Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7, while NetApp is ranked #24 with an average rating of 9.0. Dell Technologies holds a 14.7% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and Dell PowerStore are leading solutions in the storage array market. Dell PowerStore often edges out with its advanced features and flexibility, despite NetApp EF-Series being favored for its competitive pricing and reliable support.

Features: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are praised for their high performance and simplicity, offering efficient data protection and management. Dell PowerStore stands out with its scale-up and scale-out architecture, advanced deduplication, and integration with VMware. Users find Dell PowerStore's features more extensive and adaptable to various workloads.

Room for Improvement: NetApp EF-Series users seek more advanced automation capabilities and improved scalability options. Dell PowerStore users express a need for greater stability in software updates and enhanced initial setup processes. Dell PowerStore generally receives more favorable feedback despite these concerns.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetApp EF-Series is commended for its straightforward deployment and robust customer support. Dell PowerStore, while noted for its intuitive deployment experience, faces criticism for occasional complexities in advanced configurations. Both products are supported well, but NetApp EF-Series leads in ease of initial deployment.

Pricing and ROI: NetApp EF-Series is appreciated for its competitive pricing and solid ROI backed by lower setup costs. Dell PowerStore, though seen as an initial higher investment, is valued for its long-term ROI due to its extensive features and performance enhancements. Ultimately, Dell PowerStore's advanced capabilities justify its price for many users.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

December 2025

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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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 14.7%, down from 17.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 0.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dell PowerStore	14.7%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.4%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays	0.9%
Other	83.0%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

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reviewer2304864

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.

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Tayo Olubanke

Managing Director at GCET

Offers flexibility and top-notch technology

You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"Dell EMC PowerStore is scalable."

"The most impactful feature is the data reduction."

"Reliability is the most impactful feature of Dell PowerStore for my organization; it works well, with no issues at all, and that is very important."

"PowerStore is robust compared to the previous models like Unity, and it provides excellent compression and deduplication."

"The features of Dell PowerStore that I like the most include the simplified web GUI, and setting up replication to protection groups on the other site was pretty straightforward."

"I am saving costs because I am getting better performance and deduplication rates."

"A particularly valuable feature is its simplicity."

"The administration tools take advantage of machine learning and make recommendations to the admins, and that makes the administration easier."

More Dell PowerStore pros

"Some of the valuable features include MetroCluster switchover, in terms of disaster recovery, it is easy to use, and flexible."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

"The product's initial setup phase can be managed easily and completed in 20 to 30 minutes. It is one of the fastest storage tools that you can implement."

"The replication and mirroring features are very good."

"Rapid deployment, easy integration management and cloning of areas."

"Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market."

"The management software is very good."

"We use it for our VDI environment, and have not had any complaints with it."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pros

Cons

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

"We need better data deduplication."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The cost of technical support is high."

"If I needed more capacity, it quickly moves out of Dell PowerStore into something else. If I needed something more, I would prefer to stay in the Dell PowerStore ecosystem."

"Dell PowerStore is a good solution overall, but some models could support hypervisors better by allowing for more customization and flexibility for customer needs."

"The service user is only used with the CLI and cannot log into the GUI, which is not a good feature because you cannot perform any maintenance from the GUI."

"In one instance, a single PowerStore array provided only 3 to 4 GBPS, which was not satisfactory."

"Dell PowerStore is an unfinished product compared to the HPE systems because it is relatively new."

"They could improve the upgrade process. Currently, there are many manual steps required before upgrading the firmware."

"The only thing is that with PowerStore, we don't have a solution for the file object."

More Dell PowerStore cons

"There could be better integration with some of our Cisco products."

"A little more manageability, a simpler management interface. It's not necessarily that it's way overly complex. It's just that it's not as easy as the FAS series."

"The only major drawback is the replication between EF-Series units."

"This solution has limited storage."

"NetApp could improve the speed of the rebuilding rate."

"I would like to have the ability to replicate data between All Flash and other NetApp storage systems."

"The dashboard could be simplified."

"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Dell PowerStore is not a cheap solution."

"HCL Tech has a TLA with Dell, so in terms of price point, we are very competitive. Based on my experience, the cost of Dell PowerStore for around 500 GB of capacity is very competitive compared to any other platform in the market."

"It is easy to work with Dell from the licensing perspective."

"When we compared it with the other solutions, the pricing of PowerStore was equal. The pricing is good."

"There are no separate licenses required as all the basic licenses are included in the bundle."

"The pricing structure and licensing model of Dell PowerStore are pretty decent. It's pretty competitive."

"The price of Dell PowerStore could improve. The price should be managed more compared to Huawei Dorado or IBM All-Flash series."

"In the pricing and licensing department, the product is always too expensive."

More Dell PowerStore pricing and cost advice

"The pricing of the solution is expensive, considering the initial investment required...At the end of the product's life cycle, it could get cheaper, but the initial investment in NetApp makes it one of the most expensive solutions."

"The pricing is comparable with other competitors and similar in mid-range solutions, and for high range solutions, it would depend on our requirements or needs."

"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."

"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."

"The cost of our license is approximately $200,000 over three years for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. There can be additional costs for storage. For example, if you want to have eight terabytes."

"Its cost-effectiveness is a major selling point. Compared to other storage vendors, the EF-Series offers excellent value for its price. It's truly a leading product in the industry."

"They provide licenses upon purchase, so there's no need for additional licenses. Regarding additional expenses apart from the standard licensing fees, such as for support or maintenance, there aren't any. Updates take around twenty to thirty minutes, including rebooting the systems, and we haven't faced any problems with the NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We utilize various other storages like Fujitsu, IBM, and Dalian SIP, but the NetApp EF-Series stands out as we've had no issues throughout the entire year of usage."

"he price point that we're getting is very competitive in the market. Since we are buying in such a large quantity, they gave us a huge discount."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

14%

Performing Arts

11%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	54
Midsize Enterprise	34
Large Enterprise	81

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	18

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

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What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to rene...

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What needs improvement with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's supp...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

There are so many things to talk about around the use cases associated with the tool. There are so many reasons why I...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

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HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 14% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerVault vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 9% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 8% of the time

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NetApp AFF vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 16% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp ASA vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 10% of the time

Dell XtremIO vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 9% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 9% of the time

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

January 2026

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore

January 2026

Download Dell PowerStore product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

January 2026

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report

Download NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

PowerStore

NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

Dell PowerStore is a scalable, high-performance platform supporting both modern and traditional workloads, enhancing IT operations with AI-driven automation and advanced data reduction features.

Designed for flexibility, Dell PowerStore integrates seamlessly with VMware, providing robust security and high IOPS. Users benefit from fast NVMe storage, intelligent data management, and scalable performance to handle diverse workload demands. However, improvements are needed in replication, enterprise functionalities, and UI complexity. Stability and support issues highlight the need for enhanced monitoring and pricing strategies.

What are the key features of Dell PowerStore?

Advanced Compression: Optimizes storage capacity effectively.
Data Deduplication: Reduces redundant data, improving efficiency.
Scalability: Easily adjusts to growing business needs.
VMware Integration: Enhances virtualization performance.
AI-Driven Management: Simplifies IT operations.
NVMe Storage: Provides fast, reliable access to data.
Robust Security: Ensures data protection.

What benefits does Dell PowerStore offer?

High Performance: Supports demanding applications with high IOPS.
Flexible Design: Adapts to changing workload requirements.
Cost Efficiency: Promotes ROI through data reduction and scaling.
Enhanced Management: Streamlines operations with AI and integrations.
Improved Data Handling: Efficiently manages databases and storage.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and IT, Dell PowerStore is critical for VMware virtualization, high-performance databases, and backup storage. It supports hosting virtual machines, mirroring storage, and handling SAP and Oracle databases effectively. Its role in hybrid and on-premises setups showcases its adaptability and integration capabilities for mission-critical tasks.

Dell Technologies

The NetApp EF560 all-flash array is an all-SSD storage system for applications that demand extremely high levels of performance and reliability. Requiring just 2U of rack space, the EF560 all-flash array combines extreme IOPS, microsecond response times, and up to 12GBps of bandwidth with leading, enterprise-proven availability features.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

December 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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