Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado comparison

Dell Technologies and Huawei are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.5, while Huawei is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.8. Dell Technologies holds a 4.0% mindshare in AFS, compared to Huawei’s 4.5% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Huawei users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Huawei OceanStor Dorado and Dell PowerMax NVMe are leading competitors in the NVMe storage solutions market. Dell PowerMax NVMe seems to have the upper hand due to its superior features and advanced capabilities despite being costlier.

Features: Huawei OceanStor Dorado is known for its high performance, reliability, and AI-driven intelligent management. Dell PowerMax NVMe offers advanced data services, agile multi-node architecture, and extensive scalability.

Room for Improvement: Huawei OceanStor Dorado could enhance multi-cloud integration and customer support response times. Dell PowerMax NVMe would benefit from better documentation and more intuitive management tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Huawei OceanStor Dorado is noted for its straightforward deployment and good customer service. Dell PowerMax NVMe’s deployment is more complex but is supported by comprehensive customer service and excellent technical support.

Pricing and ROI: Huawei OceanStor Dorado offers competitive setup costs and solid ROI. Dell PowerMax NVMe has higher initial setup costs but delivers exceptional performance and ROI in the long run.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado

March 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax NVMe is 4.0%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huawei OceanStor Dorado is 4.5%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

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.

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Haseeb Khalid Sheikh

Senior Manager Enterprise Solutions at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

End-to-end NVMe capabilities helps improve availability, performance, and capacity

The solution's most valuable feature is the data reduction ratio. You can store a 5:1 ratio of your data in Dell PowerMax NVMe. For example, if you have 200 terabytes of usable capacity, you can save up to five times of data on that capacity. That means you can save one petabyte of data on just 200 terabytes of usable capacity. The solution's end-to-end NVMe capabilities have improved our operations. Everything is fast, and you don't have to map your storage to old hybrid storage technologies. Our organization has experienced positive change, and the solution has improved our uptime, availability, performance, and capacity.

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TOLGA ALNIAK

Expert (System Architect) at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

Offers ransomware protection for files stored on servers

Data processing is the most important feature. We are using Huawei OceanStor Dorado, which employs SSD storage on the hardware side. No reported performance issues or improvements are required for our systems because all of the systems run on memory on the host side. The Oracle data and Oracle virtual machines also operate from memory. Additionally, we use Oracle for patching systems, with all data residing in memory. There is some latency during backup times, typically at night, but this is acceptable for us. These latencies occur outside of office hours, so they do not impact our operations during normal times when there is no noticeable latency.

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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 helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"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."

"I appreciate the performance."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"We are using the solution's application and snapshot feature."

"Uptime by far is the most important thing, and also the replication ability (SRDF). Most of the customers who need this type of availability also want the protection of multiple data centers, and it is able to easily switchover workloads to their other data centers."

"The product is very fast and reliable."

"PowerMax NVMe has made it a lot easier to understand how much we are able to provision. It has made it a lot faster to provision new things. 90% of my time for provisioning has been reduced. Also, it has made it very easy to understand and see everything behind it versus the older heritage, where Dell EMC was very convoluted and hard to get working. Things that used to take an hour, probably now take five to 10 minutes."

"The compression and deduplication are the most valuable features because of the cost savings."

"The support team was very cooperative and responsive."

"The solution's snapshot capabilities and replication are very good features. Snapshots are allowing us to quickly build analytical models directly from production data. This gives us amazing insights into market trends and allows us to build more effective trading algorithms. Replication offers us unparalleled levels of resilience."

"There is no management overhead involved in optimizing performance. It does it so well on its own. We don't have to manage much at all. It really is like a set it and forget it solution. My storage engineers love the system. It is a lot less work than our previous systems, which weren't bad by any means. There is not nearly as much management as before. So, we are saving dozens of hours per month for our storage team, and that is a real cost in our business."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the overall simplicity."

"It is a scalable solution."

"The solution's pricing is its most valuable feature."

"Huawei OceanStor Dorado is fast and has significantly improved data storage efficiency."

"The fast performance and reasonable pricing of Huawei OceanStor Dorado are the main reasons we sell them."

"Huawei includes features for file servers and file services. It offers ransomware protection for files stored on servers. However, it does not support blocking websites."

"The installation and management are very easy."

"The integrated Huawei Flash technology within OceanStor Dorado stands out as one of the most valuable features."

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado pros

Cons

"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."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The price could be lower, and we are unhappy with the price."

"The main feature that I personally want to see is the possibility to upgrade to the next generation without changing all the components and just change the engine, relying on the compatibility matrices between two different generations. Meaning that we could just keep the enclosure and upgrade the engine, integrating the enclosure to the existing pool, then adding automation tools for orchestration."

"The GUI interface is very complicated and could be improved by streamlining the number of steps in the process."

"We have had some trouble with the VMAX-to-PowerMax migration, but the VMAX box will be powered down after the migration. The PowerMax boxes are working fine and we don't have any issues with them."

"The one area for improvement in Dell PowerMax NVMe would be to align the features of the on-premises version with those available in the cloud, as this would provide added value and flexibility."

"They can make the GUI better, especially for the ones that come out of the box. We did encounter a bit of difficulty in setting up the storage. We had to deploy Solutions Enabler on a Linux machine to be able to fully interact with the storage. They need to upgrade the web interface for the management of the storage that comes out of the box. The management interface for NFS is also a bit old and not very intuitive."

"Dell needs to offer more midrange storage options with enterprise-class features similar to the PowerMAX."

"There is room for improvement in adjusting into the existing infrastructure easily without much of the technical contribution."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe cons

"If they implement a backup solution directly into the OceanStor then it will be a valuable feature."

"There are some limitations to this product because they do not have unified storage."

"The product should be better aligned with the virtual environments"

"Some customers have reported not understanding how the immutable part can be unlocked."

"The product could always be faster."

"The price must be improved."

"The localization problem needs to be improved."

"Huawei should provide new security features, such as blocking ransomware sites and improving detection. Currently, we receive updates from HQ in China; there are instances where hackers may infiltrate network sites and encrypt our data."

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

"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."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"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."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The tool is very expensive."

"Our costs are on a yearly basis."

"The cost is expensive. While VMAX now has good pricing, PowerMax is a little expensive."

"The labor savings and support have been significant. If we're talking 100 hours of labor every three months, that is 100 hours of a database engineer costs. There are performance latency numbers as well as costs associated with recovering data that gets lost, and this system doesn't lose data. You can look at numbers that go around the cost of downtime, if data is not available. This system doesn't go down. Everyone's ROI is going to be unique, but the dependability and performance of the system combined with its ease of operation will definitely save businesses of all sizes money."

"Dell PowerMax NVMe's price is expensive."

"The price is starting from $500,000."

"We hope that with the combination of both NVMe and SCM the next PowerMax will be much cheaper that the one which we acquired."

"From reclaiming data center space which is so tightly constrained these days, it will pay for itself in a short amount of time, which is fantastic. Anything we can do to get more out of our current physical data center space helps us a ton, and PowerMax has helped enable that."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pricing and cost advice

"It's not easy to receive an upgrade license of Huawei OceanStor Dorado. It's easy to buy OceanStor with several features, but when you want to add on features later it's not easy. I had some problems."

"Huawei has very good pricing. They have some promotions that can be taken advantage of at certain times of the year, such as the end of December. They are providing aggressive pricing. In the Pakistan market, they are ready to beat any vendor in Pakistan because they want to grab the market."

"Huawei OceanStor Dorado is more affordable than the competitor solutions"

"The pricing is very competitive."

"You need to pay for the license."

"This product is not too expensive, and the price is competitive on the market."

"The price of Huawei OceanStor Dorado is very inexpensive, it cost approximately $5 per gigabyte."

"In price comparisons with alternative products, it stands out as a more cost-effective option."

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?

Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell of...

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

First, it's an enterprise storage solution. This is very important for us. Another important feature is replication.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

The price is starting from $500,000. It's expensive.

See all answers

What do you like most about Huawei OceanStor Dorado?

The product has the best compression and encryption features. The most valuable features I have found in the tool are...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Huawei OceanStor Dorado?

The products they offer are quite cheap. However, I do not have much information about licensing since we don't buy t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Huawei OceanStor Dorado?

Some customers have reported not understanding how the immutable part can be unlocked. From my perspective, it's not ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 32% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 27% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 4% of the time

More Dell PowerMax NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 19% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 13% of the time

Huawei OceanStor vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 11% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 9% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 2% of the time

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

March 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe

March 2025

Download Dell PowerMax NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Huawei OceanStor Dorado

March 2025

Download Huawei OceanStor Dorado product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

OceanStor Dorado V3 All-Flash Storage System

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

Dell PowerMax is the industry’s most secure mission-critical storage platform. With NVMe Dynamic Fabric technology, PowerMax breaks from traditional storage limitations, enabling seamless integration with cloud-native and legacy applications. Designed with a powerful scale-up and scale-out architecture, PowerMax supports mission-critical applications at scale with zero downtime and ultra-low latency. The latest PowerMaxOS 10 release harnesses AI-driven efficiencies for trusted performance, capacity, and security. By choosing PowerMax, you can trust in a secure, intelligent, and always modern storage solution that unlocks the full potential of your data to drive business success.

Dell Technologies

Huawei's OceanStor Dorado V3 all-flash storage is the ideal choice for enterprises' mission-critical business. It is the industry's first commercial use of NVMe all-flash storage, and it delivers high-performing, reliable, and efficient storage services.

Huawei

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Telecom Italia, Hi3G Sweden, KPN

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado

March 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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