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 newest version of ONTAP has a bit of a learning curve because you need to learn where things are to find them. It is not impossible, but when you are accustomed to the older version of ONTAP, it just takes a bit getting used to it, but it is about the same as before."
"Other manufacturers claim simplicity. In fact, frankly, they do have an advantage in that regard, however, they don't have the functionality. If you were to compare one of those products to NetApp, head to head from a feature perspective, NetApp would wind up in the top 10."
"The performance is outstanding when it's all Flash. That's the biggest bang for the buck that we get."
"The NVMe flash cache is the most useful feature. It lowers transactional speed even more."
"Technical support has been okay."
"The benefits of being on AFF are the phenomenal speed at which we're able to ingest data and index it, and the IOPS."
"In terms of the footprint, it is far more efficient. It has smaller, higher-capacity drives than our older unit. In terms of space, power, and cooling, it has simplified things."
"It impacts customer retention because of its overall ease. When you are running a business, where time is a factor, that is the biggest selling point. Things happen really rapidly, when they happen, and being able to say, "Yeah, we can get this up and running in a day, if you want," or even less time in some cases. Sometimes, that can be what makes or breaks our case."
"PowerStore is easy to use. All the drives use soft encryption. To upgrade it, you download the app, and it runs by itself. It's very easy to deploy, share, and create volumes."
"The support is very good."
"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."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"The solution is extremely stable."
"For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance."
"The supportability of SCME drives for faster data access from the PowerStore and is the most valuable feature."
"The way you're able to manage all your PowerStores as one solution is very good for us. PowerStore enables you to federate or cluster multiple appliances with automated load balancing. In terms of management, it's helpful that we can do it from a single interface where we're able to manage multiple PowerStores. When you have multiple PowerStores it works intelligently by running the workloads based on the needs of the infrastructure."
"I use all the features of this solution and I find them to be easy to use and functional, such as the compression and capacity to expand."
"I like its speed. It has all the features that I need."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides."
"We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."
"Pure Storage is extremely reliable — it's never failed."
"The availability and ease of use are the big features."
"We've been using FlashArray's snapshot for backups. Their replication across sites and response time are also excellent."
"The mobile app is very helpful."
"Some of the graphical user interface changes in the later versions of NetApp have not been as good as the older ones, like in the 9.5 era."
"After the three-year prepay, the extended warranty is a little expensive."
"Its integration could be improved."
"There is room for improvement with the user interface. There are a few things that cannot be done in the GUI. We do a lot of things through the CLI, but that's grown out of a lack of ability to do them in the GUI. An example is QTrees. You can manage them within the GUI, but the GUI is missing a few options."
"For ONTAP, in general, the deduplication ratio and Snapshot limitation are areas that need improvement. There is a global limitation on the number of Snapshots or clones that can be spun off of a particular Snapshot. If those limitations are increased, it might be helpful."
"The initial setup has a lot more steps in it than are probably necessary for a base deployment, unlike other vendors where it's more straightforward. It could be a little bit more streamlined."
"It used to give us the volume where LANs should be placed when we created a LAN in the older version. However, in the newer version of ONTAP, it does not give where to place the LAN in the volume. So, that liberty has been taken away. If that was there again, it would be very good."
"It can get a little expensive if you need to add more disks. The cost is a pain point for us, especially in terms of expansion."
"I do not like having to use VPLEX for synchronous replication, as opposed to having the store software built-in."
"The price is on the higher side."
"During the installation phase, the licensing part was not straightforward. It was very difficult for the technicians, who are not trained Dell EMC technicians, to do the licensing because the information on their website is not straightforward... Eventually, I had to pass this task to our business partner and they did it for us."
"Could use some additional automation."
"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."
"More demonstration and training options are needed."
"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."
"Many customers are looking for a cyber recovery feature included in PowerStore. We would like to see this added in a future release."
"Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases."
"Pricing could be better in comparison to other solutions."
"A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad."
"The integration capabilities could be improved."
"I feel like there is too much automation; the user doesn't have any manual input."
"It was not proactive communication."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve in the area of cryptographic information in the consoles. The user-friendliness could improve. The Pure Storage FlashArray team should come and log into the system with their maintenance credentials and then pull out the information as evidence of cryptography."
"When we were doing some tests, we found that there was an I/O freeze when they were switching the controller."
Dell PowerStore is ranked 1st in All-Flash Storage with 25 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 45 reviews. Dell PowerStore is rated 8.6, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.0. 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, IBM FlashSystem, Dell PowerMax NVMe, HPE Nimble Storage and HPE Primera, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with IBM FlashSystem, VMware vSAN, HPE Nimble Storage, Dell Unity XT and Pure Storage FlashBlade. See our Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashArray 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.
