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Dell SC Series vs VMAX [EOL] comparison

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Executive Summary

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

Dell SC Series
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays (2nd), All-Flash Storage (23rd)
VMAX [EOL]
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

RK
System Administrator at Lovely Professional University
Storage solutions accommodate diverse drives and offers good resiliency
Technical support is good. I can log complaints online through the portal and have engineers in line. I can also take dedicated engineers if needed, although this involves a different support cost. As far as my requirements are concerned, it is working fine. There are two or three types of support. Standard support involves logging a complaint and receiving a call from the OEM on the same day, but hardware replacement takes two to three days. Advanced support offers instant replacement without delays. Hardware support terms include calling or emailing the company or logging the call in the portal to receive remote support, or getting a dedicated engineer or account manager from Dell.
Ali Yazıcı - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Service Manager at Kuveyt Turk Participation Bank
Good interface that is customizable, and the technical support is good
Our primary use of this product is for our core banking servers over FC It is a high end storage, minimal downtime, reliable, good performance, get speedy support when we need. The user interface is good, and it is also customizable. snap and clone operations easy.  Stability and availability…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is good."
"It is a stable solution; we haven't had any downtime."
"Overall, the underlying technology they are using is really great."
"Technical support is really good. We have had good, high-quality support with our SC Series."
"With the SC Series SAN, the performance that we've gotten out of the boxes alleviated anyone's concerns."
"It is just as stable as any other high-end solution."
"With the hybrid storage approach, we can balance between cheap space and good performance."
"It had many features, like a snapshot, replication, on-the-file RAID levels, mix-and-match files, those kinds of things."
"This solution is resilient."
"VMAX is a rock solid foundation to deploy applications which cannot incur a disruption of service."
"We have never had a bad experience with it because we never had failures. It has good data availability and the performance is also okay."
"If someone is looking for a product that can give the best performance under heavy load then this is the product they must go for."
"I like the many new features, especially the all-flash solution."
"VMAX is more scalable and has better performance (gives more IOPS, more front end ports...)."
"It is a high end storage, minimal downtime, reliable, good performance, get speedy support when we need."
"Furthermore, EMC support is second to none, EMC engineers will visit your site to replace a disk or component before you are even aware that there is a problem (via ESRS – see below)."
 

Cons

"Overall, I'd like to see more synergy between Dell EMC's higher-tier platforms and their mid-tier platforms."
"Snapshots in VMware. You can’t do snapshots since the storage itself does that. Therefore, some apps (Veeam, for example) don’t work well with this kind of tiering storage."
"This product should be a lot more user-friendly."
"We need more discount, but it's good."
"Dell could improve the upgrading process. It was the lifecycle that made it very short."
"From a performance point of view, it's getting a bit old."
"We had some issues with the battery in the previous version that we were unable to resolve."
"Matching color coding during zoning is sometimes a little bit annoying."
"It is still expensive."
"I'd like to see improvements where we can scale out an existing array and remove older controllers\drives\etc., within the same subsystem."
"Manageability is a bit of a challenge, as the user interface to access the array is not very user-friendly."
"Stability and availability should be improved."
"Cost of the hardware tends to be high, however, you do get what you pay for."
"I'm always interested in ways we can scale out and avoid monolithic migrations from one array to another every four to five years."
"The way you configure larger size volumes needs improvement."
"I would like this solution to integrate the solution that Dell EMC vPlex offers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is one of the most cost effective systems for us. We have been able to run it longer than most, getting the most benefit and money out of it."
"Pricing depends on varying life cycles."
"This product is too expensive compared to others, and I don't see any value in using it."
"The pricing of Dell EMC Compellent is competitive."
"Always keep in mind, this is not just a enclosure with disks is a complete SAN as a service. There is software, license, and storage in one single solution."
"The scalability seems a bit more expensive than even buying a brand new one so far. That has been kind of a drawback."
"The pricing of this solution is competitive."
"Support typically depends on the array. It can range anywhere from $7,000 to a couple of hundred thousand dollars."
"There are additional costs to the standard licensing fee, and it just depends on the package."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Our licensing fees are billed on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Performing Arts
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

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 SC Series can be expensive for many companies, we received good discounts. The ...
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 already good. We cannot identify any significant areas that need improvement.
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

SC Series Storage, Compellent
Symmetrix VMAX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric
Wentworth-Douglas Hospital, Kindred Healthcare, Cosentry, Sumitomo Life Insurance Company, Shriners, BZWBK
Find out what your peers are saying about Hitachi Vantara, Dell Technologies, IBM and others in Frame-Based Disk Arrays. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.