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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
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
202
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 16.5%, up 10.1% compared to last year.
Pure Storage FlashArray, on the other hand, focuses on All-Flash Storage, holds 6.4% mindshare, down 7.0% since last year.
Storage Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dell PowerPath16.5%
NetApp ONTAP37.7%
DataCore SANsymphony25.0%
Other20.799999999999997%
Storage Software
All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashArray6.4%
Dell PowerStore15.8%
HPE Alletra Storage10.0%
Other67.8%
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.
Parul-Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Expands capacity and requires minimal management
The main drawback is the support. I’ve been working for four years without a local representative, and although I’ve submitted many requests, nothing has changed. They sometimes call me in the middle of the night, even though I’ve informed them about my working hours. I often raise cases to speak with someone directly because I prefer to discuss issues over the phone rather than via email. I specifically request them to call me when I open a ticket, but they continually reply by email instead. This ongoing situation has been very frustrating in terms of the support I receive. As a technical professional, I lack visibility into the system logs. Whenever an issue arises, a ticket is opened for us. While I'm glad they take this step, it can be frustrating. They inform me, “Hey, we opened this ticket for you. It’s critical. Call me so we can discuss what’s going on.” However, as a product manager for my institution, I don’t have access to the logs, which are withheld due to, as they say, proprietary code. I understand that, but I have been working in storage for many years and am not new to this field. In fact, I spent 17 years at IBM Storage, dealing with large enterprise systems, not just small vendor products. I wish I could access the normal logs to diagnose issues myself, rather than relying solely on their information. Before I can escalate issues or open a checklist, I need to have a clear understanding of what’s happening based on the logs. Sometimes the situation feels rushed, and I end up having to push my support team for answers. There are moments when I feel like I’m left in the dark about the log details until I actually call them for clarification. It can be quite challenging. Pure Storage can improve FlashArray by providing more logging visibility to customers. Currently, there is no log visibility. They could include an audit log, but I cannot see any system logs when problems occur.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The user interface is good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is migration without disruptions."
"It provides a high availability and will increase the performance of any server or operating system."
"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."
"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."
"The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."
"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."
"The product is very reliable."
"We put a fair amount of stress on it because we run sequel workloads and we run web applications where the same web files are hit over and over. We have had almost zero stability issues with that SAN, that has been really great for us."
"The most valuable feature is replication."
"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."
"Processes that used to take 40 minutes to two hours can be completed in five minutes."
"As we needed to grow in capacity, we were able to do so without increasing footprint by replacing smaller devices with larger ones."
"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."
"This solution has improved our organization in the way that we used to see latency but now with this solution we don't. It also has good performance. Latencies have come down for our performance in the SQL databases. We can put a lot more in a lot less in terms of space savings. We also save data center space have good deduplication."
"Very stable; no worries about how much it can handle."
 

Cons

"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."
"Customers do not choose PowerPath unless they have Unix or Linux."
"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 technical support is good but they are not available all the time."
"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 product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."
"The solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."
"They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth."
"The integration capabilities could be improved."
"I had to contact customer support when a drive failed as I was doing a couple of OS upgrades."
"In the next release I would like to see integration into other third-party player providers like Google."
"I would like to see a Nagios monitoring plugin which watches the health and performance of the system. The only one available just checks volume capacity."
"I would like to have support available in Spanish."
"We would like to see more cloud support, which we know is coming, although it's not out yet. It's going to be released in the next versions. That would be the biggest win, if additional cloud support is built into the array."
"In the next release, I would like to see file-level encryption."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution."
"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."
"There are no additional costs associated with the product."
"Pricing is very competitive, and it's better than other competitors."
"Pure is typically more expensive than everyone else. You get what you pay for, but I have lost deals to similar solutions because of pricing. They include everything, and that's another positive about Pure Storage. They aren't trying to nickel and dime their customers for different features. It is all included in one price. The license is by capacity, and the price depends on the capacity and the discount we're getting from the vendor. You get the SKU of the physical appliance, support, and maintenance, and that's it. You're licensed for whatever feature they offer. It is all rolled up into the price of the appliance."
"The pricing is an issue. However, being all-flash, it will always be sort of expensive."
"The price, in general, is around $100,000, however, I know it costs more."
"We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it. A little bit better pricing would be great."
"The price of the solution is not expensive."
"Dell and Pure Storage offer competitive pricing, but Pure Storage might have a slight advantage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Transportation Company
15%
Healthcare Company
15%
Retailer
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business60
Midsize Enterprise34
Large Enterprise137
 

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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