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Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Dell PowerProtect DD offers significant financial benefits, enhancing backup efficiency and ROI through rapid restoration and data reduction.
Sentiment score
6.2
NetApp FAS Series offers efficient storage, cost savings, and satisfaction, especially in VMware environments, despite high expansion costs.
If you have the configuration well maintained and configured, you should have good efficiency and compression for the clients and for yourself.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Dell PowerProtect DD support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, despite regional inconsistencies in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Sentiment score
7.3
NetApp FAS Series customer service is responsive and knowledgeable, though regional availability and resolution streamlining can improve.
They respond within 24 hours of case submission, which is crucial for maintaining the solution.
I have dedicated support from Dell for Vietnam, and they are responsive.
I have encountered an issue before with other brands that would not have occurred with Dell.
Sometimes, the support was inadequate because the initial architecture was poorly defined.
We are also using it ourselves for the SAN and CIFS protocol.
They often provide basic solutions, such as suggesting a failover or a power cycle, which are not the sophisticated solutions we expect from a vendor.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
Dell PowerProtect DD offers excellent scalability for enterprises, with easy expansion and effective cloud options for large data volumes.
Sentiment score
7.4
NetApp FAS Series offers seamless scalability, integrating old and new components for medium to large enterprises despite potential cost issues.
The scalability depends on the IT department's strategy.
By keeping the increasing data in mind, we decided to go for Data Domain.
The solution is scalable to higher models, both vertically and horizontally.
NetApp FAS Series is scalable, and it is possible, but you need to pay.
The NetApp FAS Series is scalable and offers numerous solutions, but only if customers are willing to invest in the shelves.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Dell PowerProtect DD is highly reliable, with minimal downtime and robust performance, consistently rated nine or ten for stability.
Sentiment score
8.0
The NetApp FAS Series is praised for stability and reliability, with users noting minimal issues and high performance.
Dell is especially more stable in the enterprise product.
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is stable in terms of software performance.
When panic occurs on the node, it reboots itself, and we have experienced numerous hardware-related issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerProtect DD requires improved processing, security, ease of use, integration, and competitive pricing to meet user demands.
NetApp FAS Series needs enhancements in flexibility, pricing, integration, performance, documentation, support, virtualization, and scalability to address user concerns.
The high availability feature is only present in the higher models of Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain).
It is suitable for more customers since it is small, cost-effective, and a good start for any customer to know about Data Domain and DBS solutions.
Medium-level and SME-level businesses can easily utilize this feature, but Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is a relatively expensive solution to propose to customers.
Nutanix leads the business in this approach, and I feel that NetApp is missing some aspects, such as CPU, GPU, and RAM, in its AI portfolio.
There is an opportunity there for NetApp with Cloud Volumes ONTAP.
It was not possible to have a custom user inside ONTAP without the delete permission to delete the volume.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerProtect DD is costly but valued for deduplication and support, despite competition from Veritas and Commvault.
NetApp FAS Series is pricey but offers good ROI and savings through bundled licensing, with support impacting overall costs.
The pricing has become higher since July, and the license costs are more expensive compared to the past.
The price for PowerProtect DD is not suitable for my customers. It is very high.
The backup solution cost is higher than the actual solution.
The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable.
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerProtect DD offers deduplication, compression, and seamless integration, praised for scalability, security, reliability, and cost-effectiveness in data management.
NetApp FAS Series excels in high availability, integration, and efficient storage solutions, featuring robust disaster recovery and unified storage.
The most valuable feature of Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is its deduplication capability.
By using Data Domain, we get the advantage of data deduplication, reducing data size.
Retention for data, deduplication, and replication between sites are valuable features.
While NVMe disks are expensive and require three disks for parity calculations, hard drives in NetApp FAS Series are inexpensive, making it more cost-efficient per GB, even with RAID tech implementation.
One important feature for customers is its ease of use and continuity, enabling seamless usage across on-premise and cloud environments.
At this moment, autonomous ransomware protection is the key feature.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data ...
Ranking in Deduplication Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Disk Based Backup Systems (1st)
NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in Deduplication Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
NAS (3rd), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Deduplication Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is 28.2%, down from 29.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 3.5%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Deduplication Software
 

Q&A Highlights

DR
Jun 01, 2022
 

Featured Reviews

Faisal_Zia - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers efficient data management with robust features and reliable performance
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) can be improved in terms of price. While Dell is providing a proper device, other solutions, such as Symantec, can replicate their data through any NAS storage. Although their deduplication and compression might not be as effective, they can still accomplish the task. Medium-level and SME-level businesses can easily utilize this feature, but Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is a relatively expensive solution to propose to customers.
Arnaud Salmon - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good performance and
Once, I've been in a program, but they stopped supporting protocols like HTTP, STP, and that kind of stuff. All of the DIP supports at the beginning were kind of support when it was just Python and just five storage. And it happened a few times that the customer required the STP and HTTP protocol for storage. And I was surprised I couldn't do it anymore with NetApp. So, it would be beneficial for them to support both kinds of protocols. The only little black points that I would put on top of NetApp FAS Series. There is room for improvement in deployment and configuration processes. The thing with ONTAP is that we have a lot of layers, from the raw disks to the volumes we present to servers and configure. There are quite a lot of things to configure. Probably NetApp should ease the way to install that. In NetApp products, such as ONTAP and FAS, a solid understanding of storage is still necessary to handle configurations in larger systems. It's not the same with Pure Storage or Huawei. Even someone less familiar with storage could manage it, making it more accessible.
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Answers from the Community

DR
Jun 1, 2022
Jun 1, 2022
I think they are different types of storage for different purposes. If you are looking for a storage where to put backups data you can think Data Domain is the perfect choice because it is its main use (most or all the backup softwares have plugins in ordere to manage data domains). If you are looking for a primary storage (where to put your servers' data) then you can look to Netapp FAS and Pu...
2 out of 3 answers
GL
May 31, 2022
I think they are different types of storage for different purposes. If you are looking for a storage where to put backups data you can think Data Domain is the perfect choice because it is its main use (most or all the backup softwares have plugins in ordere to manage data domains). If you are looking for a primary storage (where to put your servers' data) then you can look to Netapp FAS and Purestorage. The latter are flash natives so it's simpler to manage and configure. If you look at the Netapp FAS you can also choose storages with HDDs with less performance (and a cheaper price). 
MS
May 31, 2022
@Dhruba Roy, your question conflates very different kinds of storage.  PowerProtect DD is Dell's latest version of Data Domain. It is ONLY useful as target storage for backups. Nothing else, not even archiving. If that is what you want, it does what it's supposed to do. Albeit, it's a bit pricey and underperforming.  There are much faster, cheaper, and more advanced backup target storage. Especially when measuring restore performance. I would suggest you take a hard look at a variety of backup target storage vendors including, Infinidat InfiniGuard, ExaGrid, Quantum, StorONE, iXsystems, and many more. Most backup target storage is all HDD although some are hybrid SSD and HDD. NetApp FAS is a general-purpose storage system for blocks and files. It can be all HDD, hybrid HDD and SSD, or all SSD (all-flash FAS or AFF). It's a solid all around storage system with NetApp pioneered capabilities, but expensive as a backup storage target.  Pure Storage FlashArray//X or //C are block all-flash storage arrays. Their FlashBlades are all flash file and object storage systems. Good performers but overkill and way too expensive for backup target storage. I think you need to define what it is you really need. Of the 3 vendors you asked about, I am going to repeat myself, PowerProtect DD is ONLY useful as a target storage for backups. The other two can do so, but are really not priced nor designed specifically for backup target storage.  If general purpose storage is what you need NetApp and PureStorage are good possibilities among many others.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
26%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
My use case for this solution is for protecting or backing up data to safeguard against hacking or for disaster recovery. I utilize it in more projects on the governmental side, the non-governmenta...
What do you like most about Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
The product, a disk backup solution, improves our data application tasks. We used tape libraries with Dev drives in legacy architectures, resulting in slow backups compared to modern drives like NV...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
The price is also a disadvantage. Price is a disadvantage with the PowerProtect as it needs to be cheaper. The cheaper device costs around $70,000, which is a big sum to pay for a device like this.
Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?
Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?
The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable because they also have deduplication, compression, and inline compression. They fo...
 

Also Known As

DataDomain, Dell EMC Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

The US Army, City of Houston, Lloyds TSB, TiVo, Teck, Ingram Entertainment, The New York Mets
Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.