Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Dell PowerMax vs Hitachi VSP E Series comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
1.0
Organizations reduced costs and improved performance with Pure FlashArray X NVMe, achieving quick ROI and efficient resource management.
Sentiment score
8.2
Dell PowerMax delivers cost savings, enhanced efficiency, increased uptime, and improved performance, leading to high user satisfaction and ROI.
Sentiment score
1.0
Hitachi VSP E Series' ROI varies by use case, excelling in high IOPS workloads, with efficient manageability and support.
By opting for the gold subscription every three years, you get a free upgrade to the latest controller release.
If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.
During a DCDR setup and migration from VMAX to Dell PowerMax, what was planned as a two-day downtime was completed in just three to four hours.
The performance metrics or benchmarks I use to measure success with Dell PowerMax include uptime as well as our response times on our platforms, both of which are exactly where we want them to be, which is five nines and as fast as possible.
My client has seen significant ROI since the install, and when you don't go down, that's an ROI in and of itself.
Return on investment depends on the use case, especially for workloads demanding high IOPS.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe's technical support is praised for responsiveness, despite occasional follow-up issues, earning high customer satisfaction.
Sentiment score
8.4
Dell PowerMax's customer service is highly rated for promptness and knowledge, despite some issues with SLA and language barriers.
Sentiment score
3.6
Hitachi VSP E Series support receives mixed reviews, with higher-level interactions providing better experiences than initial support.
We also had one outage where a controller of one of the products had failed and had to be replaced on-site.
Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.
Pure has good storage.
I would rate Dell PowerMax support as a ten, as I have never had an issue with Dell support as it relates to this product.
Dell support for Dell PowerMax is exceptional, rating a perfect 10 out of 10.
I evaluate Dell's support for PowerMax as very good, especially regarding their response time as well as their willingness to get ahead of issues.
The support and AI-driven initiatives are well-suited for accommodating specific workloads like AI and storage for transactional workloads.
If the call reaches a senior engineer, then the support is quite good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers scalable storage with low latency, easy upgrades, though capacity customization and high costs are noted.
Sentiment score
7.7
Dell PowerMax provides scalable, efficient performance with NVMe, valued for enterprise use despite some cost and scaling speed concerns.
Sentiment score
4.9
Hitachi VSP E Series offers excellent scalability with flexible upgrades, handling up to 3,000 users but at a high cost.
It is highly scalable.
It is suitable for both medium-sized and enterprise businesses.
It hasn't broken down anytime in the last six to seven years, despite hurricanes, earthquakes, and power outages.
Scalability is not an issue.
Dell PowerMax is good for enterprises, and it also depends on how much workload you're going to bring in on Dell PowerMax in terms of performance and how many users are going to use the database you're hosting.
Volumes can be defined to grow to any level without impacting overall performance.
These products are highly scalable, offering excellent compute, memory, and storage scalability.
The product is easy to scale, although it is expensive.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Pure Storage offers exceptional stability and reliability with outstanding support, consistently achieving high user ratings for performance and service.
Sentiment score
8.7
Dell PowerMax is highly rated for reliability, performance, and stability, with quick support for occasional issues.
Sentiment score
7.0
The Hitachi VSP E Series has mixed stability reviews, praised for performance but criticized for maintenance downtimes.
During the eight years, there have been no problems such as hardware failure or stopping.
I would rate the stability of the solution as a ten out of ten.
I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.
These patches can be applied on the fly without requiring software upgrades or system downtime.
I would rate it nine out of ten since there are no required downtimes, even during firmware upgrades.
There has been no downtime with Dell PowerMax; it's been extremely reliable, easy to manage, easy to upgrade, and trustworthy as we've upgraded over the years from one version to another.
There have been no known glitches or performance issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Pure FlashArray X requires cost-effective improvements in UI, integration, cloud features, multitenancy, analytics, backup, AI, and scalability.
Dell PowerMax needs improvements in deduplication, UI, cloud integration, cost efficiency, AI, security, and system setup.
Hitachi VSP E Series is costly, has a complex interface, and requires unified storage and improved marketing and documentation.
We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.
I'm eagerly anticipating the roadmap's promise of introducing multiple controllers, which could significantly boost scalability and resilience.
We mostly rely on long-term releases. We don't need the most up-to-date features, but we need a reliable environment.
Compared to competitors such as NetApp, which integrates with public cloud hyperscalers (GCP, Azure, AWS), Dell PowerMax lacks in this aspect.
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.
Dell PowerMax NVMe is very reliable storage and cannot experience downtime.
I recommend creating one product for unified use, like other manufacturers, which includes both block and file storage in one platform.
Hitachi is quite expensive, and small to medium-sized organizations usually do not purchase it.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers see Pure FlashArray X NVMe as a justified premium investment due to performance and comprehensive licensing.
Dell PowerMax is costly yet competitive, appreciated for total ownership value, offering various pricing models and potential savings.
Hitachi VSP E Series is an enterprise-level, costly storage solution ideal for banks requiring high performance and availability.
While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.
The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.
I would give it a nine out of ten in terms of costliness.
The higher cost compared to other vendors is justified by additional features, vendor-managed upgrades, and superior support services.
It is the best choice for large projects in terms of price and features compared to midrange solutions.
The price is starting from $500,000.
Hitachi is generally expensive, providing products designed for enterprise customers like banks with transactional workloads.
The solution is expensive, which can be considered a con.
 

Valuable Features

Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers exceptional performance, reliability, scalability, and seamless VMware integration, enhancing workload efficiency and user experience.
Dell PowerMax offers advanced performance, security, and efficiency through NVMe, data reduction, and seamless integration, supporting diverse workloads.
Hitachi VSP E Series provides high-performance, all-flash storage with NVMe, offering reliability, scalability, and user-friendly automation features.
Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator.
The platform's robust features include excellent sustainability tracking, and a comprehensive dashboard offering insights into IOPS, bandwidth, performance, and virtual activities.
Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.
NVMe provides additional fast cache, similar to random access memory (RAM), which improves overall system performance and read/write experience for users.
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 key benefits of using Dell PowerMax, quantified in terms of saved hours and saved costs, is having one single platform that provides functionality to all of our internal customers.
Hitachi offers this twenty-four by seven without needing downtime.
The Hitachi VSP E Series is all-flash storage, so it is fast.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (14th)
Dell PowerMax
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (7th)
Hitachi VSP E Series
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
11th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 2.9%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax is 8.8%, down from 10.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hitachi VSP E Series is 2.4%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MayankChauhan - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Paolo Brega - PeerSpot reviewer
Rated highly for robust integration and diverse features
Currently, we are not approaching the virtual storage. We are working with Hitachi and Pure Storage; in some cases, we work with NetApp. We work with more or less all the stack of Hitachi products, starting from the small machine up to the VSP, the big family, the high-end, depending on the customer, the end user. We have very poor experience with Hitachi VSP E Series because we don't have big customers, just a couple. We had experience with VSP, specifically the E Series. We don't take care of data protection features from Hitachi because our customers do not generally involve us in this area as it is not our focus. Integrating Hitachi VSP with a hybrid cloud environment is not particularly complex. The automation process is handled by our storage administrator; I support them in the choice but don't work directly with that. I would rate Hitachi's pricing around a three, stability an eight, and Hitachi VSP's scalability a 10, as you can scale whenever you want. Hitachi VSP can compete absolutely on the market. When comparing solutions, Hitachi VSP is the best for me. I have rated this solution 9 out of 10.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays solutions are best for your needs.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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.
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...
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 ...
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?
When comparing Dell PowerMax NVMe with other vendors, such as IBM enterprise solutions, the price is relatively higher.
What do you like most about Hitachi VSP E Series?
Its user-friendly configuration and maintenance processes contribute to its reputation for being straightforward and ...
What needs improvement with Hitachi VSP E Series?
Hitachi needs to work on the marketing side because communication is a problem, as many customers do not know what th...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Rackspace, Open Line
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax vs. Hitachi VSP E Series and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.