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."Its array houses our entire production environment."
"The predictive performance analytics is a very good feature, as our system is performing better than before."
"It allows engineers to focus on other things rather than doing the more manual tasks. It automates tasks, so the ease of use is extreme. It simplifies the storage."
"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."
"The solution offers amazing performance."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are the management view of the solutions, ease of provision, and deprovision, it is fantastic."
"It helps to simplify storage. For most of our customers, when they move to Pure Storage, storage becomes an afterthought."
"The scalability options are very nice because you can scale it much better and faster. The scalability was there in the previous environment also, but this is far better than what we had before. It basically helps the user in case they are looking for more storage. We can scale it much faster."
"Ease of management, aside from the serious performance, is the best feature."
"Performance and deduplication. This is a very robust block storage option that offers both performance and data optimization."
"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."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its high performance."
"The speed is extremely valuable."
"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 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."
"Thin storage allocation"
"Our AFF 8040 is currently helping us in terms of response time and speed because it is a flash system. Most importantly, it enables our SQL Cluster to respond to database queries and things a lot faster. It minimizes latency."
"Deduplication"
"I'm from Germany, so we have lots of metro clusters. The ability to have two sides that are redundant across hundreds or thousands of kilometers is critical for our customers. We have several hundred customers with metro cluster systems, so that is one of the best features."
"I actually did major projects where we used NetApp storage for some government agencies, and we were able to keep the storage where the government or the customer is able to own the storage while using AWS as their computing. That part was helpful to the customer."
"We just migrated two petabytes of data storage from IBM over to NetApp All Flash. Some of the performance improvement that we've seen is 100 times I/O and microsecond latency."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility and level of technical support."
"Switching to AFF has improved the performance of a lot of our virtual machines in a VMware environment. The number of support tickets that we receive has fallen to almost zero because of this, so it's been a real help for our virtual server support team."
"Replication would be one of the most valuable features."
"It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups."
"Just some nit picky stuff, like allowing servers and volumes to be grouped. Therefore, it would easier to work with them in the GUI."
"Pricing could be better in comparison to other solutions."
"As partners, we should have the option to download the software, rather than have to go back through Pure to obtain it."
"Part of our company works on Dell EMC because Pure Storage did not have synchronous applications when we were purchasing our products."
"It's too early to tell if we've seen a reduction in total cost of ownership. The solution is expensive."
"We would like to see more development on their Copy Automation Tool (CAT) for Oracle, as well as better integration for our customers running Oracle VM."
"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."
"One thing that should be improved is the reporting and monitoring tools. It should use real time monitoring for storage, IOPS, latency, etc."
"I would like to see the ease of deployment and built-in Metro clustering."
"Native data replication: To replicate data between XtremIO devices, you need to use EMC’s RecoverPoint appliances to move the data."
"The product could be improved by reducing the pricing and having better organization in their technical support team."
"The GUI could be modified more in terms of how the different components are linked to each other."
"Right now, external appliances are needed to replicate XtremIO to XtremIO, or to another EMC system."
"This solution is geared toward enterprise-level companies. Small and medium-sized businesses would find it extremely expensive."
"I believe having more replication options comparatively to VMAX (other than RecoverPoint) would be great."
"I don't work on the technical side of things, so it's hard for me to highlight areas of improvement, but maybe the price could be a little better."
"I want an interface through ONTAP that look more like what it does for the E-Series with Santricity."
"We have been seeing some challenges around the application layer implementation. We are having some teething problems now with the cooperation between the application layer and backups to things, like SnapCenter. This may be a question of product maturity."
"I would like to see aggregate level encryption in the next release. This is critical."
"Better stability, not releasing features until they are fully functional, or at least giving us a software train that doesn't add them until they are fully functional and proven."
"We would like to have NVMe on FabricPool working because it broke our backups. We enabled FabricPool to do the tiering from our AFFs to our Webscale but it sort of broke our Cobalt backups."
"The initial setup was a little complex, because we weren't very knowledgeable in the NetApp at the time. We were using a third-party, and they didn't have a lot of technical individuals, so it took a while to get it out."
"NetApp AFF needs to focus more on block storage. It has to focus on high-end, performance-driven applications."
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 Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN and NetApp FAS Series. See our Dell XtremIO vs. NetApp AFF report.
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