Dell ECS vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

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Dell Technologies Logo
6,453 views|5,523 comparisons
95% willing to recommend
Pure Storage Logo
4,566 views|3,133 comparisons
96% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell ECS and Pure Storage FlashBlade based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two File and Object Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Dell ECS vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It is 100% stable. It is also scalable.""This solution is very easy to use, and is very reliable.""Dell ECS is a cost-effective solution that provides ease of use and availability.""The most valuable feature for me is off-site storage.""It is a stable platform.""It's my understanding that the initial setup is straightforward.""This product is very competitive.""The performance is good."

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"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%.""It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy.""It performs well and it is also very fast.""The most valuable feature of this solution is performance.""Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage.""The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good.""What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features.""The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

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Cons
"The troubleshooting feature of this solution needs to be improved, to allow organizations to fix issues without having to contact the support team.""In Taiwan, they don't have professional technical support.""We have concerns about the write performance. We would also like it to be easier to scale out, to add more boxes to the system. And we want improved performance, to use a next-generation NFS service.""It is a good solution, except for the cost.""The solution needs to provide better integration between this solution and all other kinds of systems.""The solution could be more cost-effective and secure.""They do not have complete documentation, which is very weak and could be improved.""Dell ECS could improve the price of the solution. It is expensive."

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"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups.""I have not seen ROI.""The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it.""I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads.""The speed could be improved.""I would like to see more deduplication.""On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge.""In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Dell EMC ECS is too expensive."
  • "We are not paying for the license at this stage."
  • "The solution could be cheaper."
  • "It's a lease-based model, so it's capacity-based. We already negotiated the price a lot, but we're still doing that with Dell because somehow the product was not installed successfully, so there was a lot of struggle in the distributor territory between Dell and the environment itself. I would give the solution a 6 out of 10 for the pricing. There's a little room for improvement."
  • "We initially purchased all of the licenses at the same time."
  • "The price of Dell ECS should be reduced."
  • "The price of Dell ECS should be reduced."
  • "The charges for this solution are made in blocks of models, which are purchased depending on what features an organization requires."
  • More Dell ECS Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We used a reseller for the purchase."
  • "Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."
  • "I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."
  • "Our licensing is renewed annually."
  • "Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."
  • "The price is a little high."
  • "In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."
  • "The price of this solution could be made more affordable."
  • More Pure Storage FlashBlade Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures… more »
    Top Answer:Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues… more »
    Ranking
    5th
    Views
    6,453
    Comparisons
    5,523
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    342
    Rating
    7.9
    7th
    Views
    4,566
    Comparisons
    3,133
    Reviews
    4
    Average Words per Review
    417
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, EMC Elastic Cloud Storage
    Learn More
    Overview

    Enterprise-ready. Future-proof. Data-first.

    Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) is a file and object storage solution from Dell EMC. ECS has been created to support both traditional and next-generation ecosystems equally. ECS boasts unrivaled economics, manageability, resilience, and scalability to satisfy the demands of today's next-gen, robust business enterprise ecosystems. ECS can easily be deployed in a software-defined model or as a turn-key appliance. ECS is software-defined and multi-layered for unlimited scalability. Every layer is abstracted and scalable with no single point of failure.

    • Data service layer: Provides S3 access along with access to SWIFT, CAZ, NFS, HDFS.
    • Storage service layer: Stores, retrieves and protects data.
    • Fabric layer: Provides clustering, configuration management, health monitoring.

    Everything is done within the software, which is containerized, using docker.

    ECS is currently deployed using basic commodity hardware, which can easily be federated across as many as eight different locations and managed as a single resource. Additionally, ECS can also protect data at the site level, locally, disk, node, and rack levels. The federation enables a single global namespace with everywhere access to content. Applications can quickly rewrite in an active/active or everywhere active manner.

    ECS is also able to be used as secondary storage or archival storage. This will free up valuable primary storage of data that is stale, redundant, or used infrequently, and the data will remain easily accessible. ECS uses policy-based tiering such as Data Domain, Cloud tiering, Isilon using cloud polls, and Geodrive, which give Windows systems direct access to ECS. Windows users can still use server message block (SMB) while leveraging the more expansive ECS storage.

    ECS is enterprise-grade and offers valuable features such as retention, multi-tenancy, metering, monitoring, quotas, and more. ECS builds in robust security from the ground up and encrypts data. ECS is compliant with STIG guidelines and adheres to SEC rule 17A-4F.

    ECS is an enterprise-ready solution that allows organizations to easily simplify object storage management and visualize information in intuitive new ways, and empowers your business to do even more with data. With ECS, enterprise organizations can deliver cloud-scale economics in-house that will lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and scale, creating greater levels of productivity and profitability.

    Reviews from Real Users

    One user, who is a deputy director at a tech service company, says ECS offers “good performance, reliability, and technical support”.

    Dell EMC ECS is “a stable solution which is easy to scale, install and manage”, relates another user, who is a senior buyer at a tech service company.

    "What I like best about this product is that it is a complete solution, both hardware, and software, by the same vendor," summarizes a system engineer at a tech services company. 














    FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

    Sample Customers
    Atos
    ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company30%
    Financial Services Firm30%
    Government10%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company12%
    Government8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Manufacturing Company18%
    Energy/Utilities Company12%
    University12%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization36%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise40%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise69%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise45%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell ECS vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell ECS vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell ECS is ranked 5th in File and Object Storage with 25 reviews while Pure Storage FlashBlade is ranked 7th in File and Object Storage with 31 reviews. Dell ECS is rated 8.0, while Pure Storage FlashBlade is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Dell ECS writes "Enables multiple protocol support, but its IOPS functionality needs improvement in terms of performance ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashBlade writes "A high-performing and scalable solution that improves data performance for S3 workloads". Dell ECS is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), Amazon AWS, MinIO, NetApp StorageGRID and Hitachi Content Platform, whereas Pure Storage FlashBlade is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), VAST Data, MinIO, Pure Storage FlashArray and NetApp AFF. See our Dell ECS vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade report.

    See our list of best File and Object Storage vendors.

    We monitor all File and Object Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.