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Dell SC Series vs StarWind Storage Appliance 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
1.0
Organizations reduced costs and improved performance with Pure FlashArray X NVMe, achieving quick ROI and efficient resource management.
Sentiment score
9.3
Dell SC Series offers cost-effective virtualization, ease of management, and significant savings through flash disks, boosting ROI and user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.0
StarWind Storage Appliance users saw reduced costs, improved performance, and increased efficiency, with easy scalability and high reliability.
If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
Users were very happy when I bought it, as it significantly lowered disk response times.
It adviser at a security firm with 201-500 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe's technical support is praised for responsiveness, despite occasional follow-up issues, earning high customer satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dell SC Series support is highly rated for its responsiveness, knowledgeable staff, and effective issue resolution globally.
Sentiment score
9.0
StarWind Storage Appliance customer service is praised for 24x7 troubleshooting, professionalism, high technical support ratings, and helpful videos.
Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
Technical support is good at least through vendors, not directly with the principal.
Infrastructure Specialis at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Advanced support offers instant replacement without delays.
System Administrator at Lovely Professional University
Compared to other companies, Dell SC Series offers one of the best support experiences in my career.
Architect Engineer, IT INFRASTRUCTURES Project Manager at Vilavi
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers scalable storage with low latency, easy upgrades, though capacity customization and high costs are noted.
Sentiment score
6.1
Dell SC Series offers flexible, scalable storage for businesses of all sizes, though some note cost and controller limitations.
Sentiment score
7.5
StarWind Storage Appliance is scalable, adaptable, hardware-independent, supports unlimited storage, and is effective in standalone and hyperconverged environments.
It hasn't broken down anytime in the last six to seven years, despite hurricanes, earthquakes, and power outages.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Pure Storage offers exceptional stability and reliability with outstanding support, consistently achieving high user ratings for performance and service.
Sentiment score
8.9
Dell SC Series is stable, cost-effective, with minimal downtime and maintenance, praised for replication and reliable performance despite setup complexities.
Sentiment score
8.9
StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for stability, robust performance, and high user ratings, especially on well-maintained Windows OS.
I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.
Project Manager at a government with 11-50 employees
In storages, stability is the most important aspect, even before performance.
It adviser at a security firm with 201-500 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Pure FlashArray X requires cost-effective improvements in UI, integration, cloud features, multitenancy, analytics, backup, AI, and scalability.
Dell SC Series needs improved user-friendliness, technical support, integration, scalability, and features like compression, automation, and cloud compatibility.
StarWind Storage Appliance requires improved integration, easier setup, better insights, and feature parity between demo and paid versions.
Storage replication should be essential.
Infrastructure Specialis at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert.
Cloud Architect at DXC Technology
One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage.
System Administrator at Lovely Professional University
Dell PowerStore, which supports NVMe over TCP, is different and not very affordable.
It adviser at a security firm with 201-500 employees
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers see Pure FlashArray X NVMe as a justified premium investment due to performance and comprehensive licensing.
Dell SC Series offers competitive and scalable enterprise storage, with varied pricing and discounts for partnering users.
StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for its affordability, straightforward licensing, and excellent value compared to competitors for SMEs.
The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.
Manager, System Infrastructure & Security at Organik Kimya San. ve Tic. A.S.
Sometimes Dell offers better performance for less money.
It adviser at a security firm with 201-500 employees
 

Valuable Features

Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers exceptional performance, reliability, scalability, and seamless VMware integration, enhancing workload efficiency and user experience.
Dell SC Series provides performance, auto-tiering, and replication with ease of management, scalability, high availability, and strong support.
StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for its user-friendly interface, high performance, reliability, excellent support, affordability, and robust data protection.
Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.
Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed.
Manager, System Infrastructure & Security at Organik Kimya San. ve Tic. A.S.
It was one of the main requirements to have a FlashArray, and this really has sorted out these issues.
Infrastructure Specialis at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The storage also lowered the response time of disks across the entire farm, making it a great product for operational efficiency.
It adviser at a security firm with 201-500 employees
The system automatically shifts hot and cold data according to usage, with features like resilient hardware and controllers.
System Administrator at Lovely Professional University
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell SC Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
16th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays (2nd)
StarWind Storage Appliance
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
31st
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
NAS (16th)
 

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 StarWind Storage Appliance is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dell SC Series1.1%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe1.4%
StarWind Storage Appliance0.3%
Other97.2%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
RK
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.
Kishore CA - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineering Assistant at Bharat Electronics Limited
Offers stable performance even with a single node failure and manages everything with just two nodes.
The only drawback is that it takes a bit of time during initial synchronization, especially after restarting the environment. This is a potential area of improvement. There's a synchronization time, but it takes time. Initially, when we start the first environment deployment, it starts synchronizing between the storage. So, it is taking time. One thing is that even when you restart. Let's assume that the synchronization is completed and the storage is synchronized. Both storages are fully synchronized, and it is in sync mode. Now, if we want to restart both nodes, there is a case for maintenance purposes. You took both nodes for maintenance, and we rebooted it. Then, it should not synchronize again. It should be a checksum. And if there is a checksum match, there should be no synchronization again. So, one thing that should be taken care of. Another thing is that I used freeware- the community version, free license, which we deployed using PowerShare. In that case, it was very difficult to bring back another node when one node was faulty. Let's assume that both the nodes are working fine. And we found one node faulty. And we destroyed all the volumes in that and tried to bring it back. So that was a difficult factor. The final solution is that we were not able to bring back the failed node. So, we reconstructed a new data source for that. That is another drawback. In future releases, I would like to see the integration with VMware or some other things as a plugin model for VMware.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
10%
Performing Arts
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
 

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 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...
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 ...
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...
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...
What is your primary use case for Dell SC Series?
We use Dell SC Series in a VMware environment.
What needs improvement with StarWind Storage Appliance?
StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one.
What advice do you have for others considering StarWind Storage Appliance?
The tool is mostly for medium companies and requires no maintenance. It has a good price and performance. I rate the ...
 

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
Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. StarWind Storage Appliance and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.