Dell SC Series vs SolidFire comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.8, while NetApp is ranked #33. Dell Technologies holds a 1.1% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

SolidFire and Dell SC Series are competing storage solutions, with each excelling in different areas based on user reviews. SolidFire has the upper hand in pricing and support, while Dell SC Series stands out for its features and performance.

Features: SolidFire's features include automated QoS, seamless scalability, and excellent automation. Dell SC Series offers advanced data progression, robust replication capabilities, and superior data management.

Room for Improvement: SolidFire needs better reporting tools, enhanced performance analytics, and more flexible deployment options. Dell SC Series users seek improved deduplication efficiency, faster support responses, and more intuitive management interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolidFire has a straightforward deployment process with strong customer support. Dell SC Series has a more complex deployment but also offers commendable support.

Pricing and ROI: SolidFire users report lower initial setup costs and quicker ROI. Dell SC Series has higher setup costs but offers long-term ROI due to its superior features.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell SC Series vs. SolidFire Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. SolidFire

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 881,114 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 January 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 1.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolidFire is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dell SC Series	1.1%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.4%
SolidFire	0.3%
Other	97.2%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

Read full review

Ramnesh Kumar

System Administrator at Lovely Professional University

Storage solutions accommodate diverse drives and offers good resiliency

Technical support is good. I can log complaints online through the portal and have engineers in line. I can also take dedicated engineers if needed, although this involves a different support cost. As far as my requirements are concerned, it is working fine. There are two or three types of support. Standard support involves logging a complaint and receiving a call from the OEM on the same day, but hardware replacement takes two to three days. Advanced support offers instant replacement without delays. Hardware support terms include calling or emailing the company or logging the call in the portal to receive remote support, or getting a dedicated engineer or account manager from Dell.

Read full review

Ramil Cerrada

Solution lead at Globe Mobile

A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance

The most significant benefit lies in its exceptional performance, driven by its Flash-based architecture. This enhances routing speed and, consequently, database performance. The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential.

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 solution is very straightforward to set up."

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

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

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

"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 best features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe include the volume snapshot capabilities, which allow us to save most of the storage space by volume snapshots periodically."

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

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

"The solution has a wide variety of valuable features. The data progression works well. We use the snapshot functionality quite a bit and really like it."

"It is fast and performs well."

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

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

"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."

"In terms of stability, it's good enough. It's okay."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to replicate. We are running a financial company and it needs to be available 24/7. We can't afford any downtime."

More Dell SC Series pros

"Overall performance of the solution."

"Greater IOPS, speed, it's all-flash. So seeing that everything is going to all-flash, all SSDs, SolidFire fits right in there with the emerging trend in IT."

"Being able to provide quality of service as promised."

"Individual settings you can put on each individual volume, if you want to do that."

"We can just buy them, scale them as we need on demand, and we don't have to spend so many front end cycles on designing the architecture."

"I would say in terms of architecture and in terms of functionality, the product is quite good."

"The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential."

"SolidFire has seamless performance for the nodes and extensions. I also like the tool’s scalability. The product’s performance does not get affected when we scale either up or down. This is not the case with other products."

More SolidFire pros

Cons

"We need better data deduplication."

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

"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."

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

"It is on the expensive side."

"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."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The lack of reporting would be the main issue."

"Snapshots in VMware. You can’t do snapshots since the storage itself does that. Therefore, some apps (Veeam, for example) don’t work well with this kind of tiering storage."

"We have seen some degraded throughput with mixed workloads. We have been working with Dell EMC to correct some of these latency issues."

"Dell SC Series is no longer available, while Dell PowerStore, which supports NVMe over TCP, is different and not very affordable."

"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?"

"If Dell SC Series wasn't being phased out, adding an NVMe tier and secure snapshots like those on the PowerStore platform would be beneficial."

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

"Licensing, especially on the storage line, could use some simplification. It's not terrible, but, for example, with the Isilon series, they've gone to completely a la carte. A la carte is very difficult to traverse, as to what you need. It would be more beneficial, at least from my point of view as a customer, if they did it more like car companies do, where there are package lines"

More Dell SC Series cons

"It would be good to provide administrative access at the root level to be able to do things with the system, if need be."

"I would like to see integration with the cloud, number one. Being able to spin SolidFire in the cloud."

"They could make the mNode more user-friendly. Now you need to configure and add nodes by CLI and it’s not really easy to manage. If they created a web interface to do the management of the mNode, that would be great!."

"Though it is a stable solution, its users may face some security issues at times...The security provided by the solution is one area that can be improved."

"The upgrade process could be better."

"The tool should improve its initial cost which is expensive compared to other products."

"SolidFire could improve in terms of hardware robustness."

"You don't have business continuity with SolidFire. I think it could be a nice feature to have in the future."

More SolidFire cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"The product is expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"We have found it to be affordable. Comparing the cost with other hardware, it seems to be right in line with the compute and the storage that we get with it."

"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."

"We have the basic license for the use of this solution and it is a permanent license. The overall cost could be less, it is expensive."

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

"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 is reasonable, but it is expensive."

"Support typically depends on the array. It can range anywhere from $7,000 to a couple of hundred thousand dollars."

"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."

More Dell SC Series pricing and cost advice

"On a scale where one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the solution between three and four. It is an expensive solution."

"It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for what you get."

"The price of this solution is more expensive than others."

"Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."

"We would probably use SolidFire more, except we're getting more bang for our buck with our purchases of ONTAP right now, and the deal we made with NetApp, so it's more of just a cost decision"

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

881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

11%

University

10%

Performing Arts

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

34%

Outsourcing Company

Computer Software Company

Performing Arts

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	16

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?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell SC Series?

In our case, we received favorable pricing with Dell because of our strong partnership. While I acknowledge that Dell...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?

For us, it is a great product. The deduplication and compression could potentially be improved, though they are alrea...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Dell SC Series?

We use Dell SC Series in a VMware environment.

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 18% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell SC Series

Compared 20% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell SC Series

Compared 8% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs Dell SC Series

Compared 7% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell SC Series

Compared 7% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Dell SC Series

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell SC Series Competitors

NetApp AFF vs SolidFire

Compared 100% of the time

More SolidFire Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

January 2026

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series

January 2026

Download Dell SC Series product report

Buyer's Guide

SolidFire

January 2026

Download SolidFire product report

Also Known As

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

SC Series Storage, Compellent

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 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

SolidFire delivers all five core elements needed to deliver newfound storage agility to your next generation data center and beyond. With SolidFire you can deploy new applications and capabilities faster, provide more agile and scalable infrastructure, increase application performance and predictability, enable automation and end-user self-service and raise operational efficiency and reduce cost.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric

California Public Utilities Commission, RFA, 1&1, Ultimate Software , Endicia, ezVerify, MercadoLibre, Sungard Availability Services, ServInt, Elastx, Hosted Network, Colt, Crucial, iWeb, Datapipe, Databarracks

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. SolidFire

December 2025

Free Report: Dell SC Series vs. SolidFire

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. SolidFire and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Dell SC Series vs. SolidFire 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.