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Dell ECS vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
8.7
Dell ECS delivers cost-saving benefits and quick ROI, with users valuing its stability and reliability over financial gains.
Sentiment score
8.4
Pure Storage FlashBlade delivers cost savings, efficiency gains, and increased VM density, with returns seen within four years.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Dell ECS customer service is efficient and highly rated despite some challenges, especially for premium service customers.
Sentiment score
8.2
Pure Storage FlashBlade's customer service is praised for expertise but sometimes experiences slower responses due to growth challenges.
There is a lack of SUSE Linux experts which affects the level of support.
Dell provides high-quality technical support
Customer support is generally good but sometimes struggles with complex issues.
I would rate them an eight out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Dell ECS is highly rated for its scalability, ease of expansion, and adaptability across various business sizes and environments.
Sentiment score
8.9
Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for its scalability and ease of expansion, satisfying various industries like banking and media.
Through the fabrics, it provides the clustering, allowing us to add nodes easily.
It allows scale-out processes by adding extra nodes, providing flexibility for customers to increase capacity on demand.
I would rate scalability ten out of ten since you buy what you want.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Dell ECS is highly stable and reliable, maintaining performance even with heavy data, earning ratings around nine out of ten.
Sentiment score
8.8
Pure Storage FlashBlade is highly rated for stability, reliability, and performance, with minimal downtime and swift recovery.
We have not experienced any outages in the last four years.
Dell ECS provides high stability compared to other object solutions.
I'd rate stability maybe 9.5 out of ten.
In case there is any issue with any blade, the data is moved to another.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell ECS requires improved scalability, performance, cost-effectiveness, support, security, and integration, alongside a user-friendly interface and enhanced documentation.
Users want better cloud integration, support, pricing, efficiency, and improvements in analytics, configuration, and backup for FlashBlade.
Live logs should be viewable through the GUI like with Logstash or Elasticsearch.
Additionally, sometimes there is an issue with memory where it hangs, and they can improve garbage collection, which takes up a lot of space during cleanup.
Incorporating extra integrations beyond S3, like Hadoop file systems, and being well aligned with trends like AI solutions would be beneficial.
Its configuration should be easier.
 

Setup Cost

Dell ECS pricing is seen as mixed, with some valuing its cost-effectiveness, while others desire more flexible pricing options.
Pure Storage FlashBlade is costlier but valued for performance, ease, and reliability, justifying its comprehensive licensing with included software.
It relies on nearline SAS drives, which are cheaper than flash or SSDs.
As a service provider, we receive good margins, indicating a favorable price point.
The pricing model is on the higher side compared to other vendors.
 

Valuable Features

Dell ECS excels in integration, scalability, performance, and reliability, offering competitive pricing and robust features for unstructured data storage.
Pure Storage FlashBlade offers high performance, scalability, and ease of use with excellent data protection and seamless integration for large storage needs.
The stability of this solution is a major advantage, as we've not experienced any outages in the last four years.
If we encounter any issues or need to upgrade anything, we can simply open a ticket, and the EMC team is there to assist us.
The most valuable features of Dell ECS are its capability to integrate multiple protocols seamlessly with other Dell solutions like PowerScale and data domain.
We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell ECS
Ranking in File and Object Storage
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pure Storage FlashBlade
Ranking in File and Object Storage
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Dell ECS is 7.9%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.8%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File and Object Storage
 

Featured Reviews

SamuelThomas - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing efficiently with user-friendly interfaces for monitoring and managing resources
We normally recommend Dell ECS to enterprise customers and government customers Dell ECS is very easy to handle, primarily because the web UI dashboard and everything is very easy to manage for every customer. They can monitor the DPS, access failures, bandwidth, failed requests, and latency.…
Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us
The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
37%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC ECS?
The price is reasonable given the abundance of features, including managing, control, host resources, dockers, and containers. The node agent includes monitoring processes and managing the system.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC ECS?
There is a need to improve the infrastructure, particularly for SUSE Linux experts. The deployment is not easy, and some expertise is required to configure the virtual data center and replication g...
What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?
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 ensure...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and performance it delivers, including quick response times.
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.
 

Also Known As

EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, EMC Elastic Cloud Storage
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Atos
ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell ECS vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.