Dell PowerMax vs VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL] comparison

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Dell Technologies and VIOLIN Systems are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VIOLIN Systems users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 24, 2025

VIOLIN QV2020 EOL and Dell PowerMax are competitors in the enterprise storage market. Dell PowerMax seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced features, thought to justify the greater cost investment.

Features: VIOLIN QV2020 EOL offers flash-based architecture, impressive performance, and convenient scalability. Dell PowerMax provides unmatched data services, high IOPS, and intelligent storage management.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerMax simplifies integration with streamlined deployment and reliable customer support. VIOLIN QV2020 EOL is easy to deploy, yet lacks Dell's extensive support infrastructure.

Pricing and ROI: VIOLIN QV2020 EOL is notable for its competitive setup cost, appealing to budget-conscious enterprises. Dell PowerMax requires a higher initial investment but is seen as worth it for its capabilities, supporting potential long-term benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed All-Flash Storage Report (Updated: October 2026).

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October 2026

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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

Everpure FlashArray

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV

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.

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Gouranga Maiti

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.

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Ramil Cerrada

Solution lead at Globe Mobile

Has high-speed data access and processing capabilities, distinguishing it as a leader in its storage solutions category

VIOLIN QV2020 lacks scalability. This affects both the timeframe for installation and the performance of end-users. Additionally, there's a challenge in deploying horizontally, either by deploying between different nodes or adding new ones. We have many customers. 50,000 users are using this solution. It depends on the projects being taken out of the operations team.

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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 comes with a large number of features out-of-the-box, which makes it easy for us to see problems and manage capacity."

"Everpure FlashArray is very user-friendly, easy to learn, and makes it easy to identify issues while providing more redundancy on both the controller and host sides."

"Our clients see a reduction in total cost of ownership by around 40%."

"Now with Pure Storage, our developers work a lot faster and more efficiently which has definitely improved our productivity."

"The initial setup was very straightforward and very quick. It was up and running in our data center within 24 hours of receiving it."

"The solution is easy to scale. I'm running two environments right now, so I need to scale. I'm running a part technology. I've got an A-side and a B-side."

"Non-disruptive upgrades: You can upgrade at anytime without worry."

"Using this solution has improved our consolidation ratio and it saves us a lot of space."

More Everpure FlashArray pros

"They're basically tanks; you could take a baseball bat to it, and it's still going to keep running and doing what it's supposed to do."

"The return on investment with Dell PowerMax is that it is rock solid; we have never experienced a problem with it."

"Technical support for Dell PowerMax NVMe is good, and I am satisfied with the assistance provided."

"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."

"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 UI is very easy to use. We can add volumes and manage them easily."

"We are able to provide storage at the right service levels without overmanaging it."

"Key features include performance, replication time, and dedup and compression."

More Dell PowerMax pros

"It’s simple to use hardware to fix performance issues. Our issue is poor coding/queries. This greatly speeded things up. It’s too costly to track down poor programming in applications. The price of a developer’s time to scan through all the coding is high compared to buying Violin."

"VIOLIN QV2020 is the latest in terms of performance. It has high-speed data access and processing capabilities, distinguishing it as a leader in its storage solutions category."

"It has lowered batch times from 14 hours to two hours."

Cons

"They are doing some stuff with containers and an object search. These could be improved, because containers is one of the main topics that we are talking with our customers about."

"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions."

"The technical support is okay, but could be improved."

"The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."

"Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases."

"There are scenarios with very specific functionality around VMware integration particularly to do with the way we'd like to manage LUNs in VMware. The tools are pretty good but there's room for improvement there."

"I would like to see data tiering to AWS."

"I think the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray is the major issue because all the great things come with the price, and a lot of customers simply are not willing to accept it."

More Everpure FlashArray cons

"I think management is where PowerMax is weakest. We're still managing it like we managed EMC arrays in the early 2000s. There's a slicker, fancier GUI that does more things, but at the end of the day, you still have to dig into the command line and issue a lot of the same commands that we still were using almost 20 years ago."

"There is some room to grow, especially with some of the installation quirks."

"When it comes to Oracle and database workloads, data reduction could be a little bit better. Some of the competition, like Pure, have post-processes which do additional deduplication and compression on the backside; everything is in-line and then they do a secondary process. It would be a good option if you could start getting 5:1 or 6:1 data reduction on database workloads."

"The size and weight of Dell PowerMax are quite cumbersome."

"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."

"They can make the GUI better, especially for the ones that come out of the box. We did encounter a bit of difficulty in setting up the storage. We had to deploy Solutions Enabler on a Linux machine to be able to fully interact with the storage. They need to upgrade the web interface for the management of the storage that comes out of the box. The management interface for NFS is also a bit old and not very intuitive."

"It's a relatively new product, but for the next release I would like to see higher bandwidth on the front-end adapters."

"Support pricing is very high. Our support contract is about to expire and Dell EMC provided us with an extremely high renewal quote."

More Dell PowerMax cons

"I set up Wi-Fi for storage, and since then, we haven't experienced any interruptions in service."

"VIMM replacement is poorly designed."

"VIMM replacement is poorly designed. You have to slide out an entire drawer, remove the cover and then pop out the failed VIMM. I would like to see a front replacement just like with hard disks. This leaves room for error; for example, when you slide it out from the rack, you are moving cables along the cable management arm. This leaves the possibility of accidentally unplugging a cable from the array if it is not seated properly. Also, you might pinch the cables when sliding it back into the server rack."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The best features come included without any additional cost."

"I don't know the exact cost but it's around $1,000."

"I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."

"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."

"We have 16 or 18 arrays. We like to do the three-year support model so that we get Evergreen and therefore, we get free upgrades. We pay around more than 1.5 million dollars."

"Pure is typically more expensive than everyone else. You get what you pay for, but I have lost deals to similar solutions because of pricing. They include everything, and that's another positive about Pure Storage. They aren't trying to nickel and dime their customers for different features. It is all included in one price. The license is by capacity, and the price depends on the capacity and the discount we're getting from the vendor. You get the SKU of the physical appliance, support, and maintenance, and that's it. You're licensed for whatever feature they offer. It is all rolled up into the price of the appliance."

"The price was more favorable than Dell EMC."

"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."

More Everpure FlashArray pricing and cost advice

"Dell PowerMax NVMe's price is expensive."

"The labor savings and support have been significant. If we're talking 100 hours of labor every three months, that is 100 hours of a database engineer costs. There are performance latency numbers as well as costs associated with recovering data that gets lost, and this system doesn't lose data. You can look at numbers that go around the cost of downtime, if data is not available. This system doesn't go down. Everyone's ROI is going to be unique, but the dependability and performance of the system combined with its ease of operation will definitely save businesses of all sizes money."

"The cost has room for improvement."

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

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

"The price is really high."

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

"The tool is very expensive."

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

"They will beat anyone’s price right now. They are struggling and just need to get product out their doors."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	73
Midsize Enterprise	38
Large Enterprise	160

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	16
Large Enterprise	64

No data available

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...

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

When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?

The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.

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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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

My experience with the pricing of Dell PowerMax is that there is a good relationship between the pricing and the func...

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What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

One area where Dell PowerMax can improve is the relationship between physical space and capacity, as well as electric...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray

October 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

October 2026

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All-Flash Storage

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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray

Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

No data available

Overview

The FlashArray family delivers consistent, high-performance data services across block, file, and object workloads. As part of the Everpure Platform, it provides the foundation for a unified data plane, enabling applications to reliably access, protect, and manage data across environments with simplicity and predictability. With built-in capabilities such as inline data reduction, snapshots, replication, and ransomware resilience, FlashArray ensures efficient operations, protected data, and consistent application uptime.

As the foundation of the (unified) data plane, FlashArray enables policy-driven automation, monitoring, and centralized management while integrating across cloud and on-premises environments. Built on an Evergreen architecture, it supports non-disruptive upgrades and continuous performance improvements over time while simplifying operations at scale.

What Key Features Does FlashArray Offer?

Simplicity and Speed: Easy management and rapid performance enhancements.
Data Reduction: Effective deduplication and compression.
Flash Architecture: Seamless upgrades and outstanding resilience.
VMware Integration: Excellent compatibility with virtualization platforms.
Predictive Analytics: Strong insights for proactive management.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Reliability: Proactive support with minimal downtime.
Efficiency: Reduced storage footprint and enhanced data management.
Performance: Faster processing speeds and low latency.
User Experience: Simplified management with Evergreen model.

In industries like finance, banking, and healthcare, FlashArray supports high-performance storage needs focusing on virtualization and database environments. Employed for VMware workloads, disaster recovery, and storage provisioning, it ensures application performance in private or hybrid cloud setups while enhancing management of virtualized environments.

Everpure (formerly 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

Quartet™ is the name of VIOLIN’s software-driven flash storage product portfolio. Quartet™ helps customers access and use more of their data, while reducing the complexity and expense of managing the infrastructure behind it. The Quartet Platform was purpose-built to the highest industry standards and has four components:

VIOLIN Systems

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas

Rackspace, Open Line

BlueScope Buildings, GameVil, VRT, IKYU Corporation

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