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Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Dell ECS comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.5
Pure Storage FlashBlade boosts ROI by reducing costs, enhancing efficiencies, increasing VM density, and saving 20%-85% in time.
Sentiment score
5.1
Amazon EFS offers scalable, cost-effective storage with minimal maintenance, enhancing productivity and benefiting businesses through pay-as-you-go pricing.
Sentiment score
4.9
Dell ECS enhances stability, reliability, and cost-efficiency, offering quicker returns on investment and operational savings.
It does not require much management once you set up correctly, so it saves time, allowing an admin to focus on other work.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Pure Storage FlashBlade support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge but criticized for slower responses and occasional language barriers.
Sentiment score
6.6
Amazon EFS customer service is rated well for responsiveness and effectiveness, with appreciated support plans and documentation.
Sentiment score
6.8
Dell ECS support is responsive with localization, but faces challenges with access, time zones, and technical expertise variability.
I would rate them an eight out of ten.
The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years.
While the time to respond was good, the time to resolve was not optimal, as it took more than a week.
Amazon's support model is consistent across services.
Training and support depend on the plan you have, with centralized support being very helpful in case issues arise.
There is a lack of SUSE Linux experts which affects the level of support.
The response time and quality of the technical support are satisfactory.
Customer support is generally good but sometimes struggles with complex issues.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.8
Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for scalability, ease of expansion, and support, despite some areas needing improvement.
Sentiment score
7.1
Amazon EFS excels in scalability and auto-scaling, supporting large users but may face connection restoration issues.
Sentiment score
7.6
Dell ECS is scalable and user-friendly, meeting business needs despite upgrade costs, suitable for various organization sizes.
Pure Storage FlashBlade is scalable.
Its auto-scaling feature is a crucial point, providing high scalability that I would rate at ten out of ten.
Elastic File Systems allow me to scale up or down easily.
It is very cost-effective, and there's no need for initial charges.
Through the fabrics, it provides the clustering, allowing us to add nodes easily.
It allows scale-out processes by adding extra nodes, providing flexibility for customers to increase capacity on demand.
I would rate scalability between eight or nine, as it provides a good ability to scale and expand storage.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.8
Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for its impressive stability and reliability, with minimal disruptions and consistent uptime even during upgrades.
Sentiment score
7.1
Amazon EFS is considered stable and reliable by users, with minor issues that are generally resolved quickly.
Sentiment score
8.0
Dell ECS is highly stable and dependable, suitable for enterprise use, with minimal issues reported despite occasional hardware failures.
In case there is any issue with any blade, the data is moved to another.
Amazon EFS is extremely stable, as it is managed by AWS.
While I experienced an EFS mount dropping, it was related to server issues rather than EFS itself.
We have not experienced any outages in the last four years.
We use it in very critical areas inside Saudi Arabia with critical customers.
I'd rate stability maybe 9.5 out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek better cloud integration, enhanced deduplication, improved support, protocol enhancements, simpler configuration, and a more intuitive interface.
Amazon EFS needs setup simplification, enhanced Windows support, speed improvements, better security, and AI-driven ease for nontechnical users.
Dell ECS requires enhanced performance, scalability, user-friendliness, regional support, pricing, security, integration, documentation, and cloud compatibility.
Technical support definitely needs significant improvement.
Its configuration should be easier.
Enabling AI-driven or automatic features would be beneficial for new or nontechnical users.
In my project, there are challenges related to AWS, such as ensuring proper security measures with IMS code and encryption.
Live logs should be viewable through the GUI like with Logstash or Elasticsearch.
The deployment is not easy, and some expertise is required to configure the virtual data center and replication groups.
Incorporating extra integrations beyond S3, like Hadoop file systems, and being well aligned with trends like AI solutions would be beneficial.
 

Setup Cost

Pure Storage FlashBlade offers high performance and features, justifying its cost with no extra software fees and fixed support costs.
Amazon EFS provides flexible pricing based on storage and usage, but monthly costs can be higher than alternatives.
Dell ECS pricing is perceived variably, with costs depending on discounts, features, and enterprise-specific needs.
The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the past, but one benefit is that they have built-in ransomware protection.
EFS could cost around $30 to $50 per month for similar usage.
Amazon EFS is more costly compared to other storage options available from AWS.
Elastic File Systems can be expensive due to the nature of data transfer costs.
It relies on nearline SAS drives, which are cheaper than flash or SSDs.
The pricing model is on the higher side compared to other vendors.
The price is reasonable given the abundance of features, including managing, control, host resources, dockers, and containers.
 

Valuable Features

Pure Storage FlashBlade offers fast, scalable, and user-friendly storage with efficient integration, analytics, and versatility for diverse needs.
Amazon EFS provides scalable, flexible storage, seamless EC2 integration, and advanced security, ideal for efficient data processing and cost reduction.
Dell ECS excels in integration, performance, support, and cost-effectiveness, offering robust features like data compression and disaster recovery.
We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.
The best features of Pure Storage FlashBlade include better throughput and better performance.
Its ease of integration with other AWS services enhances our infrastructure, while the shared storage access improves reliability and processing continuity for our applications.
They help me process data while maintaining low latency, which is crucial for efficient data processing.
The most valuable feature of Amazon EFS is its auto-scaling capability.
The stability of this solution is a major advantage, as we've not experienced any outages in the last four years.
Dell ECS helps with managing storage requirements since it's S3 kind of object storage with all needed enterprise features such as immutability, snapshotting, and application management, which are nice sets of features usually required.
If we encounter any issues or need to upgrade anything, we can simply open a ticket, and the EMC team is there to assist us.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure Storage FlashBlade
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Ranking in File and Object Storage
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (15th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th)
Amazon EFS (Elastic File Sy...
Ranking in File and Object Storage
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (10th)
Dell ECS
Ranking in File and Object Storage
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.8%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is 0.9%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell ECS is 7.7%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File and Object Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us
The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.
MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Auto-scaling capabilities enhance file management while reducing downtime
The most valuable feature of Amazon EFS is its auto-scaling capability. It's really easy to configure EFS by just creating it and running a command to directly configure it with my servers. It supports unlimited use, and charges are applied based on the file usage at the end of the month. The solution offers reduced downtime and increased durability through its auto-scaling features.
SamuelThomas - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing efficiently with user-friendly interfaces for monitoring and managing resources
We normally recommend Dell ECS to enterprise customers and government customers Dell ECS is very easy to handle, primarily because the web UI dashboard and everything is very easy to manage for every customer. They can monitor the DPS, access failures, bandwidth, failed requests, and latency.…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...
Which file storage system is better - Amazon EFS (elastic file storage) or Azure File Storage?
Amazon EFS is easy to set up: you can use the AWS management console, API, or command-line. Amazon EFS can grow to pe...
What do you like most about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?
The product's initial setup phase is easy, as per the configurations.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?
We don't need to purchase it; we are just using it and paying Amazon as per the utilization. We make direct payments ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC ECS?
The pricing is moderate and at par with the market. As a service provider, we receive good margins, indicating a favo...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC ECS?
It's difficult for me to comment on improvements for Dell ECS because we typically do not engage in those areas. We h...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, EMC Elastic Cloud Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Arcesium, Atlassian, Seeking Alpha, Zend
Atos
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Dell ECS and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.