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Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell XtremIO 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
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
232
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell VMAX All Flash
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
32nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell XtremIO
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
21st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 VMAX All Flash is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell XtremIO is 1.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray6.4%
Dell XtremIO1.8%
Dell VMAX All Flash0.7%
Other91.1%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
AS
Solution Architect at a agriculture with 10,001+ employees
Performance and interface improve data processing speeds but require complex configuration
The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface. We have seen significant improvements in technology over the last four to five years. The snap feature, along with deduplication, has notably enhanced our data processing speeds. We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution.
AS
System Engineer at Exaware
Has improved data reduction and snapshot efficiency while supporting critical workloads
There are some areas that could be improved with Dell XtremIO. The API to connect with command line or to see performance very clearly could be enhanced, similar to how NetApp works with Grafana and NetApp monitor, which shows you a comprehensive view of the whole picture. The snapshot functionality could work more similarly to Snap Center. If I want to see all the VCenter with the VM, I think it needs the API for this. I do see big differences between Dell and other products. NetApp works very closely with VCenter, and Hitachi also integrates well, but Dell is not very clear and does not proceed well with VCenter integration with Dell. It needs the API, and I need to see all the snapshots. If I want to restore a VM from only a few directories or a few files that I need to restore, it is very difficult. I do see some differences in licensing. For the last few years, the Dell EMC price is acceptable. A few years ago, Dell EMC was expensive, approximately 20 percent more than NetApp. Right now the budget between EMC and NetApp is very closely aligned. Regarding the installation process and deployment of Dell XtremIO, I notice that in Israel, a lot of professional services and engineers who work with Dell EMC have moved to another storage company. I do not know why. Dell EMC does not have enough engineers, system engineers, or professional services engineers to provide service to the old clients, similar to how NetApp or Hitachi do. I think Dell XtremIO is between easy and complicated to deploy; it gives you the whole picture, but I need to go closely to VCenter to connect to VCenter to see the snapshot and to see performance with more dashboards of performance. I also need to connect the switch fiber channel to see all zoning to give me more flexibility to install or configure fiber channel or to see the performance of the fiber channels. I think there should be some fiber channel disconnect adapter or better troubleshooting from hardware for errors.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Everpure FlashArray has positively impacted my organization by increasing our agility and the ability to run our environment at high speeds due to the flash storage."
"With Pure Storage, we don't see any latency or IOPS. It has been a very seamless integration."
"They have a very good support system, and the GUI is also very intuitive."
"What I like most about this solution, is the speed, resiliency and scalability."
"It helps us maintain uptime much better than other solutions we've used in the past, and the support is extremely quick and responsive."
"We noticed a dramatic increase in application performance when moving it from NetApp to Pure Storage."
"The initial setup was very straightforward and very quick. It was up and running in our data center within 24 hours of receiving it."
"We have seen savings in our storage, and the speed of deployment has gone from several days to a few minutes, reducing backup and restore times from 93 days to minutes and simplifying storage for us."
"It works very well."
"The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface."
"The ransomware protection feature is housed in a separate unit, specifically addressing the top twenty most critical threats."
"The snapshot feature has been precious for our testing processes, application development, and managing testing environments due to its efficiency and ease of use."
"We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution."
"The product's initial setup phase was good."
"We gain, on the average, 6:1 deduplication with compression."
"Dedupe, because we achieve 3.5X space savings with XtremIO Snapshot copies Ease of use Improvement in storage efficiency without compromising on performance"
"Moved and zoned our Prod Client facing Applications, providing quicker response to the business and more efficiency, and it also assisted with large datasets, thus dramatically reducing our batch runs."
"The most valuable features are that it is fast and reliable."
"From a price perspective, the XtremIO cost would be slightly cheaper than the VMAX and from a space perspective 1/3rd the size (with SAN Fabric)."
"It was very easy and straightforward to setup."
"I rate Dell XtremIO at eight out of ten. It is a product I would recommend to companies where data performance, scalability, and security are highly important due to its beneficial features."
"XtremIO’s capability to run any workload without much in the way of design considerations makes this very easy to use and size."
 

Cons

"A noticeable area for improvement is the support for object storage. The FlashArray does not natively support object storage like S3 or Swift, which pushes customers needing these features towards the more expensive FlashBlade."
"The 3PAR SSD arrays that we have are still failing a lot so even though we're under warranty, we still have to get someone out and usually have someone troubleshoot so that usually adds onto the cost. With Pure, we've had a disc fail and we pop it out and you pop it in and it's good to go."
"The solution is not cheap. It's much more expensive than DataCore."
"As partners, we should have the option to download the software, rather than have to go back through Pure to obtain it."
"We need to add more storage in Pure Storage FlashArray with the cluster mode activated for us to have better performance."
"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"In the configuration, which we brought in or tested it in, it has a very limited config as far as the array goes. That said, it still did more than our anticipation."
"With the introduction of Albireo technology and 81x data de-duplication reduction, Pure Storage better start looking at more effective de-duplication techniques."
"The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additional engines to address this limitation."
"We encountered some challenges during large data migrations that could be addressed for smoother transitions."
"There is room for improvement in the centralized administration."
"Improvements are needed in both partition recovery and scalability."
"The past upgrades were highly impactful to active workloads."
"The solution needs to be simplified. When you integrate your storage with other systems, it could use a little bit of automation."
"Scalability could be better."
"It needs a way to determine the deduplication of each LUN and what the impact would be if we were to move data from one LUN to another."
"If you are looking at flash storage solutions, XtremIO doesn't offer any unique features. Most of my customers are migrating their workload from XtremIO to other formats because of this."
"In some cases where we don’t need the flexibility of the virtualization layer, we could free up resources on the VPLEX by using the storage replication."
"I would like to see more scalability."
"What needs to improve is that the end compression uses a lot of CPU, which makes it difficult or impossible to upgrade."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The Evergreen Storage subscription is great, because then I get new controllers every three years."
"The pricing is an issue. However, being all-flash, it will always be sort of expensive."
"All storage is expensive so any price improvement would help."
"There should be quite a bit of reduction of TCO with just licensing (and stuff) because we run the VM environment off it."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"They have a standardized fee; it's been the same price for 10 years straight. I am happy with the price — I think it's good."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership."
"It is not a cheap product."
"The price falls within the mid-range, neither inexpensive nor high-priced."
"You can get a two-year or three-year license for the tool. You can also opt for a perpetual-based licensing model, which can be renewed on a yearly or two-year basis."
"There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Don’t buy this array. You’re paying for loads of magic beans, since it’s mediocre at best for a platform in a rapidly growing field. Look instead at Pure Storage or something with variable block deduplication. You’ll end up spending less and getting a better product with actual support."
"The license for XtremIO is in the box, so you don't have to buy anything."
"XtremIO is an all-flash array, which means it's a costly solution. When compared with general mid-range storage solutions, this is more expensive. As far as I know, there are no additional costs besides the license."
"With some workloads that benefit from compression and deduplication, costs are actually better than some tier 2 subsystems (while latency remains <1ms)."
"The price of the solution should be reduced. The price matches the price of a VMAX service but it does not have the capability of a VMAX service. However, the prices of Dell EMC XtremIO can be reduceable."
"Too high priced for the Brazil market."
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Comparison Review

it_user182013 - PeerSpot reviewer
Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
May 1, 2015
Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR
Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise29
 

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...
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 ...
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.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC VMax?
The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additiona...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC VMax?
We use the solution for SAP ERP applications. We utilize both VMAX and PowerMax for different aspects of our operations.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell XtremIO?
Pricing is hard to determine as it depends on the given configuration. XtremIO offers features that justify a potenti...
What needs improvement with Dell XtremIO?
There are some areas that could be improved with Dell XtremIO. The API to connect with command line or to see perform...
What is your primary use case for Dell XtremIO?
I was using Dell XtremIO as a storage admin and system storage admin internally within my company. My major use case ...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
Dell EMC XtremIO Flash, Dell EMC XtremIO X2, XtremIO, XtremIO X2
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
Raiffeisen Bank Bulgaria, Wentworth-Douglas Hospital
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell VMAX All Flash vs. Dell XtremIO and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.