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Dell PowerStore vs Dell VMAX All Flash comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerStore
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
187
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), NAS (2nd), Enterprise SAN (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
Dell VMAX All Flash
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
29th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.5%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 10.8%, down from 17.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell VMAX All Flash is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerStore10.8%
Everpure FlashArray7.5%
Dell VMAX All Flash0.7%
Other81.0%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2304864 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vmware Windows Senior Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Resilience has supported proactive management and secured audit readiness across multiple sites
The resilience in Dell PowerStore benefits my company from an auditing perspective because we know we have that resilience in place. I see Dell PowerStore playing a bigger role in the future because we are starting to use it more, and that is pushing it. The biggest return on investment for me when using Dell PowerStore is scalability. Scalability is key. I can amplify that scalability is the biggest return on investment because we have redundancy between two sites; if something goes down, we have to manage it, but we want to do it proactively.
AS
Solution Architect at a agriculture with 10,001+ employees
Performance and interface improve data processing speeds but require complex configuration
The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface. We have seen significant improvements in technology over the last four to five years. The snap feature, along with deduplication, has notably enhanced our data processing speeds. We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's easy to use, and the maintenance upgrades to get free controllers work really well."
"My advice to others looking into using Everpure FlashArray is that it's a really good product, especially if your main purpose is to get high speed with more redundancy and reliability; then go for it."
"Compared to Unity, these arrays offer significant advantages, such as NVMe technology and higher IOPS."
"Pure gives us better compression, it's easier to manage, a lot less hands-on, and the biggest selling point for me was the replacement of the hardware, the controllers, without any major expense to the clinic."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides."
"We can store more for a cheaper price as opposed to paying for larger devices and larger rack spaces which get outdated sooner and which we'd have to change every two years. It simplifies storage for us."
"The performance of the storage is just unbelievable."
"This solution has helped my organization by cutting down on provisioning time. I used to have to provision a VM and it would take ten minutes. Now, it takes thirty seconds."
"The beauty is the simplicity - customers can manage multiple workloads from a single dashboard with scale-out architecture."
"The administration tools take advantage of machine learning and make recommendations to the admins, and that makes the administration easier."
"My experience with deploying Dell PowerStore was that the installation was straightforward."
"While I note some potential for future enhancements, Dell PowerStore is already a leader in customer satisfaction."
"Dell PowerStore is very simple to implement, and its user interface is very simple."
"The biggest trust element is people are very happy to depend on a Dell infrastructure."
"It's really good, price-wise. It's cost-effective."
"I would recommend Dell PowerStore to others and I think it is the best option on the market at the moment, especially for enterprise storage where Dell PowerMax is still the top storage solution."
"The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface."
"We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution."
"The snapshot feature has been precious for our testing processes, application development, and managing testing environments due to its efficiency and ease of use."
"It works very well."
"The product's initial setup phase was good."
"The ransomware protection feature is housed in a separate unit, specifically addressing the top twenty most critical threats."
 

Cons

"They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth."
"I would like to see a Nagios monitoring plugin which watches the health and performance of the system."
"Improved reporting on the deduplication and compression functionality would be beneficial."
"I had to contact customer support when a drive failed as I was doing a couple of OS upgrades."
"The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."
"It was a little costly. The price was ultimately higher than both of the other solutions that we evaluated. I'd say that's the only downside."
"Enhanced documentation and beginner-friendly guidelines would benefit users with less configuration experience."
"Pure Storage can improve FlashArray by providing more logging visibility to customers. Currently, there is no log visibility."
"From the price perspective, I think it should be less expensive to better position it against vendors such as IBM or Hitachi, since sometimes it is hard to sell it due to higher pricing."
"I would improve Dell PowerStore by enhancing the replication feature because currently, users are limited to one applier, from one cluster, a Dell PowerStore cluster, to another Dell PowerStore cluster, but are not able to configure a three-site scenario."
"The licensing is a little bit high, but the product is very good."
"Sometimes, you have to go back and forth with the technical support team, where they want you to do something you've already done."
"We had a significant incident two years ago when I was preparing one of the Dell PowerStore systems for an upgrade. While running the health check, it started to corrupt every volume inside the system."
"I do not like having to use VPLEX for synchronous replication, as opposed to having the store software built-in."
"I would say it needs easier or increased compatibility with other storage solutions for easier application, such as Dell's own PowerVault."
"Dell PowerStore can improve the integration with VMware."
"Improvements are needed in both partition recovery and scalability."
"There is room for improvement in the centralized administration."
"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability."
"The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"We encountered some challenges during large data migrations that could be addressed for smoother transitions."
"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additional engines to address this limitation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of ten. It is expensive but not too much."
"Pure Storage is expensive. It comes with features, so you get what you pay for. It is expensive compared to our old storage systems, but from the amount of human effort that you have to pay to babysit a storage system, it reduces that. I don't know if the TCO is reduced, but it's not a concern for us."
"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."
"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."
"Pricing is very competitive, and it's better than other competitors."
"You get what you pay for. It is expensive, but it really works."
"The price is reasonable."
"When I last looked, the prices were reasonable, and we could get an excellent array for about $60,000."
"Dell PowerStore is more expensive than Dell EMC Unity All Flash. Dell PowerStore's performance metrics were way higher than what Dell EMC Unity All Flash offered."
"There's still a cap on the upgrade path, where you can consume all the engines within the frame before you have to go to another frame... Normally, we exceed the IOPS on the frames before we can ever exhaust the storage, so anything they can do to help us avoid stranded storage capacity, capacity that we couldn't get to, would be beneficial."
"The rate is always too high. Nobody likes paying for it. I have not seen a client yet who says that the price should be higher. Initially, people look at it, but when they see what the benefits are, it is a no-brainer. We can give them good pricing at the outset."
"The solution's price was comparable to other products for the use case, size, and setup."
"PowerStore's pricing is reasonable."
"We purchased it with a five-year warranty."
"The pricing rates at seven out of ten as it is considered overpriced. Entry-level models are reasonably priced, starting around $30,000 for a base model with 6 drives. However, upgrades become costly - adding 6 additional drives can cost another $30,000."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"The price falls within the mid-range, neither inexpensive nor high-priced."
"It is not a cheap product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise151
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business60
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise91
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated managem...
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...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC VMax?
The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additiona...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC VMax?
We use the solution for SAP ERP applications. We utilize both VMAX and PowerMax for different aspects of our operations.
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
PowerStore
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
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Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. Dell VMAX All Flash and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.