Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
199
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 14.6%, up 9.6% compared to last year.
Pure Storage FlashArray, on the other hand, focuses on All-Flash Storage, holds 6.3% mindshare, down 8.1% 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 solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."
"The user interface is good."
"The product is very reliable."
"It provides a high availability and will increase the performance of any server or operating system."
"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."
"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."
"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is migration without disruptions."
"The Direct FlashArray stands out as one of the best features in the market. The Pure1 storage management lets us see the details about utilization and everything else for all 40 storage boxes in one place."
"The technical support is very good."
"The amount of data that I have moved to it from legacy storage has enabled us to retire units that are three or four times the physical size."
"The most valuable feature is replication."
"It is an SSD array that has awesome performance, low submillisecond latency, and does what it is supposed to do. It just works, which is difficult for things to do anymore."
"The most valuable features are extremely low latency, high IOPS with VMware, inline deduplication and compression."
"It gives us capacity planning."
"Our storage phones home. It is smart and intelligent in that aspect, which has been huge for us. We don't have to be storage administrators."
 

Cons

"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."
"The solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective."
"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."
"The technical support is good but they are not available all the time."
"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."
"Customers do not choose PowerPath unless they have Unix or Linux."
"As partners, we should have the option to download the software, rather than have to go back through Pure to obtain it."
"Automation could be simplified."
"One thing I'd like to see in a future release is integration between their main storage array and what they call their FlashBlade product; to be able to snapshot directly from the primary array into multiple different backup copies on FlashBlade."
"In the next release I would like to see integration into other third-party player providers like Google."
"I would like FlashArray to add reports that help us forecast our predicted resource needs based on current usage."
"The speed can always be improved."
"I would love for them to have a hyper-converged solution."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution."
"The price of the solution is fair."
"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."
"There are no additional costs associated with the product."
"The price-to-performance is good. I looked at Pure about three to four years back, but the price-to-performance wasn't right for us. Now, it's right."
"The price of the solution is not expensive."
"Because the price is a bit higher than other products, the data reduction equalizes the price with amount of the data reduction."
"I would prefer that they lower their pricing."
"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."
"While more expensive than NetApp, Pure Storage FlashArray offers superior performance that often justifies the higher cost and adds value overall."
"We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
"When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Storage Software solutions are best for your needs.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Transportation Company
14%
Healthcare Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Educational Organization
33%
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?
I don't have the billing details right now, but the pricing is high.
 

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: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.