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Dell SC Series vs VMAX [EOL] comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Dell SC Series
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays (2nd), All-Flash Storage (23rd)
VMAX [EOL]
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Ali Yazıcı - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Service Manager at Kuveyt Turk Participation Bank
Good interface that is customizable, and the technical support is good
Our primary use of this product is for our core banking servers over FC It is a high end storage, minimal downtime, reliable, good performance, get speedy support when we need. The user interface is good, and it is also customizable. snap and clone operations easy.  Stability and availability…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"They have a feature called Live Migrate; it's been very, very useful."
"I think that Dell EMC is one of the best technical support services in Ukraine."
"I can mix and match the drives, using older mechanical devices and the latest SFP drives in a single solution with different enclosures."
"With the hybrid storage approach, we can balance between cheap space and good performance."
"Connecting it up, you can run it within a few hours."
"The process of reallocating data from fast disks (SSD or SAS) to slow disks (SATA) gives you better performance and better use of resources."
"For us, being enterprise-critical and having applications that process lots of transactions every day, we can't take chances on our applications and the ability of our storage to be reliant."
"It's allowed us to have one hundred percent uptime over the last five years — maybe more."
"I like the many new features, especially the all-flash solution."
"Furthermore, EMC support is second to none, EMC engineers will visit your site to replace a disk or component before you are even aware that there is a problem (via ESRS – see below)."
"Customer Service: Excellent. Technical Support: Excellent."
"VMAX3 is our main system for storage. All our systems and all our virtualizations are connected to it. In terms of expanding it, we are replacing it with a new system, the PowerMax 2000. So our current VMAX3 platform will be decommissioned soon. We are switching to PowerMax 2000 because we are looking for improved performance. We see it as the best fit for our requirements in terms of the performance and the overall cost."
"VMAX is a rock solid foundation to deploy applications which cannot incur a disruption of service."
"VMAX is more scalable and has better performance (gives more IOPS, more front end ports...)."
"It works with our replication technology, which is not SRDF, which is native replication technology."
"This product has enabled dynamic allocation of disk resources, and at the same time, improved the data access speed and application performance by a large extent."
 

Cons

"I would like to have 100% functionality through the web app."
"The administration and support (on the way that they delivered) was a little bit slow."
"The initial setup is somewhat complex and should be made simpler to do."
"Dell could improve the upgrading process. It was the lifecycle that made it very short."
"The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series."
"They need to make it a little cheaper."
"This product should be a lot more user-friendly."
"The tool's pricing is high and not suitable for medium companies."
"The pricing is a bit expensive. That is the reason we are now currently we are looking for other solutions. That's the reason we are looking at AFF and Unity. We are also considering PowerStore."
"Be aware that buying a Symmetrix VMAX is like owning a McLaren F1 race car; consider yourself lucky to drive it at the track since everything else must be performed by McLaren."
"I'm always interested in ways we can scale out and avoid monolithic migrations from one array to another every four to five years."
"The only draw back is you don’t get multiple point in time copies."
"I would like to see support for high-availability."
"The cluster support should be improved."
"Better speed to release new features that have become industry standards. EMC created so many standards in the past. Now, it seems they are playing a me-too game and lagging behind in some areas, specifically data reduction."
"It is still expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of this solution is competitive."
"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."
"Pricing depends on varying life cycles."
"Always keep in mind, this is not just a enclosure with disks is a complete SAN as a service. There is software, license, and storage in one single solution."
"It has a good price point and offers some value-added enterprise features."
"Support typically depends on the array. It can range anywhere from $7,000 to a couple of hundred thousand dollars."
"It's a very affordable solution."
"Compared to other solutions out there, it's affordable."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"There are additional costs to the standard licensing fee, and it just depends on the package."
"Our licensing fees are billed on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Performing Arts
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Insurance Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

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 SC Series can be expensive for many companies, we received good discounts. The ...
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 already good. We cannot identify any significant areas that need improvement.
What is your primary use case for Dell SC Series?
We use Dell SC Series in a VMware environment.
Ask a question
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Also Known As

SC Series Storage, Compellent
Symmetrix VMAX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric
Wentworth-Douglas Hospital, Kindred Healthcare, Cosentry, Sumitomo Life Insurance Company, Shriners, BZWBK
Find out what your peers are saying about Hitachi Vantara, Dell Technologies, IBM and others in Frame-Based Disk Arrays. Updated: September 2026.
912,022 professionals have used our research since 2012.