Dell PowerStore vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

Dell Technologies and Pure Storage are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8, while Pure Storage is ranked #16 with an average rating of 9.0. Dell Technologies holds a 17.1% mindshare in AFS, compared to Pure Storage’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Pure Storage users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Pure Storage FlashBlade and Dell PowerStore are competitive storage solutions. Pure Storage FlashBlade offers an edge with pricing and support, but Dell PowerStore excels in features according to user reviews, making it a more compelling choice for those who prioritize functionality over cost.

Features: Pure Storage FlashBlade has high performance, scalability, and ease of management. Dell PowerStore provides data reduction capabilities, flexible architecture, and advanced data services. Dell PowerStore offers a broader feature set and is generally preferred for its comprehensive functionalities.

Room for Improvement: Pure Storage FlashBlade needs better integration with third-party applications, enhanced analytics, and more frequent software updates. Dell PowerStore can improve its documentation, increase software update frequency, and refine user experience. Dell PowerStore's issues are more about refinement than functionality gaps.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Pure Storage FlashBlade has a straightforward deployment process and prompt customer support. Dell PowerStore also offers easy deployment but with occasional complexities in initial configuration, though its customer service efficiently resolves issues. Both systems provide solid deployment experiences with commendable customer assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Pure Storage FlashBlade has competitive pricing and significant ROI with lower operational costs. Dell PowerStore, despite higher initial setup costs, delivers excellent ROI due to its advanced features and performance reliability. Pure Storage FlashBlade is preferred for cost-effectiveness, while Dell PowerStore's ROI justifies its premium pricing.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

June 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 17.1%, up from 16.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 1.8%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

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.

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Brian Ricci

President at Pinnacle Computer Services, Inc.

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.

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Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."

"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."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The compression is excellent."

"It is a stable solution."

"The companies I sell Dell PowerStore to are extremely happy, as they keep expanding it and keep buying more shelves to expand the storage."

"he support for Dell PowerStore is exceptional."

"Dell PowerStore's compression and deduplication technologies are a big help for our organization."

"The tool's most valuable features are compression and speed."

"That's the value Dell creates; you invest less, and you get a better ROI."

"It's a great product. Integrating PowerStore with the IT workflow is easy."

More Dell PowerStore pros

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

"The main feature I have found to be product replication."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"It is on the expensive side."

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"It needs more mature code."

"The management UI is pretty decent and gets the job done, but the upgrade process is challenging."

"It was very new when we first deployed it a year ago. Even the upgrade processes and knowing what to expect, as well as documentation, could be more robust."

"Dell PowerStore is a very expensive storage solution."

"The support team doesn't always provide adequate assistance. So, there is room for improvement in the support."

"It doesn't support SSD or Flash."

"Could use some additional automation."

"Dell PowerStore does not have features that specifically cater to the needs of our company or industry that are outstanding among others, but reliability is crucial, and ease of management is also important."

More Dell PowerStore cons

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"The product is expensive."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"It is easy to work with Dell from the licensing perspective."

"The solution is expensive."

"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 licensing for this solution is good and is in the mid-range tier."

"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."

"The pricing rates at seven out of ten as it is considered overpriced. Entry-level models are reasonably priced, starting around $30,000 for a base model with 6 drives. However, upgrades become costly - adding 6 additional drives can cost another $30,000."

"Dell PowerStore is affordable and the license is just a face license which is great."

"Dell PowerStore has been priced aggressively, especially when compared to other NVMe storage options. It is likely one of the most cost-effective options for organizations seeking a pure NVMe play in terms of pricing."

More Dell PowerStore pricing and cost advice

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"The price is a little high."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Educational Organization

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

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.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

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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...

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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...

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What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

Comparisons

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 19% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 14% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerVault vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 9% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 8% of the time

More Dell PowerStore Competitors

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

DDN IntelliFlash vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 2% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

May 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore

June 2025

Download Dell PowerStore product report

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

May 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

PowerStore

No data available

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

Dell PowerStore stands out for its high performance, flexibility, and easy integration with VMware. It offers notable data compression and deduplication capabilities while providing powerful NVMe support and machine learning to optimize IT operations.

Dell PowerStore is designed to offer a comprehensive approach to IT infrastructure by enhancing performance and simplifying management. It is particularly suitable for companies that require scalable solutions to increase compute or capacity independently. Featuring built-in intelligence, PowerStore allows efficient storage consolidation and reduced footprint, while integration with CloudIQ enhances monitoring and analytics. However, there are areas for improvement, such as stability, enterprise features, and the user interface. Pricing is high, and support responsiveness needs attention. Organizations primarily use PowerStore for VMware environments, storage, and data protection, supporting high-performance databases and VMware workloads. It is utilized in data centers for disaster recovery and hybrid setups.

What are the key features of Dell PowerStore?

Flexibility: Independently scales compute or capacity
High Performance: Offers powerful NVMe support and machine learning
Integration: Easily integrates with VMware
Data Efficiency: Provides data compression and deduplication
Simplified Management: Built-in intelligence for efficient storage management

What benefits should users consider?

Performance Optimization: Enhance IT operations with machine learning
Scalability: Increase compute or storage capacity as needed
Integration Potential: Improve efficiency with VMware and CloudIQ
Data Protection: Reliable for disaster recovery and hybrid environments

In industries like IT, finance, and healthcare, Dell PowerStore supports efficient data management and enhances infrastructure performance. Organizations leverage it to manage extensive data, streamline virtualization processes, and facilitate migration from legacy systems, while integrating cloud and on-premises infrastructures for improved operations.

Dell Technologies

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

June 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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