Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) and NetApp FAS Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Deduplication Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs. NetApp FAS Series Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: How would you compare Dell PowerProtect DD vs NetApp FAS series?
Answer: Data Domain is designed for a backup solution and it is capable of deduplication and data compression where NetApp and Pure storage arrays are used to store data. If you are looking for backup purposes you can compare with Data Domain, ExaGrid and Rubrics. This appliance is designed for a backup purpose.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It is a stable solution.""The most valuable features of this product are its guaranteed reliability and its duplication capability.""Its pricing is not overly expensive.""We have found the product to be scalable.""We have never had any issues with Data Domain. It has been stable.""The solution can scale up to one petabyte right now. It's very good for enterprise-level organizations.""The features that I have found most valuable with Dell EMC PowerProtect DD are its deduplication feature and its DD Boost protocol for fast transfer, which is amazing.""I like the different features. We work closely with Dell on different products and features, which is why we use them all."

More Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) Pros →

"Compression of the backup Oracle by RMAN on NFS saves space 5:1.""The input and output per second performance are satisfactory.""It has integrated snapshot and backup capability.""The most valuable feature for us is the combining of HA and SnapMirror.""Adaptive balancing is a valuable feature.""The initial setup was so straightforward. It was well-documented.""It changed the way we do Disaster Recovery (DR) around NetApp replication.""Has rock solid reliability and is easy to use."

More NetApp FAS Series Pros →

Cons
"The firmware upgrades could be simplified. I'm in the process of struggling to upgrade right now.""First-time integrations are difficult in NetWorker. NetWorker software needs to be simplified. It's very complex.""We have had deduplication and replication issues. When we used another backup software we noticed that it didn't have the same issues.""Dell EMC Data Domain needs to have better compatibility between NetWorker and the hardware. NetWorker is not as good as the other products which are currently on the market like Backup Exec.""They should reduce the CPC cost to customers. The product is becoming very expensive.""We would like to see the price of this solution brought down to be comparable with similar products currently on the market.""Data Domain lacks compatibility with fiber channels and tapes. We can't use it with a tape library. That's an issue in Latin America sometimes because a lot of clients still use tapes for budget reasons. Maybe they have a lot of archives. In North America and Europe, they do a lot of archiving, but they use the cloud more than we do. Sometimes we have to put together a Frankenstein where we connect another server to the tape library and send all the data there.""EMC is very expensive for small customers."

More Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) Cons →

"Needs to ​add wizards for newer, inexperienced users.""Replication should ideally be part of the ONTAP base bundle.""The user interface could be improved to have better graphics and the performance analyzer could be better.""NetApp systems are somewhat more complex, though not excessively so. If you're transitioning from a Windows server environment to NetApp, get training or education; otherwise, you might struggle with this solution.""They should add new features to the product.""I would like to see NetApp add incident support.""NetApp FAS Series should improve its price, which is expensive.""There are some technical limitations, but it would be great to have in-line deduplication and in-line compression for the FAS series as well."

More NetApp FAS Series Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It is expensive, but the performance and deduplication cover for the cost."
  • "Pricing is related to size. A lower range solution might be about $33,000. My customers use higher range versions with a price of around $100,000. That's the price for both the hardware and software."
  • "In Naira it was twenty-five or twenty-seven million (approximately $75,000 USD) for the implementation and maintenance cost for three years."
  • "There are many options in the pricing structure which can cause some confusion and necessitate the purchase of additional licensing."
  • "This is one of the more expensive backup solutions on the market."
  • "Its price is reasonable."
  • "It could be more competitively priced. Its licensing was for five years. Obviously, the support will get renewed at some stage, but that's it."
  • "The price is on the high side."
  • More Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It’s difficult for us to get money, so make sure you get everything in order, because there’s no going back and saying “oh, I missed this or that”, so make sure you plan well and well in advance."
  • "it’s not an inexpensive solution and it may not be for the cost-sensitive customer."
  • "The process for going to cluster mode is expensive."
  • "Most storage vendors also have software, or licensing bundles, which may offer the required licenses considerably cheaper, but do also maybe offer licenses, which are not needed."
  • "There are products available in market with comparatively lower costs."
  • "Cost effective storage for all performance levels (including all-flash)."
  • "The only area that could be improved is to lower prices for their All Flash FAS."
  • "The price it not low, but comparing features to other vendors, the price can be balanced."
  • More NetApp FAS Series Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Answers from the Community
    Dhruba Roy
    Marc Staimer - PeerSpot reviewerMarc Staimer
    Real User

    @Dhruba Roy, your question conflates very different kinds of storage. 


    PowerProtect DD is Dell's latest version of Data Domain. It is ONLY useful as target storage for backups. Nothing else, not even archiving. If that is what you want, it does what it's supposed to do. Albeit, it's a bit pricey and underperforming. 


    There are much faster, cheaper, and more advanced backup target storage. Especially when measuring restore performance. I would suggest you take a hard look at a variety of backup target storage vendors including, Infinidat InfiniGuard, ExaGrid, Quantum, StorONE, iXsystems, and many more. Most backup target storage is all HDD although some are hybrid SSD and HDD.


    NetApp FAS is a general-purpose storage system for blocks and files. It can be all HDD, hybrid HDD and SSD, or all SSD (all-flash FAS or AFF). It's a solid all around storage system with NetApp pioneered capabilities, but expensive as a backup storage target. 


    Pure Storage FlashArray//X or //C are block all-flash storage arrays. Their FlashBlades are all flash file and object storage systems. Good performers but overkill and way too expensive for backup target storage.


    I think you need to define what it is you really need. Of the 3 vendors you asked about, I am going to repeat myself, PowerProtect DD is ONLY useful as a target storage for backups. The other two can do so, but are really not priced nor designed specifically for backup target storage. 


    If general purpose storage is what you need NetApp and PureStorage are good possibilities among many others.

    Gianfranco Lanza - PeerSpot reviewerGianfranco Lanza
    Real User

    I think they are different types of storage for different purposes.


    If you are looking for a storage where to put backups data you can think Data Domain is the perfect choice because it is its main use (most or all the backup softwares have plugins in ordere to manage data domains).


    If you are looking for a primary storage (where to put your servers' data) then you can look to Netapp FAS and Purestorage.


    The latter are flash natives so it's simpler to manage and configure. If you look at the Netapp FAS you can also choose storages with HDDs with less performance (and a cheaper price). 

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:There are many different licenses, so you pay for what you need. There are various aspects you can add on, like extra speed, or something just for reading data. There are licenses to do replication as… more »
    Top Answer:Nothing comes to mind in terms of improvement. It serves its purpose. That said, if they could develop higher algorithms to make it more efficient, that would be great. Usually, with the backup, the… more »
    Top Answer:Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.
    Top Answer:The price of NetApp FAS Series is the same as Dell's cost, so I don't think there are any comparable elements in the pricing part. The tool is expensive.
    Ranking
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    Also Known As
    DataDomain, Dell EMC Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain
    Learn More
    Dell Technologies
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    Overview

    DD series enables your organization to protect, manage and recover data at scale. As the next generation of Dell Data Domain appliances, DD series sets the bar for efficient data management from edge to core to cloud and includes the ecosystem support and comprehensive data protection that customers have come to appreciate from Data Domain. The DD series offers a super-fast, secure, and an efficient solution that is built for multi-cloud data protection and to keep up with future demands. The DD series consists of the DD9900, DD9400, DD6900, DD6400, DD3300, and a software-defined option, PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition (DDVE).

    DD series empowers organizations to protect, manage and recover data at scale across their entire diverse ecosystems. DD series provides broad ecosystem support, efficiency, powerful data protection, cloud-enabled capabilities, and the cyber resiliency that our customers demand.

    The DD Operating System (DDOS) is the brilliance that drives the DD series. DDOS contributes the agility, security, and reliability that pushes DD series to deliver high-speed, scalable, and standard-setting protection storage for backup, archive, and disaster recovery. DDOS integrates seamlessly with many existing infrastructures, permitting ease-of-use with leading backup and archiving applications, and provides superior performance in conjunction with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager and Data Protection Suite. When you decide to purchase a new DD series appliance you can easily consume DDOS as a subscription providing greater flexibility for deployment while minimizing your overall upfront costs.

    DD series does a great job to minimize the threat of data loss and adds to the value of protected data while meeting ever-increasing demands of SLAs and increasing ROI. DDOS drives DD series to deliver up to 38% faster backups and up to 45% faster restores at significantly higher compression levels.

    DD series supports high availability within the single rack. Additionally, DD series can greatly reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) by minimizing downtime in the unlikely event of a hardware failure. DD series delivers amazing high-speed networking connectivity with support for 25GbE and 100GbE network adapters.

    Benefits of Dell PowerProtect DD

    Fast, secure, efficient data protection:

    • Provide 1.5PB usable capacity in a single rack
    • Allow for Up to 3PB capacity for long-term retention
    • Logical capacity is increased by up to 30% per TB when compared to the previous generation
    • Allow for instant access and instant restore of up to 64VMs and 100k IOPS
    • High-speed network connectivity – 10GbE, 25GbE and 100GbE
    • Seamless fast integration and outstanding performance with PowerProtect Data Manager and Data Protection Suite
    • Supports many of the leading enterprise backup and archive applications

    Industry-leading multi-cloud protection:

    • Provides software-defined protection storage on-premises and in-cloud with PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition (DDVE).
    • DDVE scales up to 256TB in-cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and others).
    • Greatly improves in-cloud restore performance by as much as 10x when compared to previous versions.
    • Cloud Tier delivers super simple and value-added long-term retention to public, private, or hybrid clouds
    • Cost-efficient disaster recovery to the cloud

    Operational simplicity:

    • Enhanced DD System Manager supports a complete chassis view
    • Significantly lower administrative costs
    • Grants a single point of management for all DD series by PowerProtect DD Management Center
    • Deploy Smart Scale for PowerProtect appliances directly from PowerProtect DD Management Center. Smart Scale helps drive down management complexities while increasing storage efficiencies. 

    Reviews from Real Users

    One user, who is an enterprise IT architect at a tech service company, says that “Dell PowerProtect DD is highly stable and reliable. I have not had a time when the system did not work and in an emergency this is critical.” He rates the ROI it has brought his company a five out of five.

    A pre-sales and technical manager at a tech services company says that "The features that I have found most valuable with Dell PowerProtect DD are its deduplication feature and its DD Boost protocol for fast transfer, which is amazing."

    Chris C., lead infrastructure architect at ThinkON, relates that Dell PowerProtect DD “allows our organization to send more data to this device compared to others. It also allows us a fast recovery of files or Virtual Machines if needed being on-premise.”

    NetApp FAS series is an enterprise-level storage system that provides a wide variety of data management services, including data protection, block and file storage, and data management.

    NetApp FAS is designed to be highly scalable, allowing your organization to grow storage capacity on demand. NetApp FAS also supports multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel, as well as various storage architectures, including SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network-Attached Storage).

    The FAS series has multiple data protection and data management features, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication, to help secure your data and manage it more efficiently. The system integrates with other NetApp products and solutions, to create a unified data management platform. The system can be deployed on-premise, on multi-cloud environments, or hybrid.

    NetApp FAS Series Benefits and Features

    NetApp FAS series provides its users with several key benefits and features, including:

    • Scalability: NetApp FAS series is easy to scale, allowing organizations to rapidly grow their storage capacity according to demand.
    • Security: Protect and manage your data with various data protection and data management tools, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication.
    • Seamless integration: Integrate with other NetApp products and solutions to ensure a unified data management platform across on-premise, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
    • Reduced costs: Consolidation of multiple storage boxes greatly reduces the data center footprint. From a management point of view, with NetApp FAS you manage a single storage box instead of multiple storage boxes.

    • Compatibility: Forward and backward compatibility ensures that you don’t have to trade in existing controllers. New controllers can always integrate with previously released controllers.
    • Multi-protocol support: Support for multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel.
    • High performance and availability: The solution has high input and output per second performance and ensures that critical data remains accessible in the event of a hardware failure.

    • Intuitive interface: The FAS series has a user-friendly interface and management dashboard, making it easy to manage your storage systems. With unified management, you can quickly run a single protocol on your entire system

    • Data cloning and replication: Easily clone databases of any size. Clones occupy a very, very small footprint on the storage until they are severed from the main database. Replications carried out by the system are fast and require very little bandwidth.

    Reviews from Real Users

    NetApp FAS Series stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its speed, reliability, and a wide variety of features.

    Adriano S., IT project and infrastructure service manager, writes, “The replication feature is noteworthy because it's faster than most and it uses little bandwidth. Then there's the friendly interface that the equipment offers. With this interface, it is very easy to manage.”

    Temitope O., a NetApp product manager at Hiperdist Ltd, says, “I like the unified management feature because sometimes you end up running a single protocol on the entire system. You rather have a system for a particular protocol and another system for other protocols, especially in a big environment like mine.”

    Sample Customers
    The US Army, City of Houston, Lloyds TSB, TiVo, Teck, Ingram Entertainment, The New York Mets
    Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Computer Software Company18%
    Insurance Company14%
    Energy/Utilities Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Government8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Healthcare Company11%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization59%
    Computer Software Company7%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Financial Services Firm4%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise61%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise64%
    Large Enterprise27%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs. NetApp FAS Series
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is ranked 1st in Deduplication Software with 25 reviews while NetApp FAS Series is ranked 5th in Deduplication Software with 19 reviews. Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is rated 8.4, while NetApp FAS Series is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) writes "Offers 99.999% uptime, has useful deduplication features, and offers great compression". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp FAS Series writes "Offers fast data transfer between NetApp systems and highly scalable, accommodating clusters with significant storage capacity". Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is most compared with HPE StoreOnce, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, ExaGrid EX Series, Rubrik and DD Boost, whereas NetApp FAS Series is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), NetApp AFF, HPE StorageWorks MSA, IBM FlashSystem and HPE StoreEasy. See our Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs. NetApp FAS Series report.

    See our list of best Deduplication Software vendors.

    We monitor all Deduplication Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.