We performed a comparison between Dell EMC PowerStore and Pure Storage FlashArray based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Both products received high marks from users. Pure Storage FlashArray has a slight edge in the comparison due to its superior customer support.
"The high performance is very valuable, as well as the enterprise reliability features."
"There's lots of flexibility in how we use the resources while also maintaining a small footprint."
"We have been able to consolidate storage into Pavilion. Pavilions are our only SANs because it is a bring your own disk solution. When new drives come out, we are able to take out half of the drives in the system, put in new drives, move our VMs over to the new drives, take the other drives out, and populate those with new drives. Then, we are suddenly twice as dense as we were before. NVMe flash is only going to get denser and cheaper so we can make use of that every couple of years by just throwing newer disks into it at a fraction of the cost of a new SAN."
"You can add compute and capacity independently. We have sized the solution based on our current needs, but in the future we can choose to increase capacity if we grow our activity in the market. And if we have more business in our monetary system, we can increase compute. The ability to choose what we increase is a good feature."
"This solution is very useful to us as we use it internally for all our services that we need. We use it as a lab to be able to showcase the customers new technology and how it can help them going forward."
"The solution is extremely stable."
"For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance."
"Gives us flexibility, performance, and ease of use. It also has some very good compression capabilities. We were looking for a solution that was easy to install in our VMware environment, that was flexible. PowerStore X is a type of a VMware cluster that you install inside your environment. If you have a VMware environment, like we have in production, it's easy to install and use."
"Currently, the features of replication and deduplication have been very important to us."
"The most valuable feature is that it is easy to use this frame. I am a SAN administrator, but I was able to train my colleague, who had only been a VMware administrator, on the PowerStore in about half a day. Now he's autonomous in assigning volumes and creating data stores..."
"The administration tools take advantage of machine learning and make recommendations to the admins, and that makes the administration easier."
"The solution offers amazing performance."
"We're getting good performance, and the compression ratio is also very good in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"Processes that used to take 40 minutes to two hours can be completed in five minutes."
"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 code upgrades are very smooth."
"Technical support has been amazing."
"It's very fast and very easy to use. It performs well and is both flexible and compatible. We like it because it's easy to use."
"I like its speed. It has all the features that I need."
"I would like to see the management layer improved."
"The rail system that Pavilion uses to mount up into a standard Dell or APC cabinet extends further back than normal rails, and they cover up the zero PDU slot. So, I don't like the rail system that comes with the device. That is my biggest complaint."
"In our current configuration, we can only run the line controllers in high availability, active-standby mode, whereas we would like to see active-active implemented."
"Where the system needs to improve is by adding more enterprise features like replication on other sites. We would also like it to be much more aligned with the VMware version. For example, today we have two different versions of VMware ESXi running to keep the PowerStore online. It would be better if the software cycling was faster."
"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."
"The setup process could be improved. We had some issues regarding configuration and the time it took to do things. It wasn't specifically the people we worked with, but more the process and how it's done. They can work on that."
"I do not like having to use a VPLEX for synchronous replication, as opposed to having the store software built in."
"It was very new when we first deployed it a year ago. Even just the upgrade processes and knowing what to expect, as well as documentation, could be more robust."
"The price is on the higher side."
"It's also only supported with a limited amount of switches."
"There is no Synchronize replication feature on the storage."
"Automation could be simplified."
"Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases."
"This product has only two active controllers, whereas other solutions can have more. This is something that needs to improve."
"The integration capabilities could be improved."
"Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."
"I think replication is one area that still needs improvement. Earlier, Pure Storage FlashArray only had IP-based replication. There was no API-based replication, but they have enhanced the feature now. However, they need to work on API replication for C-type of arrays."
"Pure Storage support could be a little better."
"We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform. The idea is that they would run a basic NFS or CIF share from the controllers. FlashBlade is the powerhouse for File and Object storage, but if you don't need all that power, a lightweight file function would make FlashArrays more versatile."
More Pavilion HyperParallel Flash Array Pricing and Cost Advice →
Earn 20 points
Dell PowerStore is ranked 7th in All-Flash Storage Arrays with 15 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 1st in All-Flash Storage Arrays with 36 reviews. Dell PowerStore is rated 8.8, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. 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 Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Provides protection against ransomware threats with immutable snapshots, and it is well known for its scalability, ease of use, and non-disruptive upgrades". Dell PowerStore is most compared with Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerMax NVMe, IBM FlashSystem, HPE Nimble Storage and HPE Primera, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS), IBM FlashSystem, HPE Nimble Storage, Dell Unity XT and VMware vSAN. See our Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashArray report.
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