Dell PowerMax vs NetApp ASA comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.9, while NetApp is ranked #20 with an average rating of 9.0. Dell Technologies holds a 4.6% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 24, 2025

Dell PowerMax and NetApp ASA are leading competitors in the enterprise storage solutions market. Dell PowerMax appears to edge ahead with its advanced NVMe architecture and AI-driven capabilities, but NetApp ASA's effective cloud integration and support system might appeal to organizations focusing on efficiency and customer service.

Features: Dell PowerMax features powerful NVMe architecture, AI-driven automation, and advanced data services, offering exceptional speed and performance. NetApp ASA is notable for unified data management, robust cloud integration, and comprehensive capabilities. While both provide strong performance, Dell PowerMax's speed is a highlight. NetApp ASA's integrated cloud features offer significant advantages for hybrid cloud strategies.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerMax provides a robust deployment model with extensive support yet a steeper learning curve. NetApp ASA shines in streamlined deployment processes and exceptional customer support, ensuring easier integration and usability. Both products offer reliable support, but NetApp ASA offers a simpler, more efficient experience.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerMax involves higher initial setup costs but delivers considerable long-term ROI with enhanced performance and efficiency. NetApp ASA presents a competitive pricing model, achieving ROI through its comprehensive features and effective management solutions. Despite costs, Dell PowerMax offers value for enterprises prioritizing high performance, while NetApp ASA ensures cost-effective operations yielding strong returns in data-focused environments.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax vs. NetApp ASA Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. NetApp ASA

September 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 October 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax is 4.6%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ASA is 2.0%, up from 1.5% 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	4.6%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.0%
NetApp ASA	2.0%
Other	92.4%

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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Punit Waghela

Technical Specialist at Softcell Technologies Limited

Runs smoothly and provides excellent performance and throughput

I love the SnapMirror and autonomous ransomware protection features. SnapMirror is used for replication purposes in a DC/DR setup. If something goes wrong with the data center or production DR, the data automatically gets replicated to the DR site, and the DR site becomes operational, allowing continued access to data. Autonomous ransomware protection helps recover data in case of any threat or ransomware. Ransomware is increasing daily, and according to Gartner, most companies have to pay a ransom if a ransomware attack occurs in their environment. NetApp provides a ransomware guarantee program where they commit that if data cannot be recovered in case of ransomware, NetApp will provide compensation, which adds significant value.

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

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

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

"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."

"I appreciate the performance."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"Dell PowerMax has certainly improved our organization by being much faster than what we've had in the past; it's a strong product, and most of the solutions we have or have made with Dell are very fast."

"The product's initial setup phase is easy."

"PowerMax is a compact high-performance appliance. It is one of the best devices in terms of performance specs. It includes an NVMe All-Flash Array."

"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 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 PowerMax software and CloudIQ let us get an inside view of our compression and compaction, as well as our usage of the storage."

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

"I am impressed with the tool's reliability since we see a few hardware failures with it. Also, the solution's replication configuration is good."

More Dell PowerMax pros

"I love the SnapMirror and autonomous ransomware protection features."

"Their dedupe functionality is probably the best in the industry. We also find their support model to be good. When we purchase something, we have a very good understanding of how long that product will be supported by them. That helps."

"I love the SnapMirror and autonomous ransomware protection features."

Cons

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

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"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."

"There is also room for improvement in the PowerMax architecture and hardware itself. They should design the PowerMax on the basis of PCIe 4.0. I would like to see the possibility of an NVMe drive that operates on PCIe 4.0 and not PCIe 3.0."

"Since the merging of EMC and Dell into Dell Technologies, there has been a hurdle that they've had to overcome, and they're not over it yet. It takes two to three times longer for things to get fixed than it did when they were separate companies. That is something that has to be fixed."

"I would like to see more security features and improvements in the platform's ease of management."

"Setting up PowerMax with VMAX is always complex."

"We had challenges again with the initial setup. I don't know if there was a gap during the requirement-collection phase, but the box was partially delivered to us with missing parts and it delayed the implementation by about 60 days. It was not as smooth as I would have hoped."

"Some of the management features could be simplified and that's probably the main thing they need to address."

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

More Dell PowerMax cons

"I would like to see more in terms of replication between storage classes. They provide different lines of storage. They have a lower class. They have a capacity class. They have their enterprise class. Currently, we have interoperability at the same plane with ONTAP, but we would like to see some more mix-and-match features."

"I'm handling pre-sales and post-sales. From a partner's point of view, the tools that I'm using to create the quote or do the sizing are very slow. The tools, such as hardware universe, fusion.netapp.com, and partnerhub.netapp.com, operate very slowly. These tools should be more efficient as they enter a hung state repeatedly."

"From a partner's point of view, the tools that I'm using to create the quote or do the sizing are very slow."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The price is okay."

"Our costs are on a yearly basis."

"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."

"It is high-end storage and it is a bit expensive, but it is doing what it is meant for: running business-critical applications or latency-sensitive applications..."

"We hope that with the combination of both NVMe and SCM the next PowerMax will be much cheaper that the one which we acquired."

"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."

"The pricing is comparable to other vendors."

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

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

"It's more expensive than other storage vendors such as Dell, Pure Storage, HPE, Lenovo, etc. It provides the value, but some of the customers don't look at the value. They first look at the cost. It should be reduced by 20% to 30%."

"It is pretty good. It is definitely cheaper than Dell EMC. It is cheaper than Pure. It is cheaper than VAST. It is definitely cheaper than HPE. The only one that is on par with NetApp's pricing for enterprise customers is IBM."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

26%

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

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	16
Large Enterprise	54

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.

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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...

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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 ...

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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?

When comparing Dell PowerMax NVMe with other vendors, such as IBM enterprise solutions, the price is relatively higher.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp ASA?

I am not much aware of the pricing of NetApp ASA, but I estimate a NetApp ASA system could cost several hundreds of t...

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What needs improvement with NetApp ASA?

The areas of NetApp ASA that could be improved include features such as the active sync feature that allows a custome...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for NetApp ASA?

The most common use cases for NetApp ASA are VMware infrastructures and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization, and in gene...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 23% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 24% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 10% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 10% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 3% of the time

More Dell PowerMax Competitors

NetApp AFF vs NetApp ASA

Compared 38% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp ASA

Compared 13% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs NetApp ASA

Compared 9% of the time

NetApp E-Series vs NetApp ASA

Compared 7% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs NetApp ASA

Compared 3% of the time

More NetApp ASA Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

September 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

September 2025

Download Dell PowerMax product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp ASA

September 2025

Download NetApp ASA 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

The NetApp ASA is an all-flash SAN storage array that delivers industry-leading availability, superior performance, and simplified data management across your hybrid cloud. It is designed for a wide range of workloads, including mission-critical applications, databases, and virtualized environments. NetApp ASA features a scale-out architecture that can be scaled to meet the needs of your growing business. They also support a wide range of built-in data protection and data security features, including snapshots, replication, disaster recovery, and autonomous ransomware protection.

Benefits

Superior performance for your dedicated SAN environment.
Continuous data access to support your business-critical workloads.
Simple and efficient data management that reduces TCO.
Effortless cloud connectivity with leading integration to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and others.

Features

Ensure mission-critical data is secure and always available: NetApp ASA systems maintain data availability and keep critical applications running with symmetric active-active architecture—backed by NetApp’s Six Nines Data Availability Guarantee.
Safeguard data with built-in application-consistent data protection and achieve business continuity with synchronous disaster recovery.
Superior performance to power your most important applications: Achieve blazing-fast response times across business-critical applications with ASA systems. NetApp supports both NVMe/FC and NVMe/TCP in the ASA A-Series, providing consistent low latency and millions of IOPS in a cluster.
Efficiency and simplicity that drive down TCO: With NetApp ONTAP data management software running on ASA systems, you can enjoy storage savings with 4:1 storage efficiency—guaranteed.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. NetApp ASA

September 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax vs. NetApp ASA

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