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Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays 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 X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
18th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell PowerStore
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
175
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), NAS (1st), Enterprise SAN (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
24th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.6%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 13.8%, down from 17.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 1.0%, 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 PowerStore13.8%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe1.6%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays1.0%
Other83.6%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.
Tayo Olubanke - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."
"The best features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe include the volume snapshot capabilities, which allow us to save most of the storage space by volume snapshots periodically."
"What we've seen on the Xs, and the Pures in general, is that we can scale way beyond what we need to without any degradation in performance."
"After the testing, it was clear to us that the Pure FlashArray X NVMe was the easiest to manage and configure and had the best performance that we had seen in all the arrays."
"That's the value Dell creates; you invest less, and you get a better ROI."
"Overall, Dell PowerStore is very competitive in the market and able to beat the competition."
"Dell PowerStore's compression and deduplication technologies are a big help for our organization. It's saving us a lot of storage compared to what we were previously using."
"The improvement is massive; even a couple of milliseconds makes a significant difference to our production throughput, allowing products to leave the door more efficiently, which also cuts back on overtime and ensures we can complete our daily tasks in the required hours."
"We find NAS to be the most impactful feature of Dell PowerStore. The compression and deduplication technology is very important and essential, and this was one of the reasons that we decided to go with Dell PowerStore."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is its easy-to-use feature, specifically the simplicity."
"PowerStore is robust compared to the previous models like Unity, and it provides excellent compression and deduplication."
"Dell EMC PowerStore is scalable."
"We have high use cases for SQL databases, most of our business critical applications use SQL to allow us to complete the DoD mission needs, so we have been using the EF-series for about two years now and everything has been going smoother and faster."
"The stability, speed, and reliability are the solution's best features. The information is also very secure."
"This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs."
"We do a lot of in-house, application-dependent type things, where we find the different niches to the different things. Certain things they do better. We've found that it actually does very well on some of our higher-end applications."
"You can't beat it for the price."
"Its performance is most valuable. This solution is much faster than other as well as older storage solutions. The performance of the system is very good. We are getting 50 times better experience than the older storages. We are using AFF 300. It also has native cloud integration and most of the features."
"We found all of those things in NetApp."
"For anyone who has critical workloads like Oracle databases or DB2, NetApp All-Flash Arrays will suit their needs, as long as it fits within their budget."
 

Cons

"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."
"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."
"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"The replication part needs improvement, particularly the integration of RecoverPoint."
"One improvement I would suggest relates to the service that pings Dell when there's an issue. I would say it needs to be more transparent."
"It needs more mature code."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"The data resiliency and cybersecurity features of Dell PowerStore are just normal and would be considered medium; we need additional components such as cybersecurity vault for increased resilience."
"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 interface of Dell PowerStore reminds me of the Cisco mentality where it's just boxes moving around as you're clicking; it's not easy to understand what you're trying to do, and you have to have solid documentation to navigate the system and make changes to ensure you're not jeopardizing your system as you present and remove storage and expand LUNs."
"Some of the data metrics we get out of Pure from a support perspective online are a little bit more robust than the Dell PowerStore metrics, but it's not a negative against Dell."
"We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily."
"They could improve the product’s tools."
"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."
"The price of the All Flash solution is very high."
"The solution's technical support is not as good as it is supposed to be since you have to push them to get support."
"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."
"It's very difficult to manage the CLI."
"The price of the All Flash solution is very high."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."
"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"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."
"The software features are included in the pricing without any additional purchase requirements."
"With compression, we were able to have a solution within our company's budget. We include a clause in the contract with Dell that states if the compression ratio is not met, we will adjust the workload accordingly."
"I rate the price of Dell PowerStore a seven out of ten."
"Dell PowerStore has been priced aggressively, especially when compared to other NVMe storage options. It is likely one of the most cost-effective options for organizations seeking a pure NVMe play in terms of pricing."
"The licensing for this solution is good and is in the mid-range tier."
"The price is not cheap, but it's worth it for the features you get from the storage. If you can afford it, you are probably buying the best solution that you can have for this virtual environment."
"It is very expensive though when you get to this point of using the 3000 with a client. They will start to think about using another vendor. There are a lot of solutions similar to PowerStore in regards to networking capacity and their prices are very cheap compared to PowerStore."
"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."
"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."
"NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is an expensive product."
"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."
"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."
"One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to renew the license."
"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."
"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."
"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
10%
Performing Arts
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business55
Midsize Enterprise34
Large Enterprise87
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
 

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.
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...
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 ...
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 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...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X, Pure FlashArray X NVMe
PowerStore
NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Information Not Available
RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.