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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
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
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 (4th)
 

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 17.9%, up 9.3% compared to last year.
Pure Storage FlashArray, on the other hand, focuses on All-Flash Storage, holds 6.6% mindshare, down 7.5% 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

"It provides a high availability and will increase the performance of any server or operating system."
"The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."
"The product is very reliable."
"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is migration without disruptions."
"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."
"The user interface is good."
"We've had to use tech support on a number of occasions. They did everything remotely and talked us all the way through. They fixed the issue within 30 minutes. Every single time we contact them, they're perfect. I would give their technical support a ten out of ten."
"The compression rate is one of the most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray. Additionally, it is all-flash storage with excellent IOPS, and hardware failures are very less."
"The benefits were realized right away. Between the flash array and the compression, you can really see how good it is. Our databases run a lot better now."
"They have a very good support system, and the GUI is also very intuitive."
"It comes with a large number of features out-of-the-box, which makes it easy for us to see problems and manage capacity."
"The most valuable feature is replication."
"The deduplication in the array combined with its snap technologies allows the product to be remotely/manually controlled or scheduled."
"The first year, we started out with one or five terabytes and it took what was 20 terabytes of storage down to less than one terabyte."
 

Cons

"While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective."
"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Customers do not choose PowerPath unless they have Unix or Linux."
"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."
"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 solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."
"The technical support is good but they are not available all the time."
"There's always an opportunity for new feature functionality."
"The price of the solution can improve."
"I recognize it's a difficult challenge, but I would like to see them make the pricing more reasonable."
"I would like to get a weekly report of how our storage has been used, and if there is any storage sitting there not being used."
"There are a lot of things to improve."
"When we were doing some tests, we found that there was an I/O freeze when they were switching the controller."
"In the next release I would like to see integration into other third-party player providers like Google."
"Pure Storage's logs could provide more visibility to the end-user. The logging algorithms are different from those of other vendors. For example, Cisco's logs provide extensive troubleshooting data, whereas Pure Storage logs offer limited information. We have to contact support to get more information."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"There are no additional costs associated with the product."
"The product is a little bit 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 price of the solution is fair."
"I have had a couple of customers who have complained about the cost. It can be a little more expensive than some of the other platforms. After it has been installed, I have never had a customer say, "I wish we wouldn't have spent all that extra money." They have always been happy with the product after it has been installed. They might be on the fence about it because of the price, but everybody who I have ever seen install it, they are always happy with it."
"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."
"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."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
"It could always be lower, but it's okay."
"Because of the SSD, it is cheaper because I am not purchasing so many disks."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Transportation Company
17%
Healthcare Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Retailer
11%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
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
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