Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Dell SC Series vs Zadara comparison

Sponsored
 

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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell SC Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays (3rd)
Zadara
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
33rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (16th), Compute Service (10th), Public Cloud Storage Services (15th), File and Object Storage (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 0.8%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zadara is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
Steven McClendon - PeerSpot reviewer
Superior platform with excellent snapshots and cost-saving auto-tiering
I'm a big fan of the SC Series platform. Its feature set is superior to some of the other platforms. The snapshots on SC are excellent, allowing for multiple snapshot schedules for any one system. The auto-tiering functionality intelligently moves new data to the highest performance tier and then progresses it down to less expensive tiers over time, providing cost savings for customers.
Kirubel Behailu - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhancing storage management efficiency with user-friendly experience
Our customers are using Zadara for their research and development environments. We provide infrastructure for government projects, but we are often not fully aware of their specific usage.  I typically use it for our infrastructure and offer both Zadara and Microsoft Azure to our customers Zadara…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."
"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 standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."
"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"The solution is stable."
"Connecting it up, you can run it within a few hours."
"It is suitable for small or medium businesses."
"The setup is straightforward."
"Easy management of volumes: You can create volumes and easily assign them to VMware clusters, increasing their size."
"Everything is sub-5 MS for us. What I've found is that, with all-flash, when an app from my business is slow, I pretty much know it's them and not me. It leads to a performance conversation that has really hit an interesting threshold point where we are better than what they need. So now we get to have that "refactoring your application" conversation a lot quicker because now the performance on the infrastructure side isn't in question anymore."
"I can mix and match the drives, using older mechanical devices and the latest SFP drives in a single solution with different enclosures."
"Dell SC Series' most valuable features are performance and network facilities. We have no issues with its integration. The tool helps to visualize servers."
"The processing is much faster with this product."
"Zadara Storage Cloud having 24/7 management saves me support and engineering costs because the storage and computing are managed by a third-party. We are able to focus more attention on the customer, which is truly our core business. Even at 1:00 AM or 2:00 AM at night, someone will answer, which is important."
"I find Zadara's user-friendliness from both the customer and engineering perspectives highly appreciated."
"The most valuable feature of Zadara is its ease of use and safety. Overall the solution is a complete package, it has all the features needed."
"Being able to scale on demand, and being able to get out of our security operation center, and not having to purchase hardware upfront, has drastically reduced the overhead that was required to maintain our information. We have also gained additional capabilities in terms of speed of replicating that information."
"A nice feature is the immutable object storage, which can be used in conjunction with Veeam."
"Zadara is a fully-fledged platform, and our customers are happy with its use."
"It provides very satisfactory storage performance."
 

Cons

"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"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."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."
"The price could be improved."
"I would like to see higher compression, dedupe, faster I/O, and bigger drives."
"If Dell SC Series could have supported the protocol NVMe over TCP, that would have been great. It does not."
"I would like to have 100% functionality through the web app."
"Some menus aren't so intuitive."
"In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage."
"The interface could be improved. It should have an application point of view."
"The lower model, the 3000, should have duplication. It doesn't right now. It's only from 5000 that this is offered, but it depends on the performance. It could be they don't offer it on lower models because the duplication is too much of a burden to the performance."
"There is room for improvement in pricing as it is currently quite expensive."
"I would like to see them be a little bit more proactive in terms of the patches and updates that are available. I would like to see more disclosure and information around what fixes or what enhancements are available within a patch, and help in coordinating and scheduling that. Right now, it's driven more by the customer in reaching out via a support ticket."
"Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves."
"In the next release, there can be some improvements to the web console by adding more features because the console is simple. Additionally, the calculator could improve."
"Currently, when we do firmware upgrades, it sometimes causes issues and is not as nondisruptive as desired."
"The initial setup of the solution is complex."
"Having iSCSI over the internet using a VPN, the IPSec tunnel is really the only thing that I find missing from this product."
"There are still some storage features that they lack. For example, other vendors implemented the auto-tiering feature a long time ago, while Zadara Storage Cloud is just coming out with this feature today. So, they are a little bit late compared to the market."
 

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."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"This product is too expensive compared to others, and I don't see any value in using it."
"The scalability seems a bit more expensive than even buying a brand new one so far. That has been kind of a drawback."
"The pricing of Dell EMC Compellent is competitive."
"It has a good price point and offers some value-added enterprise features."
"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'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."
"It's a very affordable solution."
"For our use, it's appropriately priced and overall, it's proved to be very cost-effective against other tier-one vendors."
"If you just take the street price of Zadara Storage Cloud and look up the price or cost per hour, then you could think that Zadara Storage Cloud is extremely expensive or a solution only for enterprise use. That is not true. You need to compare the entire system. This means that you don't stop looking at just the street price, but you need to consider all the features, requirements, and costs of support as well as the extra cost that other vendors have. Other players just play with hidden, additional costs. Everything is included in Zadara Storage Cloud's licensing cost; what you get is what you pay for."
"One of the factors that ruled out several providers was cost. They were way too expensive for the volume of data that we needed and the speed at which we needed to be able to manage it. There aren't a lot of providers that can do that."
"The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."
"The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."
"The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using."
"It is a nice licensing model and it makes it quite simple because we just pay for what we use, and the bill that comes shows us exactly what customers are using what resources."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
21%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
What do you like most about Dell SC Series?
I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell SC Series?
Cost considerations are crucial when choosing between solutions like Dell and NetApp. Sometimes Dell offers better pe...
What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?
In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage. If I want...
What needs improvement with Zadara?
The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can ...
What is your primary use case for Zadara?
I use this product as storage. Specifically, I use it as big storage. That's the main use case for Zadara ( /products...
What advice do you have for others considering Zadara?
As for the pros and cons, the main concerns are the complexity of the initial installation and the complicated mainte...
 

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
Time, Inc. A&E Network, The Washington Post, News UK, McGraw Hill, Gilt, Toshiba, Deloitte, VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. Zadara and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.