Dell PowerMax vs NetApp ASA comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.6, while NetApp is ranked #27 with an average rating of 9.0. Dell Technologies holds a 3.9% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

Dell PowerMax and NetApp ASA are competing storage solutions. NetApp ASA appears to have the upper hand due to its broader feature set and superior value for investment.

Features: Dell PowerMax offers robust data reduction, high performance for critical workloads, and NVMe-based storage support. NetApp ASA provides advanced data management, integration with cloud environments, and enhanced flexibility and scalability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetApp ASA offers a straightforward deployment process with comprehensive support. Dell PowerMax requires more customization and management.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerMax is recognized for competitive upfront costs, especially in large-scale deployments. NetApp ASA may have higher initial costs but delivers better ROI due to its rich feature set and flexibility.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax vs. NetApp ASA Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. NetApp ASA

May 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 NetApp ASA is 2.0%, up from 0.7% 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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reviewer2561733

Senior Client Solutions Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

A tried-and-true technology with good deduplication and support model

I would like to see more in terms of replication between storage classes. They provide different lines of storage. They have a lower class. They have a capacity class. They have their enterprise class. Currently, we have interoperability at the same plane with ONTAP, but we would like to see some more mix-and-match features. That would allow us to right-size our cost structure outside of the data center and maybe in places like a remote office or another colocation facility. Better interoperability between classes of storage or models of storage at NetApp would be beneficial to us because we can then continue to use NetApp across the board. We would also have some feature parity because we are bought into the ecosystem.

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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

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."

"The solution is scalable."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

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

"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

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

"It is a fantastic Dell EMC product ever competing with all the vendors. It stands out in terms of performance. You can ask for mission-critical application workloads."

"You can use PowerMax for all workloads and consolidation. We have used it to scale thousands of VMs."

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

"The best feature is the protection - PowerMax NVMe is volume-based and replicates data, so it's very comfortable for us to use."

"For the migration process from the older VMAX arrays to PowerMax, we VMotioned everything. It was easy."

"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."

"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."

More Dell PowerMax pros

"I love the SnapMirror and autonomous ransomware protection features."

"Their dedupe functionality is probably the best in the industry. We also find their support model to be good. When we purchase something, we have a very good understanding of how long that product will be supported by them. That helps."

Cons

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."

"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."

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

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

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

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

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

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"If you go to Pure or you go to NetApp, they deliver in one month. If you go to Dell or HP, they will take up to six months for delivery. This is not a business model for today."

"Dell can improve the Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance. Sometimes, when we need to replace a component, the SLA says four hours, but for some reason, the technician doesn't arrive until the next business day or even six to eight hours later before the case is placed. So, focusing on respecting the SLA is where Dell could improve."

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

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

"The technical support is lacking. We are working with Dell EMC to get some better understanding of this."

"Remove the need for physical or hardwired virtual servers to run consistency groups, instead make the expensive array controllers handle that."

"The solution does not use new versions of OS and patches. Its installation is also difficult. The solution is not as fast as other storage in the market."

More Dell PowerMax cons

"I would like to see more in terms of replication between storage classes. They provide different lines of storage. They have a lower class. They have a capacity class. They have their enterprise class. Currently, we have interoperability at the same plane with ONTAP, but we would like to see some more mix-and-match features."

"From a partner's point of view, the tools that I'm using to create the quote or do the sizing are very slow."

"I'm handling pre-sales and post-sales. From a partner's point of view, the tools that I'm using to create the quote or do the sizing are very slow. The tools, such as hardware universe, fusion.netapp.com, and partnerhub.netapp.com, operate very slowly. These tools should be more efficient as they enter a hung state repeatedly."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."

"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."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"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."

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

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

"The pricing is competitive. I would rate the pricing of the solution a six out of ten."

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

"It is pretty good. It is definitely cheaper than Dell EMC. It is cheaper than Pure. It is cheaper than VAST. It is definitely cheaper than HPE. The only one that is on par with NetApp's pricing for enterprise customers is IBM."

"It's more expensive than other storage vendors such as Dell, Pure Storage, HPE, Lenovo, etc. It provides the value, but some of the customers don't look at the value. They first look at the cost. It should be reduced by 20% to 30%."

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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

Manufacturing Company

28%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

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?

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

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp ASA?

It is pretty good. It is definitely cheaper than Dell EMC. It is cheaper than Pure. It is cheaper than VAST. It is de...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp ASA?

I would like to see more in terms of replication between storage classes. They provide different lines of storage. Th...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for NetApp ASA?

We mostly use the solution for primary storage, and then we also have a secondary set that we are using for secondary...

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

HPE XP STORAGE ARRAYS vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell PowerMax Competitors

NetApp AFF vs NetApp ASA

Compared 49% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp ASA

Compared 12% of the time

NetApp NVMe AFF A800 vs NetApp ASA

Compared 7% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs NetApp ASA

Compared 7% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs NetApp ASA

Compared 2% of the time

More NetApp ASA 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

Enterprise SAN

May 2025

Download NetApp ASA 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

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

The NetApp ASA is an all-flash SAN storage array that delivers industry-leading availability, superior performance, and simplified data management across your hybrid cloud. It is designed for a wide range of workloads, including mission-critical applications, databases, and virtualized environments. NetApp ASA features a scale-out architecture that can be scaled to meet the needs of your growing business. They also support a wide range of built-in data protection and data security features, including snapshots, replication, disaster recovery, and autonomous ransomware protection.

Benefits

Superior performance for your dedicated SAN environment.
Continuous data access to support your business-critical workloads.
Simple and efficient data management that reduces TCO.
Effortless cloud connectivity with leading integration to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and others.

Features

Ensure mission-critical data is secure and always available: NetApp ASA systems maintain data availability and keep critical applications running with symmetric active-active architecture—backed by NetApp’s Six Nines Data Availability Guarantee.
Safeguard data with built-in application-consistent data protection and achieve business continuity with synchronous disaster recovery.
Superior performance to power your most important applications: Achieve blazing-fast response times across business-critical applications with ASA systems. NetApp supports both NVMe/FC and NVMe/TCP in the ASA A-Series, providing consistent low latency and millions of IOPS in a cluster.
Efficiency and simplicity that drive down TCO: With NetApp ONTAP data management software running on ASA systems, you can enjoy storage savings with 4:1 storage efficiency—guaranteed.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. NetApp ASA

May 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax vs. NetApp ASA

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