Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe comparison

Dell Technologies and Pure Storage are both solutions in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category. Dell Technologies is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.9, while Pure Storage is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.6. Dell Technologies holds a 8.6% mindshare in N, compared to Pure Storage’s 2.7% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Pure Storage users who would recommend it.

Dell PowerMax

Read 84 Dell PowerMax reviews

5,104 Views
2,144 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Read 35 Pure FlashArray X NVMe reviews

1,757 Views
914 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Dell PowerMax

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

In the enterprise storage category, Dell PowerMax and Pure FlashArray X NVMe both compete with their high-end features and performance. Dell PowerMax appears to have the upper hand due to its extensive integration options and reliability in complex environments, while Pure FlashArray X NVMe excels in ease of use and data handling efficiency.

Features: Dell PowerMax impresses with SRDF replication, comprehensive analytics, and high performance with low latency. Its integration capabilities with existing systems make it suitable for complex enterprise environments. Pure FlashArray X NVMe is known for its low latency, efficient data reduction, and simplified management, which make it a favorite for ease of use.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerMax users seek better NVMe over Fibre Channel support and find room to enhance management tools and interface intuitiveness. Improvements in deduplication and compression are also desired. In contrast, Pure FlashArray X NVMe's pricing structure is a concern, and users seek improved cloud integration and redundancy, along with better replication features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerMax is praised for robust customer support, although some SLA adherence issues are noted. Its extensive support network aids in complex deployments. Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers a straightforward setup and easy deployment, despite some support language barriers. It's deployed in hybrid and cloud settings widely.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerMax is costly but justified by features and savings achieved through consolidation and efficiency, delivering a strong ROI. Users of Pure FlashArray X NVMe find it expensive, yet competitive, due to powerful features. While Dell users benefit from cost efficiencies, Pure Storage's customers appreciate its performance and regular updates for simplifying operations.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe

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

Dell PowerMax

Ranking in All-Flash Storage

7th

Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

3rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Ranking in All-Flash Storage

14th

Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

6th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

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

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

Featured Reviews

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

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"It is very stable. We expect superior performance and reliability from this particular storage system."

"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerMax is its reliability."

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

"Technical support has been excellent."

"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."

"It's faster and more resilient."

"The features of Dell PowerMax that I find most useful include reliability, support, uptime as well as flexibility and expandability."

More Dell PowerMax pros

"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."

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

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

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

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

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

Cons

"They should work with the storage engineers to better tweak the management tools to give them improved visibility into their data."

"There are so many configurations in the tool that cannot be done by anyone who is not a Dell personnel."

"One area for improvement would be integration with public cloud services. Compared to competitors such as NetApp, which integrates with public cloud hyperscalers (GCP, Azure, AWS), Dell PowerMax lacks in this aspect."

"The initial setup process is difficult."

"Support of the product can be slow and an administrative challenge: planning, scheduling, and overseeing data center access for a Dell EMC rep. One improvement could be to enable a self-maintenance option. The requirements that we go through to get Dell EMC onsite to replace failed drives, power supplies, and other small redundant parts can be unnecessarily complex. If simplified, they could send us the parts, then we could replace them much faster, more easily, and truly within the SLA parameters."

"We've had a couple of little things come up, but for the most part, they've been pretty stable."

"There is room for improvement in adjusting into the existing infrastructure easily without much of the technical contribution."

"When it comes to Oracle and database workloads, data reduction could be a little bit better. Some of the competition, like Pure, have post-processes which do additional deduplication and compression on the backside; everything is in-line and then they do a secondary process. It would be a good option if you could start getting 5:1 or 6:1 data reduction on database workloads."

More Dell PowerMax cons

"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."

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

"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."

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

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

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

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

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is competitive, but they need to have a different price for West Africa. They can do better with the price point to allow us to scale even more. We wanted to migrate our entire storage infrastructure to PowerMax, which would require us to buy more capacity, and from the price point, it didn't attract us."

"Dell PowerMax NVMe's price is expensive."

"Negotiate hard and consider the commercial advantages/benefits to Dell EMC for onboarding your product."

"Our costs are on a yearly basis."

"The pricing is competitive. I would rate the pricing of the solution a six out of ten."

"The pricing might be a bit high for small organizations, so it's more suitable for larger enterprises."

"The price is really high."

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

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

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

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

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

"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."

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

"The product is expensive."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 offerings and integrated into the PowerStoreOS. The installation and setup have a ...

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 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 should not incur extra charges. This is one of the main things organizations need.

See all answers

Comparisons

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

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell PowerMax Competitors

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

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

July 2025

Download Dell PowerMax product report

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

June 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Also Known As

Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

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

Overview

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

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

Sample Customers

Rackspace, Open Line

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe

May 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe

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