Dell PowerMax NVMe 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 8.5, while Pure Storage is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.6. Dell Technologies holds a 8.8% mindshare in N, compared to Pure Storage’s 2.6% 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 NVMe

Read 76 Dell PowerMax NVMe reviews

2,445 Views
1,662 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Read 35 Pure FlashArray X NVMe reviews

873 Views
424 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Dell PowerMax NVMe

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Dell PowerMax NVMe and Pure FlashArray X NVMe are leading enterprise storage solutions. Pure FlashArray appears to have an advantage in simplicity and cost-effectiveness, whereas Dell PowerMax offers extensive enterprise features and longevity.

Features: Dell PowerMax NVMe offers advanced replication, encryption, and end-to-end NVMe support. It is known for its robust performance, security features, and integration capabilities. Pure FlashArray X NVMe focuses on simplicity and innovative data reduction technologies, with high operational efficiency and an easy-to-use interface.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerMax NVMe could improve in ease of management, cost efficiency, and user experience. Pure FlashArray X NVMe needs enhancements in support responsiveness, feature customization, and support structure.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerMax NVMe is straightforward to deploy, but users need better configuration guidance and customer support. Pure FlashArray X NVMe boasts rapid deployment and intuitive setup but some report delays in customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerMax NVMe has higher initial setup costs but offers robust ROI through enterprise features and longevity. Pure FlashArray X NVMe is more cost-effective initially, with all-inclusive pricing and efficient ROI through reduced management costs.

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

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe

April 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 NVMe

Ranking in All-Flash Storage

8th

Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

3rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Ranking in All-Flash Storage

15th

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 May 2025, in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category, the mindshare of Dell PowerMax NVMe is 8.8%, down from 13.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 2.6%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

Featured Reviews

Haseeb Khalid Sheikh

Senior Manager Enterprise Solutions at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

End-to-end NVMe capabilities helps improve availability, performance, and capacity

The solution's most valuable feature is the data reduction ratio. You can store a 5:1 ratio of your data in Dell PowerMax NVMe. For example, if you have 200 terabytes of usable capacity, you can save up to five times of data on that capacity. That means you can save one petabyte of data on just 200 terabytes of usable capacity. The solution's end-to-end NVMe capabilities have improved our operations. Everything is fast, and you don't have to map your storage to old hybrid storage technologies. Our organization has experienced positive change, and the solution has improved our uptime, availability, performance, and capacity.

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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

"The solution's snapshot capabilities and replication are very good features. Snapshots are allowing us to quickly build analytical models directly from production data. This gives us amazing insights into market trends and allows us to build more effective trading algorithms. Replication offers us unparalleled levels of resilience."

"The solution's technical support was good, and it is one of the tool's main advantages."

"The stability is amazing. Zero downtime reported over the last years."

"It is easy to manage and upgrade."

"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."

"CloudIQ has become an optimal tool for us to get the full picture of all the different arrays, from mid-tier all the way up. It gives us that single view and the ability to launch the Unisphere. That is really is powerful in being able to manage the array."

"The NVMe technology improves input/output performance, making it a valuable asset for our organization's storage solutions."

"The upgradability and extendibility for the size of the storage unit are noteworthy."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pros

"The latency is good."

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

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

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

Cons

"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."

"The initial setup was complex, and we had experienced people working on it."

"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'd like to see the dedup and compression improve. Two to one is not very good. We should be getting something like three, four, or five to one."

"The main challenge with the product was to have control over the simultaneous failures of controllers. For recovery, manual intervention is required."

"Dell should work on their marketing strategies to make the product more visible on the market. They should promote the product's compatibility with IBM, as not everyone knows it."

"Setting up PowerMax with VMAX is always complex."

"I would like to see continued visibility and analytics in the platform."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe cons

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

"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."

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

"We need better data deduplication."

"It is on the expensive side."

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

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe a five out of ten for pricing."

"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."

"Our costs for the product are three million."

"The pricing is comparable to other vendors."

"It is high-end storage and it is a bit expensive, but it is doing what it is meant for: running business-critical applications or latency-sensitive applications..."

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

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

"In terms of price-performance, it beat out other competitors when we were taking a look and comparing it to the market. That was one of the biggest driving points for us."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pricing and cost advice

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

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

"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 product is expensive."

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

"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."

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

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

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?

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 ...

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 NVMe

Compared 27% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell PowerMax NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 30% 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 15% 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 NVMe

April 2025

Download Dell PowerMax NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

April 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Also Known As

Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

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

Overview

Dell PowerMax is the industry’s most secure mission-critical storage platform. With NVMe Dynamic Fabric technology, PowerMax breaks from traditional storage limitations, enabling seamless integration with cloud-native and legacy applications. Designed with a powerful scale-up and scale-out architecture, PowerMax supports mission-critical applications at scale with zero downtime and ultra-low latency. The latest PowerMaxOS 10 release harnesses AI-driven efficiencies for trusted performance, capacity, and security. By choosing PowerMax, you can trust in a secure, intelligent, and always modern storage solution that unlocks the full potential of your data to drive business success.

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 NVMe vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe

April 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe

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