Dell PowerMax vs Dell SC Series comparison

Dell PowerMax and Dell SC Series are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell PowerMax is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.6, while Dell SC Series is ranked #17 with an average rating of 9.0. Dell PowerMax holds a 3.9% mindshare in AFS, compared to Dell SC Series’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell PowerMax users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Dell SC Series users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

In the storage solutions category, Dell SC Series and Dell PowerMax each offer unique features. Dell PowerMax tends to have the upper hand due to its advanced NVMe architecture and data services which cater to high enterprise demands.

Features: Dell SC Series is known for its flexibility, allowing the integration of both spinning disks and flash, providing cost-effective auto-tiering, reliable performance, and seamless live migrations. It also excels in expanding capacities and configuring environments. In contrast, Dell PowerMax features an NVMe architecture known for high speed and efficiency, along with compression, deduplication, and SRDF replication, coupled with CloudIQ for comprehensive performance visibility.

Room for Improvement: Dell SC Series users often seek enhanced scaling options, better deduplication, and more intuitive management. A need for NVMe support is also frequently mentioned. Dell PowerMax, while robust, faces criticism for high upfront costs and complexity in management. Users suggest improving NAS capabilities and simplifying management tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both products are commonly deployed on-premises, with the SC Series also appearing in some hybrid cloud setups. SC Series is highly praised for its proactive Copilot customer support which ensures rapid responses. PowerMax’s support is similarly excellent, characterized by professionalism and prompt service, although real-time support enhancements are desired.

Pricing and ROI: Dell SC Series is favored for its cost-effectiveness and competitive pricing, delivering strong ROI through easy expansion and lower maintenance over time. PowerMax, while expensive, is justified for large-scale projects requiring high capabilities, providing significant performance gains and comprehensive features that enhance ROI, though its cost may limit broader accessibility.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax vs. Dell SC Series Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Dell SC Series

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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

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 is 3.9%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 0.8%, down from 1.2% 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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Moin-Shah

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

Seamless management and exceptional performance facilitate efficient data handling

I have not faced significant problems or challenges with Dell PowerMax NVMe during this time, although one area for improvement is its user-friendliness, as it's a bit engineer-oriented. Specific knowledge and expertise are required to manage it properly, which some users might find a bit challenging, yet it's not a big deal for me. With user experience in mind, an improvement for Dell PowerMax NVMe could be clearer total capacity measurements from snapshots and clones, which should be more visible for better planning. Additionally, a template script from PowerMax could assist customers in easily integrating their API-interconnected systems without needing extensive knowledge. To improve regarding scripts, I recommend that if a customer wants to automate snapshots from other systems, 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.

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Steven McClendon

Data Center Server & Storage Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Superior platform with excellent snapshots and cost-saving auto-tiering

I'm a big fan of the SC Series platform. Its feature set is superior to some of the other platforms. The snapshots on SC are excellent, allowing for multiple snapshot schedules for any one system. The auto-tiering functionality intelligently moves new data to the highest performance tier and then progresses it down to less expensive tiers over time, providing cost savings for customers.

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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."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

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

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

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

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

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

"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"We were able to move away from a middleware solution for high availability, going right to snapshots and data replication on arrays."

"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."

"The speed and the compatible interface with IBM are the most valuable features of the PowerMax product."

"It's faster and more resilient."

"It is a very stable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"It allows us to protect our data using different data centers and replicate bi-directionally between our two main data centers."

"We use ESRS for our call-home, and a lot of times, Dell EMC will respond to the issue before we even know it."

"The tool is a fast-performing asset. It can perform millions of transactions within a second. I like the tool's architecture as well."

More Dell PowerMax pros

"Dell SC Series' most valuable features are performance and network facilities. We have no issues with its integration. The tool helps to visualize servers."

"With auto-tiering, it's easier to understand than most arrays, knowing that all of your writes go to the tier that you specify, with easy-to-create storage profiles."

"Easy management of volumes: You can create volumes and easily assign them to VMware clusters, increasing their size."

"One time, we had a drive fail and we were notified before we even saw it on the device."

"It is suitable for small or medium businesses."

"Technical support is very good. I do use it from time to time and it's always excellent."

"With federation, you can have multiple systems across sites. You can treat them as one, and with a live migration, volumes don't go down. You can move them from site to site, doing maintenance, and keep your environment up."

"The product offers good performance and is quite powerful."

More Dell SC Series pros

Cons

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

"The software layer has to improve."

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

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

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

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"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."

"I would like it to support NVMe over Fabrics, because that is the next item for consideration on the NVMe roadmap. PowerMax supports NVMe on the back-end, but when it starts supporting NVMe over Fibre Channel, suddenly various hosts can directly communicate with PowerMax, and with NVMe-oF, as well. Suddenly, Gen 6 and Gen 7 switchers will be able to help facilitate that particular communication channel."

"If the solution had more power-saving capabilities, it would be quite nice."

"PowerMax Storage needs improvement in the area of monitoring tools. It should have more functions and more complicated analysis options inside the monitoring tools."

"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."

"Dell PowerMax needs more connectivity options for projects that require separate web access."

"PowerMax's software is highly stable, but we faced two hardware issues in one year. We had a failure of the storage director module, and the physical disk failed on another occasion. Dell EMC should improve its hardware quality."

"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 don't think the solution is very scalable."

"If Dell SC Series wasn't being phased out, adding an NVMe tier and secure snapshots like those on the PowerStore platform would be beneficial."

"The lower model, the 3000, should have duplication. It doesn't right now. It's only from 5000 that this is offered, but it depends on the performance. It could be they don't offer it on lower models because the duplication is too much of a burden to the performance."

"The initial setup is somewhat complex and should be made simpler to do."

"It's not very efficient anymore. There are better products out there."

"Compellent comes in the form of a component that's not true of a unified storage platform."

"While there's always room for improvement in everything, I can't really think of a specific feature of the solution that requires immediate attention."

"We can definitely see a need for it being a multi-controller system for customers who want to scale beyond the current capability. That's always a downside. A lot of the new systems are scaling vertically, they scale out, and the Compellent, of course, is controllers with shelves under it, so you don't scale out with it, unless you add another one. But if you do, they don't talk to each other, like some of the other solutions that we sell."

More Dell SC Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"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."

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

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

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

"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

"Since Dell PowerMax NVMe is an enterprise storage, its price is premium."

"The pricing for this solution is good compared to other products in the market."

"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."

"Our costs for the product are three million."

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

"The labor savings and support have been significant. If we're talking 100 hours of labor every three months, that is 100 hours of a database engineer costs. There are performance latency numbers as well as costs associated with recovering data that gets lost, and this system doesn't lose data. You can look at numbers that go around the cost of downtime, if data is not available. This system doesn't go down. Everyone's ROI is going to be unique, but the dependability and performance of the system combined with its ease of operation will definitely save businesses of all sizes money."

"The PowerMax appliance pricing was reasonable. Dell EMC quoted us a substantial discount."

"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."

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

"It's a very affordable solution."

"Pricing depends on varying life cycles."

"We have found it to be affordable. Comparing the cost with other hardware, it seems to be right in line with the compute and the storage that we get with it."

"This product is too expensive compared to others, and I don't see any value in using it."

"The scalability seems a bit more expensive than even buying a brand new one so far. That has been kind of a drawback."

"This solution could be better priced in comparison with other vendors."

"Support typically depends on the array. It can range anywhere from $7,000 to a couple of hundred thousand dollars."

"We have reviewed many platforms over the years. It is probably the best solution for its value."

More Dell SC Series pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

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.

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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.

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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 ...

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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.

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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...

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What do you like most about Dell SC Series?

I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell SC Series?

Cost considerations are crucial when choosing between solutions like Dell and NetApp. Sometimes Dell offers better pe...

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What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?

In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage. If I want...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 31% 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

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 27% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 13% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 10% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 8% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell PowerMax Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell SC Series

Compared 61% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell SC Series

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell SC Series

Compared 9% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell SC Series

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell SC Series

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell SC Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series

May 2025

Download Dell SC Series product report

Also Known As

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

Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

SC Series Storage, Compellent

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

Dell EMC SC Series arrays provide a unified platform for the ultimate in performance, adaptability and machine-driven efficiency. SC Series software delivers modern features that help you meet aggressive workload demands using the fewest drives necessary. With an open, future-ready design, SC Series storage integrates seamlessly with applications and infrastructure, enabling you to scale on a single platform and add capabilities without forklift upgrades.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Dell SC Series

April 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax vs. Dell SC Series

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax vs. Dell SC Series and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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