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Dell ECS vs Qumulo comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 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 Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Ranking in File and Object Storage
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (15th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th)
Dell ECS
Ranking in File and Object Storage
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Qumulo
Ranking in File and Object Storage
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
NAS (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.8%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell ECS is 7.7%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qumulo is 4.0%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File and Object Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us
The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.
SamuelThomas - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing efficiently with user-friendly interfaces for monitoring and managing resources
We normally recommend Dell ECS to enterprise customers and government customers Dell ECS is very easy to handle, primarily because the web UI dashboard and everything is very easy to manage for every customer. They can monitor the DPS, access failures, bandwidth, failed requests, and latency.…
VinceVitro - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful data sharing, simple cluster scaling, and excellent support
One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very easy-to-use."
"The product is scalable and easy to expand."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."
"The main feature I have found to be product replication."
"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."
"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."
"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."
"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."
"It's my understanding that the initial setup is straightforward."
"Some of the best features with Dell ECS are that it's scale-out storage with compatibility, which are the main drivers, along with very good support from Dell EMC that usually makes customers happy."
"We face very few hardware failures."
"This solution is very easy to use, and is very reliable."
"Dell ECS is very easy to handle, primarily because the web UI dashboard and everything is very easy to manage for every customer."
"The performance is good."
"The most valuable features of Dell ECS are its capability to integrate multiple protocols seamlessly with other Dell solutions like PowerScale and data domain."
"The tool is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is real-time analytics."
"The most valuable feature of Qumulo is the ability to share files and reliability."
"The most valuable features of Qumulo are its rolling updates and all-day availability."
"The ratio of total operational cost to complexity versus feature set is very good."
"The feature that I like most is the analytics part of the file system."
"The most valuable features of Qumulo are the ease of management and special permissions that are quick to enable. The overall performance of the solution is good."
"It is a very stable product. I never faced any issues."
"The data protection algorithm to protect the data between the nodes has been the most valuable feature. The integration with backup platforms such as Veeam and Veritas has also been valuable."
 

Cons

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."
"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."
"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."
"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."
"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."
"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."
"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."
"The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top."
"However, hardware failures can impact the cluster, making it read-only."
"Dell ECS is not fully compatible with S3, as it supports around ninety percent of S3 APIs, which can be improved. Additionally, sometimes there is an issue with memory where it hangs, and they can improve garbage collection, which takes up a lot of space during cleanup."
"They do not have complete documentation, which is very weak and could be improved."
"We have had issues when the ECS is expiring or the NetBackup is expiring images."
"The solution’s stability could be improved."
"There is room for improvement in the DPI reports, as they could be made more user-friendly."
"While there can be occasional issues with routing to the wrong region that lead to slight delays, it's typically business as usual."
"We have had issues when the ECS is expiring or the NetBackup is expiring images."
"The solution could improve availability and improve data protection or data services such as compression of deduplication. In a future release, we'd like to have more cloud API integrations."
"Qumulo should continue to expand automation and orchestration capabilities."
"The support for iMac and protocols should be improved, not all features are available."
"In the future, I would like to see non-disruptive updates."
"In the next release, I would like to see the ability to have more control at a terminal level of the file system."
"One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential."
"Some anti-theft permissions do not transfer well to Qumulo."
"The price of the software is a bit expensive, so a reduction in cost would make it more competitive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."
"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."
"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."
"I feel that the price could always be lowered."
"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."
"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."
"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."
"Our licensing is renewed annually."
"Dell EMC ECS is too expensive."
"The price of Dell ECS should be reduced."
"It is an expensive solution. There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product."
"We initially purchased all of the licenses at the same time."
"The price of Dell ECS should be reduced."
"It's a lease-based model, so it's capacity-based. We already negotiated the price a lot, but we're still doing that with Dell because somehow the product was not installed successfully, so there was a lot of struggle in the distributor territory between Dell and the environment itself. I would give the solution a 6 out of 10 for the pricing. There's a little room for improvement."
"The product is quite expensive."
"Dell ECS is a cost-effective solution."
"The price of Qumulo is reasonable."
"The price of the solution is in the middle range compared to others. We look at the price per terabyte."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC ECS?
The pricing is moderate and at par with the market. As a service provider, we receive good margins, indicating a favo...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC ECS?
It's difficult for me to comment on improvements for Dell ECS because we typically do not engage in those areas. We h...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

No data available
EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, EMC Elastic Cloud Storage
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Atos
County of Riverside Sheriff Department, Hyundai Mobis Automotive North America, University of Arizona, UCSD - San Diego Supercomputer Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, Sinclair Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Kaiser Permanente, Deluxe Creative, Vexcel Imaging, University of Florida, The Madison Square Garden Company, Arizona State University, Cinesite, San Diego Padres Baseball, Johns Hopkins University - School of Medicine, IHME, EllieMae, Washington State University.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell ECS vs. Qumulo and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.