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ExaGrid EX Series 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

ExaGrid EX Series
Ranking in Deduplication Software
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in Deduplication Software
4th
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 May 2025, in the Deduplication Software category, the mindshare of ExaGrid EX Series is 9.0%, down from 9.2% 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
 

Featured Reviews

Daan Lieshout - PeerSpot reviewer
With great features like deduplication and landing zone, the tool also provides stability and scalability
Speed-wise, ExaGrid is much faster than the other solutions in the market. When you choose between or from several different manufacturers, you need to understand a little bit about how the product exactly works and why its speed can be so high while being able to compare it to other solutions, allowing you to know of the backup window if you ever need it. You have to understand how it works and the product's preferences, even though the price may be slightly higher. Learning about the solution is not at all a problem, but when you open a console, you see so many things, and in the beginning you don't understand it all. Later on, it becomes more usable when you start understanding it. In general, ExaGrid provides you with a lot more information than any other system in the market. It is difficult to say what is additionally required in the solution because, presently, it has a lot of things like immutability, anti-hacking, and retention. The solution does put efforts towards improvement. The product's interface provides you with a proper overview of the deduplication rate and the status of how many storage systems you are left with through a visual screen, which is more than enough. When you go deeper, you can access all the enhanced consoles. The product can easily be integrated with third-party products because ExaGrid has all its best practice documents for integrating it with many other products. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.
Paweł Jabłoński - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for VMs with replication a feature, but need upgraded SSDs
We use this solution. I configured and updated it. Of course, I was also a user of applications that store data on that storage. We already have an SSD solution. So, rather than planning to go with an SSD solution, we are focusing on expanding it. If a company wants to deploy something new, it should choose a product with SSD, and NVMe disks. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of the solution are deduplication and landing zone."
"The tool has improved backup and recovery times. One of the key features contributing to this improvement is the landing zone and deduplication retention zone. When data is in the landing zone, the process is fast, ensuring smooth backup and recovery operations at high speeds. However, the process becomes slower for long-term backups moved to the retention zone due to fragmentation. So, if the data is older than a few days, the speed may be limited, especially for non-deduplicated data in the landing zone."
"One of the main features is the landing zone, it is a particular space where the information is not duplicated."
"It is a solid and a quite simple solution, which is a good combination. The customers like the simplicity and its scale-out capacity. They like the support pricing, and even the extension capacity pricing, a fixed price, which the executive is offering in Czech market."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use and data deduplication. It's extremely easy to use and does a very good job of data deduplication and compression."
"The solution easily integrates with the backup targets, such as Veeam."
"A reliable and easily managed storage system is a key performance factor. The system also has more features than we require."
"This solution provides us with easy management and great vendor support."
"Has rock solid reliability and is easy to use."
"Using the built-in Snapshots and SnapMirror technology, we were able to have better working data protection locally and off-site."
"End-users like that they can rely on the Snapshot technology so they can do their restores themselves."
"It's a stable product. No issues there."
"The solution is easy to use."
"Can use both SAN and NAS at the same time."
 

Cons

"The one place where we are sometimes losing the opportunity with ExaGrid is that a few customers still require a fiber channel connectivity, which is not always possible."
"The solution could improve by switching to a flash-type solution rather than the spinning drives that they currently use. However, we have not had any failure with the spinning drives. The flash-type drives are more up-to-date and are something that is in their roadmap."
"The product's documentation can be made more precise."
"When speaking about a scale-out, you want to have better equipment. You cannot just add a disc to the foreign equipment. You have to buy another one and put it together, like parallel."
"The tool reduces storage footprint. However, clients are now storing data for longer durations with increasing requirements to retain backups for longer periods, particularly as a defense against ransomware attacks. As a result, the retention zone with duplicated data is experiencing more demand, leading to space constraints. This necessitates using higher-end, more expensive models to address the issue."
"I would like for them to develop direct cloud integration with a third-party cloud. Direct integration with AWS and other cloud providers."
"The only downside is in ease in management; it is not easy to use."
"It could be more flexible in terms of configuration."
"Installation of the additional switches and ETP could be improved."
"There is room for improvement in deployment and configuration processes."
"A big problem with physical appliances is that updating them can be a bit burdensome."
"We would like to have further integration with some backup products. They have some of them already, but there could be more."
"NetApp FAS Series could improve by being more secure."
"The solution could do more than just data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The current agreement has 21 terabytes of free space and it cost approximately $35,000."
"The previous solutions I have used both included the Backup Software and the Appliance making it hard to compare to this solution. However, overall the solution is reasonably priced for the features you receive. ExaGrid EX Series is priced better than HP, Dell, and possibly Commvault which I have compared in the past."
"I rate ExaGrid EX Series' pricing eight to nine out of ten."
"In comparison to other solutions, it's affordable. They're all too expensive."
"My company had to pay 1,60,000 EUR for the system we use, and the payment was made just once for the system and five years of full support."
"The product's pricing is reasonable."
"The solution is more expensive than other vendors."
"The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is reasonable for its performance."
"Cost effective storage for all performance levels (including all-flash)."
"It is a one-time license charge for NetApp FAS Series to run and we pay annually for upgrades and support."
"The price of the NetApp FAS Series is reasonable and it provides value for the money with the feature sets. NetApp FAS Series are competing with Huawei storage which has an office and does aggressive marketing with a discount. However, we found that if our customers do a technology refresh they are happy with the performance of the NetApp FAS Series."
"The scalability is pretty good, but it's too expensive."
"The product is on the expensive side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
53%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ExaGrid EX Series?
The tool has improved backup and recovery times. One of the key features contributing to this improvement is the landing zone and deduplication retention zone. When data is in the landing zone, the...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ExaGrid EX Series?
I rate ExaGrid EX Series' pricing eight to nine out of ten.
What needs improvement with ExaGrid EX Series?
The tool reduces storage footprint. However, clients are now storing data for longer durations with increasing requirements to retain backups for longer periods, particularly as a defense against r...
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

EX Series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NCI Group, North Attleborough Public School, North Kingstown School Department, NPS Pharmaceuticals, Prudential Douglas Elliman, Rathbone Brothers PLC, Rio Hondo College, Ruder Finn, Sarah Lawrence College
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 ExaGrid EX Series vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.