Dell PowerMax vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado comparison

Dell Technologies and Huawei are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.9, while Huawei is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.8. Dell Technologies holds a 4.1% mindshare in AFS, compared to Huawei’s 4.5% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Huawei users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

Huawei OceanStor Dorado and Dell PowerMax compete in high-performance storage solutions. PowerMax appears to have an edge in technical reliability and scalability, while OceanStor Dorado offers a more favorable price-to-performance ratio.

Features: OceanStor Dorado is appreciated for its competitive price-to-performance ratio, NVMe speed, HyperMetro functionality, and efficient deduplication and compression. Dell PowerMax offers robust deduplication and compression, excellent I/O performance, and high reliability, appealing to performance-intensive environments with its NVMe technology and scalability.

Room for Improvement: OceanStor Dorado could enhance NAS capabilities, better integrate with third-party solutions, and improve localization support. PowerMax users desire improvements in NVMe support, enhanced CloudIQ functionalities, and better cloud service integration, including Kubernetes. Simplifying the GUI and offering more efficient management tools are also noted areas for PowerMax.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both products primarily operate on-premises, with OceanStor Dorado also supporting hybrid clouds. Huawei's technical support is generally well-regarded, though local support can present language barriers. Dell PowerMax offers robust support, but users sometimes seek a more streamlined service process.

Pricing and ROI: OceanStor Dorado is known for its competitive pricing and ROI, attributed to lower ownership costs and maintenance expenses. While Dell PowerMax is priced higher, its performance and features justify the investment for organizations prioritizing storage performance, even though the cost might limit accessibility for smaller businesses.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado

July 2025

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Helped 861,524 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score

1.0

Organizations reduced costs and improved performance with Pure FlashArray X NVMe, achieving quick ROI and efficient resource management.

Sentiment score

8.2

Dell PowerMax delivers cost savings, enhanced efficiency, increased uptime, and improved performance, leading to high user satisfaction and ROI.

Sentiment score

5.5

Huawei OceanStor Dorado offers excellent ROI with low cost of ownership, reliability, and cost-effectiveness, despite higher initial costs.

By opting for the gold subscription every three years, you get a free upgrade to the latest controller release.

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

During a DCDR setup and migration from VMAX to Dell PowerMax, what was planned as a two-day downtime was completed in just three to four hours.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

The performance metrics or benchmarks I use to measure success with Dell PowerMax include uptime as well as our response times on our platforms, both of which are exactly where we want them to be, which is five nines and as fast as possible.

reviewer2706717

Senior Manager, Disaster Recovery, Storage & UNIX Systems at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

My client has seen significant ROI since the install, and when you don't go down, that's an ROI in and of itself.

Rocco Guerriero

Chief Executive Officer at Contour Data Solutions

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

They are, however, available and reliable, so it is a good investment.

Julien GUILLAUMOU

Chief Technical Officer at Integra Systems

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor Dorado report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

7.1

Pure FlashArray X NVMe's technical support is praised for responsiveness, despite occasional follow-up issues, earning high customer satisfaction.

Sentiment score

8.4

Dell PowerMax's customer service is highly rated for promptness and knowledge, despite some issues with SLA and language barriers.

Sentiment score

8.3

Huawei OceanStor Dorado customer support is efficient and responsive, with evolving service models and suggested improvements for high-demand regions.

With Pure FlashArray X NVMe, we need to escalate the issue and get an account manager for its resolution.

VijayShankar

Senior Administrator/IT Systems & Cloud Operations at Etisalat

We also had one outage where a controller of one of the products had failed and had to be replaced on-site.

reviewer943512

System and Network administrator at Vodafone

Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

I would rate Dell PowerMax support as a ten, as I have never had an issue with Dell support as it relates to this product.

Rocco Guerriero

Chief Executive Officer at Contour Data Solutions

Dell support for Dell PowerMax is exceptional, rating a perfect 10 out of 10.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

I evaluate Dell's support for PowerMax as very good, especially regarding their response time as well as their willingness to get ahead of issues.

reviewer2706717

Senior Manager, Disaster Recovery, Storage & UNIX Systems at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

Huawei's technical support in Romania for Europe is good.

Julien GUILLAUMOU

Chief Technical Officer at Integra Systems

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor Dorado report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.1

Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers scalable storage with low latency, easy upgrades, though capacity customization and high costs are noted.

Sentiment score

7.7

Dell PowerMax provides scalable, efficient performance with NVMe, valued for enterprise use despite some cost and scaling speed concerns.

Sentiment score

7.4

Huawei OceanStor Dorado offers superior scalability, efficiently supporting varied organizations with seamless horizontal and vertical expansion, outperforming competitors.

You cannot increase capacity if latency is present.

VijayShankar

Senior Administrator/IT Systems & Cloud Operations at Etisalat

It is highly scalable.

Joerg Utesch

Sales Director at systemzwo group

It is suitable for both medium-sized and enterprise businesses.

Jaka Demšar

VAD PLSM Storage - Slovenia & Croatia at ASBIS

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

Scalability is not an issue.

reviewer2706753

Senior System Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Dell PowerMax is good for enterprises, and it also depends on how much workload you're going to bring in on Dell PowerMax in terms of performance and how many users are going to use the database you're hosting.

MayankChauhan

Lead Consultant - Cloud & Infrastructure Services at Infosys

Volumes can be defined to grow to any level without impacting overall performance.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor Dorado report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.1

Pure Storage offers exceptional stability and reliability with outstanding support, consistently achieving high user ratings for performance and service.

Sentiment score

8.7

Dell PowerMax is highly rated for reliability, performance, and stability, with quick support for occasional issues.

Sentiment score

7.9

Huawei OceanStor Dorado is praised for its high reliability and stability, with ratings between seven and ten out of ten.

During the eight years, there have been no problems such as hardware failure or stopping.

Gokhan Dikmen

Vice President of product at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I would rate the stability of the solution as a ten out of ten.

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.

Gary Cheung

Project Manager at a government with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

These patches can be applied on the fly without requiring software upgrades or system downtime.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

I would rate it nine out of ten since there are no required downtimes, even during firmware upgrades.

Moin-Shah

System and Storage Admin at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

There has been no downtime with Dell PowerMax; it's been extremely reliable, easy to manage, easy to upgrade, and trustworthy as we've upgraded over the years from one version to another.

Rocco Guerriero

Chief Executive Officer at Contour Data Solutions

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor Dorado report

Room For Improvement

Pure FlashArray X requires cost-effective improvements in UI, integration, cloud features, multitenancy, analytics, backup, AI, and scalability.

Dell PowerMax needs improvements in deduplication, UI, cloud integration, cost efficiency, AI, security, and system setup.

Huawei OceanStor Dorado faces integration, performance, and usability challenges, compounded by licensing and geopolitical issues affecting adoption.

Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe.

VijayShankar

Senior Administrator/IT Systems & Cloud Operations at Etisalat

We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.

Joerg Utesch

Sales Director at systemzwo group

I'm eagerly anticipating the roadmap's promise of introducing multiple controllers, which could significantly boost scalability and resilience.

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

Compared to competitors such as NetApp, which integrates with public cloud hyperscalers (GCP, Azure, AWS), Dell PowerMax lacks in this aspect.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

Dell can assist by providing plug-and-play integrated templates that allow customers to drag, drop, modify, and connect with any target system for generating snapshots without logging into the storage directly.

Moin-Shah

System and Storage Admin at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dell PowerMax NVMe is very reliable storage and cannot experience downtime.

Kazi Amranul Houqe

First Assistant Vice President (FAVP) & Unit Head of Server & Storage Management Unit at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

Some customers have reported not understanding how the immutable part can be unlocked.

Julien GUILLAUMOU

Chief Technical Officer at Integra Systems

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor Dorado report

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers see Pure FlashArray X NVMe as a justified premium investment due to performance and comprehensive licensing.

Dell PowerMax is costly yet competitive, appreciated for total ownership value, offering various pricing models and potential savings.

Huawei OceanStor Dorado offers cost-effective pricing with minimal maintenance, although advanced features may require extra purchases.

While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.

Enes SUZER

Manager, System Infrastructure & Security at Organik Kimya San. ve Tic. A.S.

The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

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

VijayShankar

Senior Administrator/IT Systems & Cloud Operations at Etisalat

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

The higher cost compared to other vendors is justified by additional features, vendor-managed upgrades, and superior support services.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

It is the best choice for large projects in terms of price and features compared to midrange solutions.

Gianpaolo-Mazzola

Presales Engineer at Project Informatica srl

The price is starting from $500,000.

Mohamed Abdel Salam

Senior Sells at Enterprise Sigma Technology

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

The products they offer are quite cheap.

Julien GUILLAUMOU

Chief Technical Officer at Integra Systems

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor Dorado report

Valuable Features

Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers exceptional performance, reliability, scalability, and seamless VMware integration, enhancing workload efficiency and user experience.

Dell PowerMax offers advanced performance, security, and efficiency through NVMe, data reduction, and seamless integration, supporting diverse workloads.

Huawei OceanStor Dorado offers high performance, reliable scalability, and cost-effective storage with exceptional features and technical support.

Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator.

Gokhan Dikmen

Vice President of product at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The platform's robust features include excellent sustainability tracking, and a comprehensive dashboard offering insights into IOPS, bandwidth, performance, and virtual activities.

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

NVMe provides additional fast cache, similar to random access memory (RAM), which improves overall system performance and read/write experience for users.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

Dell PowerMax NVMe is very supportive of our operational growth since we require daily performance from our core banking systems and need to facilitate data movement efficiently.

Moin-Shah

System and Storage Admin at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The key benefits of using Dell PowerMax, quantified in terms of saved hours and saved costs, is having one single platform that provides functionality to all of our internal customers.

reviewer2706717

Senior Manager, Disaster Recovery, Storage & UNIX Systems at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

The fast performance and reasonable pricing of Huawei OceanStor Dorado are the main reasons we sell them.

Julien GUILLAUMOU

Chief Technical Officer at Integra Systems

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor Dorado report

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of July 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 4.1%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huawei OceanStor Dorado is 4.5%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Saleem Ahmed

Cloud Architect at ESDS Software Solution Pvt Ltd.

A highly stable solution that provides features like SmartMigration, HyperReplication, and SmartPartition

Other Huawei mid-end storages, like 5600 and 5500, are very easy to use. Engineers with two to three years of experience with Huawei will find that Huawei OceanStor Dorado is a bit complicated to use compared to other Huawei storages. Unlike other storages, you cannot configure the disk domain and storage pool in Huawei OceanStor Dorado.

Read full review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

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.

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...

See all answers

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 Huawei OceanStor Dorado?

The product has the best compression and encryption features. The most valuable features I have found in the tool are...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Huawei OceanStor Dorado?

The products they offer are quite cheap. However, I do not have much information about licensing since we don't buy t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Huawei OceanStor Dorado?

Some customers have reported not understanding how the immutable part can be unlocked. From my perspective, it's not ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 28% of the time

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 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 13% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 10% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 4% of the time

More Dell PowerMax Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 17% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 14% of the time

Huawei OceanStor vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Primera vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 4% of the time

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

June 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

July 2025

Download Dell PowerMax product report

Buyer's Guide

Huawei OceanStor Dorado

July 2025

Download Huawei OceanStor Dorado product report

Also Known As

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

Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

OceanStor Dorado V3 All-Flash Storage System

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

Huawei's OceanStor Dorado V3 all-flash storage is the ideal choice for enterprises' mission-critical business. It is the industry's first commercial use of NVMe all-flash storage, and it delivers high-performing, reliable, and efficient storage services.

Huawei

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Telecom Italia, Hi3G Sweden, KPN

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado

July 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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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.