Dell PowerMax vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays 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 #26 with an average rating of 9.0. Dell Technologies holds a 4.2% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and Dell PowerMax compete in the all-flash storage array category. NetApp EF-Series appears more favorable in terms of pricing and support, while Dell PowerMax has the upper hand with its extensive feature set and robust capabilities.

Features: NetApp EF-Series provides high-speed performance, simplicity, and low latency, making it effective for data-intensive environments. Dell PowerMax offers advanced scalability, a wide range of data protection features, and NVMe-based technology, catering to extensive enterprise workloads.

Room for Improvement: NetApp EF-Series could enhance its scalability, integrate more advanced management features, and improve data protection capabilities. Dell PowerMax could improve the complexity of its deployment process, enhance its user interface for better intuitiveness, and optimize licensing cost structures.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetApp EF-Series is recognized for its straightforward deployment and strong customer support. Dell PowerMax provides a comprehensive deployment process and extensive support options, accommodating the complex needs of varied enterprise clients.

Pricing and ROI: NetApp EF-Series offers more economical initial setup costs, promoting a quicker return on investment. Dell PowerMax, while having a higher initial cost, provides substantial long-term ROI justified by its rich capabilities and efficiency from advanced data services.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

July 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 August 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax is 4.2%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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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Tayo Olubanke

Managing Director at GCET

Offers flexibility and top-notch technology

You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

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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's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"The latency is good."

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."

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

"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."

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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"Dell PowerMax NVMe's tech support is good."

"The features I find most valuable about Dell PowerMax are its stability and flexibility."

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

"It was easy for teams to pick up the technology with very limited exposure and training, then implement and support it."

"It is very stable. We expect superior performance and reliability from this particular storage system."

"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerMax NVMe is its replication feature."

"Dell PowerMax is pretty much 100%."

"The solution's snapshot capabilities and replication are very good features. Snapshots are allowing us to quickly build analytical models directly from production data. This gives us amazing insights into market trends and allows us to build more effective trading algorithms. Replication offers us unparalleled levels of resilience."

More Dell PowerMax pros

"The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our data bases."

"Rapid deployment, easy integration management and cloning of areas."

"This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs."

"One of the most valuable features is the overall performance it provides. You're able to throw a pile of IOPS at it and it will handle that without much issue."

"The benefits are better up-time, better response time."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its speed."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to set a specific margin of performance to a specific workload."

"The hardware and software of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are easy for us to use."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pros

Cons

"We need better data deduplication."

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

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

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

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."

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

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

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The NVMe integration could be improved."

"We brought up this question to the implementation engineer. We were comparing use cases where a customer is using RecoverPoint, then goes to PowerMax. In our previous setup with XtremIO, we were using RecpverPoint and keeping snapshots for 30 days, every few seconds. With PowerMax, I requested this for every 15 minutes, keeping it for a week. The engineer's answer was, "There will be too many snapshots. It might slow down the system." This is specifically for the use cases where there is RecoverPoint. While PowerMax works with RecoverPoint, and you can use it, there should be some way where you can have even more snapshots and not to worry about performance and system cache."

"I hear from people on my team that they would like improved reporting. While there are some decent tools for doing reporting, they would like to see a lot more built-in functionality. This way when they are logged into the interface everyday doing basic management tasks, they could also see some statistics on what is their storage pool usage and will be their projected usage with their current data growth. They want to be able to see more detailed stats on how they are using the system and have forecasting."

"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."

"Setting up PowerMax with VMAX is always complex."

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

"The disadvantage of PowerMax is its cost. It is expensive, mainly due to pricing."

"The price could be lower, and we are unhappy with the price."

More Dell PowerMax cons

"It was difficult to implement and lacks some additional features that would be useful, but as a solution fits a particular need for our organization."

"Its pricing should be better. Its price is competitive, but they need to improve the pricing. They have different licensing models, which they need to improve. My expectation was cloud integration, which they have, but it is a different license. Therefore, people cannot enjoy it. If I want to use it, I need to pay extra. There is a cost involved for everything, but it should reach everyone. It is similar to having a Rolls-Royce, but you need to pay extra for the key. If you want the key, you need to pay."

"We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily."

"Better integration with other brands is important so we would like to see it easier to integrate."

"Their problems are on the software and the controlling of the storage where they lack segmentation and federation."

"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."

"The dashboard could be simplified."

"This solution does not have any compression or deduplication."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"The product is expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

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

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

"The price is really high."

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

"The pricing is comparable to other vendors."

"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."

"I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe a five out of ten for pricing."

"The tool is very expensive."

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."

"Cheaper pricing is always good. NetApp has been doing everything the right way. They've been figuring out things really well, going in the right direction."

"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."

"NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is an expensive product."

"Most of my customers pay for the license on a yearly basis. It can be expensive depending on the capacity number."

"It's a lot cheaper than what the other vendors have for the same type of environment. It saves us money."

"One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to renew the license."

"The cost of our license is approximately $200,000 over three years for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. There can be additional costs for storage. For example, if you want to have eight terabytes."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Performing Arts

10%

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?

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 ...

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 NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to rene...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's supp...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 25% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 25% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 12% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 10% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 9% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell PowerMax Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 26% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 15% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 13% of the time

Dell XtremIO vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 11% of the time

NetApp ASA vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 9% of the time

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

August 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

August 2025

Download Dell PowerMax product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

August 2025

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report

Download NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays product report

Also Known As

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

Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series

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

The NetApp EF560 all-flash array is an all-SSD storage system for applications that demand extremely high levels of performance and reliability. Requiring just 2U of rack space, the EF560 all-flash array combines extreme IOPS, microsecond response times, and up to 12GBps of bandwidth with leading, enterprise-proven availability features.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

July 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

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