We performed a comparison between Dell PowerStore and Dell SC Series based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Dell PowerStore came out ahead of Dell SC Series. Although both products have good service and support and have brought positive ROI, SC Series is more difficult to deploy and has more areas that require improvements.
"The back-end data reporting for Pure Storage is phenomenal. The data that you can see on the performance of your customers' array, so you can be proactive about upgrades or enhancements, and is a phenomenal tool to have access to as a partner. I haven't seen this type of stuff out of anything of the other storage systems."
"It comes with a large number of features out-of-the-box, which makes it easy for us to see problems and manage capacity."
"The compression and deduplication features help to make the best use of the capacity."
"The amount of data that I have moved to it from legacy storage has enabled us to retire units that are three or four times the physical size."
"As soon as we introduced our first Pure Storage FlashArray, the first benefit was at least twice the performance increase. Our production databases simply ran twice as fast with no other change."
"It is noticeably easier to manage than other appliances that we have."
"It upgrades in place which means we'll be using it well into the future."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is its high stability level."
"I find all of the Dell PowerStore features to be valuable."
"The product's initial setup phase was very easy."
"Dell PowerStore is an easy and fast tool to work through our company's data."
"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"The deduplication functionality provided by the solution is fairly good. The speed offered by the product is enough for our organization."
"Typically, high-performance and high-availability features, such as application snapshots and remote and local replication, are highly valued."
"When compared to Pure Storage, Dell PowerStore's cost was quite attractive."
"There's some new stuff coming with 7.3, which just got released, where they're spreading the sparing across the whole array, rather than having a dedicated spare disk, and have it sit there and do nothing until one of them dies, and then it kicks in - and having to rebuild all of that. Now, they'll do the sparing across all the disks and they say that is going to add not only space but performance to the array, with 7.3."
"The performance benefits weren't surprising, we expected that. What we didn't expect were the densification benefits that we got out of going all-flash. We're able to put more applications on the arrays because of how all-flash performs. The way some of the application profiles have responded to all-flash has been really pleasing."
"Customers are most impressed with SC's provisioning because you don't need to buy a large amount of storage upfront. It's pay-as-you-grow. It also has solid compression and duplication features."
"Easy management of volumes: You can create volumes and easily assign them to VMware clusters, increasing their size."
"One time, we had a drive fail and we were notified before we even saw it on the device."
"Connecting it up, you can run it within a few hours."
"The most valuable feature is the no-forklift upgrade. While the thing is running, I can change out the controllers one at a time and keep the customer up and running. I can add shelves and storage and SSD drives or spinning drives to the system, while it's running. I can bring all that in and rebalance the load across the new disks or, if we take disks away, rebalance the load across what's remaining, and it just works."
"They have a feature called Live Migrate; it's been very, very useful."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution. Right now, you have to click and schedule an appointment with Pure Storage to be able to upgrade. I would love for it to automatically download, install, and fall-over every controller as it updates."
"I recognize it's a difficult challenge, but I would like to see them make the pricing more reasonable."
"The solution could improve by having a multi-tenant feature."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve in the area of cryptographic information in the consoles. The user-friendliness could improve. The Pure Storage FlashArray team should come and log into the system with their maintenance credentials and then pull out the information as evidence of cryptography."
"In the configuration, which we brought in or tested it in, it has a very limited config as far as the array goes. That said, it still did more than our anticipation."
"I would rate this solution an eight. There's always room for improvement, nobody is perfect to get a ten out of ten. They do what they do well. It's not cheap but we it's for uses that we needed."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see automated copy data management for SQL Server."
"The GUI is simplistic and basic. I feel like it's explanatory, but not enough, it needs a little more to it."
"We would consider this solution if the pricing is competitive with other options, as it offers a very good solution. However, the current price is slightly higher than the competition."
"Data reduction needs improvement."
"Dell PowerStore is a good solution overall, but some models could support hypervisors better by allowing for more customization and flexibility for customer needs."
"The price is on the higher side."
"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."
"The only area I can highlight for improvement is that the 4:1 data reduction target has not been reached. This may be due to an issue with Dell EMC's initial analysis of data compression. As a result, we have had to add new physical disks to reach our goal of total available disk space."
"The solution only does thin provisioning."
"There is no Synchronize replication feature on the storage."
"What I understand is that this is a 13 year old architecture, so it has lived its life and they're phasing it out. Honestly, we were initially struggling with the integration with VMware (but it was fixed with the VMware 6.5) and, then, it was around a 10GB network. At that time, it had the longevity to go to 100GB as well. It got us thinking about, when we go into the containerized architecture, what do we need to do to fix the infrastructure?"
"The lack of reporting would be the main issue."
"In terms of additional features, I would like to see some kind of I/O meter, to indicate what we are using in terms of performance. I would like to see automation with that, where it would give me the trends. I want to know those things easily, to help me know where issues are going to occur."
"We can definitely see a need for it being a multi-controller system for customers who want to scale beyond the current capability. That's always a downside. A lot of the new systems are scaling vertically, they scale out, and the Compellent, of course, is controllers with shelves under it, so you don't scale out with it, unless you add another one. But if you do, they don't talk to each other, like some of the other solutions that we sell."
"It would be helpful if the solution offered higher performance, at least on the back end."
"The ease of use could be improved. It took me a while to learn it."
"This product should be a lot more user-friendly."
"The connection should be better integrated with the network to offer a better view of the system."
Dell PowerStore is ranked 1st in All-Flash Storage with 46 reviews while Dell SC Series is ranked 24th in All-Flash Storage with 49 reviews. Dell PowerStore is rated 8.6, while Dell SC Series is rated 8.4. 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 Dell SC Series writes "Automated architecture that proactively optimizes your database ". Dell PowerStore is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, NetApp AFF, Dell PowerMax NVMe and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, whereas Dell SC Series is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Huawei OceanStor, HPE Nimble Storage and NetApp AFF. See our Dell PowerStore vs. Dell SC Series 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.
