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 #8 with an average rating of 8.5, while Dell XtremIO is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.0. Dell PowerMax NVMe holds a 4.0% mindshare in AFS, compared to Dell XtremIO’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell PowerMax NVMe users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Dell XtremIO users who would recommend it.

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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: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell XtremIO

April 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 April 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax NVMe is 4.0%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell XtremIO is 0.7%, down from 1.1% 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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Stanislaw Jagielski

Trainer, Storage Consultant at Oxon

Efficient and straightforward setup boosts data management capabilities

Scalability is a significant feature of Dell XtremIO, as it is easy to expand and manage. It provides a lot of features suited for complex systems, such as scalability and the ability to define multi-domain systems, which are beneficial for data management and storage separation. It is efficient from the customer's point of view, offering deduplication at both the volume and file levels. The configuration and setup are straightforward, provided one has knowledge in setting up network infrastructure like VLANs. It is easy to install, use, and configure, making it a reliable product.

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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

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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

"I appreciate the performance."

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

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"It significantly simplifies storage."

"Dell PowerMax NVMe has good scalability and performance."

"It is a fantastic Dell EMC product ever competing with all the vendors. It stands out in terms of performance. You can ask for mission-critical application workloads."

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

"It has dramatically cut down the footprint in our data center and reduced the amount of raw disk capacity that we needed to purchase."

"The uptime is the most valuable feature."

"The speed and the compatible interface with IBM are the most valuable features of the PowerMax product."

"Key features include performance, replication time, and dedup and compression."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pros

"The solution's most valuable features are the inline data reduction and deduplication."

"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."

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

"It was very easy and straightforward to setup."

"The guaranteed sub-millisecond response time for a 4K block."

"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."

"The performance is good, which is important."

"Initially, we faced numerous issues with our analytical systems. However, we saw performance improvement after the implementation of the solution."

More Dell XtremIO pros

Cons

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

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

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

"We need better data deduplication."

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"We brought up this question to the implementation engineer. We were comparing use cases where a customer is using RecoverPoint, then goes to PowerMax. In our previous setup with XtremIO, we were using RecpverPoint and keeping snapshots for 30 days, every few seconds. With PowerMax, I requested this for every 15 minutes, keeping it for a week. The engineer's answer was, "There will be too many snapshots. It might slow down the system." This is specifically for the use cases where there is RecoverPoint. While PowerMax works with RecoverPoint, and you can use it, there should be some way where you can have even more snapshots and not to worry about performance and system cache."

"There is some room to grow, especially with some of the installation quirks."

"Dell should work on their marketing strategies to make the product more visible on the market. They should promote the product's compatibility with IBM, as not everyone knows it."

"I would like NVMe to be end-to-end in the next release. Right now, it is not end-to-end."

"I hear from people on my team that they would like improved reporting. While there are some decent tools for doing reporting, they would like to see a lot more built-in functionality. This way when they are logged into the interface everyday doing basic management tasks, they could also see some statistics on what is their storage pool usage and will be their projected usage with their current data growth. They want to be able to see more detailed stats on how they are using the system and have forecasting."

"I think management is where PowerMax is weakest. We're still managing it like we managed EMC arrays in the early 2000s. There's a slicker, fancier GUI that does more things, but at the end of the day, you still have to dig into the command line and issue a lot of the same commands that we still were using almost 20 years ago."

"The initial setup could be easier."

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

More Dell PowerMax NVMe cons

"Management and reporting need improvement."

"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."

"The GUI could be modified more in terms of how the different components are linked to each other."

"Scalability could be better."

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

"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."

"The product could be improved by reducing the pricing and having better organization in their technical support team."

"XtremIO needs to be lower priced. It also needs better endpoints and scalability."

More Dell XtremIO cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"The product is expensive."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Since Dell PowerMax NVMe is an enterprise storage, its price is premium."

"The cost of the solution is quite noticeable, but it provides a good fit regarding the price of the hardware and all of the required licenses."

"One area for improvement, one that everybody always comes to, is price... it's still quite expensive to purchase these big arrays... For us, the pricing doesn't make Dell EMC uncompetitive."

"I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe a five out of ten for pricing."

"I think it is an expensive tool, but it is the best product. I think it is expensive and the cost one must pay for the best solution."

"The price is really high."

"The labor savings and support have been significant. If we're talking 100 hours of labor every three months, that is 100 hours of a database engineer costs. There are performance latency numbers as well as costs associated with recovering data that gets lost, and this system doesn't lose data. You can look at numbers that go around the cost of downtime, if data is not available. This system doesn't go down. Everyone's ROI is going to be unique, but the dependability and performance of the system combined with its ease of operation will definitely save businesses of all sizes money."

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

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pricing and cost advice

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

"The initial purchase price was good but when you need to upgrade, it's a different story."

"XtremIO is pretty straightforward about pricing. However, you need to look at your data so you can estimate, with the advice of DEL EMC, what data reduction ratio you will reach. In our case, a 3:1 reduction ration gave us a positive case compared to other storage arrays."

"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."

"There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"This solution is a little bit pricey."

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

"The license for XtremIO is in the box, so you don't have to buy anything."

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

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

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?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

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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.

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

Dell offers various pricing models, including a pay-as-you-go option where storage is provided without upfront charge...

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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?

Pricing is hard to determine as it depends on the given configuration. XtremIO offers features that justify a potenti...

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What needs improvement with Dell XtremIO?

The interface could be simplified for beginners to ease the configuration of special objects in the system. While the...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 32% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Nimble 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 10% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Primera vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell PowerMax NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 26% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 7% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 7% of the time

More Dell XtremIO Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell XtremIO

April 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

April 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell XtremIO

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