Dell PowerMax vs Dell VMAX All Flash comparison

Dell PowerMax and Dell VMAX All Flash are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell PowerMax is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.8, while Dell VMAX All Flash is ranked #28 with an average rating of 8.0. Dell PowerMax holds a 4.8% mindshare in AFS, compared to Dell VMAX All Flash’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell PowerMax users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Dell VMAX All Flash users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 30, 2025

Dell PowerMax and Dell VMAX All Flash compete in advanced data management. PowerMax offers a modern feature set with greater speed and innovation, giving it a slight edge. VMAX, however, is known for its robust performance and reliability.

Features:PowerMax provides advanced data reduction, AI-driven workload optimization, and high-speed connectivity. VMAX delivers strong data protection, consistent performance, and integration with legacy systems.

Room for Improvement:PowerMax could enhance its compatibility with older systems, reduce deployment costs, and expand its feature set for non-dynamic environments. VMAX may improve by adopting more modern data analysis tools, enhancing scalability, and increasing support for hybrid environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:PowerMax features intuitive deployment and responsive technical support. VMAX requires traditional setups but benefits from a comprehensive service infrastructure.

Pricing and ROI:PowerMax involves a premium investment reflecting its advanced technology, delivering efficiency and performance gains. VMAX offers a more predictable cost structure and solid ROI due to its reliability and stable performance.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax vs. Dell VMAX All Flash Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Dell VMAX All Flash

December 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 January 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax is 4.8%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell VMAX All Flash is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dell PowerMax	4.8%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.4%
Dell VMAX All Flash	0.8%
Other	93.0%

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.

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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.

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Arjun Sadsivam

Solution Architect at a agriculture with 10,001+ employees

Performance and interface improve data processing speeds but require complex configuration

The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface. We have seen significant improvements in technology over the last four to five years. The snap feature, along with deduplication, has notably enhanced our data processing speeds. We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution.

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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

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"I appreciate the performance."

"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."

"The latency is good."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The best feature is the protection - PowerMax NVMe is volume-based and replicates data, so it's very comfortable for us to use."

"The solution has good operability and easy scalability."

"The smaller footprint of the device has been really nice. We have gone from eight bays to one bay. Having one floor tile in our data center has been pretty awesome. A lot less power and HVAC cooling is being consumed."

"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 product's initial setup phase is easy."

"Technical support has been excellent."

"The most important feature or function in Dell PowerMax is the capacity to deliver the required IOPS."

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

More Dell PowerMax pros

"The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface."

"The snapshot feature has been precious for our testing processes, application development, and managing testing environments due to its efficiency and ease of use."

"The ransomware protection feature is housed in a separate unit, specifically addressing the top twenty most critical threats."

"It works very well."

"We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution."

"The product's initial setup phase was good."

Cons

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

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

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

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

"We need better data deduplication."

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

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"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."

"There are definitely some improvements that can be made to the CloudIQ."

"The price cap of Dell PowerMax NVMe is very high."

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

"There is room for improvement in terms of integration with various service providers for public clouds."

"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."

"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."

"There is some room to grow, especially with some of the installation quirks."

More Dell PowerMax cons

"Improvements are needed in both partition recovery and scalability."

"There is room for improvement in the centralized administration."

"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability."

"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additional engines to address this limitation."

"We encountered some challenges during large data migrations that could be addressed for smoother transitions."

"The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

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

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"The product is expensive."

"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 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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Our costs for the product are three million."

"I think it is an expensive tool, but it is the best product. I think it is expensive and the cost one must pay for the best solution."

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

"Dell PowerMax NVMe's price is expensive."

"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."

"Dell is expensive compared to other products and I would rate its pricing a four out of ten."

"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."

"The pricing is comparable to other vendors."

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

"It is not a cheap product."

"The price falls within the mid-range, neither inexpensive nor high-priced."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

16%

Healthcare Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	55

No data available

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?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

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 Dell EMC VMax?

The product's initial setup phase was good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC VMax?

The pricing provided by EMC is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell EMC VMax?

The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additiona...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 18% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 20% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 7% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 5% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 3% of the time

More Dell PowerMax Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell VMAX All Flash

Compared 9% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell VMAX All Flash

Compared 8% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs Dell VMAX All Flash

Compared 7% of the time

Huawei OceanStor vs Dell VMAX All Flash

Compared 7% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell VMAX All Flash

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell VMAX All Flash Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

January 2026

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

January 2026

Download Dell PowerMax product report

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

January 2026

Download Dell VMAX All Flash product report

Also Known As

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

Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

No data available

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

PowerMax leads in mission-critical enterprise storage with advanced architecture and AI-driven automation, ensuring secure and efficient IT optimization. Its multi-node NVMe scale-out framework delivers unmatched performance and consolidation, backed by Dell’s Future-Proof Program.

PowerMax is renowned for its robust reliability, performance, and efficient data reduction capabilities. Users benefit from its NVMe architecture, aiding significant scalability and cost efficiency through effective deduplication and compression. Unisphere simplifies management, while CloudIQ provides enhanced monitoring. With high availability and strong IOPS capabilities, PowerMax effectively manages demanding workloads and ensures seamless operations. Its compact design and increased storage capacity enhance user experience, particularly with easy maintenance and robust performance.

What are the key features of PowerMax?

Reliability: Ensures consistent service uptime and data integrity.
High Performance: NVMe architecture provides exceptional speed and efficiency.
Data Reduction: Deduplication and compression drive down costs.
Management Tools: Unisphere interface for easy system management.
CloudIQ: Advanced monitoring for predictive insights.
High Availability: Supports mission-critical and demanding workloads.

What benefits should users expect from PowerMax?

Performance Optimization: Handles low latency and high IOPS needs.
Scalability: Expands effortlessly with growing data and workload demands.
Enhanced Monitoring: Predictive analytics for proactive management.
Efficient Maintenance: Streamlined processes reduce downtime and costs.

Dell PowerMax is predominantly employed in mission-critical applications such as SQL, Oracle databases, ERP systems, and high transactional environments. Healthcare, finance, and e-commerce sectors leverage its high performance, scalability, and NVMe technology for low latency and redundancy. It is adept in storage consolidation, data analytics, and disaster recovery.

Dell Technologies

Dell VMAX All Flash is utilized in hyper-converged solutions like VxRail deployments, critical for Data Domain in backup tasks. It supports multi-site replication, disaster recovery, banking IT operations, and high-performance applications.

Dell VMAX All Flash plays a key role in data-intensive environments due to its robust capabilities in storage, data protection, and high throughput tasks. It is crucial in hyper-converged solutions and VxRail deployments, facilitating multi-site replication and disaster recovery. Its applications span across banking and other critical IT operations requiring high performance. The system's ability to support efficient data compression and provide ransomware protection addresses significant security concerns. Multi-site replication and redundancy safeguard data even during power outages or hardware failures, while the snapshot feature aids in testing, application development, and environment management.

What are the key features of Dell VMAX All Flash?

Compression: Efficient data compression capabilities.
Ransomware Protection: Tackles ransomware threats effectively.
Multi-site Replication and Redundancy: Ensures data safety during power outages or hardware issues.
Snapshots: Aids in testing, application development, and environment management.

What benefits should users look for in Dell VMAX All Flash reviews?

Data Protection: Enhanced data security with ransomware protection.
Performance: High throughput for demanding applications.
Reliability: Multi-site replication and redundancy for critical operations continuity.
Support: Adheres to IP strategies with excellent customer support.

Dell VMAX All Flash is critical in industries like banking, where it supports IT operations requiring high performance, and in environments demanding stringent data protection measures. Its role in multi-site replication and disaster recovery makes it invaluable for business continuity and critical data security across sectors.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Dell VMAX All Flash

December 2025

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