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Dell SC Series vs Dell VMAX All Flash 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 SC Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays (3rd)
Dell VMAX All Flash
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
24th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
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 SC Series is 0.8%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell VMAX All Flash is 0.6%, up from 0.3% 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.
Steven McClendon - PeerSpot reviewer
Superior platform with excellent snapshots and cost-saving auto-tiering
I'm a big fan of the SC Series platform. Its feature set is superior to some of the other platforms. The snapshots on SC are excellent, allowing for multiple snapshot schedules for any one system. The auto-tiering functionality intelligently moves new data to the highest performance tier and then progresses it down to less expensive tiers over time, providing cost savings for customers.
BrijeshKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
With an easy initial setup phase, the tool is useful for multi-site replication and DR
The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. If the product is up and running after, if it goes down, my company has observed that there are multiple failures that occur in the tool, so it needs to be reinstalled from scratch. The tool should have an automated feature or an automated option to handle the aforementioned scenario, which one can simply go and reset, after which the tool should be reinstalled with the same configuration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"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."
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."
"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."
"The user interface is good, I would rate it a nine out of ten."
"It's very scalable, especially with federation. If you outgrow the number of spindles that a unit can support, depending on the model, you can go into federation."
"Its leading feature is the price-performance ratio, which is very good."
"The most valuable feature is the no-forklift upgrade. While the thing is running, I can change out the controllers one at a time and keep the customer up and running. I can add shelves and storage and SSD drives or spinning drives to the system, while it's running. I can bring all that in and rebalance the load across the new disks or, if we take disks away, rebalance the load across what's remaining, and it just works."
"It is just as stable as any other high-end solution."
"It is suitable for small or medium businesses."
"In terms of stability, it's good enough. It's okay."
"It was very easy to install, maintain, and provides excellent manageability."
"It works very well."
"The snapshot feature has been precious for our testing processes, application development, and managing testing environments due to its efficiency and ease of use."
"The ransomware protection feature is housed in a separate unit, specifically addressing the top twenty most critical threats."
"The product's initial setup phase was good."
"We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution."
"The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface."
 

Cons

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"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."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"It is on the expensive side."
"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."
"The ease of use could be improved. It took me a while to learn it."
"The tool's pricing is high and not suitable for medium companies."
"While the scalability is good, there are certain limitations."
"The administration and support (on the way that they delivered) was a little bit slow."
"This product should be a lot more user-friendly."
"This solution could be improved if overall performance was improved and operated with a higher speed and supported a higher volume of RAM."
"Some menus aren't so intuitive."
"From a performance point of view, it's getting a bit old."
"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additional engines to address this limitation."
"There is room for improvement in the centralized administration."
"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability."
"Improvements are needed in both partition recovery and scalability."
"The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"We encountered some challenges during large data migrations that could be addressed for smoother transitions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"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."
"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 support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"The product is expensive."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"Pricing depends on varying life cycles."
"Compared to other solutions out there, it's affordable."
"Support typically depends on the array. It can range anywhere from $7,000 to a couple of hundred thousand dollars."
"The maintenance is usually pretty good. It's not like some of the others where they increase it in the fourth, fifth, or sixth years."
"The pricing of Dell EMC Compellent is competitive."
"The SC Series was priced fairly. I wouldn't call it either expensive or cheap because we had a very tight budget, so if they were able to fit in that type of budget, they met our expectations."
"It is one of the most cost effective systems for us. We have been able to run it longer than most, getting the most benefit and money out of it."
"It has a good price point and offers some value-added enterprise features."
"The price falls within the mid-range, neither inexpensive nor high-priced."
"It is not a cheap product."
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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
21%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 like most about Dell SC Series?
I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell SC Series?
Cost considerations are crucial when choosing between solutions like Dell and NetApp. Sometimes Dell offers better pe...
What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?
In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage. If I want...
What do you like most about Dell EMC VMax?
The product's initial setup phase was good.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC VMax?
The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additiona...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
SC Series Storage, Compellent
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. Dell VMAX All Flash and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.