Dell VMAX vs. NetApp AFF A-Series

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Dell VMAX
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
Dell VMAX All Flash is the latest iteration in the former Symmetrix series of enterprise flash array storage, available in the Dell VMAX 250F edition, or the Dell EMC VMAX 950F edition.N/A
NetApp AFF A-Series
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
NetApp AFF A-Series All Flash Arrays are the company's flagship flash storage solutions.N/A
Pricing
Dell VMAXNetApp AFF A-Series
Editions & Modules
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Dell VMAXNetApp AFF A-Series
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Dell VMAXNetApp AFF A-Series
Features
Dell VMAXNetApp AFF A-Series
Enterprise Flash Array Storage
Comparison of Enterprise Flash Array Storage features of Product A and Product B
Dell VMAX
9.8
Ratings
9% above category average
NetApp AFF A-Series
8.3
Ratings
8% below category average
Flash Array Performance9.80 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Flash Array Integration9.60 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Data Compression9.80 Ratings6.40 Ratings
Non-Intrusive Upgrades9.90 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Simplicity9.90 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Power Savings9.90 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Dell VMAXNetApp AFF A-Series
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

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Medium-sized Companies
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 10.0 out of 10
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 10.0 out of 10
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Dell VMAXNetApp AFF A-Series
Likelihood to Recommend
9.7
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Dell VMAXNetApp AFF A-Series
Likelihood to Recommend
Dell EMC VMAX All-Flash Storage is a very powerful storage that easily manages huge data transactions with high IO processing speed. This Storage is well suited for critical production environments because response times are much better. This storage enables direct data backup. It's always up and running during updates because it creates a redundant connection from the controller.
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Easy interface and the accessibility of the features are effective and this solution functionalities on data migration and processing of different from other packages is amazing. NetApp AFF A-Series All Flash Arrays is the most secure platform for easy management of all the business and project data and the capacity planning tools and even the configuration options are the best and easy to use.
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Pros
  • Powerful storage
  • Easy to set up and use all functions
  • Great storage capacity
  • Hybrid cloud solution
  • Transparent recovery
  • Once we set up and did configuration, no adjustments are required
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  • Protective multiple project and business data is excellent.
  • Solutions for data storage and data migration.
  • Providing useful and quality data reports is effective.
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Cons
  • Initial configuration are bit difficult need some experience resource to manage it.
  • We faced issue with vendor support during major impact.
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  • As always, Netapp upgrades are really painful. I wish there was an easy way of upgrading Netapp.
  • GUI is hard to use and CLI is even worse. GUI is confusing and you click all over the place before you get over the learning curve. CLI has changed from the 7-mode days and is very confusing to use. I have had scenarios where the support themselves use documentation to put in the proper commands.
  • Like any array, Netapp's CDOT has it's own bugs in the software. We learnt the hard way when one of our nodes went down and a bug prevented take over of SCSI services which resulted in an APD situation on all our ESXI hosts. Was a nightmare rebooting all the VM's and ESXI's to relieve them of the APD's. People don't pay millions towards a storage platform to go through nightmares.
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Usability
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Our organizations primary storage platform is NetApp AFF-A900 nodes. All our storage requirements, be it storage visible to our compute either using FC or NFS is through these nodes. The shares or CIFS too are setup on these nodes. We also use the fabric pool to write the data to NetApps Storage Grid
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Support Rating
The best part about this array is that once you have it configured it is pretty much done. There is little to no other configurations to be done other than normal volume adjustments. Support is great as they understand this array very well. The updates are very hands-off and are done solely by support. You contact them and then there are no other changes done on the end-user's side.
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Alternatives Considered
The EMC array is a lot more robust, but the PURE array does almost the same with about a tenth of ease from the configuration. It really depends on the type of backend servers that you need to support as to whether you need a EMC array or a PURE array.
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The IBM All Flash FAS was similar in performance and price, but we were already a NetApp shop. This made the decision easier to go with the NetApp AFF system so it would tie in with our SnapManager architecture, as well as keep the learning curve short.
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Return on Investment
  • Dell EMC VMAX All Flash Storage provides the hybrid cloud solution
  • Dell EMC VMAX All Flash Storage provides the great storage capacity with data security
  • Data Migration from other storage, data compression, stability
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  • Epic, our EMR providor, has very aggressive guidelines for performance. The Netapp AFF meets those guidlines easily eben in a mixed workload environment. This has helped us meet our business objectives by not having to diversify our storage platforms or vendors.
  • Multi-protocol support (block (ISCSI/FiberChannel) or File (NFS/CIFS)) Allows us to use the Netapp systems to solve all storage requirements regardless of the system needing storage
  • Clustered technologies along with non-disruptive movement of data between nodes on the cluster make hardware refreshes simple and allows the business to keep running without interruption even during massive data moves.
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