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.
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"The latency is good."
"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"Deduplication and cloning capability"
"We've seen great enhancements from the performance point of view. There's good availability, stability, and continuity, but the performance actually has increased by 60 or 70%."
"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."
"Initially, we faced numerous issues with our analytical systems. However, we saw performance improvement after the implementation of the solution."
"Speed and reliability:"
"It has very good performance for an application which needs lower latency and a better response, for example, in microseconds."
"Dell XtremIO is good for databases and huge workloads."
"The most valuable features are: complete performance and ease of use."
"AFF helps us improve performance for our enterprise applications, data analytics and VMs. We have moved our primary data stores for production over to AFF, and a lot of the problems that might happened have gone away."
"Things that have been really useful, of course, are the clustering features and being able to stay online during failovers and code upgrades; and just being able to seamlessly do all sorts of movement of data without having to disrupt end-users' ability to get to those files. And we can take advantage of new shelves, new hardware, upgrade in place. It's kind of magic when it comes to doing those sorts of things."
"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."
"The most valuable aspect of NetApp AFF is the money it saves our organization."
"If the AutoSupport is well configured, then you need not to do a monitoring. You will get call and mail when any issue is completed."
"The speed, inline deduplication, and compression are really nice. It's also just easy to manage. We use Snapshot and SnapMirror offsite, which give us some good recovery options."
"NetApp AFF handles tier-one workloads, including home drives, departmental shares, group shares, and application shares."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to do QoS."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"The software layer has to improve."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"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 is very expensive to scale. You have to buy an additional system to extend from one disc, for instance. It is scalable, but extremely expensive to do so."
"Sometimes we don't get an immediate response from the support team. The initial POC also took a lot of resources."
"Dell's technical support could be better."
"Right now, external appliances are needed to replicate XtremIO to XtremIO, or to another EMC system."
"The product could be improved by reducing the pricing and having better organization in their technical support team."
"The solution needs to be simplified. When you integrate your storage with other systems, could use a little bit of automation."
"Scalability is something that can be improved because there is an issue when it comes to mixing versions."
"After the three-year prepay, the extended warranty is a little expensive."
"The total cost of ownership has increased a little."
"There is no direct storage attachment available. Most configurations require additional switches for data access."
"Tech support is a place where there is room to improve the product experience. The response time when they are busy is not very good."
"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."
"From my perspective, everything works well. They've already announced that they have some features in their next release that make the existing investment more usable, by adding software features to your existing legacy hardware investment."
"One minor improvement could be making scale-up solutions with AFF more cost-effective compared to scale-out options."
"It can get a little expensive if you need to add more disks. The cost is a pain point for us, especially in terms of expansion."
Dell XtremIO is ranked 26th in All-Flash Storage with 48 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 281 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, Pure Storage FlashArray, Dell Unity XT and INFINIDAT InfiniBox, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Pure Storage FlashArray and VMware vSAN. See our Dell XtremIO vs. NetApp AFF report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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