Dell PowerMax vs Dell VMAX All Flash comparison

Dell PowerMax and Dell VMAX All Flash are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell PowerMax is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.9, while Dell VMAX All Flash is ranked #24 with an average rating of 8.2. Dell PowerMax holds a 4.6% mindshare in AFS, compared to Dell VMAX All Flash’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell PowerMax users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Dell VMAX All Flash users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 24, 2025

Dell PowerMax and Dell VMAX All Flash are key contenders in the enterprise storage sector, both offering robust storage and data management features. Dell VMAX All Flash has a slight advantage with its extensive feature set and scalability, making it a more attractive option for businesses prioritizing comprehensive services.

Features: Dell PowerMax provides intelligent data reduction, dynamic storage capabilities, and automated workflows to optimize performance. Dell VMAX All Flash offers scalability, comprehensive data services, and integrated data protection, catering to enterprises with large-scale data needs.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerMax could enhance its data service offerings for larger enterprises and focus on adding more scalable options. Additionally, improving integration with existing IT infrastructures could increase its flexibility. Dell VMAX All Flash might benefit from making its deployment process more streamlined for smaller organizations, offer more cost-effective solutions for mid-sized businesses, and improving its initial setup cost to compete better with other options in the market.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerMax offers a straightforward deployment process with efficient integration and proactive customer support. Dell VMAX All Flash also provides a user-friendly deployment model, emphasizing large-scale configurations and extensive support services for substantial operational needs.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerMax offers a competitive setup cost with excellent ROI through efficient data management. Dell VMAX All Flash involves higher initial costs but provides long-term value with its rich feature set and scalable storage solutions, making it appealing for businesses seeking a future-ready infrastructure.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax vs. Dell VMAX All Flash Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Dell VMAX All Flash

September 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 October 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax is 4.6%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell VMAX All Flash is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dell PowerMax	4.6%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.0%
Dell VMAX All Flash	0.8%
Other	93.6%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

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MayankChauhan

Lead Consultant - Cloud & Infrastructure Services at Infosys

Delivers essential support and performance for intensive operations in real-time environments

Our infrastructure is spread across the private as well as a public cloud. Our requirement was that the IOPS latency should not be more than one millisecond. If anything goes beyond one millisecond, it's a problem for us. We wanted a system that could handle the transactions and meet our latency requirements. There are performance benefits for sure. The amount of deduplication and compression offered by Dell PowerMax is quite good, especially with databases. Dell PowerMax delivers optimum performance and reliable support, integral for handling failures and ensuring operational continuity. The performance capacity optimization and support we receive from Dell are also valuable.

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BrijeshKumar

Technical Lead at L&T Technology Services

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."

"The solution is scalable."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"I am impressed with the tool's reliability since we see a few hardware failures with it. Also, the solution's replication configuration is good."

"Dell is the best vendor worldwide, with an end-to-end solution starting from a mouse to Telza Hyperfix or HyperConverged devices."

"The solution's technical support was good, and it is one of the tool's main advantages."

"It offers a high level of availability, so pretty much near zero downtime."

"We use ESRS for our call-home, and a lot of times, Dell EMC will respond to the issue before we even know it."

"It has reduced our footprint in different physical locations."

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

"It has dramatically cut down the footprint in our data center and reduced the amount of raw disk capacity that we needed to purchase."

More Dell PowerMax pros

"We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution."

"The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface."

"The product's initial setup phase was good."

"The snapshot feature has been precious for our testing processes, application development, and managing testing environments due to its efficiency and ease of use."

"It works very well."

"The ransomware protection feature is housed in a separate unit, specifically addressing the top twenty most critical threats."

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."

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

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

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"I hear from people on my team that they would like improved reporting. While there are some decent tools for doing reporting, they would like to see a lot more built-in functionality. This way when they are logged into the interface everyday doing basic management tasks, they could also see some statistics on what is their storage pool usage and will be their projected usage with their current data growth. They want to be able to see more detailed stats on how they are using the system and have forecasting."

"I would like to see more security features and improvements in the platform's ease of management."

"I would like to see the rack change. They have defaulted to the standard rack, so our fiber cables are crowded when we shut our back door."

"Some of the management features could be simplified and that's probably the main thing they need to address."

"One area for improvement would be integration with public cloud services. Compared to competitors such as NetApp, which integrates with public cloud hyperscalers (GCP, Azure, AWS), Dell PowerMax lacks in this aspect."

"Dell PowerMax NVMe needs to increase storage and improve scalability."

"I would like to see more development in the cloud environment. It would be good if it comes in the cloud kind of setup."

"There are areas for improvement in AI, interface, support, and customizations."

More Dell PowerMax cons

"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability."

"The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

"There is room for improvement in the centralized administration."

"Improvements are needed in both partition recovery and scalability."

"We encountered some challenges during large data migrations that could be addressed for smoother transitions."

"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additional engines to address this limitation."

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."

"The product is expensive."

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

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"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."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The cost of the solution is quite noticeable, but it provides a good fit regarding the price of the hardware and all of the required licenses."

"The price is on the market. It's not inexpensive, but it's available on the market."

"One area for improvement, one that everybody always comes to, is price... it's still quite expensive to purchase these big arrays... For us, the pricing doesn't make Dell EMC uncompetitive."

"Dell is expensive compared to other products and I would rate its pricing a four out of ten."

"From a general capital investment, it's one of the higher price points in the market. It depends on the size and software features that you would include in a system. So, the cost varies dramatically."

"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."

"The pricing might be a bit high for small organizations, so it's more suitable for larger enterprises."

"Its price is competitive, but they need to have a different price for West Africa. They can do better with the price point to allow us to scale even more. We wanted to migrate our entire storage infrastructure to PowerMax, which would require us to buy more capacity, and from the price point, it didn't attract us."

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

"It is not a cheap product."

"The price falls within the mid-range, neither inexpensive nor high-priced."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Retailer

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	16
Large Enterprise	54

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.

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

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

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...

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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.

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

When comparing Dell PowerMax NVMe with other vendors, such as IBM enterprise solutions, the price is relatively higher.

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell EMC VMax?

The product's initial setup phase was good.

See all answers

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

The pricing provided by EMC is reasonable.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 23% 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 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 24% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 10% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 7% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 5% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 3% of the time

More Dell PowerMax Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell VMAX All Flash

Compared 15% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell VMAX All Flash

Compared 7% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell VMAX All Flash

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell VMAX All Flash Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

September 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

October 2025

Download Dell PowerMax product report

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

September 2025

Download Dell VMAX All Flash product report

Also Known As

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

Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

No data available

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

PowerMax leads in mission-critical enterprise storage with advanced architecture and AI-driven automation, ensuring secure and efficient IT optimization. Its multi-node NVMe scale-out framework delivers unmatched performance and consolidation, backed by Dell’s Future-Proof Program.

PowerMax is renowned for its robust reliability, performance, and efficient data reduction capabilities. Users benefit from its NVMe architecture, aiding significant scalability and cost efficiency through effective deduplication and compression. Unisphere simplifies management, while CloudIQ provides enhanced monitoring. With high availability and strong IOPS capabilities, PowerMax effectively manages demanding workloads and ensures seamless operations. Its compact design and increased storage capacity enhance user experience, particularly with easy maintenance and robust performance.

What are the key features of PowerMax?

Reliability: Ensures consistent service uptime and data integrity.
High Performance: NVMe architecture provides exceptional speed and efficiency.
Data Reduction: Deduplication and compression drive down costs.
Management Tools: Unisphere interface for easy system management.
CloudIQ: Advanced monitoring for predictive insights.
High Availability: Supports mission-critical and demanding workloads.

What benefits should users expect from PowerMax?

Performance Optimization: Handles low latency and high IOPS needs.
Scalability: Expands effortlessly with growing data and workload demands.
Enhanced Monitoring: Predictive analytics for proactive management.
Efficient Maintenance: Streamlined processes reduce downtime and costs.

Dell PowerMax is predominantly employed in mission-critical applications such as SQL, Oracle databases, ERP systems, and high transactional environments. Healthcare, finance, and e-commerce sectors leverage its high performance, scalability, and NVMe technology for low latency and redundancy. It is adept in storage consolidation, data analytics, and disaster recovery.

Dell Technologies

Dell VMAX All Flash is utilized in hyper-converged solutions like VxRail deployments, critical for Data Domain in backup tasks. It supports multi-site replication, disaster recovery, banking IT operations, and high-performance applications.

Dell VMAX All Flash plays a key role in data-intensive environments due to its robust capabilities in storage, data protection, and high throughput tasks. It is crucial in hyper-converged solutions and VxRail deployments, facilitating multi-site replication and disaster recovery. Its applications span across banking and other critical IT operations requiring high performance. The system's ability to support efficient data compression and provide ransomware protection addresses significant security concerns. Multi-site replication and redundancy safeguard data even during power outages or hardware failures, while the snapshot feature aids in testing, application development, and environment management.

What are the key features of Dell VMAX All Flash?

Compression: Efficient data compression capabilities.
Ransomware Protection: Tackles ransomware threats effectively.
Multi-site Replication and Redundancy: Ensures data safety during power outages or hardware issues.
Snapshots: Aids in testing, application development, and environment management.

What benefits should users look for in Dell VMAX All Flash reviews?

Data Protection: Enhanced data security with ransomware protection.
Performance: High throughput for demanding applications.
Reliability: Multi-site replication and redundancy for critical operations continuity.
Support: Adheres to IP strategies with excellent customer support.

Dell VMAX All Flash is critical in industries like banking, where it supports IT operations requiring high performance, and in environments demanding stringent data protection measures. Its role in multi-site replication and disaster recovery makes it invaluable for business continuity and critical data security across sectors.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Dell VMAX All Flash

September 2025

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