Dell PowerMax vs Dell PowerStore comparison

Dell PowerMax and Dell PowerStore are both solutions in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category. Dell PowerMax is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.9, while Dell PowerStore is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. Dell PowerMax holds a 8.6% mindshare in N, compared to Dell PowerStore’s 23.0% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell PowerMax users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Dell PowerStore users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

Dell PowerMax and PowerStore compete in the enterprise storage solutions market. PowerMax often has the upper hand in terms of robust performance capabilities, while PowerStore is favored for its ease of use and scalability across environments.

Features: Dell PowerMax is distinguished by its NVMe-based capabilities, strong performance, and features like SRDF replication and CloudIQ analytics for reliability and visibility. Its data reduction techniques, including compression and deduplication, are notable for performance-critical applications. Dell PowerStore features easy integration with VMware environments, flexible deployment options, and the ability to enhance ease of use with native applications and scalability across hybrid and public clouds.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerMax users have expressed a desire for enhanced NVMe capabilities and improved integration for easier management tasks, such as better reporting. There are also calls for more comprehensive analytics and support for automated workflows. Dell PowerStore users want better deduplication and compression ratios, simpler initial setups, improved cloud integration, and enhanced NAS functionalities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerMax is primarily deployed on-premises, ideal for centralized data centers, with skilled customer service that occasionally requires quicker escalation for support. Dell PowerStore is versatile, supporting both on-premises and cloud environments, with straightforward deployments and supportive customer service, ideal for businesses needing adaptable infrastructure solutions.

Pricing and ROI: Both products are considered premium priced, aimed at enterprise-grade solutions. PowerMax offers competitive pricing for large-scale projects but faces criticism for high initial and renewal costs, with ROI realized through less maintenance and power savings within two years. PowerStore is seen as expensive yet valuable, providing a simplified pricing model favored by users seeking cost predictability and scalability.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax vs. Dell PowerStore Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Dell PowerStore

May 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 July 2025, in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 2.7%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax is 8.6%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 23.0%, down from 25.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

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MayankChauhan

Lead Consultant - Cloud & Infrastructure Services at Infosys

Delivers essential support and performance for intensive operations in real-time environments

Our infrastructure is spread across the private as well as a public cloud. Our requirement was that the IOPS latency should not be more than one millisecond. If anything goes beyond one millisecond, it's a problem for us. We wanted a system that could handle the transactions and meet our latency requirements. There are performance benefits for sure. The amount of deduplication and compression offered by Dell PowerMax is quite good, especially with databases. Dell PowerMax delivers optimum performance and reliable support, integral for handling failures and ensuring operational continuity. The performance capacity optimization and support we receive from Dell are also valuable.

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Hassan_Zaki

Senior Presales Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Integrated AI and clustering enhance storage operations effectively

I promote and recommend Dell PowerStore for all workloads to my clients and customers. Most of my customers have one appliance per site. Approximately 80% of my customers have Dell PowerStore implemented in their data centers. We always use CLS as another Dell solution for cybersecurity and data security. The CLS is integrated with the Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain, not with Dell PowerStore. Windows, Linux, and some customers use Red Hat or SUSE. We have many operating systems working with Dell PowerStore in the same environments and data centers. CloudIQ and Storage IQ are used by some customers, but Apex AIOps has not been widely adopted yet. Dell PowerStore has integration with VMware and Kubernetes. Most workloads work fine and have very good integration with Dell PowerStore, except for one or two specific workloads in the market. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell PowerStore a nine.

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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

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

"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."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"There is no management overhead involved in optimizing performance. It does it so well on its own. We don't have to manage much at all. It really is like a set it and forget it solution. My storage engineers love the system. It is a lot less work than our previous systems, which weren't bad by any means. There is not nearly as much management as before. So, we are saving dozens of hours per month for our storage team, and that is a real cost in our business."

"The features I find most valuable about Dell PowerMax are its stability and flexibility."

"We're consolidating two to three arrays down to one which means that our data center footprint has decreased by like 90%. So we're saving 90% of our space, and it also is much better on power and everything else in our data center. And on top of that, the performance is much, much better than our older arrays."

"The uptime is the most valuable feature."

"The high availability that other systems don't have. In other systems, there is an owner in the storage processes. But for PowerMAX, there is no owner. All the process storage is passed to all nodes without ownership. So, there is no response feature in the storage in PowerMax. In the other systems, there is a response, which is a very nice feature. No systems have such a feature."

"The product's initial setup phase is easy."

"It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"This platform is reliable in supporting our data availability. We now have a higher performing platform and have been able to consolidate our workloads into one single platform."

More Dell PowerMax pros

"After implementing Dell PowerStore storage, the performance became exceptional, and customers started to notice improvements in system access."

"The return on investment since switching to Dell PowerStore has been really good."

"Dell PowerStore is very easy to deploy."

"The simplicity and ease of use have been very valuable features. I have a very small team, and only half of the team is well versed in the HP product. Whereas if I bring PowerStore in, everyone can learn it because it will be new on the floor."

"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is the metro cluster because we have two data centers and high availability."

"The pricing of Dell PowerStore is quite on point and very competitive overall."

"The deduplication functionality provided by the solution is fairly good. The speed offered by the product is enough for our organization."

"Dell PowerStore has helped us consolidate the data into small boxes."

More Dell PowerStore pros

Cons

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"We need better data deduplication."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

"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."

"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."

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."

"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The initial setup was complex, as it is a complex system and you have to learn a lot."

"The solution should include more AI features to make it smarter."

"The teams and SMEs on my teams may have user interface and other configuration requests. For example, there might be things that engineers do at the command line that GUIs don't do."

"Setting up PowerMax with VMAX is always complex."

"The initial setup process is difficult."

"There is room for improvement in the replication. It's an important requirement for us."

"The disadvantage of PowerMax is its cost."

"I would like them to continue improving the management tools and continue moving towards a RESTful API versus CLI."

More Dell PowerMax cons

"Dell PowerStore can improve the integration with VMware."

"If I could improve Dell PowerStore, I would suggest that integrations into backup platforms be a little more streamlined."

"After upgrades, there were a few bugs in the product, and it can be considered as an area of concern where improvements are required."

"Many customers are looking for a cyber recovery feature included in PowerStore. We would like to see this added in a future release."

"The pricing could be lower. It is very expensive."

"One of the big differences when we were looking at Pure is that they had more of an in-place upgrade option going forward, kind of future-proofing things. We hear Dell is working towards that, but they weren't quite there, especially three years ago."

"Other products have better management and analytics features."

"Reporting is an area that could be improved. It's very simplistic sometimes, and some of the very technical guys on my team want to see more of the details and be able to massage the report a little bit better."

More Dell PowerStore cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"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 licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

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

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"One area for improvement, one that everybody always comes to, is price... it's still quite expensive to purchase these big arrays... For us, the pricing doesn't make Dell EMC uncompetitive."

"From a general capital investment, it's one of the higher price points in the market. It depends on the size and software features that you would include in a system. So, the cost varies dramatically."

"It scales enormously, but it's expensive to do so."

"The price is okay."

"The price is starting from $500,000."

"Support pricing is very high. Our support contract is about to expire and Dell EMC provided us with an extremely high renewal quote. It was four times more than the support contract for our previous EMC VNX solution."

"We hope that with the combination of both NVMe and SCM the next PowerMax will be much cheaper that the one which we acquired."

"The cost has room for improvement."

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

"Pricing depends on the model and negotiation. Sometimes we manage to get good discounts, sometimes not."

"The rate is always too high. Nobody likes paying for it. I have not seen a client yet who says that the price should be higher. Initially, people look at it, but when they see what the benefits are, it is a no-brainer. We can give them good pricing at the outset."

"We are happy with the pricing that we get from Dell."

"The price is not cheap, but it's worth it for the features you get from the storage. If you can afford it, you are probably buying the best solution that you can have for this virtual environment."

"The solution’s pricing is always too high."

"With compression, we were able to have a solution within our company's budget. We include a clause in the contract with Dell that states if the compression ratio is not met, we will adjust the workload accordingly."

"There's still a cap on the upgrade path, where you can consume all the engines within the frame before you have to go to another frame... Normally, we exceed the IOPS on the frames before we can ever exhaust the storage, so anything they can do to help us avoid stranded storage capacity, capacity that we couldn't get to, would be beneficial."

"As compared to others, PowerStore is cheaper."

More Dell PowerStore pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

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What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

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What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?

Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell of...

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What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

First, it's an enterprise storage solution. This is very important for us. Another important feature is replication.

See all answers

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

When comparing Dell PowerMax NVMe with other vendors, such as IBM enterprise solutions, the price is relatively higher.

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What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?

PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and...

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How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?

Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated managem...

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What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerStore?

It's a great product. Integrating PowerStore with the IT workflow is easy.

See all answers

Comparisons

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 19% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 5% of the time

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HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 13% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 10% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 9% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 5% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 4% of the time

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HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 15% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerVault vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 11% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 8% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

July 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore

July 2025

Download Dell PowerStore product report

Also Known As

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

Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

PowerStore

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

Dell PowerMax offers robust performance, reliability, and efficient data handling. It is recognized for its compression, deduplication, and NVMe technology, significantly benefiting data centers with its advanced replication and uptime.

PowerMax is equipped to handle mission-critical applications, providing impressive performance metrics with low latency and high IOPS capacity. Its CloudIQ and Unisphere interfaces enhance manageability, while REST API support simplifies storage management. Users in sectors like healthcare, finance, and telecommunications leverage its capabilities for database management, high-transaction block storage, and disaster recovery. However, opportunities for improving deduplication efficiency, interface complexity, and automation remain.

What are the key features of Dell PowerMax?

Data Reduction: Combines compression and deduplication for efficient storage use.
NVMe Technology: Enables swift data handling with high throughput.
CloudIQ and Unisphere: Streamlines manageability and control.
REST API Support: Simplifies integration with management tools.
High Availability: Ensures consistent uptime across platforms.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Performance Metrics: Look for low latency and high IOPS as indicators.
Reliability: Consistent operations with minimal interruptions.
Manageability: Efficient control over storage environments.
Cost Efficiency: Note any potential savings in data processing and storage.

Industries utilize Dell PowerMax to support diverse environments like VMware, Oracle, and PostgreSQL. It serves multiple sectors such as healthcare, finance, and government, aiding in data storage consolidation, disaster recovery, and high-availability hosting for critical systems and applications.

Dell Technologies

Dell PowerStore stands out for its high performance, flexibility, and easy integration with VMware. It offers notable data compression and deduplication capabilities while providing powerful NVMe support and machine learning to optimize IT operations.

Dell PowerStore is designed to offer a comprehensive approach to IT infrastructure by enhancing performance and simplifying management. It is particularly suitable for companies that require scalable solutions to increase compute or capacity independently. Featuring built-in intelligence, PowerStore allows efficient storage consolidation and reduced footprint, while integration with CloudIQ enhances monitoring and analytics. However, there are areas for improvement, such as stability, enterprise features, and the user interface. Pricing is high, and support responsiveness needs attention. Organizations primarily use PowerStore for VMware environments, storage, and data protection, supporting high-performance databases and VMware workloads. It is utilized in data centers for disaster recovery and hybrid setups.

What are the key features of Dell PowerStore?

Flexibility: Independently scales compute or capacity
High Performance: Offers powerful NVMe support and machine learning
Integration: Easily integrates with VMware
Data Efficiency: Provides data compression and deduplication
Simplified Management: Built-in intelligence for efficient storage management

What benefits should users consider?

Performance Optimization: Enhance IT operations with machine learning
Scalability: Increase compute or storage capacity as needed
Integration Potential: Improve efficiency with VMware and CloudIQ
Data Protection: Reliable for disaster recovery and hybrid environments

In industries like IT, finance, and healthcare, Dell PowerStore supports efficient data management and enhances infrastructure performance. Organizations leverage it to manage extensive data, streamline virtualization processes, and facilitate migration from legacy systems, while integrating cloud and on-premises infrastructures for improved operations.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Dell PowerStore

May 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax vs. Dell PowerStore

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