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Dell XtremIO 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

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 XtremIO
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
17th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolidFire
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
32nd
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 August 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 6.9%, up from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell XtremIO is 1.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolidFire is 1.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray6.9%
Dell XtremIO1.7%
SolidFire1.3%
Other90.1%
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.
AS
System Engineer at Exaware
Has improved data reduction and snapshot efficiency while supporting critical workloads
There are some areas that could be improved with Dell XtremIO. The API to connect with command line or to see performance very clearly could be enhanced, similar to how NetApp works with Grafana and NetApp monitor, which shows you a comprehensive view of the whole picture. The snapshot functionality could work more similarly to Snap Center. If I want to see all the VCenter with the VM, I think it needs the API for this. I do see big differences between Dell and other products. NetApp works very closely with VCenter, and Hitachi also integrates well, but Dell is not very clear and does not proceed well with VCenter integration with Dell. It needs the API, and I need to see all the snapshots. If I want to restore a VM from only a few directories or a few files that I need to restore, it is very difficult. I do see some differences in licensing. For the last few years, the Dell EMC price is acceptable. A few years ago, Dell EMC was expensive, approximately 20 percent more than NetApp. Right now the budget between EMC and NetApp is very closely aligned. Regarding the installation process and deployment of Dell XtremIO, I notice that in Israel, a lot of professional services and engineers who work with Dell EMC have moved to another storage company. I do not know why. Dell EMC does not have enough engineers, system engineers, or professional services engineers to provide service to the old clients, similar to how NetApp or Hitachi do. I think Dell XtremIO is between easy and complicated to deploy; it gives you the whole picture, but I need to go closely to VCenter to connect to VCenter to see the snapshot and to see performance with more dashboards of performance. I also need to connect the switch fiber channel to see all zoning to give me more flexibility to install or configure fiber channel or to see the performance of the fiber channels. I think there should be some fiber channel disconnect adapter or better troubleshooting from hardware for errors.
Ramil Cerrada - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution lead at Globe Mobile
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 does efficient work of storing data while still delivering the performance that you would normally expect from a higher priced solution."
"It’s easy to set up and support is excellent."
"The speed is one of the most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray."
"It has simplified our storage."
"We have seen savings in our storage, and the speed of deployment has gone from several days to a few minutes, reducing backup and restore times from 93 days to minutes and simplifying storage for us."
"I find two features of Pure Storage most valuable. The first is the "safe mode" function, and the second is its simplicity."
"I am very satisfied with this solution and I would recommend it to others."
"Performance is the most valuable feature."
"It has very good performance for an application which needs lower latency and a better response, for example, in microseconds."
"The speed and scalability of Dell XtremIO are significant features that improve data storage management."
"Moved and zoned our Prod Client facing Applications, providing quicker response to the business and more efficiency, and it also assisted with large datasets, thus dramatically reducing our batch runs."
"Linear performance – The XtremIO wasn’t the fastest in all tests against other all flash arrays, but even with a massive workload, the response time and user experience were absolutely predictable with no sharp drop-offs."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its performance."
"It is great for applications like Microsoft Exchange, ERP, SQL and VDI; basically saved the VDI buy-in from users, as now performance was seamless in comparison to a physical PC."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Overall space usage has decreased, plus input/output operations per second (IOPS). Performance has increased exponentially."
"With this solution, you can actually do more with less, having more tenants and more applications with less space and a lower dollar per gigabyte by increasing utilization up to four or five times."
"All those solutions just didn't compare with what we could do with SolidFire in terms of performance, support, product stability."
"The difference between SolidFire and other storage is that it is a stand alone storage; no one has that good storage software or that scalability and performance."
"If you're bring up cloud in-house and you're still not aware of OpenStack Kubernetes, that's the way ahead."
"For us the most important criteria when selecting a vendor are reputation, reliability, support, all these things we have gotten from NetApp."
"It's a very compact device. For a medium-sized business, it's very helpful because the device is efficient and very fast."
"Individual settings you can put on each individual volume, if you want to do that."
"Each time I have been in contact with technical support, it has been proactive."
 

Cons

"I think replication is one area that still needs improvement."
"It was a little costly."
"We have not had a good experience with the IBM device."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has not helped to decrease the total cost of ownership, and I believe our total cost has probably gone up, but that's balanced by our increased amount of data and number of use cases."
"There are scenarios with very specific functionality around VMware integration particularly to do with the way we'd like to manage LUNs in VMware. The tools are pretty good but there's room for improvement there."
"The price of this solution is high and should be lowered."
"The price is too high."
"I want to improve the overall service level of the solution."
"There is a limit of 8192 volumes/LUNs that can be created. This includes all volumes/LUNs presented to hosts along with all snapshots, so it becomes very easy to bump up against the limits in certain circumstances."
"The past upgrades were highly impactful to active workloads."
"The replication and DR capabilities could be improved, since there is no native replication technique with XtremIO."
"Ease of use is key in the converged and hyper-converged world that requires administrators to have both hypervisor and storage skills."
"Customer support, when we have needed it, has been OK. We recently had some volume configuration issues related to VMware ESXi 5.5 and it took entirely too long (over eight hours) to get us back going."
"The product is highly expensive. Additionally, there is a significant lack of training, support documents, and forums available for Dell XtremIO, making troubleshooting difficult for third-party individuals."
"What needs to improve is that the end compression uses a lot of CPU, which makes it difficult or impossible to upgrade."
"If you are looking at flash storage solutions, XtremIO doesn't offer any unique features. Most of my customers are migrating their workload from XtremIO to other formats because of this."
"The user interface needs to be improved. Much of the client feedback involves comments such as "Oh, it's hard to navigate through.""
"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."
"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!."
"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."
"A little better segregation of the multi-tenancy. Right now, it's just VLAN-specific, that's all you can do."
"This solution would be improved if it were made to be more compatible with other products."
"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."
"On the negative side of it, I'm working on support, and I would get not enough detail or the support tech would say, "Check the manual.""
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"No storage device is cheap, but Pure Storage is fairly priced and offers what you pay for. You get all the licenses in the future when you purchase a license."
"There should be quite a bit of reduction of TCO with just licensing (and stuff) because we run the VM environment off it."
"Pure Storage is expensive. It comes with features, so you get what you pay for. It is expensive compared to our old storage systems, but from the amount of human effort that you have to pay to babysit a storage system, it reduces that. I don't know if the TCO is reduced, but it's not a concern for us."
"The price was more favorable than Dell EMC."
"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
"In comparison to the competitors, Pure is very price-competitive for the future functionality that it provides."
"Dell and Pure Storage offer competitive pricing, but Pure Storage might have a slight advantage."
"We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
"It's not cheap, but it absolutely gets the job done. I don't have any real comment regarding licensing specifically."
"The licensing cost is on a yearly subscription basis, which can be expensive but is necessary for ongoing support and services. The pricing could be improved to make it more accessible."
"XtremIO is pretty straightforward about pricing. However, you need to look at your data so you can estimate, with the advice of DEL EMC, what data reduction ratio you will reach. In our case, a 3:1 reduction ration gave us a positive case compared to other storage arrays."
"XtremIO is an all-flash array, which means it's a costly solution. When compared with general mid-range storage solutions, this is more expensive. As far as I know, there are no additional costs besides the license."
"There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"This is the best flash array on the market for high-end workloads, so expect to pay for that. But the support subscription cost is fixed for seven years, which made it easier for us to plan on the maintenance costs."
"With some workloads that benefit from compression and deduplication, costs are actually better than some tier 2 subsystems (while latency remains <1ms)."
"It is great when a product can deliver high-end performance capabilities while offering a very competitive price point."
"Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."
"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."
"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."
"The price of this solution is more expensive than others."
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Comparison Review

it_user182013 - PeerSpot reviewer
Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
May 1, 2015
Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR
Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

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 Business16
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise17
 

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 XtremIO?
Pricing is hard to determine as it depends on the given configuration. XtremIO offers features that justify a potenti...
What needs improvement with Dell XtremIO?
There are some areas that could be improved with Dell XtremIO. The API to connect with command line or to see perform...
What is your primary use case for Dell XtremIO?
I was using Dell XtremIO as a storage admin and system storage admin internally within my company. My major use case ...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Dell EMC XtremIO Flash, Dell EMC XtremIO X2, XtremIO, XtremIO X2
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Raiffeisen Bank Bulgaria, Wentworth-Douglas Hospital
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 XtremIO vs. SolidFire and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.