Dell PowerMax vs Dell XtremIO comparison

Dell PowerMax and Dell XtremIO are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell PowerMax is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.8, while Dell XtremIO is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.0. Dell PowerMax holds a 4.0% mindshare in AFS, compared to Dell XtremIO’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell PowerMax users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Dell XtremIO users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

Dell XtremIO and Dell PowerMax are competing storage solutions designed for enterprise environments. Dell PowerMax seems to have the upper hand with its advanced capabilities and performance, making it a strong contender for complex setups.

Features: Dell XtremIO offers simplicity, inline data deduplication, and consistent performance. It supports virtualization platforms and provides robust snapshots. Dell PowerMax provides adaptable infrastructure, inline deduplication and compression, and AI-driven monitoring, supporting high availability and extensive connectivity options.

Room for Improvement: Dell XtremIO could improve in handling complex enterprise requirements and offering advanced AI features. It also lacks extensive connectivity options found in more advanced solutions. Dell PowerMax could enhance its deployment simplicity and streamline its customization options. It might benefit from clearer cost management tools given its higher initial investment. More intuitive user interfaces could improve the setup process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell XtremIO is recognized for its straightforward setup, which supports rapid deployment. Dell PowerMax has a more intricate deployment process due to customization options but offers comprehensive support services, which benefit long-term use through its robust infrastructure.

Pricing and ROI: Dell XtremIO features a lower entry cost with a quicker ROI due to efficient storage and reduced upfront investment, though costs may increase with expanded use. Dell PowerMax, despite a higher initial cost, provides substantial ROI over time with performance, scalability, and reduced operational overhead, making it a cost-effective option for enterprises seeking superior performance and scalability.

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

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Dell XtremIO

June 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 June 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax is 4.0%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell XtremIO is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

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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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"The latency is good."

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."

"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

"The performance is very good. Our predominant workloads are all less than 5 milliseconds and it's most common to have a sub-1-millisecond response time for our applications. In terms of efficiency, we've turned on compression and we're able to get as high as two-to-one compression on our workloads, on average."

"The optimization of the cache memory of each engine and the use of persistent memory."

"The stability is great. It is five nines."

"The solution is stable. I would rate it ten out of ten."

"Dell PowerMax NVMe has been a significant enhancement for data handling in my industry. Its improved security features and data calculation capabilities make it a valuable solution for our customers. The most critical feature of Dell PowerMax NVMe for performance enhancement is its strong network support and integration with other vendors, along with its efficient use of hardware components like CPU and memory. Data reduction technologies in PowerMax have been highly beneficial for our company, allowing us to optimize storage and reduce costs by consolidating files"

"The number one most valuable feature is reliability. I want to go home at the end of the day and come in the next day knowing it works, especially since we have storage offshore."

"PowerMax, with version 9.02, which we installed recently, has some very good features, such as CloudIQ."

"Technical support for Dell PowerMax NVMe is good, and I am satisfied with the assistance provided."

More Dell PowerMax pros

"Speed and reliability:"

"The most valuable features are: complete performance and ease of use."

"Linear performance – The XtremIO wasn’t the fastest in all tests against other all flash arrays, but even with a massive workload, the response time and user experience were absolutely predictable with no sharp drop-offs."

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

"Very good IOPS 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."

"It has very good performance for an application which needs lower latency and a better response, for example, in microseconds."

"The feature I like most about Dell Xtremio is its hardware quality compared to other vendors. It's clear they're continuously improving their research and development."

More Dell XtremIO pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"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."

"I remember an episode where we had a performance issue based on one disk or more, which caused a performance drop for all equipment."

"Setting up PowerMax with VMAX is always complex."

"There are definitely some improvements that can be made to the CloudIQ."

"There might be things that engineers do at the command line that GUIs don't do."

"The solution should integrate better with OpenShift and Kubernetes architecture."

"The price could be lower, and we are unhappy with the price."

"Dell can improve the Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance. Sometimes, when we need to replace a component, the SLA says four hours, but for some reason, the technician doesn't arrive until the next business day or even six to eight hours later before the case is placed. So, focusing on respecting the SLA is where Dell could improve."

More Dell PowerMax cons

"I believe having more replication options comparatively to VMAX (other than RecoverPoint) would be great."

"The management should be improved and the GUI interface could be better and easier."

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

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

"I would like to see the ease of deployment and built-in Metro clustering."

"Scalability could be better."

"Management and reporting need improvement."

"Native data replication: To replicate data between XtremIO devices, you need to use EMC’s RecoverPoint appliances to move the data."

More Dell XtremIO cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

"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."

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

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"From reclaiming data center space which is so tightly constrained these days, it will pay for itself in a short amount of time, which is fantastic. Anything we can do to get more out of our current physical data center space helps us a ton, and PowerMax has helped enable that."

"The tool is very expensive."

"Our costs for the product are three million."

"Dell offers various pricing models, including a pay-as-you-go option where storage is provided without upfront charges, billing only for used capacity. As a 360° partner, significant discounts are available."

"The price is on the market. It's not inexpensive, but it's available on the market."

"The cost is expensive. While VMAX now has good pricing, PowerMax is a little expensive."

"I think it is an expensive tool, but it is the best product. I think it is expensive and the cost one must pay for the best solution."

"The cost of the solution is quite noticeable, but it provides a good fit regarding the price of the hardware and all of the required licenses."

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

"It's not cheap, but it absolutely gets the job done. I don't have any real comment regarding licensing specifically."

"You can get a two-year or three-year license for the tool. You can also opt for a perpetual-based licensing model, which can be renewed on a yearly or two-year basis."

"Don’t buy this array. You’re paying for loads of magic beans, since it’s mediocre at best for a platform in a rapidly growing field. Look instead at Pure Storage or something with variable block deduplication. You’ll end up spending less and getting a better product with actual support."

"Dell XtremIO's price is affordable and I would rate it a five out of ten."

"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."

"XtremIO is an all-flash array, which means it's a costly solution. When compared with general mid-range storage solutions, this is more expensive. As far as I know, there are no additional costs besides the license."

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

"The license for XtremIO is in the box, so you don't have to buy anything."

More Dell XtremIO 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

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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.

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...

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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

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 29% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 18% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 5% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 27% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 14% 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

HPE Primera vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell PowerMax Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 25% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 9% of the time

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 7% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 7% of the time

More Dell XtremIO Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell XtremIO

June 2025

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Also Known As

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

Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

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

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

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

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Raiffeisen Bank Bulgaria, Wentworth-Douglas Hospital

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Dell XtremIO

June 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax vs. Dell XtremIO

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