Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Dell XtremIO comparison

Dell PowerMax NVMe and Dell XtremIO are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell PowerMax NVMe is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.5, while Dell XtremIO is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.3. Dell PowerMax NVMe holds a 4.0% mindshare in AFS, compared to Dell XtremIO’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell PowerMax NVMe users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 82% of Dell XtremIO users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Dell XtremIO and Dell PowerMax NVMe are both popular storage solutions. Dell PowerMax NVMe stands out for its features and performance, making it a superior choice overall despite the cost.

Features: Dell XtremIO users value its easy scalability, data reduction capabilities, and pricing. Dell PowerMax NVMe is known for its high performance, real-time machine learning, and data efficiency. PowerMax NVMe includes cutting-edge features that drive better performance.

Room for Improvement: Users suggest that Dell XtremIO could improve by offering broader compatibility with third-party tools, enhancing cloud integration, and refining user interfaces. Dell PowerMax NVMe needs more intuitive management tools, a reduction in operational complexity, and enhanced automation capabilities. XtremIO focuses more on compatibility issues, while PowerMax NVMe needs improvements in usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell XtremIO is known for a straightforward deployment model and responsive customer support. Dell PowerMax NVMe has a slightly more complex deployment but provides excellent customer service. While both products offer strong support, XtremIO is easier to deploy, whereas PowerMax NVMe requires more effort but delivers top-tier performance.

Pricing and ROI: Dell XtremIO users find the setup cost reasonable and the ROI satisfactory. Dell PowerMax NVMe, though higher in cost, justifies the investment with significant performance gains and robust ROI. XtremIO is cost-effective and offers good returns, whereas PowerMax NVMe, despite its higher price, delivers remarkable ROI through advanced capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell XtremIO Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell XtremIO

January 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax NVMe is 4.0%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell XtremIO is 0.8%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

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Haseeb Khalid Sheikh

Senior Manager Enterprise Solutions at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

End-to-end NVMe capabilities helps improve availability, performance, and capacity

The solution's most valuable feature is the data reduction ratio. You can store a 5:1 ratio of your data in Dell PowerMax NVMe. For example, if you have 200 terabytes of usable capacity, you can save up to five times of data on that capacity. That means you can save one petabyte of data on just 200 terabytes of usable capacity. The solution's end-to-end NVMe capabilities have improved our operations. Everything is fast, and you don't have to map your storage to old hybrid storage technologies. Our organization has experienced positive change, and the solution has improved our uptime, availability, performance, and capacity.

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Gouranga Maiti

Sr. Project Manager -IT at ITC Ltd

Suitable for high IOPS and helps get backup in ten minutes

We use Dell XtremIO for high IOPS. We get backup within 10 minutes. Initially, we faced numerous issues with our analytical systems. However, we saw performance improvement after the implementation of the solution. I like the tool's snapshot backup and flash storage features. Sometimes we…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"The latency is good."

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The solution's snapshot capabilities and replication are very good features. Snapshots are allowing us to quickly build analytical models directly from production data. This gives us amazing insights into market trends and allows us to build more effective trading algorithms. Replication offers us unparalleled levels of resilience."

"The stability is great. It is five nines."

"PowerMax is a compact high-performance appliance. It is one of the best devices in terms of performance specs. It includes an NVMe All-Flash Array."

"It has reduced our footprint in different physical locations."

"We removed the need to observe whether we ran into issues with the performance of disks or number of IOPS. Previously, our Oracle Database would throw us performance errors. Now, with PowerMax, everything runs smoothly."

"The product is very fast and reliable."

"The support team was very cooperative and responsive."

"The NVMe technology improves input/output performance, making it a valuable asset for our organization's storage solutions."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pros

"Very good IOPS performance"

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its performance."

"The feature I like most about Dell Xtremio is its hardware quality compared to other vendors. It's clear they're continuously improving their research and development."

"XtremIO is very stable."

"The most valuable feature of Dell EMC XtremIO is the data protection (DP) group, it is one of the most advanced features in these types of arrays. The dedupe and compression that this array provides both do a superb job."

"The performance is good, which is important."

"The Metro clustering and solid-state performance, are the most valuable features of this solution."

"Thin storage allocation"

More Dell XtremIO pros

Cons

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

"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."

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"We have issues that we don't know about, which Dell EMC fixes."

"If the solution had more power-saving capabilities, it would be quite nice."

"There is room for improvement in the replication. It's an important requirement for us."

"Remove the need for physical or hardwired virtual servers to run consistency groups, instead make the expensive array controllers handle that."

"There is also room for improvement in the PowerMax architecture and hardware itself. They should design the PowerMax on the basis of PCIe 4.0. I would like to see the possibility of an NVMe drive that operates on PCIe 4.0 and not PCIe 3.0."

"Since the merging of EMC and Dell into Dell Technologies, there has been a hurdle that they've had to overcome, and they're not over it yet. It takes two to three times longer for things to get fixed than it did when they were separate companies. That is something that has to be fixed."

"I would like them to continue improving the management tools and continue moving towards a RESTful API versus CLI."

"Dell PowerMax needs more connectivity options for projects that require separate web access."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe cons

"In the next release, the solution could have better integration and if we can host assets on the cloud, such as NetApp has the NetApp volumes, which we can host on the cloud directly called NetApp CVO (cloud volume ONTAP). Dell EMC should come up with something purely on the cloud rather than manage services."

"The implementation isn't exactly complex, but the solution should have some enhancements in it to make the process more centralized."

"Sometimes we don't get an immediate response from the support team. The initial POC also took a lot of resources."

"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."

"It is very expensive to scale. You have to buy an additional system to extend from one disc, for instance. It is scalable, but extremely expensive to do so."

"This solution is geared toward enterprise-level companies. Small and medium-sized businesses would find it extremely expensive."

"Get rid of the Java aspect of the GUI console."

"I would like to see more scalability."

More Dell XtremIO cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"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."

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"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."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"The product is expensive."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Dell PowerMax NVMe's price is expensive."

"From a general capital investment, it's one of the higher price points in the market. It depends on the size and software features that you would include in a system. So, the cost varies dramatically."

"The pricing might be a bit high for small organizations, so it's more suitable for larger enterprises."

"The price is starting from $500,000."

"Support pricing is very high. Our support contract is about to expire and Dell EMC provided us with an extremely high renewal quote. It was four times more than the support contract for our previous EMC VNX solution."

"In terms of price-performance, it beat out other competitors when we were taking a look and comparing it to the market. That was one of the biggest driving points for us."

"It is high-end storage and it is a bit expensive, but it is doing what it is meant for: running business-critical applications or latency-sensitive applications..."

"From reclaiming data center space which is so tightly constrained these days, it will pay for itself in a short amount of time, which is fantastic. Anything we can do to get more out of our current physical data center space helps us a ton, and PowerMax has helped enable that."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Pricing and licensing are in line with other products from other manufacturers. You get what you pay for."

"Licensing is approximately $200,000 per year."

"It is expensive if you need to increase scalability."

"The licensing cost is on a yearly subscription basis, which can be expensive but is necessary for ongoing support and services. The pricing could be improved to make it more accessible."

"With some workloads that benefit from compression and deduplication, costs are actually better than some tier 2 subsystems (while latency remains <1ms)."

"Too high priced for the Brazil market."

"This solution is a little bit pricey."

"It is great when a product can deliver high-end performance capabilities while offering a very competitive price point."

More Dell XtremIO pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user182013

Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at Rubrik

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

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What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive.

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What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?

Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell of...

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What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

First, it's an enterprise storage solution. This is very important for us. Another important feature is replication.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

The price of Dell PowerMax depends on the project size. It is the best choice for large projects in terms of price an...

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What do you like most about Dell EMC XtremIO?

The feature I like most about Dell Xtremio is its hardware quality compared to other vendors. It's clear they're cont...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell XtremIO?

When purchased eight years ago, it was offered at a special price that was good and competitive. However, upgrading w...

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What needs improvement with Dell XtremIO?

When we upgraded the capacity from five to ten TB, the price of the disks was high. Dell explained that they are sell...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 36% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 5% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 27% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 6% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell PowerMax NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 32% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 15% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 11% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 8% of the time

VAST Data vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 7% of the time

More Dell XtremIO Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

January 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe

February 2025

Download Dell PowerMax NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell XtremIO

February 2025

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Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

Dell EMC XtremIO Flash, Dell EMC XtremIO X2, XtremIO, XtremIO X2

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

Dell PowerMax is the industry’s most secure mission-critical storage platform. With NVMe Dynamic Fabric technology, PowerMax breaks from traditional storage limitations, enabling seamless integration with cloud-native and legacy applications. Designed with a powerful scale-up and scale-out architecture, PowerMax supports mission-critical applications at scale with zero downtime and ultra-low latency. The latest PowerMaxOS 10 release harnesses AI-driven efficiencies for trusted performance, capacity, and security. By choosing PowerMax, you can trust in a secure, intelligent, and always modern storage solution that unlocks the full potential of your data to drive business success.

Dell Technologies

Bring all-flash, scale-out storage to your enterprise applications with EMC XtremIO. Purpose-built for flash, XtremIO storage arrays are amazingly fast. Delivering high IOPS at less than 1 millisecond latency is just the start. EMC XtremIO helps you harness the power of flash storage by building in innovations like content-based data placement and dual-stage metadata.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Raiffeisen Bank Bulgaria, Wentworth-Douglas Hospital

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell XtremIO

January 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell XtremIO

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell XtremIO and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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