We performed a comparison between Dell XtremIO and NetApp AFF based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It is the SAN backbone for our company."
"FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."
"Data deduplication is one feature I found to be the most valuable in the tool...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The ease of management is one of the most valuable features of this solution. I would have also said that it's pretty fast but now our SQL servers are starting to beat it up pretty bad."
"Technical support has been amazing."
"The stability is very good. I've done destructive testing on it and never had any type of storage outages from it."
"The speed of the Pure FlashArray is very, very fast and nothing in the market can compare to it."
"The stability and performance are the best things about the solution."
"Dell XtremIO is good for databases and huge workloads."
"Linear performance – The XtremIO wasn’t the fastest in all tests against other all flash arrays, but even with a massive workload, the response time and user experience were absolutely predictable with no sharp drop-offs."
"Very good IOPS performance"
"The Metro clustering and solid-state performance, are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The feature I like most about Dell Xtremio is its hardware quality compared to other vendors. It's clear they're continuously improving their research and development."
"Snapshots are valuable because of their seamless nature, as well as the minimal space each snapshot takes."
"It is great for applications like Microsoft Exchange, ERP, SQL and VDI; basically saved the VDI buy-in from users, as now performance was seamless in comparison to a physical PC."
"The most valuable features are that it is fast and reliable."
"Data efficiency is the most valuable feature because of the dedupe and compression."
"The speed, inline deduplication, and compression are really nice. It's also just easy to manage. We use Snapshot and SnapMirror offsite, which give us some good recovery options."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of management."
"The initial setup was very straightforward. It was intuitive to set up storage volumes and get the networking functioning. Their engineer was very helpful. We got the current array on our production site the very same day it was shipped in. We had it up on the network and started to put some storage on it."
"The most valuable features of AFF are its speed and the responsive support from NetApp."
"The performance is outstanding when it's all Flash. That's the biggest bang for the buck that we get."
"Our architecture has historically relied on RDMs, so AFF has enabled us to easily migrate from our old EMC PowerMax to the new NetApp. It's been pretty smooth. We have a lot of SAP servers in our environment, so performance is critical for us."
"One of the main features that differentiate AFF from the FAS products, or some other technologies used, is the footprint of these arrays are significantly smaller than the traditional ones. Also, the performance that you get to these new arrays is really significant. You can see a huge difference there. By switching to it, we can achieve more storage performance and efficiency as well as in the long run lower down some of the TCOs due to reducing the footprint."
"There was some complexity in the initial setup."
"I had to contact customer support when a drive failed as I was doing a couple of OS upgrades."
"One thing I'd like to see in a future release is integration between their main storage array and what they call their FlashBlade product; to be able to snapshot directly from the primary array into multiple different backup copies on FlashBlade."
"I would like to see more detailed reporting on the data. However, it would be nice to know what are the exact VMs usage after deduplication and/or what that VMs actual latency and bandwidth is, outside of VMware."
"We have not seen a reduction in our TCO nor have we seen ROI."
"Storage. There could be better storage."
"Just some nit picky stuff, like allowing servers and volumes to be grouped. Therefore, it would easier to work with them in the GUI."
"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"I am not too impressed with XtremeIO because we had a major failure."
"Scalability is something that can be improved because there is an issue when it comes to mixing versions."
"Get rid of the Java aspect of the GUI console."
"The GUI could be modified more in terms of how the different components are linked to each other."
"I would like to see more scalability."
"In some cases where we don’t need the flexibility of the virtualization layer, we could free up resources on the VPLEX by using the storage replication."
"The management should be improved and the GUI interface could be better and easier."
"The physical architecture could use some higher levels of redundancy."
"It would be much better if you had it more like the way they do Metro Clusters, where they have a switch, and the storage is all attached to a switch."
"I need faster Fibre Channel over Ethernet. They top out at 10GBs today and I would like that to go to 40 or 100."
"It would be better if they just improved the performance of the system."
"We have had customers asking about S3 support for a while now. I heard that is coming in one of the next versions. So, I would like to see S3 targeted support on the FAS system."
"We should be able to manage NetApp AFF as per the desired usage and needs."
"The certification classes are good, but they don't cover enough of the material, and the exams only test on what is covered in class."
"A graphical user interface displaying efficiency metrics, such as compression and deduplication rates, would be a great addition."
"The upgrade process could be a lot quicker, but it's still good as it is. The failovers and things like that are harder than expected."
Dell XtremIO is ranked 25th in All-Flash Storage with 48 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews. Dell XtremIO is rated 7.6, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell XtremIO writes "Suitable for high IOPS and helps get backup in ten minutes ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". Dell XtremIO is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell Unity XT, INFINIDAT InfiniBox and VMware vSAN, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN and NetApp FAS Series. See our Dell XtremIO vs. NetApp AFF report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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