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Dell PowerStore vs NetApp NVMe AFF A800 comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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
6.6
Dell PowerStore boosts ROI by enhancing efficiency, reducing costs, improving performance, and increasing satisfaction with IT infrastructures.
Sentiment score
4.8
NetApp NVMe AFF A800 is cost-effective, offering ROI in 18 months, but requires strategic use in academic settings.
By opting for the gold subscription every three years, you get a free upgrade to the latest controller release.
If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.
If you purchase storage with 300 terabytes, you can easily achieve one petabyte of effective capacity.
It's been trouble-free the entire time, with very high performance, as it has been designed and built properly.
We have seen a return on our investment in Dell PowerStore; definitely our cost per terabyte has been very good compared to some of the other vendors that we would have been using previously, and our performance benchmarks have exceeded what we were expecting.
 

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
6.2
Dell PowerStore's support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, despite some concerns about response times and regional disparities.
Sentiment score
6.5
NetApp NVMe AFF A800 customer service is praised for professionalism, effective problem resolution, and meeting SLA across time zones.
We also had one outage where a controller of one of the products had failed and had to be replaced on-site.
Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.
Pure has good storage.
If necessary, they will search for a specialist within their Dell network who we can approach with our questions.
I would rate the technical support of Dell PowerStore between nine and ten out of ten.
They're responsive, knowledgeable, and have a quick turnaround.
They don't exceed the predicted SLA times.
 

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
7.1
Dell PowerStore offers scalable solutions for diverse business needs, supporting seamless expansion while maintaining performance, despite some upgrade costs.
Sentiment score
6.6
NetApp NVMe AFF A800 offers high scalability with minimal effort, despite challenges choosing between on-premises and cloud deployments.
It is highly scalable.
It is suitable for both medium-sized and enterprise businesses.
It hasn't broken down anytime in the last six to seven years, despite hurricanes, earthquakes, and power outages.
The solution's scalability is a ten out of ten.
The customer likely exceeds 20,000 users globally.
You can create as many tools as needed, providing scalability based on the use case.
We already had some challenges with escalating the volumes and adding more cabinets, but we discovered it is possible.
 

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
7.5
Dell PowerStore is stable with excellent uptime, though initial software issues exist; users appreciate its robustness and reliable support.
Sentiment score
7.7
NetApp NVMe AFF A800 is highly stable and reliable, receiving praise for uptime, swift support, and data integrity features.
During the eight years, there have been no problems such as hardware failure or stopping.
I would rate the stability of the solution as a ten out of ten.
I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.
When I removed all the cables, it failed over within five minutes.
There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze.
I would rate the stability of Dell PowerStore as ten out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Pure FlashArray X requires cost-effective improvements in UI, integration, cloud features, multitenancy, analytics, backup, AI, and scalability.
Dell PowerStore requires better VMware integration, stability, UI, and support, with high pricing limiting small business adoption.
The NetApp NVMe AFF A800 needs improvements in cost, setup, support, stability, speed, UI, cloud integration, and connectivity.
We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.
I'm eagerly anticipating the roadmap's promise of introducing multiple controllers, which could significantly boost scalability and resilience.
We mostly rely on long-term releases. We don't need the most up-to-date features, but we need a reliable environment.
If you want to delve into where your I/Os are going, the reporting might need more in-depth information to make informed decisions.
In my organization, we have had to go through two weeks with no replication, which is not very handy for our production environment.
Something needs to be done with the caching to ensure that if some issue occurs, there needs to be an ability to disable caching during maintenance to make it static, safe, and good.
The dashboard is not user-friendly.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers see Pure FlashArray X NVMe as a justified premium investment due to performance and comprehensive licensing.
Dell PowerStore is high-priced but valued for performance and scalability, offering competitive discounts for larger organizations.
NetApp NVMe AFF A800 is seen as high-priced yet offers enterprise value with manageable costs and standard annual payments.
While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.
The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.
I would give it a nine out of ten in terms of costliness.
Likely the cost is $400,000 whereas IBM may be $250,000.
Based on my experience, the cost of Dell PowerStore for around 500 GB of capacity is very competitive compared to any other platform in the market.
There's no need to pay for a license; it's all-inclusive.
 

Valuable Features

Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers exceptional performance, reliability, scalability, and seamless VMware integration, enhancing workload efficiency and user experience.
Dell PowerStore excels with flexibility, high performance, seamless VMware integration, efficient data management, and user-friendly administration, enhancing cost-effectiveness.
NetApp NVMe AFF A800 excels in performance, stability, low latency, and efficient multi-application handling with enhanced encryption and space management.
Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator.
The platform's robust features include excellent sustainability tracking, and a comprehensive dashboard offering insights into IOPS, bandwidth, performance, and virtual activities.
Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.
The solution promotes data reduction, often meeting the compression ratio.
The PowerStore's compression ratio is even higher than the Unity system.
The deduplication part of the solution is valuable since, as a user, you get more space for less money.
It helps prevent being hacked, and so far we don't have any issues. We can do the encryption of the data.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerStore
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
1st
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
130
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), NAS (1st), Enterprise SAN (1st)
NetApp NVMe AFF A800
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
29th
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 3.2%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 21.5%, down from 23.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp NVMe AFF A800 is 1.9%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dell PowerStore21.5%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe3.2%
NetApp NVMe AFF A8001.9%
Other73.4%
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Eoin O’Brien - PeerSpot reviewer
Improves cost efficiency and significantly while boosting workload performance
We have realized several benefits from using Dell PowerStore; we migrated to the current Dell PowerStore models from tiered storage, and now we're using all flash. The dedupe and compression has been a big benefit for us versus the old storage that it was running, and we've seen the performance of all flash for our storage services. My company finds particular features within Dell PowerStore valuable, primarily the cost benefits for the performance that we get out of the platform. We've definitely seen the benefit on that side of it, including the cost per terabyte, and the support from Dell has been excellent as well. We haven't had any issues with it, so it's been very reliable as a platform for us. The performance metrics I use to measure success with Dell PowerStore are all IOPS and throughput. We are not using it with AI workloads on Dell PowerStore, so it's primarily just customers running IaaS, however, it is important that it's reliable and performs well, and we get that from Dell PowerStore. Dell PowerStore has supported growth and operational success for my business; a key driver at the moment is consolidation, and the dedupe and compression ratios allow us to standardize on a single platform. This has helped improve our operational metrics and overall operations, as we now have only one vendor to support and one set of storage arrays to manage. We have a very clear path into support and escalation if there is an issue, and we are not dealing with multiple vendors.
Helder-Valente - PeerSpot reviewer
Has improved data efficiency and application performance while supporting encryption and fast access to imaging workloads
We use it quite extensively because with this we have more space and the information can be read without wasting time. We are satisfied with this. The performance is quite good. We don't have any issues regarding the applications that use fat clients. It helps prevent being hacked, and so far we don't have any issues. We can do the encryption of the data. The solution performs quite well. It helps us maintain our systems. Since we have many applications that use images for streaming, it works exceptionally well. We don't have any issues, and this helps us with the service we provide to the hospital.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise61
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

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.
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...
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 ...
What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated managem...
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 do you like most about NetApp NVMe AFF A800?
The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a product that is fast and provides a fast I/O.
What needs improvement with NetApp NVMe AFF A800?
For NVMe, the reporting and consolidation dashboard could be improved. The dashboard is not user-friendly. It should ...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
PowerStore
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Information Not Available
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp NVMe AFF A800 and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,019 professionals have used our research since 2012.