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."Their technical support is excellent. It's the best out of any of the vendors we work with."
"Pure gives us better compression, it's easier to manage, a lot less hands-on."
"All our junior partners can administer the storage arrays. It is simple and easy to use. We don't have to dedicate a whole team of full time people to work on it."
"It's actually very stable"
"Most of the problems that we had in the past with the performance in IOPS have disappeared. It has been a great improvement for our customers' services."
"It helps to simplify storage. For most of our customers, when they move to Pure Storage, storage becomes an afterthought."
"We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression."
"The most valuable feature is it never goes down. We can expand and create volumes."
"XtremIO’s capability to run any workload without much in the way of design considerations makes this very easy to use and size."
"Very good IOPS performance"
"Initially, we faced numerous issues with our analytical systems. However, we saw performance improvement after the implementation of the solution."
"Performance and deduplication. This is a very robust block storage option that offers both performance and data optimization."
"The guaranteed sub-millisecond response time for a 4K block."
"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."
"The program is very stable."
"There are two compression technologies available within it, and they are valuable because they allow for significantly higher data storage capacity and the retention of a larger number of snapshots on the system."
"The performance. The flash performance helps move data pretty fast."
"Other manufacturers claim simplicity. In fact, frankly, they do have an advantage in that regard, however, they don't have the functionality. If you were to compare one of those products to NetApp, head to head from a feature perspective, NetApp would wind up in the top 10."
"I think it is a very stable product."
"In terms of the footprint, it is far more efficient. It has smaller, higher-capacity drives than our older unit. In terms of space, power, and cooling, it has simplified things."
"AFF has improved my organization because we now have better performance. We can scale up and we can create servers a lot faster now. With the storage that we had, it used to take a lot longer, but now we can provide the business what they need a lot faster."
"Speed, reliability, ease of use are the most valuable features."
"The stability is solid. It doesn't fail on us, which is exactly what we want. We are in a critical business that we can't have any percentage of downtime."
"I would like to see active replication. I know that it's available now but I haven't tried it yet. I hope that it works."
"It is not possible to create a cluster on top of multiple arrays."
"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."
"Just some nit picky stuff, like allowing servers and volumes to be grouped. Therefore, it would easier to work with them in the GUI."
"The credentials on the iSCSI interface are only available to type in with the Chrome browser, and not with the Firefox browser."
"The file functionality could be better."
"From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable."
"I would like some performance analytics which go deeper than today. It should be specific to some hosts and applications. This would be good."
"Native data replication: To replicate data between XtremIO devices, you need to use EMC’s RecoverPoint appliances to move the data."
"The physical architecture could use some higher levels of redundancy."
"Dell's technical support could be better."
"Scalability is something that can be improved because there is an issue when it comes to mixing versions."
"The solution needs to be simplified. When you integrate your storage with other systems, could use a little bit of automation."
"The product could be improved by reducing the pricing and having better organization in their technical support team."
"I would like to see the ease of deployment and built-in Metro clustering."
"This solution is geared toward enterprise-level companies. Small and medium-sized businesses would find it extremely expensive."
"ZAPI is kind of difficult to use. You know, it's SOAP-like, it's not really SOAP. I would like to see it more of a REST-based JSON, instead of XML."
"Offering the ability to actively write data on a single volume spanning multiple clusters is significant."
"The product should be more competitive and come up with additional features. They should keep the client always in mind and as the top priority. This would be the best way to compete with other solutions."
"We have had issues with CIFS presentations and outages, so if that was removed, we could do seamless upgrades without affecting CIFS presentations. That would be an advantage. That's about the only improvement I can think of."
"I would like to see a little more flexibility in customizing some of the SnapMirror stuff. We have been having a little trouble and, in the first round with tech support, they say, "Well, this is how we do it." It's not exactly throttled but it's limited in the number of connections it makes. We would like to be able to tweak that, to increase it a little bit, because we don't have half a dozen large areas that we are protecting, we have more like 40 or 50 areas. They run into each other a little bit and I don't want to spend time on them."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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.
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