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Dell PowerMax vs Hitachi VSP 5000 Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
Dell PowerMax
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (5th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
Hitachi VSP 5000 Series
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (14th)
 

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.
Gouranga Maiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Project Manager IT at ITC Ltd
High‑performance all‑flash storage has transformed data warehousing and reporting speed
The features of Dell PowerMax that I find most valuable so far include its all-flash capability, along with its performance, reliability, and efficiency. Additionally, it has snapshot-level features that allow me to take snapshots or backups within only a few seconds. There is no need to wait long, and unnecessary high bandwidth used for backup does not occur because I can take the whole snapshot backup within a fraction of a second. I have used the deduplication feature of Dell PowerMax. Deduplication and compression are very effective, so despite my large amount of data, the effective size is reduced due to this deduplication and compression, allowing me to store more data on the same storage. Regarding the impact of Dell PowerMax's real-time data encryption on my data protection strategies, I have not used that feature personally. However, in another department, my colleagues are using it, and they have not faced any performance bottlenecks due to data encryption. The encryption is very powerful, but I have not implemented that encryption in our database data warehouse systems since they are for internal use only, not exposed worldwide. At first, I faced several issues, and our report rendering complaints were quite annoying. However, now with Dell PowerMax storage's high IOPS handling capabilities, the output comes within a fraction of a second, making our users happy. Whatever our requirement or demand is, it has already been implemented in Dell PowerMax with its all-flash NVMe storage. New bricks can also be added if a size increase is required, allowing for additional bricks to be added as needed. Everything is in place; therefore, I do not think any other improvements are required. However, it is worth noting that Dell is continuously inventing and releasing more powerful types of storage. This results in increased reliability, enhanced data handling capabilities, improved deduplication ratios, and the fulfillment of more IOPS demand.
Patrick Ammann - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Administrator at Post CH AG
Provides reliable performance but could benefit from better deduplication management and intuitive admin tools
Regarding the NVMe over Fabrics feature of Hitachi VSP 5000 Series, we tested it, but there was no admin tool available for configuration until about a year ago. This was problematic for us, so we decided not to use it until we have the proper management tools. The main difficulty with this feature is that it's not supported for GAD devices, so Global-Active Devices are not supported with NVMe. That's basically what all our ESX platform is based on. We believe we would get the most benefit if we could use it in the ESX platform, but it's not supported yet. The deduplication impacts the quality of block storage that system administrators were accustomed to, resulting in increased service time due to the high CPU usage. The whole deduplication should be handled better in the next Plattform, should not have such a high impact on contoller CPU usage. The admin tools, called Ops Center Suite, have been inadequate for years, which Hitachi acknowledges. We had to find other vendors to provide a simple, fast GUI to provision storage. There are limitations, such as a storage pool only having 1024 pool volumes, which means the storage pool is maximum three petabyte in space. This requires building multiple storage pools, resulting in multiple pools where you have to keep some space as reserve. Having more than one storage pool forces you to have multiple times some percentage of storage capacity as a reserve, that you paid for but can't use it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has a small footprint, as the current system is only four units per rack, it's got good speed for the price as it uses eMLC, an advanced type of SSD, and it's very scalable, and we're not paying for capacity as we get free controllers every three years."
"The most important feature of any storage array is its reliability, measured by its uptime."
"It does everything they say it will do: It's very cost-effective compared to other big players, integrates very well with VMware, is tiny so we're saving power and space in the data center, and it's really easy for us to manage."
"We chose Pure Storage because it had the best performance of all the products that we tested."
"The most valuable features are the replication of data and the continuous snapshot that we can take from the disc."
"This is the best all-flash storage array on the market."
"I appreciate the ease of provisioning storage on Pure Storage FlashArray."
"Our storage phones home. It is smart and intelligent in that aspect, which has been huge for us. We don't have to be storage administrators."
"The support team was very cooperative and responsive."
"Because of the compression ratio, we are able to put more on less hardware."
"The features of Dell PowerMax that I appreciate most include its quick performance and good specifications, and its ease of use benefits my company because it makes my job easier, as I am not struggling with a machine every day and everything simply works as intended."
"Our time to response has increased significantly with the new storage tier (SSD)."
"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."
"NVMe technology improves input/output performance."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the latency, performance, and footprints, which means I can store a large amount of data."
"One of the best features of the Hitachi VSP 5000 Series is the stability of the product."
 

Cons

"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."
"The setup needs to be improved the most. They can do a little more with the user interface, but the setup is what I would like to see made a bit easier."
"They can also include file services such as NAS shares and CIFS shares. There should be provisioning of the file shares from a unified array."
"Improved reporting on the deduplication and compression functionality would be beneficial."
"I would like to migrate to the cloud in the future and know how that would actually work with this product."
"With scalability, I have run into a little problem with our last upgrade. There were some undocumented limitations to the number of drives that our controller could run on. So, instead of putting in a new data pack as we had anticipated, we had to keep adding and removing to get up to the capacity that we needed to be. What should have been a one day process (or a few hours) turned into a month and a half process."
"As partners, we should have the option to download the software, rather than have to go back through Pure to obtain it."
"I would like the ability to swap out the network adapters into it. So, without taking out the whole controller, I would like to be able to swap adapters. This would make things easier."
"The management interface needs improvement. It shouldn't be as hard to do some of the functions as it is."
"The initial setup was complex, as it is a complex system and you have to learn a lot."
"I remember an episode where we had a performance issue based on one disk or more, which caused a performance drop for all equipment."
"Dell PowerMax can be improved because there are very strict guidelines when it comes to installation and the amount of control a customer has."
"Some of the management features could be simplified and that's probably the main thing they need to address."
"The disadvantage of PowerMax is its cost. It is expensive, mainly due to pricing."
"PowerMax's software is highly stable, but we faced two hardware issues in one year. We had a failure of the storage director module, and the physical disk failed on another occasion. Dell EMC should improve its hardware quality."
"While Dell PowerMax NVMe is very reliable storage and cannot experience downtime, we sometimes face challenges in our territories regarding the availability of critical parts."
"The whole deduplication should be handled better in the next platform and should not have such a high impact on controller CPU usage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While more expensive than NetApp, Pure Storage FlashArray offers superior performance that often justifies the higher cost and adds value overall."
"We implemented Pure Storage FlashArray nine years ago when it was new to the market and obtained it at a preferential price."
"I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing. It could be improved."
"We consume it as a service, and that's actually something we really like, or at least I really like from the technical perspective. That's because it means there is no hassle when we need to upgrade arrays to add capacity. We just interact directly with technical counterparts, and we say, "Hey, we're filling up," and they say, "All right, here's another data pack." They ship it in, and we install it. So, the as-a-service model has worked very well. Given the outstanding data reduction rates, it has improved our profitability because we're selling allocated volumes as part of the cloud service or recovering those costs from our tenants. It is very efficient, but that has offset the premium price. It started out that way, but over time, as we've added capacity, the price per gig has gone down a lot because we have a lot of it."
"Cost-wise, I imagine that the product's price would probably give you a nosebleed if you were a younger company."
"We have an Evergreen Storage subscription, which I think is a great feature."
"Pure has been flexible with us on the pricing models."
"We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"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."
"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 pricing for this solution is good compared to other products in the market."
"Our costs for the product are three million."
"Dell is expensive compared to other products and I would rate its pricing a four out of ten."
"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 offers various pricing models, including a pay-as-you-go option where storage is provided without upfront charges, billing only for used capacity. As a 360° partner, significant discounts are available."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise64
No data available
 

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?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?
My experience with the pricing of Dell PowerMax is that there is a good relationship between the pricing and the func...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?
One area where Dell PowerMax can improve is the relationship between physical space and capacity, as well as electric...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hitachi VSP 5000 Series?
The cost of the solution is always too expensive, though it's difficult to make a direct comparison as all competitor...
What needs improvement with Hitachi VSP 5000 Series?
Regarding the NVMe over Fabrics feature of Hitachi VSP 5000 Series, we tested it, but there was no admin tool availab...
What is your primary use case for Hitachi VSP 5000 Series?
My main use cases for Hitachi VSP 5000 Series are basically all the block storage, mainly DBs and ESX.
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Rackspace, Open Line
Information Not Available
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