No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Dell PowerMax vs TrueNAS F-Series comparison

Sponsored
 

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
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
Dell PowerMax
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (5th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (3rd)
TrueNAS F-Series
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (23rd)
 

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.
TM
Engineer at Fairway-corp
A storage solution for file sharing with unified storage
We use the solution for file sharing We like TrueNAS because of the services it offers. TrueNAS F-Series provides unified storage. We can run an SMB server, enabling connections through Windows. Additionally, it supports VNAC. We are using all hardware but use those features sparingly. However,…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has made working with storage as easy and simple as it should be."
"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."
"NVMe data storage platform that's easy to set up and easy to use. It's stable, with a lower response time, and quick technical support."
"VMware has benefited our IT organization because we're 100% VMware, everything is running on it."
"Our clients see a reduction in total cost of ownership by around 40%."
"One valuable feature of the Pure Storage FlashArray is its Flash-based architecture, which provides a significant advantage."
"Compared to other storage boxes, Everpure FlashArray is very useful because it is cost-effective and requires less work."
"The predictive performance analytics is a very good feature, as our system is performing better than before."
"The NVMe technology improves input/output performance, making it a valuable asset for our organization's storage solutions."
"The solution's snapshot capabilities and replication are very good features. Snapshots are allowing us to quickly build analytical models directly from production data. This gives us amazing insights into market trends and allows us to build more effective trading algorithms. Replication offers us unparalleled levels of resilience."
"Six months in, we have ROI."
"NVMe technology improves input/output performance."
"The UI is very easy to use. We can add volumes and manage them easily."
"The smaller footprint of the device has been really nice. We have gone from eight bays to one bay. Having one floor tile in our data center has been pretty awesome. A lot less power and HVAC cooling is being consumed."
"The solution is stable. I would rate it ten out of ten."
"Dell support for Dell PowerMax is exceptional, rating a perfect 10 out of 10."
"It provides unified storage."
 

Cons

"The scalability of the solution is not as good as it probably could be."
"The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features."
"It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups."
"We need to add more storage in Pure Storage FlashArray with the cluster mode activated for us to have better performance."
"The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can save their investment."
"If they could make it cheaper, that would be something."
"I think the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray is the major issue because all the great things come with the price, and a lot of customers simply are not willing to accept it."
"It's not so scalable. It's got moderate scaling capabilities right now. The clustering technology needs a bit of work, they need to improve that."
"Dell PowerMax could be improved with additional features such as a one-click upgrade capability that would allow us to perform upgrades ourselves without scheduling support, and long-term support capability so that we do not have to continually upgrade multiple times a year, as we prefer to minimize disruptions to the system."
"The solution should include more AI features to make it smarter."
"With PowerMax, I requested this for every 15 minutes, keeping it for a week. The engineer's answer was, "There will be too many snapshots. It might slow down the system.""
"The disadvantage of PowerMax is its cost. It is expensive, mainly due to pricing."
"I would like to make some changes regarding scalability and the number of disks that the solution can be scaled versus the other competitors."
"Firmware updates are a bit painful because you have to involve their support, as opposed to having the ability to do it yourself."
"When it comes to Oracle and database workloads, data reduction could be a little bit better."
"They can make the GUI better, especially for the ones that come out of the box."
"The solution’s UI could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."
"Pure Storage has not helped us to reduce our licensing costs."
"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it. A little bit better pricing would be great."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"Pricing is moderate. It is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The guaranty that Pure Storage provides when you purchase it doesn't meet the overall capacity needs to provide extra storage, if needed. Thus, it is not meeting our expectations."
"The pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray is reasonable."
"Our Evergreen Storage subscription is supposed to be good when we go to upgrade."
"The price is really high."
"We hope that with the combination of both NVMe and SCM the next PowerMax will be much cheaper that the one which we acquired."
"It scales enormously, but it's expensive to do so."
"The price is starting from $500,000."
"I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe a five out of ten for pricing."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing is comparable to other vendors."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays solutions are best for your needs.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise62
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?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
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 pricing, setup cost, and licensing was great.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?
Dell PowerMax can be improved because there are very strict guidelines when it comes to installation and the amount o...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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
1. Acronis 2. Acumatica 3. Atlassian 4. Autodesk 5. Barracuda Networks 6. Cisco Systems 7. Cloudflare 8. Dell EMC 9. DigitalOcean 10. Equinix 11. Google Cloud Platform 12. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 13. IBM 14. Inspur 15. Intel 16. Juniper Networks 17. Konica Minolta 18. Linode 19. Malwarebytes 20. Microsoft Azure 21. NetApp 22. Oracle 23. Palo Alto Networks 24. Red Hat 25. Rackspace 26. SAP 27. ServiceNow 28. SolarWinds 29. VMware 30. Western Digital 31. Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Nutanix and others in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays. Updated: July 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.