


NetApp FAS Series and Dell PowerStore are in the competitive storage solutions category, with each offering unique strengths. NetApp appears stronger with features like multiprotocol support and high availability, while Dell PowerStore has advantages in machine learning and VMware integration.
Features: NetApp FAS Series provides flexibility with hybrid cloud solutions and a robust framework supporting various protocols. It includes powerful data management tools like SnapMirror and FlexClone. Dell PowerStore features end-to-end NVMe storage and integration with VMware. It utilizes machine learning for resource optimization, offering performance-driven design.
Room for Improvement: NetApp FAS Series could improve user experience with better documentation and management interfaces, and enhance deduplication processes. Concerns about pricing are also noted. Dell PowerStore could benefit from improved data replication capabilities, consistent technical support, and better VMware integration.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both solutions are mainly deployed on-premises with increasing hybrid and private cloud implementations. Customers generally report positive technical support experiences for both NetApp and Dell, despite occasional service delays. NetApp is recognized for knowledgeable support, while Dell is appreciated for consistent service delivery.
Pricing and ROI: NetApp FAS Series offers competitive pricing, though some users find it costly when considering features and support. Dell PowerStore is recognized as cost-efficient within the NVMe market but may have a higher initial expense. Both solutions promise good ROI regarding performance and functionality for various enterprise storage needs.
If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.
If you purchase storage with 300 terabytes, you can easily achieve one petabyte of effective capacity.
It's been trouble-free the entire time, with very high performance, as it has been designed and built properly.
We have seen a return on our investment in Dell PowerStore; definitely our cost per terabyte has been very good compared to some of the other vendors that we would have been using previously, and our performance benchmarks have exceeded what we were expecting.
If you have the configuration well maintained and configured, you should have good efficiency and compression for the clients and for yourself.
Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.
Technical support is good at least through vendors, not directly with the principal.
I would rate the technical support of Dell PowerStore between nine and ten out of ten.
They're responsive, knowledgeable, and have a quick turnaround.
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Dell support as a ten, focusing on that aspect alone, because it's what allows me to sleep at night.
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.
It hasn't broken down anytime in the last six to seven years, despite hurricanes, earthquakes, and power outages.
The solution's scalability is a ten out of ten.
It scales up and scales out both ways, and as our data keeps growing, it is very easy to just keep attaching and keep growing.
Scaling up can be done from a single enclosure that already has two controllers to a maximum of four storage units with up to eight controllers, and a massive amount of storage can be added.
We normally avoid current versions and use versions that have been running for at least two months in client usage before updating drivers.
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.
I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.
When I removed all the cables, it failed over within five minutes.
It's quite stable and reliable in general.
I have not experienced any downtime, bugs, or glitches, and it's much better than previous technologies.
When panic occurs on the node, it reboots itself, and we have experienced numerous hardware-related issues.
Most things are tailor-made, and we avoid downtimes even with primitive CLI commands.
One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware.
I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert.
Storage replication should be essential.
Something needs to be done with the caching to ensure that if some issue occurs, there needs to be an ability to disable caching during maintenance to make it static, safe, and good.
Pricing must also be considered, as Dell PowerStore is quite expensive compared to competitors in the market like HPE Alletra, Huawei Dorado, or Hitachi storage, for example.
The main reason why people move to Pure Storage is because it's simplified.
Storage companies should create encrypted storage solutions between the OS and storage to protect against ransomware attacks.
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.
While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.
The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.
Likely the cost is $400,000 whereas IBM may be $250,000.
Based on my experience, the cost of Dell PowerStore for around 500 GB of capacity is very competitive compared to any other platform in the market.
I asked for a new quotation on a server, and it is quite expensive; it is really expensive.
The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable.
Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed.
We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options.
This includes storage sharing, adding servers to the service, and the wireless host connection on the network side.
Dell PowerStore offers good integration capabilities, especially since it helps with backup, which is an important aspect.
In terms of whether my company could reduce the power consumption with Dell PowerStore, I would say that my company had a use case with a customer around three weeks ago where their old Dell EMC VNX Storage System used to draw about 2500 watts compared to Dell PowerStore which drew about 800 watts, which is a really a big saving looking at the twenty-four hours and seven days of usage of the system.
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.
Our IOPS are very high, reaching somewhere about 50k to 150k or 1.150k.
One important feature for customers is its ease of use and continuity, enabling seamless usage across on-premise and cloud environments.


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 15 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 11 |
| Large Enterprise | 12 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 54 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 34 |
| Large Enterprise | 81 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 31 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 38 |
| Large Enterprise | 57 |
Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.
Dell PowerStore is a scalable, high-performance platform supporting both modern and traditional workloads, enhancing IT operations with AI-driven automation and advanced data reduction features.
Designed for flexibility, Dell PowerStore integrates seamlessly with VMware, providing robust security and high IOPS. Users benefit from fast NVMe storage, intelligent data management, and scalable performance to handle diverse workload demands. However, improvements are needed in replication, enterprise functionalities, and UI complexity. Stability and support issues highlight the need for enhanced monitoring and pricing strategies.
What are the key features of Dell PowerStore?
What benefits does Dell PowerStore offer?
In industries like finance, healthcare, and IT, Dell PowerStore is critical for VMware virtualization, high-performance databases, and backup storage. It supports hosting virtual machines, mirroring storage, and handling SAP and Oracle databases effectively. Its role in hybrid and on-premises setups showcases its adaptability and integration capabilities for mission-critical tasks.
NetApp FAS series is an enterprise-level storage system that provides a wide variety of data management services, including data protection, block and file storage, and data management.
NetApp FAS is designed to be highly scalable, allowing your organization to grow storage capacity on demand. NetApp FAS also supports multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel, as well as various storage architectures, including SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network-Attached Storage).
The FAS series has multiple data protection and data management features, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication, to help secure your data and manage it more efficiently. The system integrates with other NetApp products and solutions, to create a unified data management platform. The system can be deployed on-premise, on multi-cloud environments, or hybrid.
NetApp FAS Series Benefits and Features
NetApp FAS series provides its users with several key benefits and features, including:
Reviews from Real Users
NetApp FAS Series stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its speed, reliability, and a wide variety of features.
Adriano S., IT project and infrastructure service manager, writes, “The replication feature is noteworthy because it's faster than most and it uses little bandwidth. Then there's the friendly interface that the equipment offers. With this interface, it is very easy to manage.”
Temitope O., a NetApp product manager at Hiperdist Ltd, says, “I like the unified management feature because sometimes you end up running a single protocol on the entire system. You rather have a system for a particular protocol and another system for other protocols, especially in a big environment like mine.”
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