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Dell PowerStore vs Pure Storage FlashArray 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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell PowerStore
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
119
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), NAS (1st), Enterprise SAN (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
Pure Storage FlashArray
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
199
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 16.8%, up from 16.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashArray is 6.5%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
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. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
Hassan_Zaki - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrated AI and clustering enhance storage operations effectively
I promote and recommend Dell PowerStore for all workloads to my clients and customers. Most of my customers have one appliance per site. Approximately 80% of my customers have Dell PowerStore implemented in their data centers. We always use CLS as another Dell solution for cybersecurity and data security. The CLS is integrated with the Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain, not with Dell PowerStore. Windows, Linux, and some customers use Red Hat or SUSE. We have many operating systems working with Dell PowerStore in the same environments and data centers. CloudIQ and Storage IQ are used by some customers, but Apex AIOps has not been widely adopted yet. Dell PowerStore has integration with VMware and Kubernetes. Most workloads work fine and have very good integration with Dell PowerStore, except for one or two specific workloads in the market. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell PowerStore a nine.
Nabeel Sayegh - PeerSpot reviewer
Supercharges enterprise storage by way of highly optimized hardware, comprehensive data management and a feature rich interface.
During their early years, I was a member of Pure's Customer Advisory Board. In addition, when we first adopted Pure, they did not have replication GA yet. We got into their beta testing program and help them work out certain issues with that technology. One weakness I can say the array has, still to this day, is limited control on scheduling snapshots. Depending on the type of replication schedule you are building, you may or may not have control on specifying the start time of a given replication schedule. This is not a very big problem in the grand scheme of things, but something nonetheless that has bothered me about the scheduler in general. Another area for improvement would be automatic host alias creation. Other platforms such as EMC Unity/PowerStore will automatically detect the host name, create a alias for it and associate the logged in HBA's to it. Pure does not do this for you and as a result, requires manual configuration. This can be very time consuming especially when you are deploying a large number of new servers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"The latency is good."
"I appreciate the performance."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is its immutable storage, which is what we are looking for. It offers high protection in terms of ransomware protection."
"The most valuable aspects of Dell PowerStore are integration with VMware and reliability."
"The stability has been excellent."
"The beauty is the simplicity - customers can manage multiple workloads from a single dashboard with scale-out architecture."
"Though the initial investment might seem high, achieving five times deduplication compression provides good value for money."
"The beauty is the simplicity - customers can manage multiple workloads from a single dashboard with scale-out architecture."
"PowerStore has helped us reduce our Capex by 20% to 40%."
"I like the performance of the PowerStore. When you talk about PowerStore, it's mainly about flash systems and high-end IOPS. The 1000T is a midsize box, in terms of the way the vendor positions it, but it is more than enough for our needs."
"Scalability is one of the best features. You can quickly add more. You can swap out the drives with larger sizes, you can add more shelves. All of that is perfect - the whole concept of keeping it modular..."
"I appreciate the ease of provisioning storage on Pure Storage FlashArray."
"On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the most comfortable pricing, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The management features are well organized and they have a very good dashboard."
"This solution is very scalable."
"The first year, we started out with one or five terabytes and it took what was 20 terabytes of storage down to less than one terabyte."
"The first set up we had was really straight forward and simple."
"All updates, upgrades, and hardware work are all performed on-line with no impact."
 

Cons

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."
"The software layer has to improve."
"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."
"I wish there were more options to fine-tune things. Some of the information requires deeper investigation to get data efficiency per data store."
"We would consider this solution if the pricing is competitive with other options, as it offers a very good solution. However, the current price is slightly higher than the competition."
"The only improvement that might be required, though not significantly, relates to the features that allow for support, specifically the call home features."
"The customer support is slow and has room for improvement."
"The UI should be a little more user-friendly to manage."
"The solution only does thin provisioning."
"Pricing must also be considered, as Dell PowerStore is quite expensive compared to competitors in the market like HPE Alletra, Huawei Dorado, or Hitachi storage, for example."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"We would like to see better troubleshooting aspects. It helps us if we can find out where the problem is. Right now, it's difficult. Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint the issue. If they had more visibility and more troubleshooting feature built into the tool that would really help."
"FlashArray could improve on the administrative side. For example, when you need to upgrade the boxes, we can't do that ourselves. We need to open a ticket with support and have them do that for us. You don't need to be on the call with them. We tell them we have a slot that we want to upgrade, and they send us an email when it's done."
"The pricing needs to be improved as they offer very high budgeting prices. Searching is a big challenge in Pure Storage FlashArrays, especially when trying to restore a VM."
"It needs to improve its price."
"They can also include file services such as NAS shares and CIFS shares. There should be provisioning of the file shares from a unified array."
"It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups."
"For large storage needs, it is expensive."
"The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"The product is expensive."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"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 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."
"The pricing structure and licensing model of Dell PowerStore are pretty decent. It's pretty competitive."
"We only have a single machine and we are currently using half of the hard disk slots. We have asked for an upgrade for the rest of the hard disks but, from my point of view, it costs too much. We have 12 to 15 hard disks inside and if we try to upgrade only the hard disks, it costs the same as the complete system. This is something I don't understand."
"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."
"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."
"PowerStore's pricing is reasonable."
"Pure Storage has not helped us to reduce our licensing costs."
"Our Evergreen Storage subscription is supposed to be good when we go to upgrade."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"Pricing is very competitive, and it's better than other competitors."
"Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
"We have an Evergreen Storage subscription, which I think is a great feature."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
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...
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 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

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
PowerStore
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Information Not Available
Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashArray and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.