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Dell ObjectScale vs Quantum ActiveScale 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
7.3
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
Dell ObjectScale
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (7th)
Quantum ActiveScale
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (27th)
 

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.
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.
FL
Architecture Department at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Good performance and reliable but the setup is complex
We would like to see a self-sufficient installation. Nowadays it's open-source, but the installation is still tied to the vendor, which means it is unlikely that it is going to scale. I want them to tap into the broader community. It is really emerging, they have a year over year, 50% annual growth. With a 10-year-old company, it will certainly bring a lot of interest, and will certainly make it more successful, if they tap into that growing customer base. They have to make themselves relevant to the industry. The industry is totally geared to the Cloud, DevOps, and geared for agility. The software with the appliance in my set is already outdated, and it is not that it cannot sell, but it has to be tapping into the emerging and growing sectors to continue with the customers and businesses. This is what the requirement is, to improve their technology. Which means that they have to make themselves relevant to the industry.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"After the implementation, the time to run the process was reduced to minutes and it did not require any manual intervention from our DBAs."
"They are quite responsive and our local team was pretty good."
"We've been using FlashArray's snapshot for backups. Their replication across sites and response time are also excellent."
"It has improved my organization in the way that we have high reliability and faster access to our data."
"Pure Storage has the right business model and will be around for a long time."
"All my customers are pretty happy with most Pure Storage solutions."
"It simplifies the overall management. We don't have to worry about storage anymore."
"It's very fast and very easy to use. It performs well and is both flexible and compatible. We like it because it's easy to use."
"The setup was straightforward."
"The support is good."
"I would rate scalability ten out of ten since you buy what you want."
"Dell EMC ECS is the leading storage area network, you can do anything with it."
"I like that the solution is easy to scale and that's its stable."
"This product is very competitive, it's a good product."
"Dell ECS provides compatibility between on-premises and cloud-based storage, supporting protocols such as S3, which is commonly used in cloud storage, enabling integration between on-premises storage and cloud storage."
"For the performance it gives, it's quite competitive."
"Workflow is easy to manage and maintain."
"The operations and the functionality are very simple."
"Quantum ActiveScale is a reliable solution."
"The technology is stable which is good."
 

Cons

"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution."
"The latest release contains bugs that shouldn't be in a production environment. Two incidents impacted our client, including hardware-related bugs. They need to be more cautious in testing before they release."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable."
"It is way in excess of what we need. If anything, we could see a bit more speed. I'm just comparing it with what some of my colleagues who are implementing their own systems do."
"The 3PAR SSD arrays that we have are still failing a lot so even though we're under warranty, we still have to get someone out and usually have someone troubleshoot so that usually adds onto the cost. With Pure, we've had a disc fail and we pop it out and you pop it in and it's good to go."
"We would like to see more cloud support, which we know is coming, although it's not out yet."
"As partners, we should have the option to download the software, rather than have to go back through Pure to obtain it."
"You should be able to calculate so that when it's full it's 100% full, not just 90%."
"The troubleshooting feature of this solution needs to be improved, to allow organizations to fix issues without having to contact the support team."
"They need to ensure that the system will work if a site goes down."
"Dell has a very poor support channel in Taiwan. They sell the models directly to our enterprise customers and they don't have a very good vendor support system."
"They do not have complete documentation, which is very weak and could be improved."
"The solution needs to provide better integration between this solution and all other kinds of systems."
"The graphical user interface should offer more options, and the documentation with respect to administration could be improved, as it is quite weak in this product."
"In Taiwan, they don't have professional technical support."
"We would like to see a self-sufficient installation."
"Lacks some ability to integrate with different systems."
"The setup is very complex, it took 18 hours for the first setup."
"I'd like to see more integrations with different systems and for the product to be more scalable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We do not incur additional costs beyond the licensing fee."
"Our costs are around $100,000."
"The price is very reasonable when compared to other solutions."
"In the beginning, we saw that the price is not very good. When we made some compilations about the deduplication and the compression and what the equipment does, including the differentiation of upper management of the storage, the price was not so bad. However, in the beginning, the price was very difficult to justify."
"It is light years beyond anything else with the same price point."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"We have a seen a reduction in TCO. It is definitely a cost-effective solution for us. We have seen ROI."
"When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
"It is an inexpensive product."
"The price of Dell ECS should be reduced."
"We initially purchased all of the licenses at the same time."
"We are not paying for the license at this stage."
"The product is quite expensive."
"The price of Dell ECS should be reduced."
"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."
"Dell EMC ECS is too expensive."
"Quantum ActiveScale is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Educational Organization
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise151
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise11
No data available
 

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?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
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.
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS)
ActiveScale, Quantum ActiveScale Object Storage, ActiveScale Object Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Atos
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Find out what your peers are saying about Dell ObjectScale vs. Quantum ActiveScale and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.