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Dell PowerMax vs SolidFire comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerMax
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (3rd)
SolidFire
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
32nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 6.7%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax is 4.6%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolidFire is 1.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray6.7%
Dell PowerMax4.6%
SolidFire1.4%
Other87.3%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Gouranga Maiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Project Manager IT at ITC Ltd
High‑performance all‑flash storage has transformed data warehousing and reporting speed
The features of Dell PowerMax that I find most valuable so far include its all-flash capability, along with its performance, reliability, and efficiency. Additionally, it has snapshot-level features that allow me to take snapshots or backups within only a few seconds. There is no need to wait long, and unnecessary high bandwidth used for backup does not occur because I can take the whole snapshot backup within a fraction of a second. I have used the deduplication feature of Dell PowerMax. Deduplication and compression are very effective, so despite my large amount of data, the effective size is reduced due to this deduplication and compression, allowing me to store more data on the same storage. Regarding the impact of Dell PowerMax's real-time data encryption on my data protection strategies, I have not used that feature personally. However, in another department, my colleagues are using it, and they have not faced any performance bottlenecks due to data encryption. The encryption is very powerful, but I have not implemented that encryption in our database data warehouse systems since they are for internal use only, not exposed worldwide. At first, I faced several issues, and our report rendering complaints were quite annoying. However, now with Dell PowerMax storage's high IOPS handling capabilities, the output comes within a fraction of a second, making our users happy. Whatever our requirement or demand is, it has already been implemented in Dell PowerMax with its all-flash NVMe storage. New bricks can also be added if a size increase is required, allowing for additional bricks to be added as needed. Everything is in place; therefore, I do not think any other improvements are required. However, it is worth noting that Dell is continuously inventing and releasing more powerful types of storage. This results in increased reliability, enhanced data handling capabilities, improved deduplication ratios, and the fulfillment of more IOPS demand.
Ramil Cerrada - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution lead at Globe Mobile
A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance
The most significant benefit lies in its exceptional performance, driven by its Flash-based architecture. This enhances routing speed and, consequently, database performance. The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It overperforms both in terms of storage capacity and throughput, and bandwidth capability."
"After the implementation, the time to run the process was reduced to minutes and it did not require any manual intervention from our DBAs."
"Pure Storage FlashArray offers numerous valuable features, such as low latency and high throughput."
"We like the speed. It's very low latency. In virtualization, you can mask lots of problems, and even in code you can mask lots of problems, with low latency. It's just pure speed and low latency."
"The most valuable feature is the speed of it, as it is much faster than anything that we can get from similar competitors, and the solution helps to simplify storage."
"The most valuable features I have experienced are the centralized management and redundancy under speed of the right disk."
"The mobile app is very helpful."
"The back-end data reporting for Pure Storage is phenomenal. The data that you can see on the performance of your customers' array, so you can be proactive about upgrades or enhancements, and is a phenomenal tool to have access to as a partner. I haven't seen this type of stuff out of anything of the other storage systems."
"Enterprise Cloud Storage is the most valuable feature, along with the data services which come with it, plus the deduplication and compression."
"As a major service provider, who has been working with Dell EMC for well over a decade, hosting mission-critical applications for important brands and businesses, along with some health institutions, where access to data is literally a life or death, we have to go with a system that we can trust without fail, and PowerMax has been giving that to us."
"It has been a great experience for most of my customers."
"The solution has helped to improve our services, in the medical field."
"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."
"Technical support for Dell PowerMax NVMe is good, and I am satisfied with the assistance provided."
"The features of Dell PowerMax that I find most useful include reliability, support, uptime as well as flexibility and expandability."
"It has dramatically cut down the footprint in our data center and reduced the amount of raw disk capacity that we needed to purchase."
"The difference between SolidFire and other storage is that it is a stand alone storage; no one has that good storage software or that scalability and performance."
"It's absolutely a consistently stable solution, with 100% up-time and no data loss at all, not even the slightest, delivering not only stability but also a lot of efficiency with the data storage."
"The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential."
"The product is stable and performs very well without any bugs."
"Based on those use cases we get really good efficiencies."
"Individual settings you can put on each individual volume, if you want to do that."
"If you're looking for an easy-to-implement solution from an all-flash perspective, really take a look at SolidFire."
"The scalability and being able to implement it quickly."
 

Cons

"Areas for improvement would be the financial operations. In the next release, I would like to see a NAS protocol included."
"Technical support needs improvement. With respect to them being able to respond, they're more marketing people, less technical."
"It would be good to have metrics of the box's performance so we can see what it delivers, but currently, I can't see what it's actually doing."
"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."
"The main disadvantage of Pure Storage FlashArray is the price."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve some aspects. There are certain features that are good and there are some features that I see some issues with at the technical level. Those issues are related to replication. They need to resolve those issues, which I have already highlighted to the Pure team. Additionally, there are some issues in the active cluster that could improve."
"The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can save their investment."
"I think replication is one area that still needs improvement."
"Dell needs to offer more midrange storage options with enterprise-class features similar to the PowerMAX."
"I would like a more informative CloudIQ for iOS. What you can see via the web UI significantly differs from what you can see via the web application."
"Part validation could be improved."
"The tool is costly compared to other similar products. The product's pricing needs to be improved. I would like the product to include the replication feature in its future releases."
"The GUI interface is very complicated and could be improved by streamlining the number of steps in the process."
"In my opinion, Dell PowerMax could be improved regarding pricing; the pricing is very expensive."
"There is room for improvement in the replication. It's an important requirement for us."
"The size and weight of Dell PowerMax are quite cumbersome."
"We've had issues with the stability of our platform."
"We have had to stop using this solution because the price was too high for global implementation."
"The technical support is really bad and has to be improved."
"That's one of disadvantages, the actual cost."
"We are looking for, potentially, on the Active IQ reporting side, to do reporting based on the datastore. Right now, I can report on the whole SolidFire, or I can report on just a certain datastore or a volume. I'd like to take all of my VDI infrastructure, which as an example would be multiple datastores."
"It's a very good Windows-type solution. But we do a lot of legacy systems and the like. So it's getting that incorporated into it that would help us."
"I now know their best practices associated with allocating IOPS to your LUNs; I wish that was more apparent to me when actually configuring the system."
"The level of monitoring could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is moderate. It is neither cheap nor expensive."
"They have a standardized fee; it's been the same price for 10 years straight. I am happy with the price — I think it's good."
"It is cost-effective because after buying a subscription, they provide a service to upgrade hardware for free. They are providing so many features. When you consider the features provided, it is cost-effective."
"The cost was initially high, but once more people were using it, the costs came down. This was because the University was reselling it to other departments."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"Pure has been flexible with us on the pricing models."
"The price was more favorable than Dell EMC."
"The price-to-performance is good. I looked at Pure about three to four years back, but the price-to-performance wasn't right for us. Now, it's right."
"I think it is an expensive tool, but it is the best product. I think it is expensive and the cost one must pay for the best solution."
"The tool is very expensive."
"The price is on the market. It's not inexpensive, but it's available on the market."
"The price is really high."
"We hope that with the combination of both NVMe and SCM the next PowerMax will be much cheaper that the one which we acquired."
"Support pricing is very high. Our support contract is about to expire and Dell EMC provided us with an extremely high renewal quote. It was four times more than the support contract for our previous EMC VNX solution."
"Our costs are on a yearly basis."
"Our costs for the product are three million."
"The price of this solution is more expensive than others."
"On a scale where one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the solution between three and four. It is an expensive solution."
"We would probably use SolidFire more, except we're getting more bang for our buck with our purchases of ONTAP right now, and the deal we made with NetApp, so it's more of just a cost decision"
"Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."
"It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for what you get."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Healthcare Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise63
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was great.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?
Dell PowerMax can be improved because there are very strict guidelines when it comes to installation and the amount o...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Rackspace, Open Line
California Public Utilities Commission, RFA, 1&1, Ultimate Software , Endicia, ezVerify, MercadoLibre, Sungard Availability Services, ServInt, Elastx, Hosted Network, Colt, Crucial, iWeb, Datapipe, Databarracks
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax vs. SolidFire and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
912,517 professionals have used our research since 2012.