We performed a comparison between Dell PowerStore and NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays 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."We've had to use tech support on a number of occasions. They did everything remotely and talked us all the way through. They fixed the issue within 30 minutes. Every single time we contact them, they're perfect. I would give their technical support a ten out of ten."
"It's very fast and very easy to use. It performs well and is both flexible and compatible. We like it because it's easy to use."
"There was a dramatic improvement in operating costs just as a result of the environmentals and space, let alone the cost of the unit itself."
"We have tons of capacity on it."
"The initial setup was really straight forward."
"This is the best all-flash storage array on the market."
"Our storage phones home. It is smart and intelligent in that aspect, which has been huge for us. We don't have to be storage administrators."
"Lone segmentation is simpler and more agile. It's improved the velocity in overall provisioning from project to operation."
"Typically, high-performance and high-availability features, such as application snapshots and remote and local replication, are highly valued."
"This solution is highly flexible and offers efficient online compression capabilities."
"A particularly valuable feature is its simplicity."
"The support is very good."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is the all-NVMe flash storage. This is the most powerful feature of this series. It supports compression and duplication leads."
"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."
"You can add compute and capacity independently. We have sized the solution based on our current needs, but in the future we can choose to increase capacity if we grow our activity in the market. And if we have more business in our monetary system, we can increase compute. The ability to choose what we increase is a good feature."
"It provides a big benefit when upgrading a new VMware environment. For example, in a big environment with 10 to 30 ESXs, you can take everything and put that into PowerStore. So, it is cost-effective, which is very important and has been massive for us. You reduce almost 80% from the hardware and work directly from PowerStore. Building hardware, especially in a big VMware environment, is a big issue for my organization."
"Rapid deployment, easy integration management and cloning of areas."
"One of the most valuable features is the overall performance it provides. You're able to throw a pile of IOPS at it and it will handle that without much issue."
"I like the performance aspect of EF Series. It basically provides everything that we are looking for as a solution, very low latency and very high performance."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to set a specific margin of performance to a specific workload."
"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The management software is very good."
"It provides multi-protocol, which is what gives the edge when it comes to big lineage PC workloads."
"The stability, speed, and reliability are the solution's best features. The information is also very secure."
"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."
"This product has only two active controllers, whereas other solutions can have more. This is something that needs to improve."
"There are many features which need to be added, particularly on the replication side."
"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."
"They have a product, FlashBlade, which is their object storage integration, and that's something that we haven't integrated with yet. This might be an area for additional focus as it would play into scalability, because the very nature of object storage is that it's infinitely scalable."
"Pure Storage support could be a little better."
"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."
"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."
"With PowerStore, we have to choose between block storage and NAS functionality."
"It was very new when we first deployed it a year ago. Even the upgrade processes and knowing what to expect, as well as documentation, could be more robust."
"We are looking for the Dell PowerStore to become more mature to maximize our use cases."
"While using Dell PowerStore's interface in our organization, we sometimes miss out on some information."
"There is no Synchronize replication feature on the storage."
"Reporting is an area that could be improved. It's very simplistic sometimes, and some of the very technical guys on my team want to see more of the details and be able to massage the report a little bit better."
"The storage could be improved. I would like a feature for how to best secure an appliance and the storage since we are connecting the container to the public cloud. I would like them to develop another level of security, making it more secure than from what they have now."
"During the installation phase, the licensing part was not straightforward. It was very difficult for the technicians, who are not trained Dell EMC technicians, to do the licensing because the information on their website is not straightforward... Eventually, I had to pass this task to our business partner and they did it for us."
"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."
"A little more manageability, a simpler management interface. It's not necessarily that it's way overly complex. It's just that it's not as easy as the FAS series."
"This solution has limited storage."
"It needs a better management tool."
"Things like the FlexClones, SnapVault, SnapMirror, all of that. Some of it's available on the EF series, but we like what we have in the FAS system."
"This solution does not have any compression or deduplication."
"There could be better integration with some of our Cisco products."
"Its pricing should be better. Its price is competitive, but they need to improve the pricing. They have different licensing models, which they need to improve. My expectation was cloud integration, which they have, but it is a different license. Therefore, people cannot enjoy it. If I want to use it, I need to pay extra. There is a cost involved for everything, but it should reach everyone. It is similar to having a Rolls-Royce, but you need to pay extra for the key. If you want the key, you need to pay."
More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Pricing and Cost Advice →
Dell PowerStore is ranked 1st in All-Flash Storage with 46 reviews while NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is ranked 23rd in All-Flash Storage with 38 reviews. Dell PowerStore is rated 8.6, while NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Dell PowerStore writes "It has a very strong NAS that can support a lot of big, heavy environments". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays writes "A storage solution that offers great stability, resilience, and support". Dell PowerStore is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, NetApp AFF, Dell PowerMax NVMe and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is most compared with NetApp AFF, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Huawei OceanStor Dorado, HPE Primera and IBM FlashSystem. See our Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
We monitor all All-Flash Storage 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.
