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Dell PowerStore vs Pure Storage FlashArray 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell PowerStore
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), NAS (2nd), Enterprise SAN (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
Pure Storage FlashArray
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
199
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 17.3%, up from 16.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashArray is 6.3%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
Brian Ricci - PeerSpot reviewer
It's constantly enhanced and has impressive reliability and data compression
The maintenance is a bit expensive. The service and support are there for three years, but after the third year, it is pretty pricey for renewal. I hope Dell addresses that. Everything is pricey these days anyway. It is not like the old days of Compellent. We used to be able to see the metrics for our customers. On Compellent, we could look up that customer and see all the metrics. That is not allowed for us now. We cannot do that anymore. I have to be explicitly allowed by the customer to do that, and some companies' security does not allow that.
Nabeel Sayegh - PeerSpot reviewer
Supercharges enterprise storage by way of highly optimized hardware, comprehensive data management and a feature rich interface.
During their early years, I was a member of Pure's Customer Advisory Board. In addition, when we first adopted Pure, they did not have replication GA yet. We got into their beta testing program and help them work out certain issues with that technology. One weakness I can say the array has, still to this day, is limited control on scheduling snapshots. Depending on the type of replication schedule you are building, you may or may not have control on specifying the start time of a given replication schedule. This is not a very big problem in the grand scheme of things, but something nonetheless that has bothered me about the scheduler in general. Another area for improvement would be automatic host alias creation. Other platforms such as EMC Unity/PowerStore will automatically detect the host name, create a alias for it and associate the logged in HBA's to it. Pure does not do this for you and as a result, requires manual configuration. This can be very time consuming especially when you are deploying a large number of new servers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."
"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."
"The simplicity and ease of use have been very valuable features. I have a very small team, and only half of the team is well versed in the HP product. Whereas if I bring PowerStore in, everyone can learn it because it will be new on the floor."
"The supportability of SCME drives for faster data access from the PowerStore and is the most valuable feature."
"There is no complicated configuration for queries and calls. You just create a model and go."
"Reliable, with comprehensive features and a well-established support base."
"The management capabilities of Dell PowerStore are extremely easy to use and user-friendly."
"Dell PowerStore is an easy and fast tool to work through our company's data."
"PowerStore has helped us reduce our Capex by 20% to 40%."
"Dell PowerStore is more cost-efficient than other solutions."
"There was a dramatic improvement in operating costs just as a result of the environmentals and space, let alone the cost of the unit itself."
"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."
"The best features of Pure Storage are their support and analytics."
"Most of the problems that we had in the past with the performance in IOPS have disappeared. It has been a great improvement for our customers' services."
"We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression."
"It is pretty much just plug and play. There is not that much to do with it. It is very easy to use."
"Having an intuitive user interface to get things running is great."
"The speed of the Pure FlashArray is very, very fast and nothing in the market can compare to it."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"The support is not very good."
"Dell PowerStore is a good solution overall, but some models could support hypervisors better by allowing for more customization and flexibility for customer needs."
"Pricing must also be considered, as Dell PowerStore is quite expensive compared to competitors in the market like HPE Alletra, Huawei Dorado, or Hitachi storage, for example."
"It doesn't support SSD or Flash."
"Dell PowerStore currently only allows us to copy data from our main production system to the disaster recovery site."
"When you create a case on Dell's support website, you don't always get someone who is experienced in the kind of systems you need help with...making it an area where Dell's support team needs to make improvements."
"Dell PowerStore is too expensive, and it could be less complicated. It isn't as user-friendly as other options, especially regarding the user interface."
"The only thing is that with PowerStore, we don't have a solution for the file object."
"A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad."
"It was not proactive communication."
"I would rate this solution an eight. To make it a ten it would have to be a little cheaper."
"CIFS and SMB Shares cannot be mounted directly."
"As partners, we should have the option to download the software, rather than have to go back through Pure to obtain it."
"I would like to see more detailed reporting on the data. However, it would be nice to know what are the exact VMs usage after deduplication and/or what that VMs actual latency and bandwidth is, outside of VMware."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services. There are increasingly more and more services coming out from AWS but there are also certain constraints where we can't move everything over to a cloud as well. We would like for things that are on-premise to be easily integrated with AWS."
"They are doing some stuff with containers and an object search. These could be improved, because containers is one of the main topics that we are talking with our customers about."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
"The product is expensive."
"We are currently using Dell PowerStore for our smaller storage and there is no competition for pricing."
"It is very expensive though when you get to this point of using the 3000 with a client. They will start to think about using another vendor. There are a lot of solutions similar to PowerStore in regards to networking capacity and their prices are very cheap compared to PowerStore."
"In terms of licensing, my organization has Dell Technologies End User License Agreement (EULA), but I don't know exactly how it works, though it is a big bundle of licenses for Dell Data Domain, Dell EMC Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Dell ECS, and all such kinds of storage arrays."
"The price of Dell EMC PowerStore could be better, it is a bit expensive."
"The price is not cheap, but it's worth it for the features you get from the storage. If you can afford it, you are probably buying the best solution that you can have for this virtual environment."
"I rate the price of Dell PowerStore a seven out of ten."
"We only have a single machine and we are currently using half of the hard disk slots. We have asked for an upgrade for the rest of the hard disks but, from my point of view, it costs too much. We have 12 to 15 hard disks inside and if we try to upgrade only the hard disks, it costs the same as the complete system. This is something I don't understand."
"Dell PowerStore is not a cheap solution."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is great, because then I get new controllers every three years."
"It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
"We do not incur additional costs beyond the licensing fee."
"The price is very reasonable when compared to other solutions."
"Once you purchase Pure Storage FlashArray it is all-inclusive, you receive all the licenses needed."
"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."
"The price is too high."
"The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
33%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
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...
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 Stor...
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 cost of Pure Storage is subjective and determined by your environment. Pure Storage tends to be more expensive th...
 

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
Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashArray and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.