We performed a comparison between Dell EMC Powermax and Dell EMC PowerStorebased on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, our reviewers consider Dell EMC PowerStore to be a superior solution. The setup is simpler, and although the price is on the higher side, most users consider it to be worthwhile for the high performance.
"The product cheaper compared to other solutions concerning the technology that they are using."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides."
"The solution offers amazing performance."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the all-flash storage performance, low latency, and efficiency of their de-duplication technology. Additionally, the ease of use is good compared to other storage systems. The features in data protection, snapshotting, and replication between data centers and sites are superior to other solutions."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are the management view of the solutions, ease of provision, and deprovision, it is fantastic."
"It is always out of the box, and ready to use."
"We've been using FlashArray's snapshot for backups. Their replication across sites and response time are also excellent."
"The availability and ease of use are the big features."
"It allows us to protect our data using different data centers and replicate bi-directionally between our two main data centers."
"We removed the need to observe whether we ran into issues with the performance of disks or number of IOPS. Previously, our Oracle Database would throw us performance errors. Now, with PowerMax, everything runs smoothly."
"We are most interested in cloud utilization."
"The compression and deduplication are always on. We get more than 4:1 capacity savings using them. The efficiency benefits from compression and deduplication are through a specialized hardware module within the storage itself, and that means there is no overhead to the compression and dedupe."
"Based on our experience with VMAX, there isn't any hardware failure or something like that in PowerMax. Performance-wise also, everything is fine. We haven't faced any performance issues or any hardware failure. Its performance is great as compared to VMAX. Its I/O per second rate is higher than the old model."
"I have been highly satisfied with the resiliency and scalability of the solution."
"The solution has good operability and easy scalability."
"The tool is a fast-performing asset. It can perform millions of transactions within a second. I like the tool's architecture as well."
"It provides a big benefit when upgrading a new VMware environment. For example, in a big environment with 10 to 30 ESXs, you can take everything and put that into PowerStore. So, it is cost-effective, which is very important and has been massive for us. You reduce almost 80% from the hardware and work directly from PowerStore. Building hardware, especially in a big VMware environment, is a big issue for my organization."
"The most valuable feature is that it is easy to use this frame. I am a SAN administrator, but I was able to train my colleague, who had only been a VMware administrator, on the PowerStore in about half a day. Now he's autonomous in assigning volumes and creating data stores..."
"The solution is very easy to implement."
"Has a great mapping feature."
"The most valuable features of Dell PowerStore are the support for NVMe and SCM, which provides end-to-end performance and high IOPS, minimizing latency. It is a full-fledged storage solution."
"This solution is very useful to us as we use it internally for all of the services that we need. We use it as a lab and we showcase new technology to the customers and how it can help them going forward."
"Currently, the features of replication and deduplication have been very important to us."
"Migrations are very easy and fast."
"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."
"It is a bit expensive."
"The price of the solution can improve."
"Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases."
"The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release."
"The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."
"I can't see where they can make anything better, unless, of course, they lower their prices even more."
"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current. I think it's bundled with the deduplication and other compression factors. We need more user interfaces for forecasting in this software and more interfaces need to be integrated with this array management tool."
"We brought up this question to the implementation engineer. We were comparing use cases where a customer is using RecoverPoint, then goes to PowerMax. In our previous setup with XtremIO, we were using RecpverPoint and keeping snapshots for 30 days, every few seconds. With PowerMax, I requested this for every 15 minutes, keeping it for a week. The engineer's answer was, "There will be too many snapshots. It might slow down the system." This is specifically for the use cases where there is RecoverPoint. While PowerMax works with RecoverPoint, and you can use it, there should be some way where you can have even more snapshots and not to worry about performance and system cache."
"We would like more documentation, a guide to the features of the PowerMax."
"We have had some trouble with the VMAX-to-PowerMax migration, but the VMAX box will be powered down after the migration. The PowerMax boxes are working fine and we don't have any issues with them."
"I would like a more informative CloudIQ for iOS. What you can see via the web UI significantly differs from what you can see via the web application."
"PowerMax Storage needs improvement in the area of monitoring tools. It should have more functions and more complicated analysis options inside the monitoring tools."
"I think management is where PowerMax is weakest. We're still managing it like we managed EMC arrays in the early 2000s. There's a slicker, fancier GUI that does more things, but at the end of the day, you still have to dig into the command line and issue a lot of the same commands that we still were using almost 20 years ago."
"The price could be lower, and we are unhappy with the price."
"The tool is costly compared to other similar products. The product's pricing needs to be improved. I would like the product to include the replication feature in its future releases."
"Could use some additional automation."
"The price is on the higher side."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"Could be improved by including a synchronizing feature for the file systems."
"The NAS part is very poor. It's very basic. Even Dell EMC has said that to us. We are waiting for version 3 of PowerStore for that. This must be improved and it is in the roadmap."
"Dell PowerStore is a good solution overall, but some models could support hypervisors better by allowing for more customization and flexibility for customer needs."
"We are looking for the Dell PowerStore to become more mature to maximize our use cases."
"When it comes to Dell PowerStore, I would like to see more integration and more security features included. It's unfortunate that the solution does not feature Flash trace."
Dell PowerMax NVMe is ranked 7th in All-Flash Storage with 26 reviews while Dell PowerStore is ranked 1st in All-Flash Storage with 35 reviews. Dell PowerMax NVMe is rated 8.6, while Dell PowerStore is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Dell PowerMax NVMe writes "Allows us to define different service levels for storage groups to prioritize our workload at the infrastructure level, and provides remarkable value in terms of compression and deduplication". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Dell PowerStore writes "Saves us power and floor space, and we can quickly assign new data stores for our developers' VMs". Dell PowerMax NVMe is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, Huawei OceanStor Dorado and Dell XtremIO, whereas Dell PowerStore is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage and HPE Primera. See our Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell PowerStore report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors and best NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays 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.
