Dell PowerMax vs VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL] comparison

Dell Technologies and VIOLIN Systems are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VIOLIN Systems users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 24, 2025

VIOLIN QV2020 EOL and Dell PowerMax are competitors in the enterprise storage market. Dell PowerMax seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced features, thought to justify the greater cost investment.

Features: VIOLIN QV2020 EOL offers flash-based architecture, impressive performance, and convenient scalability. Dell PowerMax provides unmatched data services, high IOPS, and intelligent storage management.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerMax simplifies integration with streamlined deployment and reliable customer support. VIOLIN QV2020 EOL is easy to deploy, yet lacks Dell's extensive support infrastructure.

Pricing and ROI: VIOLIN QV2020 EOL is notable for its competitive setup cost, appealing to budget-conscious enterprises. Dell PowerMax requires a higher initial investment but is seen as worth it for its capabilities, supporting potential long-term benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed All-Flash Storage Report (Updated: May 2026).

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All-Flash Storage

May 2026

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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

Everpure FlashArray

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV

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.

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Gouranga Maiti

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.

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Ramil Cerrada

Solution lead at Globe Mobile

Has high-speed data access and processing capabilities, distinguishing it as a leader in its storage solutions category

VIOLIN QV2020 lacks scalability. This affects both the timeframe for installation and the performance of end-users. Additionally, there's a challenge in deploying horizontally, either by deploying between different nodes or adding new ones. We have many customers. 50,000 users are using this solution. It depends on the projects being taken out of the operations team.

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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

"We have looked at all of the platforms, and to see what Pure was able to do within a PoC environment meant that we never turned back our PoC environment."

"The support from Pure Storage Flash Array is amazing."

"I can personally state that the Pure Storage Flash Systems are the best built and Pure has the utmost professional customer care."

"The predictive performance analytics is a very good feature, as our system is performing better than before."

"It's very fast and very easy to use. It performs well and is both flexible and compatible. We like it because it's easy to use."

"Their support is top-notch, and their NPS scores reflect this."

"The stability of Pure Storage is very very good."

"We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."

More Everpure FlashArray 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."

"It is a good solution for any environment; you won't face any issues in terms of performance and stability."

"CloudIQ has become an optimal tool for us to get the full picture of all the different arrays, from mid-tier all the way up. It gives us that single view and the ability to launch the Unisphere. That is really is powerful in being able to manage the array."

"Enterprise Cloud Storage is the most valuable feature, along with the data services which come with it, plus the deduplication and compression."

"I have been highly satisfied with the resiliency and scalability of the solution."

"Because it is NVMe, it is extremely fast; things that used to take four to five hours are now taking 15 minutes, if that."

"It has dramatically cut down the footprint in our data center and reduced the amount of raw disk capacity that we needed to purchase."

"We use ESRS for our call-home, and a lot of times, Dell EMC will respond to the issue before we even know it."

More Dell PowerMax pros

"VIOLIN QV2020 is the latest in terms of performance. It has high-speed data access and processing capabilities, distinguishing it as a leader in its storage solutions category."

"It has lowered batch times from 14 hours to two hours."

"It’s simple to use hardware to fix performance issues. Our issue is poor coding/queries. This greatly speeded things up. It’s too costly to track down poor programming in applications. The price of a developer’s time to scan through all the coding is high compared to buying Violin."

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."

"We do have an issue with the vCenter integration. Pure Storage says it has a lot of free space, but vCenter says its completely full. This is because their dedupes are saved as space, but Vcenter still detects the disk as completely full. So, we do have an issue with that."

"We would like to be able to connect to data tape for backup, specifically to the LTO backups."

"As partners, we should have the option to download the software, rather than have to go back through Pure to obtain it."

"The negative aspect of Everpure FlashArray is that migrations can be somewhat complicated."

"We haven't seen ROI yet."

"We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform. The idea is that they would run a basic NFS or CIF share from the controllers. FlashBlade is the powerhouse for File and Object storage, but if you don't need all that power, a lightweight file function would make FlashArrays more versatile."

"It took us a year to get it to stabilize and to get the best out of Pure."

More Everpure FlashArray cons

"I would like to see more development in the cloud environment. It would be good if it comes in the cloud kind of setup."

"PowerMax Storage needs improvement in the area of monitoring tools. It should have more functions and more complicated analysis options inside the monitoring tools."

"The teams and SMEs on my teams may have user interface and other configuration requests. For example, there might be things that engineers do at the command line that GUIs don't do."

"There is also room for improvement in the PowerMax architecture and hardware itself. They should design the PowerMax on the basis of PCIe 4.0. I would like to see the possibility of an NVMe drive that operates on PCIe 4.0 and not PCIe 3.0."

"The one area for improvement in Dell PowerMax NVMe would be to align the features of the on-premises version with those available in the cloud, as this would provide added value and flexibility."

"We have had some trouble with the VMAX-to-PowerMax migration, but the VMAX box will be powered down after the migration. The PowerMax boxes are working fine and we don't have any issues with them."

"Support pricing is very high. Our support contract is about to expire and Dell EMC provided us with an extremely high renewal quote."

"I would like a more informative CloudIQ for iOS. What you can see via the web UI significantly differs from what you can see via the web application."

More Dell PowerMax cons

"I set up Wi-Fi for storage, and since then, we haven't experienced any interruptions in service."

"VIMM replacement is poorly designed."

"VIMM replacement is poorly designed. You have to slide out an entire drawer, remove the cover and then pop out the failed VIMM. I would like to see a front replacement just like with hard disks. This leaves room for error; for example, when you slide it out from the rack, you are moving cables along the cable management arm. This leaves the possibility of accidentally unplugging a cable from the array if it is not seated properly. Also, you might pinch the cables when sliding it back into the server rack."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."

"No storage device is cheap, but Pure Storage is fairly priced and offers what you pay for. You get all the licenses in the future when you purchase a license."

"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."

"It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."

"The price of the Pure Storage Flash Array is too high and there needs to be more contact clarity. We went with the Evergreen plan and I don't have clarity on what am I supposed to pay each year or every three years. There was not much contract clarity."

"The price, in general, is around $100,000, however, I know it costs more."

"The price is too high."

More Everpure FlashArray pricing and cost advice

"It is high-end storage and it is a bit expensive, but it is doing what it is meant for: running business-critical applications or latency-sensitive applications..."

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

"The labor savings and support have been significant. If we're talking 100 hours of labor every three months, that is 100 hours of a database engineer costs. There are performance latency numbers as well as costs associated with recovering data that gets lost, and this system doesn't lose data. You can look at numbers that go around the cost of downtime, if data is not available. This system doesn't go down. Everyone's ROI is going to be unique, but the dependability and performance of the system combined with its ease of operation will definitely save businesses of all sizes money."

"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."

"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."

"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 cost has room for improvement."

"The price is on the market. It's not inexpensive, but it's available on the market."

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

"They will beat anyone’s price right now. They are struggling and just need to get product out their doors."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Construction Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	71
Midsize Enterprise	38
Large Enterprise	159

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	18
Midsize Enterprise	16
Large Enterprise	62

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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?

I have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?

When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...

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

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that it is what it is; essentially, you pay for solid enter...

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What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

I would like to make some changes regarding scalability and the number of disks that the solution can be scaled versu...

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Comparisons

NetApp AFF vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 7% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 7% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 3% of the time

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Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 13% of the time

Everpure FlashArray X NVMe vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 6% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 6% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 5% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 4% of the time

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Dell Unity XT vs VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL]

Compared 38% of the time

Everpure FlashArray X NVMe vs VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL]

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray

June 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

June 2026

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Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

May 2026

Download VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL] product report

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray

Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

No data available

Overview

The FlashArray family delivers consistent, high-performance data services across block, file, and object workloads. As part of the Everpure Platform, it provides the foundation for a unified data plane, enabling applications to reliably access, protect, and manage data across environments with simplicity and predictability. With built-in capabilities such as inline data reduction, snapshots, replication, and ransomware resilience, FlashArray ensures efficient operations, protected data, and consistent application uptime.

As the foundation of the (unified) data plane, FlashArray enables policy-driven automation, monitoring, and centralized management while integrating across cloud and on-premises environments. Built on an Evergreen architecture, it supports non-disruptive upgrades and continuous performance improvements over time while simplifying operations at scale.

What Key Features Does FlashArray Offer?

Simplicity and Speed: Easy management and rapid performance enhancements.
Data Reduction: Effective deduplication and compression.
Flash Architecture: Seamless upgrades and outstanding resilience.
VMware Integration: Excellent compatibility with virtualization platforms.
Predictive Analytics: Strong insights for proactive management.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Reliability: Proactive support with minimal downtime.
Efficiency: Reduced storage footprint and enhanced data management.
Performance: Faster processing speeds and low latency.
User Experience: Simplified management with Evergreen model.

In industries like finance, banking, and healthcare, FlashArray supports high-performance storage needs focusing on virtualization and database environments. Employed for VMware workloads, disaster recovery, and storage provisioning, it ensures application performance in private or hybrid cloud setups while enhancing management of virtualized environments.

Everpure (formerly Pure Storage)

PowerMax leads in mission-critical enterprise storage with advanced architecture and AI-driven automation, ensuring secure and efficient IT optimization. Its multi-node NVMe scale-out framework delivers unmatched performance and consolidation, backed by Dell’s Future-Proof Program.

PowerMax is renowned for its robust reliability, performance, and efficient data reduction capabilities. Users benefit from its NVMe architecture, aiding significant scalability and cost efficiency through effective deduplication and compression. Unisphere simplifies management, while CloudIQ provides enhanced monitoring. With high availability and strong IOPS capabilities, PowerMax effectively manages demanding workloads and ensures seamless operations. Its compact design and increased storage capacity enhance user experience, particularly with easy maintenance and robust performance.

What are the key features of PowerMax?

Reliability: Ensures consistent service uptime and data integrity.
High Performance: NVMe architecture provides exceptional speed and efficiency.
Data Reduction: Deduplication and compression drive down costs.
Management Tools: Unisphere interface for easy system management.
CloudIQ: Advanced monitoring for predictive insights.
High Availability: Supports mission-critical and demanding workloads.

What benefits should users expect from PowerMax?

Performance Optimization: Handles low latency and high IOPS needs.
Scalability: Expands effortlessly with growing data and workload demands.
Enhanced Monitoring: Predictive analytics for proactive management.
Efficient Maintenance: Streamlined processes reduce downtime and costs.

Dell PowerMax is predominantly employed in mission-critical applications such as SQL, Oracle databases, ERP systems, and high transactional environments. Healthcare, finance, and e-commerce sectors leverage its high performance, scalability, and NVMe technology for low latency and redundancy. It is adept in storage consolidation, data analytics, and disaster recovery.

Dell Technologies

Quartet™ is the name of VIOLIN’s software-driven flash storage product portfolio. Quartet™ helps customers access and use more of their data, while reducing the complexity and expense of managing the infrastructure behind it. The Quartet Platform was purpose-built to the highest industry standards and has four components:

VIOLIN Systems

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas

Rackspace, Open Line

BlueScope Buildings, GameVil, VRT, IKYU Corporation

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: May 2026.

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