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Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Pure Storage FlashArray comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell PowerMax NVMe
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (3rd)
Pure Storage FlashArray
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
199
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax NVMe is 3.9%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashArray is 6.3%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Kazi Amranul Houqe - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust storage system enables seamless handling of mission-critical applications
Performance and management aspects are satisfactory, however, there is room to enhance data protection and future proofing to enable remote visualization and control capabilities when compared with other vendors. It can improve its hybrid model. Improvements can be made in support services, remote support, and remote visualization. This depends on in-situ support, remote support, and other factors, however, enhancement is needed in our territories to improve remote support and parts availability. While Dell PowerMax NVMe is very reliable storage and cannot experience downtime, we sometimes face challenges in our territories regarding the availability of critical parts. Our local support people occasionally encounter situations where faulty parts are not currently available.
Nabeel Sayegh - PeerSpot reviewer
Supercharges enterprise storage by way of highly optimized hardware, comprehensive data management and a feature rich interface.
During their early years, I was a member of Pure's Customer Advisory Board. In addition, when we first adopted Pure, they did not have replication GA yet. We got into their beta testing program and help them work out certain issues with that technology. One weakness I can say the array has, still to this day, is limited control on scheduling snapshots. Depending on the type of replication schedule you are building, you may or may not have control on specifying the start time of a given replication schedule. This is not a very big problem in the grand scheme of things, but something nonetheless that has bothered me about the scheduler in general. Another area for improvement would be automatic host alias creation. Other platforms such as EMC Unity/PowerStore will automatically detect the host name, create a alias for it and associate the logged in HBA's to it. Pure does not do this for you and as a result, requires manual configuration. This can be very time consuming especially when you are deploying a large number of new servers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"The solution is scalable."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"The most valuable feature is the performance and compression. The most useful tool is CloudIQ."
"We are using the solution's application and snapshot feature."
"The solution is easy to use with applications that are user-friendly."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"It has reduced our footprint in different physical locations."
"It is a true, stable product."
"The best feature is the protection - PowerMax NVMe is volume-based and replicates data, so it's very comfortable for us to use."
"This platform is reliable in supporting our data availability. We now have a higher performing platform and have been able to consolidate our workloads into one single platform."
"This solution has improved our organization in the way that we used to see latency but now with this solution we don't. It also has good performance. Latencies have come down for our performance in the SQL databases. We can put a lot more in a lot less in terms of space savings. We also save data center space have good deduplication."
"It simplifies building out the storage."
"Pure Storage FlashArray provides immediate benefits to our customers with its easy setup process, allowing for instant use and rapid realization of advantages."
"I never have to worry about its performance or if it is the root cause of an issue."
"We also use VMware integrations developed by Pure, their plugins in our vCenter environment. They help by allowing our non-technical operations teams to deploy new data stores and resize data stores without me having to involve myself all the time to do those simple tasks."
"Compared to Unity, these arrays offer significant advantages, such as NVMe technology and higher IOPS."
"The most valuable feature is replication."
"Cost, racial per terabyte, and speed is why we chose PureStorage. It was no brainer."
 

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."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."
"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."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"The software layer has to improve."
"I hear from people on my team that they would like improved reporting. While there are some decent tools for doing reporting, they would like to see a lot more built-in functionality. This way when they are logged into the interface everyday doing basic management tasks, they could also see some statistics on what is their storage pool usage and will be their projected usage with their current data growth. They want to be able to see more detailed stats on how they are using the system and have forecasting."
"The technical support is lacking. We are working with Dell EMC to get some better understanding of this."
"If you go to Pure or you go to NetApp, they deliver in one month. If you go to Dell or HP, they will take up to six months for delivery. This is not a business model for today."
"The solution does not use new versions of OS and patches. Its installation is also difficult. The solution is not as fast as other storage in the market."
"They should work with the storage engineers to better tweak the management tools to give them improved visibility into their data."
"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."
"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."
"It goes at about 95 percent, so we have had some performance issues. It is hard to clear them."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"If they could make it cheaper, that would be something."
"It is way in excess of what we need. If anything, we could see a bit more speed. I'm just comparing it with what some of my colleagues who are implementing their own systems do."
"I feel like there is too much automation; the user doesn't have any manual input."
"The integration capabilities could be improved."
"A noticeable area for improvement is the support for object storage. The FlashArray does not natively support object storage like S3 or Swift, which pushes customers needing these features towards the more expensive FlashBlade."
"If I need to change or troubleshoot the dashboard, I cannot do it without calling support. If I want to move something critical, I cannot do it by myself. The dashboard blocks me from changing those critical things."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"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."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"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."
"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 pricing might be a bit high for small organizations, so it's more suitable for larger enterprises."
"The price is starting from $500,000."
"The pricing for this solution is good compared to other products in the market."
"Our costs for the product are three million."
"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."
"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 is expensive compared to other products and I would rate its pricing a four out of ten."
"The price, in general, is around $100,000, however, I know it costs more."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could always improve. They are still more expensive than some alternative offerings. Cost is always a concern and when there is a battle they tend to be more expensive."
"I don't know the exact cost but it's around $1,000."
"We would like them to improve the pricing, so we could put them to use some more product, like backup or long-term storage. In the future, if the price goes down, then we could buy different types of products."
"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."
"It was less expensive than some of the alternatives. It's not as though it was a premium price to get that kind of quality. It's a very competitive product from a price perspective..."
"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
"Pure is typically more expensive than everyone else. You get what you pay for, but I have lost deals to similar solutions because of pricing. They include everything, and that's another positive about Pure Storage. They aren't trying to nickel and dime their customers for different features. It is all included in one price. The license is by capacity, and the price depends on the capacity and the discount we're getting from the vendor. You get the SKU of the physical appliance, support, and maintenance, and that's it. You're licensed for whatever feature they offer. It is all rolled up into the price of the appliance."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
32%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

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.
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 ...
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...
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.
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 charge...
Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashArray?
We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The cost of Pure Storage is subjective and determined by your environment. Pure Storage tends to be more expensive th...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Rackspace, Open Line
Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Pure Storage FlashArray and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.