Dell PowerMax vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado comparison

Dell Technologies and Huawei are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.6, while Huawei is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.8. Dell Technologies holds a 3.9% 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.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

Huawei OceanStor Dorado and Dell PowerMax compete in high-performance storage solutions. PowerMax appears to have an edge in technical reliability and scalability, while OceanStor Dorado offers a more favorable price-to-performance ratio.

Features: OceanStor Dorado is appreciated for its competitive price-to-performance ratio, NVMe speed, HyperMetro functionality, and efficient deduplication and compression. Dell PowerMax offers robust deduplication and compression, excellent I/O performance, and high reliability, appealing to performance-intensive environments with its NVMe technology and scalability.

Room for Improvement: OceanStor Dorado could enhance NAS capabilities, better integrate with third-party solutions, and improve localization support. PowerMax users desire improvements in NVMe support, enhanced CloudIQ functionalities, and better cloud service integration, including Kubernetes. Simplifying the GUI and offering more efficient management tools are also noted areas for PowerMax.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both products primarily operate on-premises, with OceanStor Dorado also supporting hybrid clouds. Huawei's technical support is generally well-regarded, though local support can present language barriers. Dell PowerMax offers robust support, but users sometimes seek a more streamlined service process.

Pricing and ROI: OceanStor Dorado is known for its competitive pricing and ROI, attributed to lower ownership costs and maintenance expenses. While Dell PowerMax is priced higher, its performance and features justify the investment for organizations prioritizing storage performance, even though the cost might limit accessibility for smaller businesses.

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

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado

April 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 May 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax is 3.9%, 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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Moin-Shah

System and Storage Admin at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Seamless management and exceptional performance facilitate efficient data handling

I have not faced significant problems or challenges with Dell PowerMax NVMe during this time, although one area for improvement is its user-friendliness, as it's a bit engineer-oriented. Specific knowledge and expertise are required to manage it properly, which some users might find a bit challenging, yet it's not a big deal for me. With user experience in mind, an improvement for Dell PowerMax NVMe could be clearer total capacity measurements from snapshots and clones, which should be more visible for better planning. Additionally, a template script from PowerMax could assist customers in easily integrating their API-interconnected systems without needing extensive knowledge. To improve regarding scripts, I recommend that if a customer wants to automate snapshots from other systems, Dell can assist by providing plug-and-play integrated templates that allow customers to drag, drop, modify, and connect with any target system for generating snapshots without logging into the storage directly.

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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

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

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

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

"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."

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

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The performance is very good on our servers. It's superior. And the QoS capabilities for providing work congestion protection are also important because about 99 percent of our servers are production servers."

"The stability is amazing. Zero downtime reported over the last years."

"Dell PowerMax NVMe has been a significant enhancement for data handling in my industry. Its improved security features and data calculation capabilities make it a valuable solution for our customers. The most critical feature of Dell PowerMax NVMe for performance enhancement is its strong network support and integration with other vendors, along with its efficient use of hardware components like CPU and memory. Data reduction technologies in PowerMax have been highly beneficial for our company, allowing us to optimize storage and reduce costs by consolidating files"

"Dell PowerMax NVMe is very supportive of our operational growth since we require daily performance from our core banking systems and need to facilitate data movement efficiently."

"It allows us to protect our data using different data centers and replicate bi-directionally between our two main data centers."

"The number one most valuable feature is reliability. I want to go home at the end of the day and come in the next day knowing it works, especially since we have storage offshore."

"The most valuable feature is the performance and compression. The most useful tool is CloudIQ."

"The solution is stable. I would rate it ten out of ten."

More Dell PowerMax pros

"The solution is scalable."

"The solution’s overall security is good."

"We can use Huawei OceanStor Dorado capacity storage for many different purposes."

"Most of the features which all enterprises storages solutions have are available in Huawei OceanStor Dorado."

"The performance is good."

"Huawei OceanStor Dorado is equipped with powerful controllers"

"There are plenty of features available in this solution."

"The platform's most valuable features are reliability, intelligence, and fast performance speed."

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado pros

Cons

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

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

"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"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."

"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"I would also like to see a real-time, graphical view of metrics. I don't know how far back in time we can look, but if we could see the performance from two months or three months back, and how it is performing now, that would be helpful."

"There are some stability issues that we just recently experienced. We hope the next release will solve these problems."

"I believe it would be of great benefit to work on the customization of the pricing structure for different enterprises and their specific needs."

"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 is some room to grow, especially with some of the installation quirks."

"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 initial setup was a little bit complicated."

"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."

More Dell PowerMax cons

"Huawei OceanStor Dorado could improve the integration, there have been some compatibility issues with some operating system functions."

"The solution needs to improve its integration."

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

"Difficult integration with third parties."

"The user interface of Huawei OceanStor Dorado could be more user-friendly. Other solutions, such as EMC, have a better user interface."

"The built-in reporting tools need some enhancement."

"The solution's price could be better."

"There could be local support services available for the platform. Additionally, they should provide a bundled license, including all protection and encryption rules."

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"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."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

"The product is expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The PowerMax appliance pricing was reasonable. Dell EMC quoted us a substantial discount."

"It scales enormously, but it's expensive to do so."

"The price is okay."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"Support pricing is very high. Our support contract is about to expire and Dell EMC provided us with an extremely high renewal quote. It was four times more than the support contract for our previous EMC VNX solution."

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

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

"The price of the solution is reasonable. There is not a vendor that offers an All-Flash Storage Array at the price of Huawei OceanStor Dorado. The other solutions are approximately 50% higher."

"The pricing is very competitive."

"The price of the solution is competitive compared to others, such as Dell EMC and Hitachi. I believe the reason they are providing a discount is they want to increase their penetration into the market."

"It stands out as the fastest purpose-built storage solution available on the market, and the pricing is highly competitive and excellent."

"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."

"I rate the pricing a six on a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive, not cost-effective, and ten is cheap."

"We saw ROI in terms of both money and time saved. It is worth the price."

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

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

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...

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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.

See all answers

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

Dell offers various pricing models, including a pay-as-you-go option where storage is provided without upfront charge...

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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 31% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 18% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 5% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 27% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 13% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 10% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 8% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 4% of the time

More Dell PowerMax 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 10% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 4% of the time

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

May 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

May 2025

Download Dell PowerMax product report

Buyer's Guide

Huawei OceanStor Dorado

May 2025

Download Huawei OceanStor Dorado product report

Also Known As

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

Dell PowerMax NVMe, 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 offers robust performance, reliability, and efficient data handling. It is recognized for its compression, deduplication, and NVMe technology, significantly benefiting data centers with its advanced replication and uptime.

PowerMax is equipped to handle mission-critical applications, providing impressive performance metrics with low latency and high IOPS capacity. Its CloudIQ and Unisphere interfaces enhance manageability, while REST API support simplifies storage management. Users in sectors like healthcare, finance, and telecommunications leverage its capabilities for database management, high-transaction block storage, and disaster recovery. However, opportunities for improving deduplication efficiency, interface complexity, and automation remain.

What are the key features of Dell PowerMax?

Data Reduction: Combines compression and deduplication for efficient storage use.
NVMe Technology: Enables swift data handling with high throughput.
CloudIQ and Unisphere: Streamlines manageability and control.
REST API Support: Simplifies integration with management tools.
High Availability: Ensures consistent uptime across platforms.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Performance Metrics: Look for low latency and high IOPS as indicators.
Reliability: Consistent operations with minimal interruptions.
Manageability: Efficient control over storage environments.
Cost Efficiency: Note any potential savings in data processing and storage.

Industries utilize Dell PowerMax to support diverse environments like VMware, Oracle, and PostgreSQL. It serves multiple sectors such as healthcare, finance, and government, aiding in data storage consolidation, disaster recovery, and high-availability hosting for critical systems and applications.

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 vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado

April 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado

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

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