Dell SC Series vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ comparison

Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #17 with an average rating of 9.0, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.1. Dell Technologies holds a 0.8% mindshare in AFS, compared to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

HPE 3PAR StoreServ and Dell SC Series are two major players in the enterprise storage market. While HPE 3PAR StoreServ is favored for its consistent performance and robust features, Dell SC Series stands out with superior scalability and lower initial costs.

Features: Users value HPE 3PAR StoreServ for its high availability, ease of management, and advanced data reduction capabilities. Dell SC Series is noted for its dynamic enterprise features like automated tiering, solid integration with diverse environments, and superior scalability, offering better flexibility for growing businesses.

Room for Improvement: HPE 3PAR StoreServ could benefit from better integration with third-party tools, a more intuitive configuration process, and enhanced firmware updates. Dell SC Series requires improvements in firmware updates, analytics tools, and customer support processes. While both products need technical enhancements, HPE 3PAR StoreServ users report fewer critical issues and a more stable experience overall.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HPE 3PAR StoreServ is known for its straightforward deployment process and strong vendor support, providing comprehensive training and resources. Dell SC Series offers various deployment models but users mention occasional complexities during setup. Dell's customer service is reliable but not as hands-on as HPE's, with many users finding HPE to be more responsive to support needs and easier to implement.

Pricing and ROI: HPE 3PAR StoreServ typically entails higher initial setup costs but delivers significant ROI through consistent performance and lower operational expenses. Dell SC Series is more cost-effective upfront with reasonable ongoing costs, providing good long-term ROI. Despite the higher initial price, HPE users feel the investment is justified by its superior capabilities and reliability.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell SC Series vs. HPE 3PAR StoreServ Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. HPE 3PAR StoreServ

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 852,649 peers since 2012

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 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 HPE 3PAR StoreServ is 3.0%, down from 3.7% 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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Muhammad Saqib

System Engineer at Hybrid Tech

Uninterrupted upgrades accelerate performance with good support

I would rate the solution eight out of ten. It should be noted that in Pakistan, some parts are not readily available, and we need to import them from Singapore or other countries. We encountered an issue with a customer where the midplane failed and was not available. We had to wait for several days for a replacement, even in a 24/7 support case. Additionally, we faced motherboard failures in the customer's environment, encountering two motherboard failures simultaneously. We obtained one motherboard immediately, yet had to wait ten days for another. These issues should have been resolved promptly given the 24/7 support level.

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

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

"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."

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

"I appreciate the performance."

"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."

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the speed for the end-user."

"The solution is stable."

"The interface is easy to use which makes the product user-friendly."

"It was very easy to install, maintain, and provides excellent manageability."

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

"Dell SC Series offers a lot of performance, being one of the best performing storages Dell ever made."

"One of the most valuable features is the capability to switch between all-flash to hybrid, which have have actually done for one of our arrays. We started with the hybrid, with the limited if I'm not mistaken, and then over a period of time, we swapped all the hybrids with the SSDs. This was one of the big features because it gave us the capability to not stick with just one kind of media. Secondly, since it has sorted clustering, we were able to bring in the newer boxes and have it all clustered together. These were the two main features that we really looked into, which benefited our use case from an expansion/growth perspective. Another valuable feature is the ease of management."

More Dell SC Series pros

"The Remote Copy Group is amazing for the replication stuff."

"The availability of the server has given us increased stability in our environment."

"It's a really stable solution. We have no problems with the customer, no negative feedback from them on this."

"It's a very popular product for enterprise storage."

"The ease of management is its most valuable feature. It is so much easier to manage storage on a 3PAR array than anything that we have had before."

"The solutions has increased our performance. We went from 24,000 IOPS to around 70,000 IOPS."

"When we bought it, the big sell for us was what they called "wide striping", how they striped the data and could get performance on a cheaper disk. Nowadays, the newer models that are out, which we are going to in the next couple of years, the most valuable feature is mainly being able to achieve such high IOPS in such a small chassis."

"Any action we want to do with a Dell EMC product needs a license. But with 3PAR's converged solution, at least there is no need to purchase more licenses to get the all the features that we need. We can get basic and mid-range features without licenses."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pros

Cons

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

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

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

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."

"It is on the expensive side."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The ease of use could be improved. It took me a while to learn it."

"The initial setup is somewhat complex and should be made simpler to do."

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

"We had times that we needed a file service solution. We've used FluidFS, but it's a solution that is being transitioned out."

"While the scalability is good, there are certain limitations."

"I would like to see an integrated key manager in the controllers. Currently, it's an external product. It would be nice to have the option of having a built-in key for self-encrypting drive features."

"The connection should be better integrated with the network to offer a better view of the system."

"From a performance point of view, it's getting a bit old."

More Dell SC Series cons

"Our support in the US has been phenomenal, no issues at all. But the European support was poor initially."

"In the next release, I would like them to make it a little easier to find where everything is in the new console. It now has the OneView look and sometimes I don't think the OneView look is enough. It's too different from the original console that was a separate system."

"It needs the addition of InfoSight, which is the most critical, along with predictive analytics and AI."

"A lot of tasks, you have to manually set up. They need to already have them set up and working. Then, you can just go in and tweak them if you need to."

"The performance of the solution is not good anymore and the software is different from all the other types and is not compatible. There are more negative things at this moment than positive. This is why we are removing them all from our organization this year."

"While the stability is pretty good, it could always be improved upon."

"It is suitable for medium-sized businesses and data centers with less number of users and less important data. It is not really an enterprise-level solution. It needs more capacity. It is also not really stable. It should be more stable. It should also support any server model. It is really weak in this area."

"As long as they can keep the solution stable, it will be good. Stability is very important to us."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."

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

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

"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 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."

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

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"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."

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

"We have found the solution to be affordable."

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

"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."

"The scalability seems a bit more expensive than even buying a brand new one so far. That has been kind of a drawback."

More Dell SC Series pricing and cost advice

"3PAR was quite a bit less money than EMC, and that was one of the deciding factors."

"It is a bit more expensive. IBM is cheaper than HPE in Turkey."

"We have seen ROI. While the costs were quite high at the time of purchase for our environment, the ease of use and the fact that it hasn't failed all the time, working fine, that makes it worth buying."

"I have to renew support in October for the existing solution. That will cost me roughly $50,000 this year, which in the grand scheme of things, $50,000 is not that much compared to paying $850,000. However, it will be the last year that I'll be able to get direct support from HPE. Therefore, product has to be replaced in 2020."

"Our licensing cost are $32,000 annually."

"This is not an expensive product but every time you add capacity to it, you need to pay for re-balancing."

"Cost-wise, it is a little bit on the higher side, but it is an awesome product."

"The licensing cost for HPE 3PAR StoreServ is expensive."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

852,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user182013

Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at Rubrik

May 1, 2015

Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR

Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Educational Organization

83%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?

HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspectiv...

See all answers

What do you like most about HPE 3PAR StoreServ?

The compression features are good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE 3PAR StoreServ?

It is expensive, however, when we compare it to the features provided by HPE, the price-to-performance ratio is very ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 30% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 18% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% 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 61% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell SC Series

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell SC Series

Compared 10% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell SC Series

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell SC Series

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell SC Series Competitors

HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 22% of the time

HPE Primera vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 21% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 6% of the time

HPE MSA vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 6% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 5% of the time

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ 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

May 2025

Download Dell SC Series product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

May 2025

Download HPE 3PAR StoreServ product report

Also Known As

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

SC Series Storage, Compellent

HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage

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

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is an AI-driven storage solution that prevents issues before they occur by learning and adjusting in real time. The solution offers a tier-1 all-flash foundation for mission-critical workloads. HPE 3PAR StoreServ was designed with more than 3M IOPS and consistent sub-ms latency. It aims to transform midrange and enterprise deployments with solutions that scale from a few TBs to more than 20PBs. In addition, the solution is built to modernize data centers and is made to handle unpredictable workloads effortlessly. By implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you gain automated and rapid provisioning, hardware-accelerated deduplication and compression, and a multi-tenant design.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Features

HPE 3PAR StoreServ has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Flexibility: With HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you can easily deploy highly configurable, scale-out storage for multi-tenant workloads.

Always-on availability for your data: HPE 3PAR StoreServ includes an always-on resilient storage infrastructure for your hypervisors and applications. In addition, with Peer Persistence, your virtual machines (VMs), hosts, and data can move freely across data centers rather than being constrained by their physical boundaries.

Fast, scalable performance: HPE 3PAR StoreServ enables you to accelerate consistent mixed-workload performance and also provides necessary QoS levels that are optimized for your highest priority applications.

Performance insights: HPE 3PAR StoreServ helps you gain performance insights in real time, and anticipate as well as prevent issues across the infrastructure stack by utilizing cross-stack analytics.

Flash optimized data protection: With tier-1 data services, multi-tenant security, and copy data management, you can avoid downtime.

Seamless data mobility: HPE 3PAR StoreServ makes it possible for you to not only experience converged data protection, but also experience seamless data mobility services, at flash speed, from the edge to the cloud.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Easy to manage. The web interface to manage the units is a great asset and one that makes managing storage easy.

User-friendly GUI

Exceptionally fast and well-managed replication
Low latency

Hybrid storage gives you the ability to assign different roles to different types of storage arrays inside one enclosure

Both file-level and block-level replication

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the HPE 3PAR StoreServ solution.

A SAN Consultant at a tech services company says, “One of the features that I like the most is the data replication element. The reason I like it is due to the fact that it's pretty clean on replicating data over to a second site. The product stands on its own in heavy enterprise environments. It's easy to make changes without affecting the environment. The solution is very easy to use. The product is very robust and offers very good performance.”

A Storage Manager at a financial services firm mentions, "There are a lot of screens for easy management where you can change some settings. But after a few years, the important settings were better after an upgrade, and all the vendors have other ways to upgrade their systems."

A Senior IT Infrastructure & Data Center Operation Engineer at Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) comments, “The adaptive optimization is the biggest feature in 3PAR. 3PAR is very usable with thin volume because it detects zeros while writing. Every time I tell the hypervisor to make the full provisioning, it makes the volume as simple provisioning in 3PAR, not full provisioning.”

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric

Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. HPE 3PAR StoreServ

April 2025

Free Report: Dell SC Series vs. HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. HPE 3PAR StoreServ and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

852,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Dell SC Series vs. HPE 3PAR StoreServ 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.