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: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell XtremIO

March 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

"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."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."

"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."

"I appreciate the performance."

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"The latency is good."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"For the migration process from the older VMAX arrays to PowerMax, we VMotioned everything. It was easy."

"We are able to provide storage at the right service levels without overmanaging it."

"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."

"We use ESRS for our call-home, and a lot of times, Dell EMC will respond to the issue before we even know it."

"The optimization of the cache memory of each engine and the use of persistent memory."

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

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

"The high availability that other systems don't have. In other systems, there is an owner in the storage processes. But for PowerMAX, there is no owner. All the process storage is passed to all nodes without ownership. So, there is no response feature in the storage in PowerMax. In the other systems, there is a response, which is a very nice feature. No systems have such a feature."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pros

"XtremIO’s capability to run any workload without much in the way of design considerations makes this very easy to use and size."

"The speed is extremely valuable."

"It is great for applications like Microsoft Exchange, ERP, SQL and VDI; basically saved the VDI buy-in from users, as now performance was seamless in comparison to a physical PC."

"The speed and scalability of Dell XtremIO are significant features that improve data storage management."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"Speed and reliability:"

"Deduplication and cloning capability"

"It is scalable."

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."

"It is on the expensive side."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

"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."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"Although they call it unified storage where you have SAN and NAS, with a NAS implementation on top of a SAN, the NAS implementation is a little complicated and clumsy. As SAN, as block storage, it is very powerful... If they could provide a very good NAS implementation, it would be better, so that customers don't have to look for other simple solutions for NAS."

"The price cap of Dell PowerMax NVMe is very high."

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

"I would like the scalability to improve, as it requires additional footprints."

"The one area for improvement in Dell PowerMax NVMe would be to align the features of the on-premises version with those available in the cloud, as this would provide added value and flexibility."

"Some of the management features could be simplified and that's probably the main thing they need to address."

"We've had a couple of little things come up, but for the most part, they've been pretty stable."

"PowerMax's software is highly stable, but we faced two hardware issues in one year. We had a failure of the storage director module, and the physical disk failed on another occasion. Dell EMC should improve its hardware quality."

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."

"Management and reporting need improvement."

"It can be more cost-efficient."

"I believe having more replication options comparatively to VMAX (other than RecoverPoint) would be great."

"Dell's technical support could be better."

"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."

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

"Ease of use is key in the converged and hyper-converged world that requires administrators to have both hypervisor and storage skills."

More Dell XtremIO cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

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

"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."

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

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"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."

"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."

"The product is expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"The price is really high."

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

"The cost is expensive. While VMAX now has good pricing, PowerMax is a little expensive."

"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."

"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 okay."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"It's not cheap, but it absolutely gets the job done. I don't have any real comment regarding licensing specifically."

"This solution is a little bit pricey."

"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 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."

"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."

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

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

15%

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?

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?

The price is starting from $500,000. It's expensive.

See all answers

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 33% 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 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 6% 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 14% 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

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Dell PowerStore vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 29% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 12% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 8% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell XtremIO

March 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

March 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: March 2025.

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