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 easy to deploy and it's all-flash, so it's very fast."
"It is the SAN backbone for our company."
"We are very happy with the data deduplication and compression ratio that we have on the platform."
"At this point, I don't know anything that they could provide in a better way."
"The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"Pure Storage FlashArray's overall speed is its most valuable feature."
"The stability is perfect. The reliability is 100% and the latency is always lower than 1 millisecond."
"We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."
"A valuable feature of XtremIO is that, in terms of administration, it's simple and manageable."
"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."
"I like the deduplication and auto-tiering features."
"Xtrem10's features are more simple to implement. The integration and interface are also good."
"Thin storage allocation"
"The solution's most valuable feature is its high performance."
"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."
"We mostly use it for backup, because we cannot measure anything, and we are afraid to use it for surveillance systems. We were planning to use it for mostly for surveillance systems."
"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."
"Over the past 18 years, it has been extremely easy to upgrade to newer products and technology. We can upgrade as we move along. So, we have been able to keep up with the newest technology with zero downtime."
"The tool's most valuable feature is efficiency."
"My favorite part is all-flash solid drives. All of my applications are running on an all-flash array. Before, we used to get too many severity tickets on performance, but as soon as we migrated everything to an all-flash array, our critical applications are at top performance."
"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."
"The speed is important; no more problems caused by high latency."
"MetroCluster provides business continuity and is a critical part of our contingency setup."
"Speed. it's very performance designed. It's designed to have a lot of high speed."
"We do have an issue with the vCenter integration. Pure Storage says it has a lot of free space, but vCenter says its completely full. This is because their dedupes are saved as space, but Vcenter still detects the disk as completely full. So, we do have an issue with that."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution. Right now, you have to click and schedule an appointment with Pure Storage to be able to upgrade. I would love for it to automatically download, install, and fall-over every controller as it updates."
"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."
"The GUI is simplistic and basic. I feel like it's explanatory, but not enough, it needs a little more to it."
"Most of our upgrades have not been as smooth as they should have been."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions. For example, if I want to use this storage for a backup from the cloud, I want to have integration with the cloud vendors, such as Microsoft, Oracles, or Amazon. It could be available as an API to allow seamless integration. Additionally, the solution could improve by having native integration with a cloud provider, such as VMware or Microsoft, this would reduce the need to use third-party solutions to complete the task."
"They are doing some stuff with containers and an object search. These could be improved, because containers is one of the main topics that we are talking with our customers about."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"Right now, external appliances are needed to replicate XtremIO to XtremIO, or to another EMC system."
"I would like to see more scalability."
"Sometimes we don't get an immediate response from the support team. The initial POC also took a lot of resources."
"They can improve the product by providing an HTML5-based interface instead of the Java GUI based application."
"The solution needs to be simplified. When you integrate your storage with other systems, could use a little bit of automation."
"The management should be improved and the GUI interface could be better and easier."
"Scalability is something that can be improved because there is an issue when it comes to mixing versions."
"The GUI could be modified more in terms of how the different components are linked to each other."
"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."
"AFF could introduce different subscriptions on the platform."
"We would like to have more behavioral reporting."
"Some of the graphical user interface changes in the later versions of NetApp have not been as good as the older ones, like in the 9.5 era."
"The total cost of ownership has increased a little."
"In future releases, I would like to see the ability to automatically mount SMB shares and file systems."
"One minor improvement could be making scale-up solutions with AFF more cost-effective compared to scale-out options."
"The bad part about having scalability is the expense. It is currently extremely expensive, to be able to scale so fast on flash."
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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