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Dell VMAX All Flash vs SolidFire 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

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 VMAX All Flash
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
24th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolidFire
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
28th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell VMAX All Flash is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolidFire is 0.2%, down from 0.3% 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.
BrijeshKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
With an easy initial setup phase, the tool is useful for multi-site replication and DR
The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. If the product is up and running after, if it goes down, my company has observed that there are multiple failures that occur in the tool, so it needs to be reinstalled from scratch. The tool should have an automated feature or an automated option to handle the aforementioned scenario, which one can simply go and reset, after which the tool should be reinstalled with the same configuration.
Ramil Cerrada - PeerSpot reviewer
A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance
The most significant benefit lies in its exceptional performance, driven by its Flash-based architecture. This enhances routing speed and, consequently, database performance. The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 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."
"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."
"I appreciate the performance."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution."
"It works very well."
"The ransomware protection feature is housed in a separate unit, specifically addressing the top twenty most critical threats."
"The product's initial setup phase was good."
"The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface."
"The snapshot feature has been precious for our testing processes, application development, and managing testing environments due to its efficiency and ease of use."
"Feature-wise, it is a good solution allowing users to monitor and simplify their networks. The solution also provides its users with flexibility by enabling them to utilize its extensions."
"If you buy the solution for its specific purpose it will work well."
"The square footage for doing development is at a premium when dealing with government networks. To be able to put a lot of IOPS in a lot of high-speed performing drives in a very small location which requires very little HVAC with very little power, it is very valuable to us."
"Being able to provide quality of service as promised."
"Individual settings you can put on each individual volume, if you want to do that."
"It's a very compact device. For a medium-sized business, it's very helpful because the device is efficient and very fast."
"The scalability and being able to implement it quickly."
"It is very easy to scale up SolidFire."
 

Cons

"It is on the expensive side."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."
"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."
"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."
"The software layer has to improve."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"There is room for improvement in the centralized administration."
"The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"We encountered some challenges during large data migrations that could be addressed for smoother transitions."
"Improvements are needed in both partition recovery and scalability."
"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability."
"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additional engines to address this limitation."
"There is room for improvement with a focus on creating a centralized storage system, functioning similar to AWS."
"They could make the mNode more user-friendly. Now you need to configure and add nodes by CLI and it’s not really easy to manage. If they created a web interface to do the management of the mNode, that would be great!."
"Though it is a stable solution, its users may face some security issues at times...The security provided by the solution is one area that can be improved."
"I think there is room for improvement needed with its storage capability. A bigger node is needed."
"For example, the ease of use with the reporting. Right now it's not impossible, but you have to know Sequel. It's a little time consuming to get those customized reports in there."
"SolidFire should start from two nodes instead of the four nodes. That's the only thing. In a lot of solutions, we have to use four nodes, that's the better thing. But as a starting point, two is better. That's why their starting point is expensive."
"It's a very good Windows-type solution. But we do a lot of legacy systems and the like. So it's getting that incorporated into it that would help us."
"The upgrade process could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"The product is expensive."
"The price falls within the mid-range, neither inexpensive nor high-priced."
"It is not a cheap product."
"Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."
"The price of this solution is more expensive than others."
"We would probably use SolidFire more, except we're getting more bang for our buck with our purchases of ONTAP right now, and the deal we made with NetApp, so it's more of just a cost decision"
"It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for what you get."
"On a scale where one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the solution between three and four. It is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
37%
Computer Software Company
19%
Real Estate/Law Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 EMC VMax?
The product's initial setup phase was good.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC VMax?
The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additiona...
What do you like most about SolidFire?
The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance w...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolidFire?
It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay fo...
What needs improvement with SolidFire?
There is room for improvement with a focus on creating a centralized storage system, functioning similar to AWS. This...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Information Not Available
California Public Utilities Commission, RFA, 1&1, Ultimate Software , Endicia, ezVerify, MercadoLibre, Sungard Availability Services, ServInt, Elastx, Hosted Network, Colt, Crucial, iWeb, Datapipe, Databarracks
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell VMAX All Flash vs. SolidFire and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.