Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8, while NetApp is ranked #29. Dell Technologies holds a 7.7% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 97% 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: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

September 2026

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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

Everpure FlashArray

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 6.4%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 7.7%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 1.5%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dell PowerStore	7.7%
Everpure FlashArray	6.4%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays	1.5%
Other	84.4%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV

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.

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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 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."

"I find Pure Storage FlashArray to be much better than traditional storage because it has a GUI interface. It makes the process of allocating the storage much easier, and most activities are automated. It is like clicking a button for every task."

"If you need a high-performance storage appliance that is easy to install and maintain, you pretty much can't go wrong."

"It has improved my organization in the way that now we have lower latency, we get fewer complaints from customers, and we see a constant response time."

"The most valuable features are extremely low latency, high IOPS with VMware, inline deduplication and compression."

"This is the best all-flash storage array on the market."

"All my customers are pretty happy with most Pure Storage solutions."

"The ease of use. That's what our customers love. They say it's very easy, they don't need special training, they don't need to call us or any other company or integrator to help them do their job. That's the main reason they purchase Pure."

More Everpure FlashArray pros

"My experience with deploying Dell PowerStore was that the installation was straightforward."

"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is the ease of deployment and general use."

"From the last 10 years, my company is actually using Dell PowerStore, and we have great results regarding data redundancy, data storage, data mapping, and availability of the data."

"The solution's technical support is excellent. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."

"You can add compute and capacity independently. We have sized the solution based on our current needs, but in the future we can choose to increase capacity if we grow our activity in the market. And if we have more business in our monetary system, we can increase compute. The ability to choose what we increase is a good feature."

"The main benefit is the security and immutability that we have with the technology, which we demonstrated in an external audit."

"Dell PowerStore has benefited our organization through reliability, scalability, and trustworthiness, as it has been year after year the product that the teams constantly recommend."

"The feature of integrated AI and machine learning enhances the usage and operations of the storage, making it one of the key features of Dell PowerStore."

More Dell PowerStore pros

"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 NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our databases, and what's great about this solution is that it speeds up our data store because it is a cheap solution for flash performances."

"The most valuable feature for us is the ability to move the workload between peers, and it also has a huge advantage of helping us cut down on power consumption."

"The main advantage of this solution is performance."

"Our use case is both corporate storage and for all of our datacenter and back-end enterprise applications."

"The stability, speed, and reliability are the solution's best features. The information is also very secure."

"The benefits are better up-time, better response time."

"At the end of the day, low latency was what geared us towards the EF."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pros

Cons

"The problem is that we can only make a few groups, around five or six groups. I like groups and we need a lot of them. We had to put all the information in only a few groups and cannot make a more detailed separation of them."

"Beyond a certain amount of petabytes, you have to have a separate system. Basically, it's not infinitely scalable."

"The credentials on the iSCSI interface are only available to type in with the Chrome browser, and not with the Firefox browser."

"The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers."

"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."

"This product has only two active controllers, whereas other solutions can have more. This is something that needs to improve."

"I wish they could add more of a monitor on the machine itself so you don't have to rely on a KVM or something to look at the display, such as an onboard diagnostic display."

"It took us a year to get it to stabilize and to get the best out of Pure."

More Everpure FlashArray cons

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

"I would like to see a Snapshot feature. Currently, it is unable to occupy the capacity."

"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 update cycle should be automated or scheduled. Currently, it takes a full day of my job to update Dell PowerStore nodes, and if I have to do two, my entire day is focused on the update process."

"There are crashes from time to time. We had a controller problem once where something broke."

"I would have preferred if Dell PowerStore could have a common operating system across all their products, as that would be of great advantage."

"There are some management issues in Dell PowerStore. I have managed several pieces of Dell PowerStore's hardware area, and I could feel that it was almost like a step back in certain areas when it came to the management interface."

"There is an issue with Dell PowerStore related to future expansions which are software-related."

More Dell PowerStore cons

"Its pricing should be better. Its price is competitive, but they need to improve the pricing. They have different licensing models, which they need to improve. My expectation was cloud integration, which they have, but it is a different license. Therefore, people cannot enjoy it. If I want to use it, I need to pay extra. There is a cost involved for everything, but it should reach everyone. It is similar to having a Rolls-Royce, but you need to pay extra for the key. If you want the key, you need to pay."

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

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

"The pricing could be cheaper and it should have documentation in more languages, specifically, Russian."

"Its pricing should be better. They have different licensing models, which they need to improve."

"If you're not using DDP, it is a little tedious to configure."

"I’d like to see bigger, faster, better hardware, of course. I think that is the way the hardware is trending anyway; bigger, faster CPU, better software, fewer bugs, all that stuff. T"

"For us, in our country, the solution is a bit expensive."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."

"There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."

"For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."

"Our Evergreen Storage subscription is supposed to be good when we go to upgrade."

"The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."

"The best features come included without any additional cost."

"We have an Evergreen Storage subscription, which I think is a great feature."

"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."

More Everpure FlashArray pricing and cost advice

"We are currently using Dell PowerStore for our smaller storage and there is no competition for pricing."

"The software features are included in the pricing without any additional purchase requirements."

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

"If we use the 500 or 1000, the licensing and pricing are reasonable. PowerStore can compete with any vendor and the price isn't that expensive."

"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 is expensive."

"We purchased it with a five-year warranty."

"The solution’s pricing is always too high."

More Dell PowerStore pricing and cost advice

"They need to improve its pricing. The storage market is dying. So, they need to improve the price because it should reach all people. NetApp is one of the top ones, and they are charging a little bit of royalty as compared to other storage solutions."

"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."

"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."

"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."

"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."

"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."

"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Construction Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	73
Midsize Enterprise	38
Large Enterprise	161

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	83
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	124

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

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...

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

When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?

The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.

See all answers

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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Comparisons

NetApp AFF vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 6% of the time

VAST Data vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 5% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 4% of the time

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CTERA Intelligent Data Platform vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 13% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 13% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 5% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 4% of the time

Dell PowerVault vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 4% of the time

More Dell PowerStore Competitors

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 12% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 11% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 10% of the time

Dell XtremIO vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 5% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 4% of the time

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray

November 2026

Download Everpure FlashArray product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore

November 2026

Download Dell PowerStore product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

October 2026

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report

Download NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays product report

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray

PowerStore

NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series

Overview

The FlashArray family delivers consistent, high-performance data services across block, file, and object workloads. As part of the Everpure Platform, it provides the foundation for a unified data plane, enabling applications to reliably access, protect, and manage data across environments with simplicity and predictability. With built-in capabilities such as inline data reduction, snapshots, replication, and ransomware resilience, FlashArray ensures efficient operations, protected data, and consistent application uptime.

As the foundation of the (unified) data plane, FlashArray enables policy-driven automation, monitoring, and centralized management while integrating across cloud and on-premises environments. Built on an Evergreen architecture, it supports non-disruptive upgrades and continuous performance improvements over time while simplifying operations at scale.

What Key Features Does FlashArray Offer?

Simplicity and Speed: Easy management and rapid performance enhancements.
Data Reduction: Effective deduplication and compression.
Flash Architecture: Seamless upgrades and outstanding resilience.
VMware Integration: Excellent compatibility with virtualization platforms.
Predictive Analytics: Strong insights for proactive management.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Reliability: Proactive support with minimal downtime.
Efficiency: Reduced storage footprint and enhanced data management.
Performance: Faster processing speeds and low latency.
User Experience: Simplified management with Evergreen model.

In industries like finance, banking, and healthcare, FlashArray supports high-performance storage needs focusing on virtualization and database environments. Employed for VMware workloads, disaster recovery, and storage provisioning, it ensures application performance in private or hybrid cloud setups while enhancing management of virtualized environments.

Everpure (formerly 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

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays excels in high-performance storage with fast speeds and low latency, suitable for demanding environments like databases. It offers simplified management and integration, making it an efficient and reliable choice for data-intensive tasks.

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays provides robust storage for applications needing exceptional IOPS and low power usage. Renowned for ease of integration and management, they seamlessly fit into existing infrastructures. While known for dependable performance in SQL and Oracle databases, they are popular for blending ease of use with advanced storage capabilities. However, the need for larger and faster drives, improved NVMe integration, and a more intuitive interface remains. Desired features also include enhanced monitoring, smooth cloud integration, comprehensive encryption, and clearer licensing.

What are the key features of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

High Performance: Delivers high speed and low latency for demanding applications like SQL databases.
Management Simplicity: Streamlines deployment and integration for hassle-free management.
Diverse Connectivity: Offers various connectivity options to fit into different infrastructures.
Cost-Effective: Balances affordability with robust performance and reliability.

What benefits should you look for when evaluating NetApp EF-Series?

Improved IOPS: Boosts application performance with high IOPS capabilities.
Low Power Consumption: Reduces operational costs with efficient energy usage.
Reliable Database Access: Ensures consistent performance for critical applications.
Comprehensive Integration: Enhances compatibility within diverse IT environments.

In industry-specific implementations, companies utilize NetApp EF-Series in virtualized environments and private clouds, often incorporating hybrid models. It's prevalent in sectors like banking, oil and gas, and gaming, where speed and dependability are critical. Tech consultancies deploy these arrays for diverse data management tasks, including CCTV solutions.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas

Information Not Available

RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

September 2026

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: September 2026.

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