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NEC D3 series vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

NEC D3 series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (4th), NAS (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of NEC D3 series is 1.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 12.3%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp FAS Series12.3%
NEC D3 series1.7%
Other86.0%
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1369971 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of IT at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
Stable, performs well, and the technical support is good
We use this storage solution to host our ERP, CRM, file server, databases, and lots of other things The performance is better than with our previous version. We are not satisfied with the cost of licensing and would like to have a better price to performance ratio. We have had contract-related…
Srikanth Purushothaman - PeerSpot reviewer
DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems
Has supported long-term data protection and backup while requiring better part availability and pricing options
For monitoring purposes, we normally use flash access storage exclusively. We utilize a hybrid system because we need performance, combining NL-SAS for the volume and SAS flash to use as a fast cache system that provides more IOPS. We normally implement RAID 10, which we prefer over RAID 6's n plus 2 combinations. We utilize it for data redundancy, even with write intensity on. Regarding the unified storage architecture for NetApp FAS Series, we normally opt for exclusivity unless budget constraints exist. Our IOPS are very high, reaching somewhere about 50k to 150k or 1.150k. The high performance ensures minimal latency. An advantage we've seen with NetApp FAS Series is that snapshots provide very rapid backup and fast recovery. We basically use snapshots for data protection as first-level protection, with deduplication between the two storages serving as second-level protection.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The performance is better than with our previous version."
"Technical support from NEC is very good."
"It is good to have a unified storage where you can have block and file level protocols."
"The solution is stable."
"I would recommend this solution to new users because it's easy to implement, it's easy to install, it's easy to scale, and there is what we call investment protection."
"It helps us reduce costs because its data compression saves a lot of capacity we'd otherwise have to have."
"The biggest advantage that makes NetApp FAS Series better is that we can use RAID technology on the storage."
"The solution has tiers inside which means we do not only need to use SSDs."
"NetApp is also a very stable company that offers various storage options at the highest level of build and reliability."
"The most valuable features are the NAS features and NetApp's excellent support."
 

Cons

"We are not satisfied with the cost of licensing and would like to have a better price to performance ratio."
"We are not satisfied with the cost of licensing and would like to have a better price to performance ratio."
"The solution’s pricing is expensive."
"The adoption of flash by NetApp has also been lagging behind the trendsetters, like TMS, Nimble, and others."
"The product must support more drives."
"The solution can improve on the replication features."
"It's not a cheap system. It is very expensive. The pricing has been ridiculous every time that we had to renew the support."
"The product should improve its user experience."
"The adoption of flash by NetApp has also been lagging behind the trendsetters, like TMS, Nimble, and others."
"With scalability, we feel the system is limited."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution’s cost is reasonable."
"I don't recall the price, but in general, pricing can always be better."
"If we want a ransomware solution with the product or other extended features, we need to pay an extra cost."
"When we need to implement a less expensive solution we use Huawei. NetApp FAS Series is a little bit expensive compared to the average of the market."
"The price, compared to competitors, is quite high."
"NetApp FAS Series is a reasonably high-priced solution, partially because we select the configuration that duplicates the entire system."
"There are products available in market with comparatively lower costs."
"I've sold arrays for as little $20,000 USD and as high as $300,000 USD."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

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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?
I do not handle the pricing part of NetApp FAS Series since it is managed by the sales team.
 

Also Known As

D3 series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tsukuba Science City, Hokkaido Telecommunication Network Co. Inc, PHP Institute
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 NetApp, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Hitachi Vantara and others in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network). Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.