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."One of the features that my customers are really interested in is immutable snapshots. There are immutable snapshots to which your applications can be reverted back if you are hit by some kind of ransomware threat or malicious attack. That's kind of a key deal, and it is one of the selling points I use to point out to my customers the value and the features that Pure Storage brings to the table."
"The first year, we started out with one or five terabytes and it took what was 20 terabytes of storage down to less than one terabyte."
"Performance, deduplication, compression, and fast response time for requests from servers and applications."
"It is an SSD array that has awesome performance, low submillisecond latency, and does what it is supposed to do. It just works, which is difficult for things to do anymore."
"At this point, I don't know anything that they could provide in a better way."
"With Pure Storage, we don't see any latency or IOPS. It has been a very seamless integration."
"It helps to simplify storage. For most of our customers, when they move to Pure Storage, storage becomes an afterthought."
"The first set up we had was really straight forward and simple."
"Ease of management, aside from the serious performance, is the best feature."
"The solution's most valuable features are the inline data reduction and deduplication."
"XtremIO’s capability to run any workload without much in the way of design considerations makes this very easy to use and size."
"It has very good performance for an application which needs lower latency and a better response, for example, in microseconds."
"The program is very stable."
"The performance is good, which is important."
"Very good IOPS performance"
"The solution's most valuable feature is its high performance."
"The Snapshots and just the overall flexibility of the product have been great."
"The tool's most valuable feature is efficiency."
"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."
"It is easy to manage data through the GUI by using Active IQ and the unified manager."
"Previously we had migrated from Dell EMC and we had a lot of difficulties moving data around. Now, if we need to move it to any slower storage, we can move it with just a vault move within the cluster. Even moving data between clusters is extremely simple using SnapMirror. The mobility options for data in All Flash FAS have been awesome."
"I would say the consistency with the ONTAP versions and the speed and performance from the flash."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the deduplication and the ability to move data to different clouds."
"Tech support has been absolutely amazing. I think on the technical aspects as well, my staff is able to get great support from the NetApp technical support resources that we have. What I love about NetApp is they have a health care division. At times, it's such an amazing thing because if we have a healthcare-related issue, there's no one better than having prior CIOs from health care organizations that NetApp has hired, and that are part of the health care team, to help out with any of those initiatives and support problems. Support has been absolutely phenomenal."
"The credentials on the iSCSI interface are only available to type in with the Chrome browser, and not with the Firefox browser."
"It was a little costly. The price was ultimately higher than both of the other solutions that we evaluated. I'd say that's the only downside."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"The product should improve its response time. I have also encountered issues with its configuration."
"There are a lot of things to improve."
"There are scenarios with very specific functionality around VMware integration particularly to do with the way we'd like to manage LUNs in VMware. The tools are pretty good but there's room for improvement there."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve in the area of cryptographic information in the consoles. The user-friendliness could improve. The Pure Storage FlashArray team should come and log into the system with their maintenance credentials and then pull out the information as evidence of cryptography."
"The problem is that we can only make a few groups, around five or six groups. I like groups and we need a lot of them. We had to put all the information in only a few groups and cannot make a more detailed separation of them."
"They can improve the product by providing an HTML5-based interface instead of the Java GUI based application."
"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."
"I would like to see the ease of deployment and built-in Metro clustering."
"I believe having more replication options comparatively to VMAX (other than RecoverPoint) would be great."
"In the next release, the solution could have better integration and if we can host assets on the cloud, such as NetApp has the NetApp volumes, which we can host on the cloud directly called NetApp CVO (cloud volume ONTAP). Dell EMC should come up with something purely on the cloud rather than manage services."
"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."
"I would like to see more scalability."
"The solution needs to be simplified. When you integrate your storage with other systems, could use a little bit of automation."
"NetApp AFF needs to focus more on block storage. It has to focus on high-end, performance-driven applications."
"The Bezels need improvement."
"Stability could be improved."
"There is room for improvement in terms of support. I have noticed that if I sometimes call their customer care for a particular issue, they will give me another number and ask me to call that other team. It would be better if they could do a warm transfer. That would save customers time from calling all the numbers again and speaking to another team."
"For ONTAP, in general, the deduplication ratio and Snapshot limitation are areas that need improvement. There is a global limitation on the number of Snapshots or clones that can be spun off of a particular Snapshot. If those limitations are increased, it might be helpful."
"This is an expensive solution that could be cheaper."
"We'd like to see improvement in the time to retrieve from the Cloud, whether it's on-prem to cloud and whether it's public or private cloud."
"NetApp should offer more training so everyone can learn about the products. Other vendors have a lot of training options. It would be great if NetApp would highlight how to use the features more so that every admin or person can gain more knowledge about this technology."
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.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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