We performed a comparison between Dell PowerStore and Dell SC Series based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Dell PowerStore came out ahead of Dell SC Series. Although both products have good service and support and have brought positive ROI, SC Series is more difficult to deploy and has more areas that require improvements.
"FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."
"The most valuable feature is replication."
"The management features are well organized and they have a very good dashboard."
"It is always out of the box, and ready to use."
"It's just very easy for general block storage."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are simplicity, ease of use, and dashboard management."
"The solution is very reliable."
"The code upgrades are very smooth."
"It has its own file formatting protocol, which saves a lot of space."
"It provides a big benefit when upgrading a new VMware environment. For example, in a big environment with 10 to 30 ESXs, you can take everything and put that into PowerStore. So, it is cost-effective, which is very important and has been massive for us. You reduce almost 80% from the hardware and work directly from PowerStore. Building hardware, especially in a big VMware environment, is a big issue for my organization."
"The supportability of SCME drives for faster data access from the PowerStore and is the most valuable feature."
"Overall, we're quite happy with the product because we can move the data that is stored on more than 10 of our current storage devices to a single PowerStore."
"This solution is highly flexible and offers efficient online compression capabilities."
"Migrations are very easy and fast."
"The solution's technical support is excellent. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"It is a stable solution."
"The user interface is good, I would rate it a nine out of ten."
"Customers are most impressed with SC's provisioning because you don't need to buy a large amount of storage upfront. It's pay-as-you-grow. It also has solid compression and duplication features."
"One of the most valuable features is the capability to switch between all-flash to hybrid, which have have actually done for one of our arrays. We started with the hybrid, with the limited if I'm not mistaken, and then over a period of time, we swapped all the hybrids with the SSDs. This was one of the big features because it gave us the capability to not stick with just one kind of media. Secondly, since it has sorted clustering, we were able to bring in the newer boxes and have it all clustered together. These were the two main features that we really looked into, which benefited our use case from an expansion/growth perspective. Another valuable feature is the ease of management."
"The flexibility of this solution has been valuable for our business."
"The Dell support is helpful and the response is quick. The agents' knowledge is very good."
"The solution is stable."
"What is most valuable about the Dell EMC SC Series system was its reliability."
"I've found the stability to be very good."
"Larger capacity and more storage ports would be the two things I'd like to see."
"Self-backup is the only feature lacking in this solution."
"Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases."
"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current. I think it's bundled with the deduplication and other compression factors. We need more user interfaces for forecasting in this software and more interfaces need to be integrated with this array management tool."
"The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions. For example, if I want to use this storage for a backup from the cloud, I want to have integration with the cloud vendors, such as Microsoft, Oracles, or Amazon. It could be available as an API to allow seamless integration. Additionally, the solution could improve by having native integration with a cloud provider, such as VMware or Microsoft, this would reduce the need to use third-party solutions to complete the task."
"The price of the solution can improve."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better."
"The upgrades themselves are running fine, but after the upgrade is when we have a problem. With the update to 1.4, we had a head crash. They told us, 'This is a known issue. Please upgrade to 2.' We upgraded to 2 and, one week later they told us, 'Yeah, there are some issues in 2.0.0. You can lose data. Please upgrade to 2.0.1.' Overall, they need to make the system stable."
"It needs more mature code."
"The solution only does thin provisioning."
"The only thing is that with PowerStore, we don't have a solution for the file object."
"The storage could be improved. I would like a feature for how to best secure an appliance and the storage since we are connecting the container to the public cloud. I would like them to develop another level of security, making it more secure than from what they have now."
"When it comes to Dell PowerStore, I would like to see more integration and more security features included. It's unfortunate that the solution does not feature Flash trace."
"The pricing could be lower. It is very expensive."
"We would consider this solution if the pricing is competitive with other options, as it offers a very good solution. However, the current price is slightly higher than the competition."
"What I understand is that this is a 13 year old architecture, so it has lived its life and they're phasing it out. Honestly, we were initially struggling with the integration with VMware (but it was fixed with the VMware 6.5) and, then, it was around a 10GB network. At that time, it had the longevity to go to 100GB as well. It got us thinking about, when we go into the containerized architecture, what do we need to do to fix the infrastructure?"
"While the scalability is good, there are certain limitations."
"The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series."
"The lack of reporting would be the main issue."
"This solution could be improved if overall performance was improved and operated with a higher speed and supported a higher volume of RAM."
"The price could be improved."
"The SC Series doesn't support NVMe storage."
"From a performance point of view, it's getting a bit old."
Dell PowerStore is ranked 1st in All-Flash Storage with 35 reviews while Dell SC Series is ranked 17th in All-Flash Storage with 9 reviews. Dell PowerStore is rated 8.4, while Dell SC Series is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Dell PowerStore writes "Saves us power and floor space, and we can quickly assign new data stores for our developers' VMs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Dell SC Series writes "The performance was staggering and more than what we paid for". Dell PowerStore is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Dell PowerMax NVMe, NetApp AFF and Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series, whereas Dell SC Series is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Huawei OceanStor, HPE Nimble Storage and IBM System Storage DS8000 Series. See our Dell PowerStore vs. Dell SC Series report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
