Dell PowerMax vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

Dell Technologies and IBM are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.8, while IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.5. Dell Technologies holds a 4.0% mindshare in AFS, compared to IBM’s 6.6% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

IBM FlashSystem and Dell PowerMax are competitive in the enterprise storage category. Dell PowerMax appears to have the upper hand due to a more favorable user perception for handling high-performance workloads.

Features: IBM FlashSystem offers advanced virtualization and optimization features supporting high IOPS rate and micro-latency enhancements. It allows seamless integration with IBM's SAN Volume Controller for efficient storage management. Dell PowerMax provides NVMe-based flash technology, deduplication, and compression capabilities, reducing costs while enhancing performance with features like global cache and near-zero downtime.

Room for Improvement: IBM FlashSystem could improve deduplication and compression to better align with competitors. Enhancement in NAS integration and advanced reporting tools is also needed. Dell PowerMax’s pricing is a concern despite user satisfaction with features. Both products could benefit from improved user interfaces and more granular management options to enhance user experience and data handling.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM FlashSystem offers flexibility in deployments with additional Hybrid and Private Cloud options. Customer service receives mixed reviews, with responsiveness needing improvement. In contrast, Dell PowerMax enjoys positive feedback, though clearer setup guidance and enhanced automation tools are suggested.

Pricing and ROI: IBM FlashSystem's cost is high but competitive due to discounts and bundled features, delivering ROI by boosting application performance and reliability. Dell PowerMax, with its higher initial cost, offers efficient performance and robust after-sale support, ensuring long-term returns. Users recommend evaluating licensing structures and negotiation for optimal pricing.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax vs. IBM FlashSystem Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. IBM FlashSystem

June 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 857,162 peers since 2012

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 June 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax is 4.0%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FlashSystem is 6.6%, down from 6.8% 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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Raanan Sitton

Vice President Sales at BELOCAL LTD

Offers cost-effective storage for small companies with budget constraints

IBM FlashSystem 5300 is offered at a very low cost in Israel, which is advantageous for small companies. However, other features like deduplication and compression do not perform effectively. The price sensitivity makes it a viable option for clients with budgetary constraints, as it allows us to secure deals based on the cost rather than advanced performance.

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

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

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."

"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."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"Technical support has been excellent."

"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 performance is very good on our servers. It's superior. And the QoS capabilities for providing work congestion protection are also important because about 99 percent of our servers are production servers."

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

"The compression and deduplication are always on. We get more than 4:1 capacity savings using them. The efficiency benefits from compression and deduplication are through a specialized hardware module within the storage itself, and that means there is no overhead to the compression and dedupe."

"PowerMax NVMe has made it a lot easier to understand how much we are able to provision. It has made it a lot faster to provision new things. 90% of my time for provisioning has been reduced. Also, it has made it very easy to understand and see everything behind it versus the older heritage, where Dell EMC was very convoluted and hard to get working. Things that used to take an hour, probably now take five to 10 minutes."

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

"I have realized that Dell PowerMax is reliable."

More Dell PowerMax pros

"Installing FlashSystem is very easy. It takes less than half an hour, and I can handle it all myself."

"Stability-wise, this solution is fine."

"Data deduplication is one of the most valuable features of this solution."

"User friendly management interface."

"The most valuable features were the performance of the array, i.e., very low latency and high IOPS. Plus, the management interface is very easy to use."

"Ability to manage third-party arrays and virtualise them: One screen to control multiple arrays. Simplified administration."

"IBM FlashSystem is a powerful effective storage solution. Additionally, it is user-friendly, anyone can use it."

"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem are performance and security."

More IBM FlashSystem pros

Cons

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

"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."

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

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

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

"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."

"We need better data deduplication."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"One area for improvement for Dell PowerMax could be portability, as it would be beneficial to take my data with me if I change platforms. Additionally, upgrades, which we have to pay for now, were previously included in the price."

"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."

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

"The one area for improvement in Dell PowerMax NVMe would be to align the features of the on-premises version with those available in the cloud, as this would provide added value and flexibility."

"We've had issues with whole waves of memory DIMMs that had to be replaced in a machine, which is 32 sticks of memory in one director. It was a tedious day; we've had that on multiple arrays due to a bad batch of memory."

"Dell needs to offer more midrange storage options with enterprise-class features similar to the PowerMAX."

"We have issues that we don't know about, which Dell EMC fixes."

"We are very interested in NVMe over Fibre Channel, which I understand is on the horizon. We would like to see that come to fruition."

More Dell PowerMax cons

"The pricing could be improved, but I think it's getting better and better with each version. IBM needs to implement NAS storage again, as this is a big flaw. Dell EMC is very good at this and if you compared them based on NAS storage, Dell EMC would win right away. IBM's solution for NAS storage is very complicated. We don't have a storage box that provides file sharing from itself, we have to put software on it and go through a whole complicated process. It should be simplified."

"The only issue my team faced was transferring the data from the old system to IBM FlashSystem, which is an area for improvement in the solution."

"IBM FlashSystems is lagging in optimizing storage technologies."

"We had issues when attempting to do a flash, we hope to resolve it soon."

"I would like to have a larger disk. Right now, you can get 57 terabytes in a shelf. Once they get the larger disk and you get larger capacities, it'll be even better."

"GUI interface should be enhanced more as there is some issues in copy services."

"With regards to the IBM V7000 storage system, where we have multiple tiers of storage, a heat map would show I/O distribution across the tiers of storage."

"The pricing needs to be more competitive."

More IBM FlashSystem cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

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

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"It scales enormously, but it's expensive to do so."

"One area for improvement, one that everybody always comes to, is price... it's still quite expensive to purchase these big arrays... For us, the pricing doesn't make Dell EMC uncompetitive."

"The pricing is comparable to other vendors."

"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."

"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."

"The price is starting from $500,000."

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

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

"The tool is cost-efficient."

"I'd rate the basic licensing and the Virtualize software a ten out of ten, and the extra Spectrum and other an eight out of ten."

"The integration is already included in the license cost of IBM FlashSystem. The integration is very easy. You get the IBM storage core with all software, firmware, and upgrades. EMC provides the features in the box, but they are not free for customers. There is a licensing cost for features. We have yearly licensing, but IBM has also provided a new option where you pay as you go. They provide a big box, and I pay, for example, for 10 terabytes. If I exceed 10 terabytes, IBM will charge for the new storage after 10 terabytes. It is a good opportunity in the market for using the storage as a cloud and paying as you go."

"This solution is expensive compared to other solutions."

"Overall the price of the solution is expensive and this includes the license."

"Its price is very good."

"They've been much more aggressive in the last five, six years than they were before that."

"The total storage capacity vs price is still quite high for the IBM Flash Array."

More IBM FlashSystem pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

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.

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 ...

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 IBM FlashSystem?

It is simple to make an update.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem?

Many factors affect purchasing directly from IBM, often involving a multi-step process. Customers, especially in bank...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem?

The deduplication technology in IBM FlashSystem needs significant improvement. Other vendors like NetApp ( /products/...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 29% 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 14% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% 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

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 9% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 5% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 4% of the time

More Dell PowerMax Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 22% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM FlashSystem Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

May 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

June 2025

Download Dell PowerMax product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem

June 2025

Download IBM FlashSystem product report

Also Known As

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

Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

IBM Storwize

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

IBM FlashSystem products are enterprise computer data storage systems that store data on flash memory chips. Unlike storage systems that use standard solid-state drives, IBM FlashSystem products incorporate custom hardware based on technology from the 2012 acquisition of Texas Memory Systems. This hardware provides performance, reliability, and efficiency benefits versus competitive offerings.

IBM

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Celero, Friedhelm Loh Group, Clarks, Mingkang Natregro Health Food Group, Sofia, Etisalat Fights Fraud, UF Health Shands Hospital, Generali, Elecon Engineering Company Limited, Ventiv , Technology, CPFL Energia, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., SciQuest, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, Paddy Power, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Interconnect Services, Severstal IP-Only AB, PVU Group GmbH

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. IBM FlashSystem

June 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax vs. IBM FlashSystem

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax vs. IBM FlashSystem and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Dell PowerMax vs. IBM FlashSystem report.

See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.

We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.