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Dell PowerPath vs Pure Storage FlashArray comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Dell PowerPath
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (3rd)
Pure Storage FlashArray
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Dell PowerPath and Pure Storage FlashArray aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Dell PowerPath is designed for Storage Software and holds a mindshare of 11.5%, up 9.4% compared to last year.
Pure Storage FlashArray, on the other hand, focuses on All-Flash Storage, holds 6.3% mindshare, down 8.4% since last year.
Storage Software
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Derrick Brockel - PeerSpot reviewer
A resilient and reliable solution that has many load-balancing technologies and provides high availability
People who want to buy the solution must create a scorecard of Dell PowerPath against other products. They must run database tests. They must consider factors like pricing, performance, ease of use, visibility, and reliability. They must also run tests to understand which product recovers faster. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
Nabeel Sayegh - PeerSpot reviewer
Supercharges enterprise storage by way of highly optimized hardware, comprehensive data management and a feature rich interface.
During their early years, I was a member of Pure's Customer Advisory Board. In addition, when we first adopted Pure, they did not have replication GA yet. We got into their beta testing program and help them work out certain issues with that technology. One weakness I can say the array has, still to this day, is limited control on scheduling snapshots. Depending on the type of replication schedule you are building, you may or may not have control on specifying the start time of a given replication schedule. This is not a very big problem in the grand scheme of things, but something nonetheless that has bothered me about the scheduler in general. Another area for improvement would be automatic host alias creation. Other platforms such as EMC Unity/PowerStore will automatically detect the host name, create a alias for it and associate the logged in HBA's to it. Pure does not do this for you and as a result, requires manual configuration. This can be very time consuming especially when you are deploying a large number of new servers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is very reliable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that disaster recovery scenarios are very good and easy to use in Dell PowerPath since it is available in a simplified form."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is migration without disruptions."
"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."
"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."
"The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."
"The user interface is good."
"It provides a high availability and will increase the performance of any server or operating system."
"They have a very good support system, and the GUI is also very intuitive."
"Access speed and power consumption are most valuable."
"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both."
"The ease of management is one of the most valuable features of this solution. I would have also said that it's pretty fast but now our SQL servers are starting to beat it up pretty bad."
"It's extremely stable and has good performance."
"The connections are a lot faster than what we had in the past. One InfiniBand does what we did on all of our Fibre Channels."
"The product cheaper compared to other solutions concerning the technology that they are using."
"It is easy to manage. You don't have to have the same people who used to manage the Dell EMC arrays because the solution is more intuitive."
 

Cons

"The solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."
"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Although PowerPath is very mature and has been on the market for more than 15 years there are still a lot of bugs that have been profiled with PowerPath, specifically, during any OS upgrade."
"Customers do not choose PowerPath unless they have Unix or Linux."
"The technical support is good but they are not available all the time."
"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."
"While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective."
"I would like to see support for NVMe, end-to-end."
"If I need to change or troubleshoot the dashboard, I cannot do it without calling support. If I want to move something critical, I cannot do it by myself. The dashboard blocks me from changing those critical things."
"The internal garbage collection process has been fixed recently in some OS updates so it is more efficient but that could be just a little better."
"Larger capacity and more storage ports would be the two things I'd like to see."
"The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release."
"There is not a great need for improvement, but better pricing could be beneficial."
"Awareness about Pure Storage needs to increase. Currently, people mostly think of Dell and NetApp when it comes to storage."
"The interface lacks the same level of control as some other arrays I've used."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"I rate the product's price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is affordable, and ten is really expensive. Dell PowerPath is an expensive tool."
"The product is a little bit expensive."
"Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution."
"The price of the solution is fair."
"There are no additional costs associated with the product."
"It was less expensive than some of the alternatives. It's not as though it was a premium price to get that kind of quality. It's a very competitive product from a price perspective..."
"The licensing is $100,000."
"Cost-wise, it's been very effective."
"Our costs are around $100,000."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
"I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."
"It is light years beyond anything else with the same price point."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
13%
Healthcare Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Retailer
11%
Educational Organization
34%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell PowerPath?
The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerPath?
The product is a little bit expensive. It is a little pricey because it provides multipathing with other OSs. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.
What needs improvement with Dell PowerPath?
The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR. When we use 3PAR storage, we have to use another technology to load balance. The product must be integrated with other products l...
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 Storage. It may be more expensive, but it should pay for itself for its functionalit...
What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashArray?
We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The cost of Pure Storage is subjective and determined by your environment. Pure Storage tends to be more expensive than NetApp, but it is cheaper than EMC. Performance varies with data workload, ma...
 

Also Known As

PowerPath
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Healthcare Residential Service Company
Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp, DataCore, Dell Technologies and others in Storage Software. Updated: March 2025.
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