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Dell SC Series vs Pavilion HyperParallel Flash Array 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
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell SC Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
16th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays (2nd)
Pavilion HyperParallel Flas...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
35th
Average Rating
9.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (24th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.5%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pavilion HyperParallel Flash Array is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dell SC Series1.2%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe1.5%
Pavilion HyperParallel Flash Array0.3%
Other97.0%
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.
RafaelGamaluis - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect Engineer, IT INFRASTRUCTURES Project Manager at Vilavi
User interface offers clarity and detailed information while technical support consistently delivers
The best features of Dell SC Series are stability and replication. The replication solution is excellent, and they have a solution named Live Migration. It is a robust platform. The interface and the GUI (graphical user interface) for administrating the Compellent are exceptional, with abundant information that is very clear. The management capabilities are excellent, and the stability of our storage hardware is remarkable.
it_user1534224 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of Production Systems at a media company with 10,001+ employees
Good support, improves performance, scales well, and boosts team efficiency
For us, in terms of what is very important, is keeping pace with the evolution of the new standards. For example, as PCI Express 4.0 becomes more ubiquitous, moving into PCI Express 5 is important. Having an architecture that can truly utilize 200-gig or maybe 400-gig networking, or having storage densities in line with what we would expect in a Gen 4, Gen 5 PCI Express, are things that as they come available, I hope that the vendor is looking at that going into the future. We need this because we're really at the point where our workloads are about to explode outwards. I would like to see the management layer improved. HyperOS 3.0 is excellent, and this is important because one of the things that we looked at in the beginning, before HyperOS 3.0 had been released, was that this is an excellent technology and it's very versatile, but it would be great if we could run certain things on this box. It would be helpful if there were more ways to consume the APIs or if there were some ways to get into the hardware, get into the functionality of the system programmatically, or have flexibility where, for example, we just need to do quick namespaces, or something similar. We don't want to deploy an entire secondary storage layer on top of this. Rather, we just want to run something quick. Having a containerized system or having some sort of first-party support for basic storage functionality, or basic extensibility would be excellent for us. In many ways, these boxes are very malleable. It's a blank slate, but having a little more in terms of, if you want more directed use of it, having some way to really get at that, would be helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."
"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"The user interface is good, I would rate it a nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is the no-forklift upgrade. While the thing is running, I can change out the controllers one at a time and keep the customer up and running. I can add shelves and storage and SSD drives or spinning drives to the system, while it's running. I can bring all that in and rebalance the load across the new disks or, if we take disks away, rebalance the load across what's remaining, and it just works."
"One time, we had a drive fail and we were notified before we even saw it on the device."
"Everything is sub-5 MS for us. What I've found is that, with all-flash, when an app from my business is slow, I pretty much know it's them and not me. It leads to a performance conversation that has really hit an interesting threshold point where we are better than what they need. So now we get to have that "refactoring your application" conversation a lot quicker because now the performance on the infrastructure side isn't in question anymore."
"It is just as stable as any other high-end solution."
"It is suitable for small or medium businesses."
"It had many features, like a snapshot, replication, on-the-file RAID levels, mix-and-match files, those kinds of things."
"In terms of stability, it's good enough. It's okay."
"There's lots of flexibility in how we use the resources while also maintaining a small footprint."
"The high performance is very valuable, as well as the enterprise reliability features."
"We have been able to consolidate storage into Pavilion. Pavilions are our only SANs because it is a bring your own disk solution. When new drives come out, we are able to take out half of the drives in the system, put in new drives, move our VMs over to the new drives, take the other drives out, and populate those with new drives. Then, we are suddenly twice as dense as we were before. NVMe flash is only going to get denser and cheaper so we can make use of that every couple of years by just throwing newer disks into it at a fraction of the cost of a new SAN."
 

Cons

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."
"We need better data deduplication."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"From a performance point of view, it's getting a bit old."
"We can definitely see a need for it being a multi-controller system for customers who want to scale beyond the current capability. That's always a downside. A lot of the new systems are scaling vertically, they scale out, and the Compellent, of course, is controllers with shelves under it, so you don't scale out with it, unless you add another one. But if you do, they don't talk to each other, like some of the other solutions that we sell."
"We had times that we needed a file service solution. We've used FluidFS, but it's a solution that is being transitioned out."
"The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series."
"We have seen some degraded throughput with mixed workloads. We have been working with Dell EMC to correct some of these latency issues."
"Overall, I'd like to see more synergy between Dell EMC's higher-tier platforms and their mid-tier platforms. What I have said, constantly, to my partners at Dell EMC is that the clear articulation of the path is really important to us. In that vein, what I'd also like to see is, with the migration strategy that's built into this product, a lot more attention paid to Dell's - in particular - legacy platforms and how we get from some of our legacy EMC platforms onto this platform with a straight-through migration and scaling strategy, not host-based migrations and not piecemeal... Dell EMC would do well to focus more on my ability to skip a generation, rather than having me take individual hops because I can't greenfield my way into a software-defined data center fast enough. This journey of multiple hops is not helpful."
"Compellent comes in the form of a component that's not true of a unified storage platform."
"There's always room for improvement in the operating code."
"The rail system that Pavilion uses to mount up into a standard Dell or APC cabinet extends further back than normal rails, and they cover up the zero PDU slot. So, I don't like the rail system that comes with the device. That is my biggest complaint."
"I would like to see the management layer improved."
"In our current configuration, we can only run the line controllers in high availability, active-standby mode, whereas we would like to see active-active implemented."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"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."
"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 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."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"Support typically depends on the array. It can range anywhere from $7,000 to a couple of hundred thousand dollars."
"There are costs involving the solution, vendor fees and product safety which are additional."
"The maintenance is usually pretty good. It's not like some of the others where they increase it in the fourth, fifth, or sixth years."
"The pricing of Dell EMC Compellent is competitive."
"The scalability seems a bit more expensive than even buying a brand new one so far. That has been kind of a drawback."
"We have reviewed many platforms over the years. It is probably the best solution for its value."
"We have the basic license for the use of this solution and it is a permanent license. The overall cost could be less, it is expensive."
"We have found it to be affordable. Comparing the cost with other hardware, it seems to be right in line with the compute and the storage that we get with it."
"The licensing fees are very reasonable."
"This is hardware. They have a singular array that you can populate with your own disk, or you can buy the disks through them. For controllers, you pay for the components inside of the SAN, but there is only one chassis that they work with."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
9%
Performing Arts
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

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 Business26
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise20
No data available
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell SC Series?
In our case, we received favorable pricing with Dell because of our strong partnership. While I acknowledge that Dell...
What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?
For us, it is a great product. The deduplication and compression could potentially be improved, though they are alrea...
What is your primary use case for Dell SC Series?
We use Dell SC Series in a VMware environment.
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
SC Series Storage, Compellent
Pavilion HFA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric
Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), Statistics Netherlands (CBS)
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. Pavilion HyperParallel Flash Array and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.