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."Very efficient storage"
"The speed is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"Provides fast access and is user-friendly."
"We've been using FlashArray's snapshot for backups. Their replication across sites and response time are also excellent."
"The first set up we had was really straight forward and simple."
"It is an easy to use product for all of my team members."
"We like the data reduction rates. That has been really helpful. You get 4U of Pure storage replacing something like two racks of spinning disks. One of the things that has contributed to that are the data reduction rates."
"The mobile app is very helpful."
"The Metro clustering and solid-state performance, are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The most valuable feature of Dell EMC XtremIO is the data protection (DP) group, it is one of the most advanced features in these types of arrays. The dedupe and compression that this array provides both do a superb job."
"Very good IOPS performance"
"Thin storage allocation"
"Dell XtremIO is good for databases and huge workloads."
"It has very good performance for an application which needs lower latency and a better response, for example, in microseconds."
"The speed is extremely valuable."
"Deduplication and cloning capability"
"NetApp is like a one-point central management. For example, one can put everything on the right version and control the whole environment from one software solution."
"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."
"It should scale far beyond our needs. I don't think we will ever hit the edge of it."
"NetApp tech support is so good. Their tech support has always been so stable and the people are so good in case of any failure or any good feature that needs to be updated or features that supposedly can help with performance to improve some performance. NetApp support is one of the best that I deal with."
"We are using the AQoS operating system, which allows us to get a lot more out of our AFF systems."
"The most valuable feature is the support. If we have any issues, we can call into NetApp and their support is really good."
"Efficient and easily scalable all-flash storage solution, significantly reducing latency, optimizing data management, and providing cost savings for businesses"
"Most of our business-critical systems are provisioned from the NetApp AFF system. Compared to others, we have a minimal latency. Configuring the DR for high availability or migrating the volumes from one box to another is pretty easy with NetApp AFF."
"I would like to see more cloud integration."
"When we were doing some tests, we found that there was an I/O freeze when they were switching the controller."
"If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it."
"It is not possible to create a cluster on top of multiple arrays."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services. There are increasingly more and more services coming out from AWS but there are also certain constraints where we can't move everything over to a cloud as well. We would like for things that are on-premise to be easily integrated with AWS."
"The price could be better."
"I recognize it's a difficult challenge, but I would like to see them make the pricing more reasonable."
"I want to learn more about command line usage which I have not explored much yet. However, there are many automated solutions for repetitive tasks. I would like to see additional features like performance monitoring, configuring of alerts, and the customization of alert thresholds in the next release."
"The product could be improved by reducing the pricing and having better organization in their technical support team."
"Get rid of the Java aspect of the GUI console."
"The implementation isn't exactly complex, but the solution should have some enhancements in it to make the process more centralized."
"I would like hardware capacity additions to be a little more flexible. The upgrade path for the existing XTremIO units requires you to purchase 2 XBricks at a time and they need to be the same capacity as the existing XBricks."
"It needs a way to determine the deduplication of each LUN and what the impact would be if we were to move data from one LUN to another."
"Management: At the time, there was no snapshot scheduler, so I had to write XSnapCourier to address it. The sad thing is that even after the newest release, which includes a native scheduler, most customers using XSnapCourier chose to stick with it due to a more feature-rich experience."
"They can improve the product by providing an HTML5-based interface instead of the Java GUI based application."
"The GUI could be modified more in terms of how the different components are linked to each other."
"As for AFF itself, I don't have any suggestions of what I would be excited about seeing. I think that adding the support for the rest of APIs to AFF would be super handy. I think it's something that we've been waiting for for a while which would be fantastic."
"I've had a few cases where support wasn't able to answer the question or they took quite a while."
"Its integration could be improved."
"Its technical support could be better."
"One of the areas that the product can improve is definitely in the user interface. We don't use it for SAN, but we've looked at using it for SAN and the SAN workflows are really problematic for my admins, and they just don't like doing SAN provisioning on that app. That really needs to change if we're going to adopt it and actually consider it to be a strong competitor versus some of the other options out there."
"I just got through the session where it looks like they are going to support Oracle running on Linux with SnapCenter. That is one of the main things that we are hoping to get integrated."
"A while ago, they performed quite slowly."
"One minor improvement could be making scale-up solutions with AFF more cost-effective compared to scale-out options."
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.
We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.