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Dell PowerMax vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) comparison

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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
6.8
Nutanix Unified Storage boosts ROI by cutting costs, enhancing efficiency, improving management, and strengthening data security for users.
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.
For me, the biggest return on investment when using this solution is that we do not have to have much support staff to run it.
The scalability challenge with previous systems is lessened with Nutanix since we can expand by adding new hardware without needing migrations.
We are saving approximately 20% to 25% compared with the competition.
 

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
7.5
Nutanix Unified Storage support is responsive and knowledgeable, though complex issue resolution can occasionally face delays.
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.
They come on the call, start troubleshooting immediately, and resolve issues effectively.
They are very knowledgeable, and if they can't solve the problem, they find the answer within a day or so.
I would give the customer service and technical support a ten out of ten.
 

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
7.8
Nutanix Unified Storage is highly scalable and flexible, allowing seamless expansion and integration without downtime, despite initial complexity.
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.
This means you don't have to buy everything upfront; you can buy what you need and add more as you grow, which is advantageous.
These three components utilize scalability tools, enabling storage addition to nodes and supporting independent, linear performance growth.
I can rack mount the server or node and add it to the cluster anytime with just one click.
 

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
8.0
Nutanix Unified Storage is praised for stability, high availability, and minimal disruptions, ensuring dependable performance and quick support resolution.
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.
We have not experienced these issues with Nutanix, which I attribute to the all-flash technology, the quality of their platform, and the responsiveness of the hyper-converged infrastructure.
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very stable.
It automatically triggers tasks, causing 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.
Nutanix Unified Storage requires enhancements in implementation, analysis, technical support, FTP compatibility, management, integration, security, and usability.
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.
The main concern is pricing, which could deter some customers; addressing this would enhance its appeal.
The system should move towards AI-driven optimization and enhance S3 object storage capabilities.
System downtime can disturb the entire ecosystem and impact all applications.
 

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.
Nutanix Unified Storage offers competitive pricing, valued for features and ROI, but may be costly for smaller users.
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.
Compared to buying three or four vendor solutions, it is much cheaper.
The cost has doubled for the same amount of data, which was a challenge when presenting use case justifications for the increased cost.
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has definitely helped reduce our total cost of ownership.
 

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.
Nutanix Unified Storage delivers easy management, high availability, and integration with robust security and flexible storage options.
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.
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is appreciated for its fault tolerance and redundancy at the cluster level, which ensures reliable storage of files, folders, and other information accessible on the client side.
The cybersecurity features of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) when dealing with unstructured data, such as ransomware threats, provide the ability to detect and back up block-based storage, allowing me to restore repositories or sets of block storage with one button click, which is automatic.
My experience with using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for data-intensive workloads is that we have many SQL Servers and they perform much better than they did when we used hybrid converged previously.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerMax
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
7th
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
5th
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), Public Cloud Storage Services (5th), File and Object Storage (3rd)
 

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 Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

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.
Amarnath Charugundla - PeerSpot reviewer
Unified management and cost-effectiveness lead to positive experiences and future savings
Improvement is necessary wherein the memory or storage should not breach 90%, because if breached, it becomes unmanageable. We have to set alerts or CPU triggering for 95% for the first warning. Other activities on nodes or file systems should be properly maintained. We must monitor the dashboard for P1, P2 alerts in the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) file share system including SMB, NFS, objects, and blocks. Attention should be maintained for any alerts such as CPU, memory, and RAM alerts, as exceeding these creates issues within teams. If triggered to 95% and forgotten, it crosses the SLA breach, causing disturbances to application, web, and platform teams. Continuous monitoring on the Nutanix dashboard is essential. Even a highly experienced person in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cannot provide a 10 rating out of 10 because it is a vast system. I would rate it eight from my perspective.
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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%
Computer Software Company
30%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

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.
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 Nutanix Unified Storage?
Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?
I have no idea about the pricing of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) as I'm not the decision authority for pricing. Gene...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?
While there are good aspects, I would like to see improvements in networking configuration, particularly regarding ov...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax
Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Rackspace, Open Line
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.