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Dell PowerMax vs Pavilion HyperParallel Flash Array comparison

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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
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
232
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerMax
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
Pavilion HyperParallel Flas...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
34th
Average Rating
9.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (16th)
 

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.
it_user1534224 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of Production Systems at a media company with 10,001+ employees
Good support, improves performance, scales well, and boosts team efficiency
For us, in terms of what is very important, is keeping pace with the evolution of the new standards. For example, as PCI Express 4.0 becomes more ubiquitous, moving into PCI Express 5 is important. Having an architecture that can truly utilize 200-gig or maybe 400-gig networking, or having storage densities in line with what we would expect in a Gen 4, Gen 5 PCI Express, are things that as they come available, I hope that the vendor is looking at that going into the future. We need this because we're really at the point where our workloads are about to explode outwards. I would like to see the management layer improved. HyperOS 3.0 is excellent, and this is important because one of the things that we looked at in the beginning, before HyperOS 3.0 had been released, was that this is an excellent technology and it's very versatile, but it would be great if we could run certain things on this box. It would be helpful if there were more ways to consume the APIs or if there were some ways to get into the hardware, get into the functionality of the system programmatically, or have flexibility where, for example, we just need to do quick namespaces, or something similar. We don't want to deploy an entire secondary storage layer on top of this. Rather, we just want to run something quick. Having a containerized system or having some sort of first-party support for basic storage functionality, or basic extensibility would be excellent for us. In many ways, these boxes are very malleable. It's a blank slate, but having a little more in terms of, if you want more directed use of it, having some way to really get at that, would be helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability and performance are the best things about the solution."
"This solution is very scalable."
"Whoever is using Pure Storage is happy with it, including the latency and everything, and we have not received any complaints related to Pure Storage throughout the four years I have worked here, which is really great."
"The pricing of the product is very competitive to others in the market for Flash and NVMe storage, and from an ROI standpoint, if you consider compression and de-duplication and all that, you get a pretty good ratio."
"It is noticeably easier to manage than other appliances that we have."
"This is a very good product at a very good price, with very good support."
"We have seen a good reduction in the amount of total storage space that we're using because of the deduplication."
"It gives us capacity planning."
"The most valuable aspects include the remote replication features, as it allows us to protect our data using different data centers and replicate bi-directionally between our two main data centers."
"We find the service level option to provision storage very valuable. The ability to define different service levels for storage groups helps us in prioritizing our workload at the infrastructure level."
"It offers a high level of availability, so pretty much near zero downtime."
"Six months in, we have ROI."
"Because of the compression ratio, we are able to put more on less hardware."
"The features of Dell PowerMax that I find most valuable so far include its all-flash capability, along with its performance, reliability, and efficiency."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the data reduction ratio."
"The number one most valuable feature is reliability, as 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 high performance is very valuable, as well as the enterprise reliability features."
"Pavilion provides us with DAS performance and SAN manageability at an affordable price, which has allowed us to continue a very rapid growth of our business."
"This unit is so dense and the performance is so high that the advice I would give is that if performance is a critical factor for your use case, then you really ought to look at this unit."
"In summary, this is an excellent system."
"There's lots of flexibility in how we use the resources while also maintaining a small footprint."
"We have been able to consolidate storage into Pavilion. Pavilions are our only SANs because it is a bring your own disk solution. When new drives come out, we are able to take out half of the drives in the system, put in new drives, move our VMs over to the new drives, take the other drives out, and populate those with new drives. Then, we are suddenly twice as dense as we were before. NVMe flash is only going to get denser and cheaper so we can make use of that every couple of years by just throwing newer disks into it at a fraction of the cost of a new SAN."
 

Cons

"The integration capabilities could be improved."
"I would like to migrate to the cloud in the future and know how that would actually work with this product."
"Had some issues with Purity not being entirely compatible with VMware ESXi."
"It's too early to tell if we've seen a reduction in total cost of ownership. The solution is expensive."
"The price should be lower."
"We ran into some issues with the program at first and we had to work around those issues to fix our problems."
"Storage. There could be better storage."
"The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality."
"There are so many configurations in the tool that cannot be done by anyone who is not a Dell personnel."
"I'm not a fan of the UI that they've deployed over the recent years; I feel that you can do more with the command line platform than you can with the actual UI."
"I would like it to support NVMe over Fabrics, because that is the next item for consideration on the NVMe roadmap."
"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."
"I would like to see more security features and improvements in the platform's ease of management."
"The technical support is lacking. We are working with Dell EMC to get some better understanding of this."
"There is room for improvement in the replication. It's an important requirement for us."
"I'd like to see the dedup and compression improve. Two to one is not very good. We should be getting something like three, four, or five to one."
"I would like to see the management layer improved."
"The rail system that Pavilion uses to mount up into a standard Dell or APC cabinet extends further back than normal rails, and they cover up the zero PDU slot. So, I don't like the rail system that comes with the device. That is my biggest complaint."
"In our current configuration, we can only run the line controllers in high availability, active-standby mode, whereas we would like to see active-active implemented."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. So, every year, we renew. We could do a three-year contract, but right now, we only do a one-year."
"Because of the SSD, it is cheaper because I am not purchasing so many disks."
"The cost was initially high, but once more people were using it, the costs came down. This was because the University was reselling it to other departments."
"The license for Pure Storage FlashArray includes the support and there are no additional payments that are needed. This is not an inexpensive solution, you need to understand the value of your data before you use a backup solution."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive."
"It is cost-effective because after buying a subscription, they provide a service to upgrade hardware for free. They are providing so many features. When you consider the features provided, it is cost-effective."
"The price is really high."
"In terms of price-performance, it beat out other competitors when we were taking a look and comparing it to the market. That was one of the biggest driving points for us."
"The pricing is comparable to other vendors."
"I think it is an expensive tool, but it is the best product. I think it is expensive and the cost one must pay for the best solution."
"It scales enormously, but it's expensive to do so."
"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 PowerMax appliance pricing was reasonable. Dell EMC quoted us a substantial discount."
"I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe a five out of ten for pricing."
"The licensing fees are very reasonable."
"This is hardware. They have a singular array that you can populate with your own disk, or you can buy the disks through them. For controllers, you pay for the components inside of the SAN, but there is only one chassis that they work with."
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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%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise160
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...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax
Pavilion HFA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Rackspace, Open Line
Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), Statistics Netherlands (CBS)
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax vs. Pavilion HyperParallel Flash Array and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.