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Cohesity SmartFiles vs Dell ObjectScale comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
Cohesity SmartFiles
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (17th)
Dell ObjectScale
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
SM
Evangelist / CTO at fgnext
Enables effective data management with reliable backup and recovery
Cohesity SmartFiles aids in data management with features like full-text search through indexed documents. The architecture supports backup, ransomware awareness, and data management on a converged platform, offering triple-protocol access (NFS, CIFS, and S3) while facilitating gradual improvements in access rights management. It allows for redundant setups, with automated backup and recovery options in a cloud environment.
RM
Solution arhitect at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Extends data management capabilities while offering robust options for further enhancement
Dell ECS provides features such as active-active and geo-replication, which offers a good approach for disaster recovery. As a Dell platinum partner, we appreciate that most Dell portfolio products are integrated together. For example, Dell ECS can be integrated with other file share systems or PowerScale without requiring third-party tools. The integration between Dell products is particularly noteworthy because Dell provides the full cycle of storage solutions, from NAS, SAN, hybrid, to object storage. All these solutions are fully integrated together. The pricing is competitive when compared to other vendors. While comparing with HP's offerings, Dell ECS as object storage is one of the best. Pure Storage might offer better pricing, but you won't find the same level of integration across products if you source the full cycle from one vendor. The complete integration of Dell solutions is one of the main features I appreciate, and I often advise my customers to consider this ecosystem. This integration helps with having a single point of contact and support.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The speed is the most valuable feature, along with the ease of getting it connected. We were able to get it online in less than a day."
"With this program, all of our applications are able to perform faster and this enables us to provide faster platforms and services to our customers and employees."
"NVMe data storage platform that's easy to set up and easy to use. It's stable, with a lower response time, and quick technical support."
"Before we used Pure Storage it took 93 days of employees who run the database to back up and restore databases. The scale of deployment basically went from several days to a few minutes."
"I find Pure Storage FlashArray to be much better than traditional storage because it has a GUI interface. It makes the process of allocating the storage much easier, and most activities are automated. It is like clicking a button for every task."
"It has good stability for our company."
"The seamless integration into the public cloud has improved my organization."
"We clearly have seen the difference between having storage on Dell EMC or NetApp versus what we have now on Pure Storage, and the investment was a clear win for us."
"Cohesity SmartFiles aids in data management with features like full-text search through indexed documents."
"The performance is good."
"Dell ECS is very easy to handle, primarily because the web UI dashboard and everything is very easy to manage for every customer."
"Dell ECS is a very stable solution and most of the S3 APIs are supported."
"The performance is good."
"The most valuable features of Dell ECS are its capability to integrate multiple protocols seamlessly with other Dell solutions like PowerScale and data domain."
"This solution is very easy to use, and is very reliable."
"Dell ECS is a cost-effective solution that provides ease of use and availability."
"The most valuable features are the S3 protocol implementation and the integration with other DELL EMC products, like ISILON."
 

Cons

"The GUI is simplistic and basic. I feel like it's explanatory, but not enough, it needs a little more to it."
"The initial setup was a little complex. We had some initial issues with the design and had to help correct some of the white papers for it, but it wasn't your standard use case."
"Pure Storage had operational challenges between 2016 to 2018, impacting perceived reliability."
"The speed can always be improved."
"The connectivity needs improvement. You do not have the possibility to have a file and block connectivity at the same time on the same machine."
"I want to improve the overall service level of the solution."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"I would love for them to have a hyper-converged solution."
"Users must remember that running DataProtect and files on the same cluster could threaten access if there is a platform failure. It's not suitable for applications needing high I/O or low latency."
"Its security can be improved."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"The major weakness in the solution is that there is no cloud version for Dell ECS."
"We have had issues when the ECS is expiring or the NetBackup is expiring images."
"One area for product improvement would be the garbage collection process. It takes longer than expected, so speeding up that process would be beneficial."
"There is room for improvement in the DPI reports, as they could be made more user-friendly."
"The solution needs to provide better integration between this solution and all other kinds of systems."
"They could provide centralized reports."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could always improve. They are still more expensive than some alternative offerings. Cost is always a concern and when there is a battle they tend to be more expensive."
"It was less expensive than some of the alternatives. It's not as though it was a premium price to get that kind of quality. It's a very competitive product from a price perspective..."
"The license for Pure Storage FlashArray includes the support and there are no additional payments that are needed. This is not an inexpensive solution, you need to understand the value of your data before you use a backup solution."
"Cost-wise, it's been very effective."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is a really cool concept. As long as we maintain our subscription, we will get new controllers every three years and really never have a forklift upgrade like we currently are doing. Just that future-proofing is an ease off of my mind to know that I won't have to do what I'm dong right now again."
"We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
"We have 16 or 18 arrays. We like to do the three-year support model so that we get Evergreen and therefore, we get free upgrades. We pay around more than 1.5 million dollars."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
Information not available
"It's a lease-based model, so it's capacity-based. We already negotiated the price a lot, but we're still doing that with Dell because somehow the product was not installed successfully, so there was a lot of struggle in the distributor territory between Dell and the environment itself. I would give the solution a 6 out of 10 for the pricing. There's a little room for improvement."
"If I remember correctly, Dell ECS is an appliance, so if you buy Dell ECS, you also have to buy the hardware, while IBM is standalone software, so you can buy IBM as software only without needing to buy the hardware. On a scale of one to five, I'm rating the pricing for Dell ECS a four."
"We initially purchased all of the licenses at the same time."
"The product is quite expensive."
"It is an expensive solution. There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product."
"The price of Dell ECS should be reduced."
"It is an inexpensive product."
"The charges for this solution are made in blocks of models, which are purchased depending on what features an organization requires."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Government
9%
University
9%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business63
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise143
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I don't really know much about the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray in terms of the absolute cost. Regarding Everg...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Despite liking Pure Storage FlashArray, there is room for improvement in automation. Pure Storage FlashArray needs to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cohesity SmartFiles?
SmartFiles is an economical solution, priced per terabyte on the backend. Initial setup and licensing costs align wit...
What needs improvement with Cohesity SmartFiles?
Users must remember that running DataProtect and files on the same cluster could threaten access if there is a platfo...
What is your primary use case for Cohesity SmartFiles?
Our customers use Cohesity SmartFiles ( /products/cohesity-smartfiles-reviews ) in conjunction with Cohesity SpanFS (...
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?
I cannot think of anything as an area for improvement with Dell ECS. I do not see any pricing or usability concerns.
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
1. Acer 2. Adobe 3. AIG 4. Airbus 5. Allstate 6. Amazon 7. American Express 8. Aon 9. Apple 10. ATT 11. Autodesk 12. Bank of America 13. Barclay's 14. Bayer 15. BlackRock 16. Boeing 17. BNP Paribas 18. Cisco 19. Coca-Cola 20. Comcast 21. Dell 22. Deutsche Bank 23. Equinix 24. ExxonMobil 25. Ford 26. GE 27. Google 28. HP 29. IBM 30. Intel 31. JPMorgan Chase 32. Kroger
Atos
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