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Dell PowerPath vs Pure Storage FlashArray comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Dell PowerPath
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (3rd)
Pure Storage FlashArray
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
207
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Dell PowerPath and Pure Storage FlashArray aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Dell PowerPath is designed for Storage Software and holds a mindshare of 15.5%, up 9.7% compared to last year.
Pure Storage FlashArray, on the other hand, focuses on All-Flash Storage, holds 6.5% mindshare, down 6.8% since last year.
Storage Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dell PowerPath15.5%
NetApp ONTAP35.1%
DataCore SANsymphony26.1%
Other23.299999999999997%
Storage Software
All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashArray6.5%
Dell PowerStore15.6%
HPE Alletra Storage9.8%
Other68.1%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Derrick Brockel - PeerSpot reviewer
A resilient and reliable solution that has many load-balancing technologies and provides high availability
People who want to buy the solution must create a scorecard of Dell PowerPath against other products. They must run database tests. They must consider factors like pricing, performance, ease of use, visibility, and reliability. They must also run tests to understand which product recovers faster. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
Parul-Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Expands capacity and requires minimal management
The main drawback is the support. I’ve been working for four years without a local representative, and although I’ve submitted many requests, nothing has changed. They sometimes call me in the middle of the night, even though I’ve informed them about my working hours. I often raise cases to speak with someone directly because I prefer to discuss issues over the phone rather than via email. I specifically request them to call me when I open a ticket, but they continually reply by email instead. This ongoing situation has been very frustrating in terms of the support I receive. As a technical professional, I lack visibility into the system logs. Whenever an issue arises, a ticket is opened for us. While I'm glad they take this step, it can be frustrating. They inform me, “Hey, we opened this ticket for you. It’s critical. Call me so we can discuss what’s going on.” However, as a product manager for my institution, I don’t have access to the logs, which are withheld due to, as they say, proprietary code. I understand that, but I have been working in storage for many years and am not new to this field. In fact, I spent 17 years at IBM Storage, dealing with large enterprise systems, not just small vendor products. I wish I could access the normal logs to diagnose issues myself, rather than relying solely on their information. Before I can escalate issues or open a checklist, I need to have a clear understanding of what’s happening based on the logs. Sometimes the situation feels rushed, and I end up having to push my support team for answers. There are moments when I feel like I’m left in the dark about the log details until I actually call them for clarification. It can be quite challenging. Pure Storage can improve FlashArray by providing more logging visibility to customers. Currently, there is no log visibility. They could include an audit log, but I cannot see any system logs when problems occur.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is migration without disruptions."
"The user interface is good."
"It provides a high availability and will increase the performance of any server or operating system."
"The product is very reliable."
"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that disaster recovery scenarios are very good and easy to use in Dell PowerPath since it is available in a simplified form."
"The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."
"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."
"Performance is the most valuable feature."
"The initial setup was straightforward in the way that it was a database vacuum storage."
"The most valuable features are the ease of use and support."
"It allows engineers to focus on other things rather than doing the more manual tasks. It automates tasks, so the ease of use is extreme. It simplifies the storage."
"The all-flash disc is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both."
"It upgrades in place which means we'll be using it well into the future."
"In Pure Storage FlashArray, the dedupe and compression are excellent, and performance is good too."
 

Cons

"The technical support is good but they are not available all the time."
"Customers do not choose PowerPath unless they have Unix or Linux."
"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."
"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."
"While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Although PowerPath is very mature and has been on the market for more than 15 years there are still a lot of bugs that have been profiled with PowerPath, specifically, during any OS upgrade."
"The solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."
"There was some complexity in the initial setup."
"I would like to get a weekly report of how our storage has been used, and if there is any storage sitting there not being used."
"The technical support is okay, but could be improved."
"There are a lot of things to improve."
"The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features."
"If they could make it cheaper, that would be something."
"I’d love to view the average, minimum and maximum performance in the reports (Analysis tab - Performance) but it is only graphics and you need to export data in CSV to find this information."
"Pure Storage's logs could provide more visibility to the end-user. The logging algorithms are different from those of other vendors. For example, Cisco's logs provide extensive troubleshooting data, whereas Pure Storage logs offer limited information. We have to contact support to get more information."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no additional costs associated with the product."
"The solution is expensive."
"I rate the product's price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is affordable, and ten is really expensive. Dell PowerPath is an expensive tool."
"Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution."
"The product is a little bit expensive."
"The price of the solution is fair."
"The cost of Pure Storage is subjective and determined by your environment. Pure Storage tends to be more expensive than NetApp, but it is cheaper than EMC. Performance varies with data workload, making cost considerations complex."
"It is not the cheapest one out there. We're paying yearly, but I'm not 100% sure."
"The price was more favorable than Dell EMC."
"We consume it as a service, and that's actually something we really like, or at least I really like from the technical perspective. That's because it means there is no hassle when we need to upgrade arrays to add capacity. We just interact directly with technical counterparts, and we say, "Hey, we're filling up," and they say, "All right, here's another data pack." They ship it in, and we install it. So, the as-a-service model has worked very well. Given the outstanding data reduction rates, it has improved our profitability because we're selling allocated volumes as part of the cloud service or recovering those costs from our tenants. It is very efficient, but that has offset the premium price. It started out that way, but over time, as we've added capacity, the price per gig has gone down a lot because we have a lot of it."
"Pure Storage has not helped to reduce our HANA licensing costs."
"We have a seen a reduction in TCO. It is definitely a cost-effective solution for us. We have seen ROI."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"The best features come included without any additional cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Transportation Company
17%
Healthcare Company
17%
Retailer
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise141
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell PowerPath?
The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerPath?
The product is a little bit expensive. It is a little pricey because it provides multipathing with other OSs. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.
What needs improvement with Dell PowerPath?
The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR. When we use 3PAR storage, we have to use another technology to load balance. The product must be integrated with other products l...
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 Storage. It may be more expensive, but it should pay for itself for its functionalit...
What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashArray?
We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The pricing and licensing are straightforward, but I do consider it to be expensive.
 

Also Known As

PowerPath
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Healthcare Residential Service Company
Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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