Dell PowerMax vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

Dell Technologies and Pure Storage are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.9, while Pure Storage is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.8. Dell Technologies holds a 4.2% mindshare in AFS, compared to Pure Storage’s 1.9% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Pure Storage users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

Pure Storage FlashBlade and Dell PowerMax are competitors in the enterprise data storage market. Pure Storage FlashBlade has a slight edge due to its impressive performance and scalability, while Dell PowerMax offers superior NVMe support and reliability.

Features: Pure Storage FlashBlade is recognized for its ease of use, seamless integration, and scalability. It features active replication, data warehousing, and fast recovery. Dell PowerMax includes powerful compression and deduplication, NVMe support, and SRDF replication, offering high performance and reliability for mission-critical workloads.

Room for Improvement: Pure Storage FlashBlade could enhance cloud integration, improve deduplication, and provide better technical support. Users express a need for more comprehensive documentation and training resources. Dell PowerMax could benefit from simplified management tools, enhanced automation for storage provisioning, and a better cost structure. Improved end-to-end NVMe integration and a more intuitive user interface are also desired.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both Pure Storage FlashBlade and Dell PowerMax are praised for customer support, but FlashBlade users report a decline in service quality and slower resolutions. Dell PowerMax maintains excellent technical support with fast, professional responses. Both solutions focus on on-premises deployment; FlashBlade also provides private cloud options.

Pricing and ROI: Pure Storage FlashBlade is premium-priced, justified by its performance and reduced operational overhead, although some users consider the initial cost high. Dell PowerMax is expensive but seen as valuable for its feature set. Both offer significant ROI, reducing total cost of ownership and contributing to cost savings.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

July 2025

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Helped 865,384 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:

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

8.5

Pure Storage FlashBlade boosts ROI by reducing costs, enhancing efficiencies, increasing VM density, and saving 20%-85% in time.

By opting for the gold subscription every three years, you get a free upgrade to the latest controller release.

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

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.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

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.

reviewer2706717

Senior Manager, Disaster Recovery, Storage & UNIX Systems at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

My client has seen significant ROI since the install, and when you don't go down, that's an ROI in and of itself.

Rocco Guerriero

Chief Executive Officer at Contour Data Solutions

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

It does not require much management once you set up correctly, so it saves time, allowing an admin to focus on other work.

Parul-Patel

System admin at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

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

7.0

Pure Storage FlashBlade support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge but criticized for slower responses and occasional language barriers.

We also had one outage where a controller of one of the products had failed and had to be replaced on-site.

reviewer943512

System and Network administrator at Vodafone

Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Pure has good storage.

Gokhan Dikmen

Vice President of product at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

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.

Rocco Guerriero

Chief Executive Officer at Contour Data Solutions

Dell support for Dell PowerMax is exceptional, rating a perfect 10 out of 10.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

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.

reviewer2706717

Senior Manager, Disaster Recovery, Storage & UNIX Systems at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

I would rate them an eight out of ten.

Redy ERIYAWAN

IT Field Support Engineer at Unisys

The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years.

Parul-Patel

System admin at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

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

8.8

Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for scalability, ease of expansion, and support, despite some areas needing improvement.

It is highly scalable.

Joerg Utesch

Sales Director at systemzwo group

It is suitable for both medium-sized and enterprise businesses.

Jaka Demšar

VAD PLSM Storage - Slovenia & Croatia at ASBIS

It hasn't broken down anytime in the last six to seven years, despite hurricanes, earthquakes, and power outages.

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

Scalability is not an issue.

reviewer2706753

Senior System Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

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.

MayankChauhan

Lead Consultant - Cloud & Infrastructure Services at Infosys

Volumes can be defined to grow to any level without impacting overall performance.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

Pure Storage FlashBlade is scalable.

Parul-Patel

System admin at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

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

8.8

Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for its impressive stability and reliability, with minimal disruptions and consistent uptime even during upgrades.

During the eight years, there have been no problems such as hardware failure or stopping.

Gokhan Dikmen

Vice President of product at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I would rate the stability of the solution as a ten out of ten.

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.

Gary Cheung

Project Manager at a government with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

These patches can be applied on the fly without requiring software upgrades or system downtime.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

I would rate it nine out of ten since there are no required downtimes, even during firmware upgrades.

Moin-Shah

System and Storage Admin at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

Rocco Guerriero

Chief Executive Officer at Contour Data Solutions

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

In case there is any issue with any blade, the data is moved to another.

Redy ERIYAWAN

IT Field Support Engineer at Unisys

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

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.

Users seek better cloud integration, enhanced deduplication, improved support, protocol enhancements, simpler configuration, and a more intuitive interface.

We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.

Joerg Utesch

Sales Director at systemzwo group

I'm eagerly anticipating the roadmap's promise of introducing multiple controllers, which could significantly boost scalability and resilience.

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

We mostly rely on long-term releases. We don't need the most up-to-date features, but we need a reliable environment.

reviewer943512

System and Network administrator at Vodafone

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

Compared to competitors such as NetApp, which integrates with public cloud hyperscalers (GCP, Azure, AWS), Dell PowerMax lacks in this aspect.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

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.

Moin-Shah

System and Storage Admin at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dell PowerMax NVMe is very reliable storage and cannot experience downtime.

Kazi Amranul Houqe

First Assistant Vice President (FAVP) & Unit Head of Server & Storage Management Unit at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

Technical support definitely needs significant improvement.

Parul-Patel

System admin at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

Its configuration should be easier.

Redy ERIYAWAN

IT Field Support Engineer at Unisys

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

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.

Pure Storage FlashBlade offers high performance and features, justifying its cost with no extra software fees and fixed support costs.

While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.

Enes SUZER

Manager, System Infrastructure & Security at Organik Kimya San. ve Tic. A.S.

The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

I would give it a nine out of ten in terms of costliness.

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

The higher cost compared to other vendors is justified by additional features, vendor-managed upgrades, and superior support services.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

It is the best choice for large projects in terms of price and features compared to midrange solutions.

Gianpaolo-Mazzola

Presales Engineer at Project Informatica srl

The price is starting from $500,000.

Mohamed Abdel Salam

Senior Sells at Enterprise Sigma Technology

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the past, but one benefit is that they have built-in ransomware protection.

Parul-Patel

System admin at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

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.

Pure Storage FlashBlade offers fast, scalable, and user-friendly storage with efficient integration, analytics, and versatility for diverse needs.

Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator.

Gokhan Dikmen

Vice President of product at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The platform's robust features include excellent sustainability tracking, and a comprehensive dashboard offering insights into IOPS, bandwidth, performance, and virtual activities.

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

NVMe provides additional fast cache, similar to random access memory (RAM), which improves overall system performance and read/write experience for users.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

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.

Moin-Shah

System and Storage Admin at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

reviewer2706717

Senior Manager, Disaster Recovery, Storage & UNIX Systems at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.

Redy ERIYAWAN

IT Field Support Engineer at Unisys

The best features of Pure Storage FlashBlade include better throughput and better performance.

Parul-Patel

System admin at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

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 Pure Storage FlashBlade is 1.9%, down from 2.1% 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.

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

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

Read full review

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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

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

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?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

See all answers

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 Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

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

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

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% 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 PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 19% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 3% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade 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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade 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

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

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

July 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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