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Dell SC Series vs VMAX [EOL] comparison

 

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 (18th)
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

"The flexibility of this solution has been valuable for our business."
"Technical support has been quite good; we are very satisfied with the level of support we receive."
"It is suitable for small or medium businesses."
"Connecting it up, you can run it within a few hours."
"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 had many features, like a snapshot, replication, on-the-file RAID levels, mix-and-match files, those kinds of things."
"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."
"I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits my customers. It's highly advantageous due to its affordability. The operational aspect is also noteworthy. Additionally, its availability and performance are commendable. The speaker are also equally powerful."
"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)."
"Deploying, Expanding, and Modifying systems are easier than ever."
"It works with our replication technology, which is not SRDF, which is native replication technology."
"VMAX is more scalable and has better performance (gives more IOPS, more front end ports...)."
"This solution is resilient."
"It is a high end storage, minimal downtime, reliable, good performance, get speedy support when we need."
"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."
"The interface is good, and it is also customizable."
 

Cons

"I don't think the solution is very scalable."
"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."
"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 some issues with the battery in the previous version that we were unable to resolve."
"Compared to other solutions, Compellent comes in the form of a component that's not true of a unified storage platform, for instance, to block a level of support can only be done through two different platforms."
"It would be helpful if the solution offered higher performance, at least on the back end."
"The tool's pricing is high and not suitable for medium companies."
"Matching color coding during zoning is sometimes a little bit annoying."
"I would like this solution to integrate the solution that Dell EMC vPlex offers."
"Manageability is a bit of a challenge, as the user interface to access the array is not very user-friendly."
"It is still expensive."
"I'd like to see improvements where we can scale out an existing array and remove older controllers\drives\etc., within the same subsystem."
"Resilience replication, reporting, and performance need to be improved."
"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 would like to see support for high-availability."
"The cluster support should be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing depends on varying life cycles."
"We have reviewed many platforms over the years. It is probably the best solution for its value."
"It's a very affordable solution."
"This product is too expensive compared to others, and I don't see any value in using it."
"This solution could be better priced in comparison with other vendors."
"Support typically depends on the array. It can range anywhere from $7,000 to a couple of hundred thousand dollars."
"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 pricing of this solution is competitive."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Our licensing fees are billed on a yearly basis."
"There are additional costs to the standard licensing fee, and it just depends on the package."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise20
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: June 2026.
904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.