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Dell SC Series vs VAST Data 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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell SC Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
23rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays (2nd)
VAST Data
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
28th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (19th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 6.7%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VAST Data is 3.0%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray6.7%
Dell SC Series1.5%
VAST Data3.0%
Other88.8%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
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.
Alan Powers - PeerSpot reviewer
HPC CTO at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Stability-wise, a device that has been up and running for years
The failover capability and resiliency are some of the solution's valuable features. The big thing is resilience because it has richer coding in it, so multiple devices can't fail. Also, one can still access a number of CBoxes that can allow one to access their file system. Once a device fails, it fails the transparency of the end-user, and it just starts using another resource. The encryption capability, the snapshots, along with a whole bunch of features make the tool valuable. VAST Data keeps adding more and more features all the time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The predictive performance analytics are good."
"Overall, Pure Storage FlashArray has never let us down in front of customers so far."
"Running SAP on Pure Storage helps a lot without doing any further tuning to improve application performance. Our internal clients are happy."
"If you need a high-performance storage appliance that is easy to install and maintain, you pretty much can't go wrong."
"Pure gives us better compression, it's easier to manage, a lot less hands-on, and the biggest selling point for me was the replacement of the hardware, the controllers, without any major expense to the clinic."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has helped decrease the total cost of ownership because we know what the cost is going to be every year; we don't get any hidden fees or upgrade fees, everything is included in the price."
"With Pure Storage FlashArray we have been able to deploy several thousand VDI servers, virtual machines, very quickly and efficiently."
"The scalability is good."
"The support is good."
"The customers really appreciate that the storage is cost-effective and that has enterprise features."
"In terms of performance with mixed workloads, the SC Series is pretty good."
"Overall, the underlying technology they are using is really great."
"Connecting it up, you can run it within a few hours."
"Technical support is good."
"Most valuable features have been the system customization with it, the performance you receive, and their CoPilot Support (or Dell EMC Storage Support)."
"We replicate between SAN to SAN for a lot of features and supportability. It also helps us when we want to upgrade to a newer SC Series or move the data from one data center to another."
"The solution is useful for machine learning and scientific applications, including computer simulations."
"This has been one of the most reliable storage systems that I have ever used."
 

Cons

"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."
"I have been primarily working with storage and have not fully explored other areas, but there is some room for improvement when it comes to performance reporting."
"On the technical side, the way that the array performs cleanup and garbage collection sometimes pushes it close to 100 percent utilization, causing some stress."
"Based on my experience with various technologies like EMC, NetApp, and Pure Storage, one area for improvement is compliance certifications. NetApp excels in this area, particularly in the American Army or defense sector, where NetApp has approval, whereas others are striving to achieve the same. NetApp also delivers security, ransomware protection, and scale-up capabilities more effectively."
"We had one instance with an eight-hour outage in our primary data center because the upgrade to the controller failed, and the controller redundancy didn't work."
"In the next release, I would like to see file-level encryption."
"The internal garbage collection process has been fixed recently in some OS updates so it is more efficient but that could be just a little better."
"The only thing is that we've had to upgrade controllers a few times because we ended up wanting to use more stuff on here."
"The only issue with scaling up is that the pricing gets pretty high."
"Currently, we are not using this solution extensively because it's becoming a sunset solution."
"While the scalability is good, there are certain limitations. Our racks are at their limit, so we do not have the requisite scalability to expand."
"We can definitely see a need for it being a multi-controller system for customers who want to scale beyond the current capability."
"We had times that we needed a file service solution. We've used FluidFS, but it's a solution that is being transitioned out."
"The tool's pricing is high and not suitable for medium companies."
"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."
"For example, for a 4TB SSD, they may charge you seven grand or eight grand. It's expensive."
"The read/write ratio is an area in the solution with some flaws and needs improvement."
"The write performance could be improved because it is less than half of the read performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"There is always room for negotiation."
"In terms of other contemporary arrays, Pure is something you need to have a use case for, as it's not priced for you to buy one off-the-shelf. If you have a use case, heavy lift Oracle Databases, any type of noticeable virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), or need low latency and high throughput, you should consider all-flash at least and probably Pure Storage."
"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."
"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."
"We implemented Pure Storage FlashArray nine years ago when it was new to the market and obtained it at a preferential price."
"My organization has a yearly license, but I believe that Pure Storage FlashArray has capacity-based licenses as well. I'm definitely happy with the pricing."
"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 pricing of this solution is competitive."
"Compared to other solutions out there, it's affordable."
"The scalability seems a bit more expensive than even buying a brand new one so far. That has been kind of a drawback."
"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."
"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."
"We have reviewed many platforms over the years. It is probably the best solution for its value."
"It's a very affordable solution."
"Price-wise, VAST Data is not the cheapest, not the most expensive one."
"We acquired VAST Data as a one-time, capital purchase."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise21
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
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.
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
SC Series Storage, Compellent
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric
Norwest Venture Partners, General Dynamics Information Technology, Ginkgo Bioworks
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. VAST Data and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
912,006 professionals have used our research since 2012.