an engineer. Then, most of the time, their engineers are not good enough to understand our problems. While we might not be able to explain the problem well, or they are not able to understand the problem well, their solutions are slow to resolution. The response time for tickets is bad nowadays."

"I would like to see more evolution towards the cloud."

"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."

"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."

"They could expand what is possible to do with automation as there are gaps in the Ansible module coverage they have."

"They could also improve on their ability to back up storage."

"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."

More NetApp ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is fair."

"The product is a little bit expensive."

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

"The solution is expensive."

"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."

"We have seen ROI as we can fit a lot more storage in one rack."

"Because of its manageability, we have fewer people managing it."

"With the duplication and compression, we have been about a one and half to two times savings since we are not running all-flash."

"With other vendors, we need to buy a separate license for a third-party storage, but with NetApp, you don't need to buy a license, as it will come up with the storage."

"There could be improvements, its proprietary software so it can be pricey."

"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."

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

"Because of the dedupe technologies and Data ONTAP servers, we have saved 20% on hardware. This is a lot of money for us."

More NetApp ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Transportation Company

14%

Healthcare Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

20%

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Media 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?

The price could be a little bit cheaper, but you get what you pay for. I would rate it an eight out of ten for pricing because it reflects the quality of the service offered.

See all answers

Comparisons

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell PowerPath

Compared 47% of the time

More Dell PowerPath Competitors

DataCore SANsymphony vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 44% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 17% of the time

Cloudian HyperStore vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 11% of the time

More NetApp ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerPath

May 2025

Download Dell PowerPath product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp ONTAP

May 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

April 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: April 2025.

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