DDN IntelliFlash vs Dell VMAX All Flash comparison

DataDirect Networks and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. DataDirect Networks is ranked #28 with an average rating of 9.0, while Dell Technologies is ranked #24 with an average rating of 8.2. DataDirect Networks holds a 0.5% mindshare in AFS, compared to Dell Technologies’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of DataDirect Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

DDN IntelliFlash and Dell VMAX All Flash are competitors in enterprise data storage. Users prefer the pricing and support of DDN IntelliFlash, but Dell VMAX All Flash stands out for its superior features and overall perceived value.

Features: DDN IntelliFlash is praised for its high-performance hybrid storage capabilities, scalability, and efficient data reduction. Dell VMAX All Flash excels with advanced features like powerful data services, robust performance, and extensive storage options.

Room for Improvement: Users suggest that DDN IntelliFlash could improve its software functionalities and integration processes. Dell VMAX All Flash users mention the need for better cost management and more user-friendly configurations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DDN IntelliFlash is known for its straightforward deployment process and responsive customer service. Dell VMAX All Flash provides a manageable deployment process but is noted for higher complexity. Its customer service is reliable but deemed less personal.

Pricing and ROI: DDN IntelliFlash is noted for its competitive pricing and favorable return on investment. Conversely, Dell VMAX All Flash, despite higher upfront costs, is viewed as providing value through its advanced capabilities and long-term reliability.

To learn more, read our detailed DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell VMAX All Flash Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell VMAX All Flash

September 2025

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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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DDN IntelliFlash is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell VMAX All Flash is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.0%
Dell VMAX All Flash	0.8%
DDN IntelliFlash	0.5%
Other	97.7%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

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Anil Rahulwar

Storage Engineer at Movate

Good customer service and support and suitable for large environments

It is very easy to install. Users don't need to remember anything while deploying IntelliFlash because everything will be taken care of by tech support. They can easily modify the installation or change the password with the help of the tech support. It is very easy to integrate IntelliFlash with other solutions. We have plugins that can be integrated with other solutions. It will require maintenance. It is the same as any other storage solution: updates and upgrades, firmware upgrades, and drive upgrades.

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BrijeshKumar

Technical Lead at L&T Technology Services

With an easy initial setup phase, the tool is useful for multi-site replication and DR

The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. If the product is up and running after, if it goes down, my company has observed that there are multiple failures that occur in the tool, so it needs to be reinstalled from scratch. The tool should have an automated feature or an automated option to handle the aforementioned scenario, which one can simply go and reset, after which the tool should be reinstalled with the same configuration.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

"The solution is scalable."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"It provides a combination of all the protocols that you need, without losing deduplication and compression."

"Data Compression: Up to 80% space reduction in the database"

"It's very fast. We were seeing read latencies of less than one millisecond. It is robust."

"We use IntelliFlash products for larger environments, like Qatar Airways."

"It has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the amount of disks needed for the virtual environment."

"It performed great originally, and when it performed great, it was awesome."

"High performance and ease-of-management are the most valuable features."

More DDN IntelliFlash pros

"The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface."

"The ransomware protection feature is housed in a separate unit, specifically addressing the top twenty most critical threats."

"The snapshot feature has been precious for our testing processes, application development, and managing testing environments due to its efficiency and ease of use."

"We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution."

"It works very well."

"The product's initial setup phase was good."

Cons

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"In future releases, I look forward to more AI features."

"Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible."

"In the proxy section you can’t choose a user account and password, so it is not allowed at the moment to go out, if customer has such constellation."

"It only keeps one hour of real-time data without the ability to do deep analysis of each element."

"We had just one small stability problem with power flapping and it did not start up again automatically. We had to access service ports and manually restart the storage processors."

"Snapshots are not as easy to access as on a NetApp device."

"Performance is horrible now. Our original intent was to buy new storage in about two years. But since it became a critical urgency for us, we decided to purchase a new one in two or three months."

"It's somewhat scalable, but maybe not so much as some of the competition."

More DDN IntelliFlash cons

"There is room for improvement in the centralized administration."

"Improvements are needed in both partition recovery and scalability."

"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability."

"We encountered some challenges during large data migrations that could be addressed for smoother transitions."

"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additional engines to address this limitation."

"The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"The product is expensive."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"I think we pay around 100 grand per year for three arrays or four arrays."

"I recommend the full bundle software in order to have all the functionality. It is more expensive to purchase it one by one."

"The price falls within the mid-range, neither inexpensive nor high-priced."

"It is not a cheap product."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Retailer

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IntelliFlash?

It is a bit cheaper than other products, 10% to 20% cheaper.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IntelliFlash?

DDN IntelliFlash should improve in terms of sales. In future releases, I look forward to more features about AI and M...

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What is your primary use case for IntelliFlash?

We use IntelliFlash products for larger environments, like Qatar Airways. They have large scalability and use more th...

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell EMC VMax?

The product's initial setup phase was good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC VMax?

The pricing provided by EMC is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell EMC VMax?

The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additiona...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 23% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

VAST Data vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 48% of the time

NetApp AFF vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 19% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 12% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 11% of the time

Tintri VMstore T7000 vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 10% of the time

More DDN IntelliFlash Competitors

Dell PowerMax vs Dell VMAX All Flash

Compared 71% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs Dell VMAX All Flash

Compared 15% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell VMAX All Flash

Compared 7% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell VMAX All Flash

Compared 7% of the time

More Dell VMAX All Flash Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

September 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash

October 2025

Download DDN IntelliFlash product report

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

September 2025

Download Dell VMAX All Flash product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

Tegile, IntelliFlash N-Series, IntelliFlash T-Series, IntelliFlash HD-Series

No data available

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

Western Digital through its IntelliFlash arrays delivers high-performance storage with a complete range of features and connectivity options, including inline compression and deduplication, application and VM consistent snapshots, replication, RAID, data encryption, VMware vCenter integration, and multi-protocol support for SAN (FC, iSCSI) and NAS (NFS, SMBv3). IntelliFlash arrays deliver high availability through dualredundant and hot-swappable components, active/active or active/passive controllers, non-disruptive software upgrades, eMLC flash, and proactive cloud-based monitoring, analytics, and intelligence. A RESTful API provides scripted or programmatic control.

DataDirect Networks

Dell VMAX All Flash is utilized in hyper-converged solutions like VxRail deployments, critical for Data Domain in backup tasks. It supports multi-site replication, disaster recovery, banking IT operations, and high-performance applications.

Dell VMAX All Flash plays a key role in data-intensive environments due to its robust capabilities in storage, data protection, and high throughput tasks. It is crucial in hyper-converged solutions and VxRail deployments, facilitating multi-site replication and disaster recovery. Its applications span across banking and other critical IT operations requiring high performance. The system's ability to support efficient data compression and provide ransomware protection addresses significant security concerns. Multi-site replication and redundancy safeguard data even during power outages or hardware failures, while the snapshot feature aids in testing, application development, and environment management.

What are the key features of Dell VMAX All Flash?

Compression: Efficient data compression capabilities.
Ransomware Protection: Tackles ransomware threats effectively.
Multi-site Replication and Redundancy: Ensures data safety during power outages or hardware issues.
Snapshots: Aids in testing, application development, and environment management.

What benefits should users look for in Dell VMAX All Flash reviews?

Data Protection: Enhanced data security with ransomware protection.
Performance: High throughput for demanding applications.
Reliability: Multi-site replication and redundancy for critical operations continuity.
Support: Adheres to IP strategies with excellent customer support.

Dell VMAX All Flash is critical in industries like banking, where it supports IT operations requiring high performance, and in environments demanding stringent data protection measures. Its role in multi-site replication and disaster recovery makes it invaluable for business continuity and critical data security across sectors.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Bank of Stockton, Barnsley College, Boyes Turner, Brigham Young University

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell VMAX All Flash

September 2025

Free Report: DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell VMAX All Flash

Find out what your peers are saying about DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell VMAX All Flash and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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