Dell XtremIO vs VMware vSAN comparison

The compared Dell Technologies and Broadcom solutions aren't in the same category. Dell Technologies is ranked #23 in AFS , with an average rating of 7.8, and holds a 0.8% mindshare in the category. Broadcom is ranked #2 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.9, and holds a 14.0% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell XtremIO and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in All-Flash Storage.

To learn more, read our detailed All-Flash Storage Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

August 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

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dell XtremIO	0.8%
Dell PowerStore	15.9%
HPE Alletra Storage	10.0%
Other	73.3%

All-Flash Storage

HCI Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
VMware vSAN	14.0%
VxRail	16.1%
Dell PowerFlex	10.0%
Other	59.9%

HCI

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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Stanislaw Jagielski

Trainer, Storage Consultant at Oxon

Efficient and straightforward setup boosts data management capabilities

Scalability is a significant feature of Dell XtremIO, as it is easy to expand and manage. It provides a lot of features suited for complex systems, such as scalability and the ability to define multi-domain systems, which are beneficial for data management and storage separation. It is efficient from the customer's point of view, offering deduplication at both the volume and file levels. The configuration and setup are straightforward, provided one has knowledge in setting up network infrastructure like VLANs. It is easy to install, use, and configure, making it a reliable product.

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Pramod-Talekar

Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Enables efficient multi-environment cluster deployment and resource management with versatile features

While VMware vSAN is quite comprehensive, if we are running multiple infrastructures, applications, databases, and other elements, having a diagnostic tool to identify the actual problem area, whether application-side or infrastructure-side, would be beneficial. A proper monitoring tool that encompasses both applications and infrastructure would help in quickly resolving issues.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

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

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

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

"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"We've seen great enhancements from the performance point of view. There's good availability, stability, and continuity, but the performance actually has increased by 60 or 70%."

"Initially, we faced numerous issues with our analytical systems. However, we saw performance improvement after the implementation of the solution."

"Ease of management, aside from the serious performance, is the best feature."

"Snapshots are valuable because of their seamless nature, as well as the minimal space each snapshot takes."

"The most valuable features include the easy manageability of snapshots and its excellent performance in large-scale workloads."

"It is scalable."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its high performance."

"It is great for applications like Microsoft Exchange, ERP, SQL and VDI; basically saved the VDI buy-in from users, as now performance was seamless in comparison to a physical PC."

More Dell XtremIO pros

"I like the tolerance of VMware vSAN."

"We didn't only choose vSAN; we chose VMware because of SR-IOV, which is more on the hypervisor level and not on the vSAN storage. It's part of the whole system."

"It helped us survive power outages in one of our data centers, then continued to function without a hitch."

"In my opinion, vSAN is the most natural way to migrate to a fully hyperconverged solution. If a customer needs a more scalable solution with consolidated management, vSAN is excellent."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to continue our business needs and have higher visibility. It has definitely increased our business productivity levels."

"vSAN is very integrated."

"The solution's unified administration is its most valuable aspect."

"The deduplication and compression are excellent."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

"It is on the expensive side."

"The software layer has to improve."

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

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

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"If you are looking at flash storage solutions, XtremIO doesn't offer any unique features. Most of my customers are migrating their workload from XtremIO to other formats because of this."

"We've encountered challenges in integrating other products with Dell Xtremio, as it tends to be more vendor-locked. This means we can't easily explore other solutions that might work alongside Dell."

"Management: At the time, there was no snapshot scheduler, so I had to write XSnapCourier to address it. The sad thing is that even after the newest release, which includes a native scheduler, most customers using XSnapCourier chose to stick with it due to a more feature-rich experience."

"The interface could be simplified for beginners to ease the configuration of special objects in the system."

"The GUI could be modified more in terms of how the different components are linked to each other."

"Management and reporting need improvement."

"Right now, external appliances are needed to replicate XtremIO to XtremIO, or to another EMC system."

"I would like hardware capacity additions to be a little more flexible. The upgrade path for the existing XTremIO units requires you to purchase 2 XBricks at a time and they need to be the same capacity as the existing XBricks."

More Dell XtremIO cons

"There needs to be an increase in the supported memory and hard disk space, as it is an area where the product currently has certain shortcomings."

"The monitoring feature in VMware vSAN could be better."

"There is a room for improvement on the latest version of compatibility with the VMware product, especially for vSAN and with other vendors on their motherboards and driver configurations."

"Reporting currently depends on third party applications and that could be improved."

"I would like to see a little bit more documentation on the initial setup, and a little bit more explanation on the expandability: How to extend out your vSAN much more simply through the console because, a lot of the time, you have to do it through the command line."

"VMware vSAN could improve by adding NAS and object storage."

"vSAN has a significantly higher license cost post-merger."

"I would rate the stability a seven out of ten."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

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

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"It is great when a product can deliver high-end performance capabilities while offering a very competitive price point."

"This is the best flash array on the market for high-end workloads, so expect to pay for that. But the support subscription cost is fixed for seven years, which made it easier for us to plan on the maintenance costs."

"Pricing and licensing are in line with other products from other manufacturers. You get what you pay for."

"Licensing is approximately $200,000 per year."

"It is expensive if you need to increase scalability."

"This solution is a little bit pricey."

"Too high priced for the Brazil market."

"There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

More Dell XtremIO pricing and cost advice

"It could be cheaper."

"VMware vSAN is a little bit expensive and we pay annually. We have an educational institute where we receive discount prices from VMware. We do receive a reasonable discount but it's still expensive."

"In comparison with other solutions, such as HP or Cisco, I find the solution to be quite pricey."

"This solution is expensive. Nutanix provides us with Acropolis Operating System (AOS) along with its hardware, while VMware provides vSAN, vCenter, and vSphere which all have separate licenses and costs."

"I would like to see this technology be made available to smaller businesses, who might benefit from high availability but struggle with the entry fee."

"From a cost perspective, it is expensive. From a usability perspective, it reduces the overhead costs attached to its users' servers."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."

"It is expensive. It should be cheaper. It has a perpetual license as well as a subscription-based license, but they are moving towards subscription-based licenses."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user182013

Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at Rubrik

May 1, 2015

Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR

Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

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	15
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	29

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	98
Midsize Enterprise	58
Large Enterprise	128

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.

See all answers

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 do you like most about Dell EMC XtremIO?

The feature I like most about Dell Xtremio is its hardware quality compared to other vendors. It's clear they're cont...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell XtremIO?

Pricing is hard to determine as it depends on the given configuration. XtremIO offers features that justify a potenti...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell XtremIO?

The interface could be simplified for beginners to ease the configuration of special objects in the system. While the...

See all answers

What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?

While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an e...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?

We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...

See all answers

How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?

HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We resea...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 24% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 26% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 20% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 8% of the time

More Dell XtremIO Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN

Compared 15% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

August 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell XtremIO

September 2025

Download Dell XtremIO product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

August 2025

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

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

Dell EMC XtremIO Flash, Dell EMC XtremIO X2, XtremIO, XtremIO X2

vSAN

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

Bring all-flash, scale-out storage to your enterprise applications with EMC XtremIO. Purpose-built for flash, XtremIO storage arrays are amazingly fast. Delivering high IOPS at less than 1 millisecond latency is just the start. EMC XtremIO helps you harness the power of flash storage by building in innovations like content-based data placement and dual-stage metadata.

Dell Technologies

VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

VMware vSAN Features

VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.

Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.

Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.

High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.

Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.

HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.

Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

VMware vSAN Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution.

Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance.

Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.

Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly.

Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “vSAN gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources. We have an overall larger host infrastructure, and we split that up for specific customer test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Raiffeisen Bank Bulgaria, Wentworth-Douglas Hospital

Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: August 2025.

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