Dell SC Series vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform comparison

Dell Technologies and Hitachi Vantara are both solutions in the Frame-Based Disk Arrays category. Dell Technologies is ranked #2 with an average rating of 9.0, while Hitachi Vantara is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.1. Additionally, 94% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Hitachi Vantara users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Both Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and Dell SC Series offer robust storage solutions, with each having unique advantages. Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is favored for pricing and support, while Dell SC Series stands out due to its advanced features, making it considered worth the higher price.

Features: Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is praised for its reliable performance, scalability, and advanced data protection features. Dell SC Series is noted for its automated tiering, easy management, and integration with VMware. Users highlight Hitachi's robust data protection, while Dell's automated tiering stands out, making it easier to optimize storage resources.

Room for Improvement: Users suggest that Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform could improve its integration capabilities and reduce costs. For Dell SC Series, users seek enhancements in reporting tools and better performance metrics. Hitachi needs better integration, while Dell could benefit from more refined reporting options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform generally receives positive feedback for smooth deployment and responsive customer service. Dell SC Series, while praised for a straightforward deployment process, sometimes faces criticism for slower customer service responses. Hitachi excels in customer support, whereas Dell's deployment ease is appreciated.

Pricing and ROI: Users find Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform to have a higher setup cost but indicate that the ROI is solid due to reliability and scalability. Dell SC Series is considered more cost-effective for initial setup, and users feel the long-term ROI justifies its advanced features. Hitachi might be pricier upfront, but its ROI is seen as strong; Dell is more budget-friendly on setup, with good ROI seen in feature utility.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell SC Series vs. Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

May 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

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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Steven McClendon

Data Center Server & Storage Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

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.

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Ozair Amin

Sales Manager - Infrastructure at Synergy Computers

A robust and dependable product that ensures a 100 percent data availability guarantee

We don't encounter any challenges in selling these Hitachi VSPs to our customers. These products boast an exceptionally robust architecture, making them highly reliable. This reliability is the key reason behind our lack of challenges. However, when we delve into the realm of competition, particularly in the unified storage sector, we do face certain challenges. This is primarily due to the usage of gateways in their storage solutions by some competitors. Unlike other competitors such as NetApp and Huawei, who do not employ gateways, we contend with challenges related to these gateways within the context of unified products. Many customers have been utilizing Hitachi Vantara for several years, relying on its storage capabilities. They appreciate its reliable roadmaps, which facilitate long-term planning. This makes it an effortless choice for customers to opt for Hitachi Vantara, as the product seamlessly accommodates updates and future changes. The key focal point of the Hitachi Vantara roadmap for our clients is centered around future upgrades. Typically, customers undergo tech refresh cycles approximately every five years. Consequently, when they embark on a tech refresh initiative, they tend to prioritize options that facilitate a smooth transition of data to alternative storage solutions. In this context, Hitachi Vantara leverages its external storage virtualization platform to ensure a seamless data migration process. This approach proves to be highly advantageous for our customers, and it stands as a primary reason for their choice to engage with Hitachi Vantara's offerings. Our customers are highly satisfied with their choice to acquire Hitachi products and services. I have not observed any of our customers shifting away from the Hitachi brand. I would recommend Hitachi Vantara 100 percent of the time to others. There are tools that assist us in accessing the IOPS per second and latencies of Hitachi Vantara systems. One such tool is the CPK tool, accessible through the Hitachi Vantara portal. Whenever we configure a product and a customer requests information about the IOPS and latencies, we can provide them with a report from the portal. This report includes details about reads, writes, IOPS, and sequential operations, offering a comprehensive overview of the IOPS performance that Hitachi Vantara offers. The combination of low latency and high performance has consistently assisted customers in improving their production and enhancing their working experience. It also aids them in easily managing the product, giving them time to expand their knowledge and plan for the future, rather than dealing with storage-related issues. The cost comparison of IOPS between our solutions and those of competitors is favorable at present, but this wasn't always the case. In the Pakistani market, Huawei used to be highly competitive. However, our current partnership with Hitachi has allowed us to pose a strong challenge to Huawei. Additionally, when considering products from NetApp, EMC, and even IBM, Hitachi remains highly competitive. Hitachi offers flexible media options to support the consolidation of multiple uses within the same platform which is important to our customers. Most of our customers utilize Unified Storage, employing a two-tier storage approach that includes both NVMe and SSDs. However, current trends indicate a shift in customer preferences towards NVMe over SAAS or SSDs due to the heightened reliability and increased cost-effectiveness of NVMe technology. This transition is driving many customers to adopt a comprehensive NVMe solution. Nonetheless, a substantial number of large customers still adhere to the two-tier storage model. For their primary tier, they employ NVMe drives, while for the secondary tier, they opt for NFS drives or a SAAS-based large-scale service. The integration of various use cases into a unified platform to facilitate the transformation of data into business insights is highly valuable. We receive input from our customers regarding their workloads. Based on the nature of these workloads and their intended use for storage – whether for ERP solutions, archives, or backup purposes – we recommend the appropriate storage type. These steps outline our process for evaluating the intended storage workload. Following this workload assessment, we suggest either NAS Unified Storage or Document Storage solutions. In the portal, there is a tool that enables us to calculate Hitachi's guaranteed effective capacity. It is quite straightforward for customers to comprehend and identify the effective capacity ratio. This is because many customers in Pakistan are already familiar with and using effective capacity ratios. Explaining the concept of effective capacity to customers is not a challenging task. Customers typically appreciate the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform due to its efficiency, easy product manageability, and product reliability, all of which offer significant benefits to the customers. This is crucial, especially in sectors like banking, where any breach or downtime could lead to substantial losses for customers. The uninterrupted operation of storage is paramount. This substantial benefit not only ensures customer satisfaction but also underscores the value derived from data utilization. Hitachi's adaptive data reduction technology assists in decreasing our client's storage footprint by around 50 percent. The majority of our customers were using storage from various vendors. We consolidated this storage into a single system using Hitachi Vantara.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"I appreciate the performance."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"With auto-tiering, it's easier to understand than most arrays, knowing that all of your writes go to the tier that you specify, with easy-to-create storage profiles."

"The user interface is good, I would rate it a nine out of ten."

"The product offers good performance and is quite powerful."

"With federation, you can have multiple systems across sites. You can treat them as one, and with a live migration, volumes don't go down. You can move them from site to site, doing maintenance, and keep your environment up."

"Dell SC Series' most valuable features are performance and network facilities. We have no issues with its integration. The tool helps to visualize servers."

"Its feature set is superior to some of the other platforms."

"It is just as stable as any other high-end solution."

"I can mix and match the drives, using older mechanical devices and the latest SFP drives in a single solution with different enclosures."

More Dell SC Series pros

"One of the features, for us, that is important is the monitoring platform integrated into the solution. It has all the elements that we need to see, at all times, to be sure the platform is working right."

"The technical support is great."

"Hitachi's technical support is perfect."

"The product has great data storage performance with a 100% data security and availability guarantee."

"The active data management of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, especially with the HOPS Center, makes it easier to work with the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform infrastructure."

"The deduplication is useful for us because we don't have that much money for our lab infrastructure. Deduplication means we have more storage available. And the IOPS are really fast."

"The valuable features for data management include deduplication and compression without performance impact, and the ability to virtualize old storage, making migration seamless."

"Storage is the most valuable feature."

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform pros

Cons

"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

"It is on the expensive side."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

"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."

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"There's always room for improvement in the operating code."

"What I understand is that this is a 13 year old architecture, so it has lived its life and they're phasing it out. Honestly, we were initially struggling with the integration with VMware (but it was fixed with the VMware 6.5) and, then, it was around a 10GB network. At that time, it had the longevity to go to 100GB as well. It got us thinking about, when we go into the containerized architecture, what do we need to do to fix the infrastructure?"

"The administration and support (on the way that they delivered) was a little bit slow."

"If Dell SC Series could have supported the protocol NVMe over TCP, that would have been great. It does not."

"While the price is competitive, in the next release it would be better if they could reduce the fees."

"The lower model, the 3000, should have duplication. It doesn't right now. It's only from 5000 that this is offered, but it depends on the performance. It could be they don't offer it on lower models because the duplication is too much of a burden to the performance."

"We can definitely see a need for it being a multi-controller system for customers who want to scale beyond the current capability. That's always a downside. A lot of the new systems are scaling vertically, they scale out, and the Compellent, of course, is controllers with shelves under it, so you don't scale out with it, unless you add another one. But if you do, they don't talk to each other, like some of the other solutions that we sell."

"I would like to see higher compression, dedupe, faster I/O, and bigger drives."

More Dell SC Series cons

"The initial setup was difficult, as we don't have access to assistance. We had some issues around configuration. We needed to know things like what kind of rate is the best, or what kind of replication is ideal. We had to seek out answers online to get the information we needed."

"The life-cycle of the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series is too short. We only had approximately four or five years out of the solution before it was rendered its end of life."

"The embedded management for installation feature has neither simplified nor complicated the management process, therefore, there is room for improvement."

"Hitachi Vantara has invested heavily in improving their management interface, however, they still have a way to go to catch up with many of their competitors."

"In terms of ransomware, Pure Storage is probably a couple of steps ahead of Hitachi, but Hitachi does not rush in terms of features. They want to be really sure that the hardware works properly without any kind of problem in new environments, and the implementation or improvement does not affect the customer installation. They really want to make sure that customers are not affected in any way."

"One improvement I am hoping for in the next release is unified storage."

"Hitachi should launch some small machines in Brazil. The smallest machine here in Brazil is VSP 350, which can be quite big for some of the customers. In China, Hitachi has small models of this equipment, but those models are not available in our region. Its pricing is a big issue for us. We are resellers, and we face some competition from other vendors. Hitachi doesn't always have a good position in terms of the price. Its user interface is also not as good as some of the other competitors, and it can be improved."

"The interface should be simplified and made easier to use."

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

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

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"This product is too expensive compared to others, and I don't see any value in using it."

"The pricing is reasonable, but it is expensive."

"There are costs involving the solution, vendor fees and product safety which are additional."

"It's absolutely affordable. Again, not having to do a forklift upgrade like some of the others have had to do in the past, it's very affordable for our customers and they continue to buy."

"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's a very affordable solution."

"We were able to afford two tiers of flash storage at a price where the competition was giving us one tier or just a handful of discs."

"It has a good price point and offers some value-added enterprise features."

More Dell SC Series pricing and cost advice

"A drawback of Hitachi storage systems is that they are expensive. The upfront cost is very high compared to others. But when you compare the IOPS at the same price, Hitachi gives you better business value..."

"In our company, we only pay towards the licensing charges associated with Forcepoint, as Hitachi is considered to be a third-party product for us."

"The cost price of this product is better than its competitors."

"I find Hitachi to be cheaper by five to ten percent when compared to Dell and HP's costs, but the features in Dell are better than Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform."

"The costs were primarily in line with every other vendor at the time."

"It is a little expensive."

"We pay for a support contract agreement."

"Our main issue with the Hitachi G-Series is what we consider to be an archaic software licensing scheme and high maintenance costs."

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 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

22%

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

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 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 ...

See all answers

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...

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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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform?

For NVMe storage, the pricing is reasonable compared to competitors in India. However, for entry-level SAN storage or...

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What do you like most about Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E990?

The product's reliability has been crucial for our company's operations.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E990?

The interface management and monitoring need improvement. Although I receive emails from Hitachi Virtual Storage Plat...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 29% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 19% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% 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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell SC Series

Compared 59% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell SC Series

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell SC Series

Compared 10% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell SC Series

Compared 9% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell SC Series

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell SC Series Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 14% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 12% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 6% of the time

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

May 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series

June 2025

Download Dell SC Series product report

Buyer's Guide

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

June 2025

Download Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform product report

Also Known As

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

SC Series Storage, Compellent

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series, 5000 Series, E Series, N Series, G Series

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 EMC SC Series arrays provide a unified platform for the ultimate in performance, adaptability and machine-driven efficiency. SC Series software delivers modern features that help you meet aggressive workload demands using the fewest drives necessary. With an open, future-ready design, SC Series storage integrates seamlessly with applications and infrastructure, enabling you to scale on a single platform and add capabilities without forklift upgrades.

Dell Technologies

RETHINK YOUR DEFINITION OF SPEED AND PERFORMANCE

With adaptive, guaranteed data reduction and a 100% data-availability guarantee, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F series helps you tackle complicated business challenges. Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) VSP F series delivers up to 4.8M IOPS with sub-millisecond response times.
Featuring legendary Hitachi reliability, VSP F series arrays are backed by the industries only 100% availability guarantee. For these reasons, 80% of the Fortune 500 choose Hitachi all-flash arrays to accelerate the performance of mission-critical applications like Oracle, SAP, Virtualization, Microsoft apps etc. With over 350 patents in flash technology, Hitachi’s innovative mix of flash hardware and software accelerates ROI with enterprise-class reliability and performance.

Hitachi Vantara

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric

Turkcell, Owens Corning, Region Nord, Net Credit Financial Group (NFC Group), Russian Railways

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

May 2025

Free Report: Dell SC Series vs. Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

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