Dell PowerMax vs Huawei OceanStor comparison

Dell Technologies and Huawei are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.9, while Huawei is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.7. Dell Technologies holds a 4.1% mindshare in AFS, compared to Huawei’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Huawei users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

Huawei OceanStor and Dell PowerMax are competitors in the high-end storage solutions market. Comparing their features, Dell PowerMax might have an advantage due to its advanced data protection and cloud integration capabilities, despite the higher costs.

Features: Huawei OceanStor is recognized for its scalability and flexibility in tiering, helping reduce costs substantially while supporting hybrid storage solutions. Users find its management straightforward and appreciate the stability and consistent user support. Dell PowerMax focuses on superior performance, featuring advanced compression and deduplication that enhance availability and minimize latency. The robust data-protection features and cloud integration stand out as key benefits of the PowerMax solution.

Room for Improvement: Huawei OceanStor has notable gaps in its management and integration capacities, with language barriers affecting tech support and a need for better encryption and vendor compatibility. Dell PowerMax is critiqued for its high expense and configuration complexity, and there is a growing desire for enhanced AI integration and improved data reduction rates.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Huawei OceanStor is often seen as easy to deploy on-premises. However, language barriers and inconsistent support can pose challenges for users. Dell PowerMax typically receives positive support evaluations and is straightforward to deploy, although there are concerns about support costs and responsiveness relative to Huawei.

Pricing and ROI: Huawei OceanStor is positioned as a cost-effective solution with competitive pricing and flexible options for scalability, though complexity in pricing can be an issue. Its mid-range market position allows for appealing licensing options. Dell PowerMax, while providing substantial performance benefits, incurs high upfront costs and support expenses. However, the overall ROI over time can be compelling for enterprises with significant data needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax vs. Huawei OceanStor Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Huawei OceanStor

July 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:

ROI

Sentiment score

1.0

Organizations reduced costs and improved performance with Pure FlashArray X NVMe, achieving quick ROI and efficient resource management.

Sentiment score

8.2

Dell PowerMax delivers cost savings, enhanced efficiency, increased uptime, and improved performance, leading to high user satisfaction and ROI.

Sentiment score

8.5

Huawei OceanStor offers significant cost savings and performance improvements, with some organizations seeing returns and efficiencies within a year.

By opting for the gold subscription every three years, you get a free upgrade to the latest controller release.

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

During a DCDR setup and migration from VMAX to Dell PowerMax, what was planned as a two-day downtime was completed in just three to four hours.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

The performance metrics or benchmarks I use to measure success with Dell PowerMax include uptime as well as our response times on our platforms, both of which are exactly where we want them to be, which is five nines and as fast as possible.

reviewer2706717

Senior Manager, Disaster Recovery, Storage & UNIX Systems at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

My client has seen significant ROI since the install, and when you don't go down, that's an ROI in and of itself.

Rocco Guerriero

Chief Executive Officer at Contour Data Solutions

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

7.1

Pure FlashArray X NVMe's technical support is praised for responsiveness, despite occasional follow-up issues, earning high customer satisfaction.

Sentiment score

8.4

Dell PowerMax's customer service is highly rated for promptness and knowledge, despite some issues with SLA and language barriers.

Sentiment score

6.0

Huawei OceanStor's customer support is mixed, with strengths in efficiency but weaknesses in language barriers and complex case handling.

With Pure FlashArray X NVMe, we need to escalate the issue and get an account manager for its resolution.

VijayShankar

Senior Administrator/IT Systems & Cloud Operations at Etisalat

We also had one outage where a controller of one of the products had failed and had to be replaced on-site.

reviewer943512

System and Network administrator at Vodafone

Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

I would rate Dell PowerMax support as a ten, as I have never had an issue with Dell support as it relates to this product.

Rocco Guerriero

Chief Executive Officer at Contour Data Solutions

Dell support for Dell PowerMax is exceptional, rating a perfect 10 out of 10.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

I evaluate Dell's support for PowerMax as very good, especially regarding their response time as well as their willingness to get ahead of issues.

reviewer2706717

Senior Manager, Disaster Recovery, Storage & UNIX Systems at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

Huawei took longer to respond and send a new device when something critical happened.

reviewer2507187

Manager, Information Technology Security at a retailer with 5,001-10,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.1

Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers scalable storage with low latency, easy upgrades, though capacity customization and high costs are noted.

Sentiment score

7.7

Dell PowerMax provides scalable, efficient performance with NVMe, valued for enterprise use despite some cost and scaling speed concerns.

Sentiment score

7.5

Huawei OceanStor is praised for its scalability and flexibility, although scaling may involve additional costs for some users.

You cannot increase capacity if latency is present.

VijayShankar

Senior Administrator/IT Systems & Cloud Operations at Etisalat

It is highly scalable.

Joerg Utesch

Sales Director at systemzwo group

It is suitable for both medium-sized and enterprise businesses.

Jaka Demšar

VAD PLSM Storage - Slovenia & Croatia at ASBIS

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

Scalability is not an issue.

reviewer2706753

Senior System Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Dell PowerMax is good for enterprises, and it also depends on how much workload you're going to bring in on Dell PowerMax in terms of performance and how many users are going to use the database you're hosting.

MayankChauhan

Lead Consultant - Cloud & Infrastructure Services at Infosys

Volumes can be defined to grow to any level without impacting overall performance.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

Huawei OceanStor is capable of scaling up to a few megabytes and is equipped to handle varied network protocols.

reviewer2236056

Product Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.1

Pure Storage offers exceptional stability and reliability with outstanding support, consistently achieving high user ratings for performance and service.

Sentiment score

8.7

Dell PowerMax is highly rated for reliability, performance, and stability, with quick support for occasional issues.

Sentiment score

7.9

Huawei OceanStor offers high stability and reliability, with effective fault tolerance and minimal downtime, resolving initial component issues efficiently.

During the eight years, there have been no problems such as hardware failure or stopping.

Gokhan Dikmen

Vice President of product at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I would rate the stability of the solution as a ten out of ten.

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.

Gary Cheung

Project Manager at a government with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

These patches can be applied on the fly without requiring software upgrades or system downtime.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

I would rate it nine out of ten since there are no required downtimes, even during firmware upgrades.

Moin-Shah

System and Storage Admin at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

There has been no downtime with Dell PowerMax; it's been extremely reliable, easy to manage, easy to upgrade, and trustworthy as we've upgraded over the years from one version to another.

Rocco Guerriero

Chief Executive Officer at Contour Data Solutions

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

Huawei OceanStor is stable and reliable for storage solutions.

reviewer2236056

Product Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Other than the data store running out of space, I haven't had any issues with the technology.

reviewer2507187

Manager, Information Technology Security at a retailer with 5,001-10,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor report

Room For Improvement

Pure FlashArray X requires cost-effective improvements in UI, integration, cloud features, multitenancy, analytics, backup, AI, and scalability.

Dell PowerMax needs improvements in deduplication, UI, cloud integration, cost efficiency, AI, security, and system setup.

Huawei OceanStor users face challenges with integration, support, performance, and pricing, suggesting improvements in various technical and operational areas.

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

VijayShankar

Senior Administrator/IT Systems & Cloud Operations at Etisalat

We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.

Joerg Utesch

Sales Director at systemzwo group

I'm eagerly anticipating the roadmap's promise of introducing multiple controllers, which could significantly boost scalability and resilience.

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

Compared to competitors such as NetApp, which integrates with public cloud hyperscalers (GCP, Azure, AWS), Dell PowerMax lacks in this aspect.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

Dell can assist by providing plug-and-play integrated templates that allow customers to drag, drop, modify, and connect with any target system for generating snapshots without logging into the storage directly.

Moin-Shah

System and Storage Admin at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dell PowerMax NVMe is very reliable storage and cannot experience downtime.

Kazi Amranul Houqe

First Assistant Vice President (FAVP) & Unit Head of Server & Storage Management Unit at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

Huawei currently lacks a solution for high-performance AI, unlike other companies like DDN, WekaIO, or IBM BlueStore.

reviewer2236056

Product Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The stated capacity was not a true reflection of the actual capacity.

reviewer2507187

Manager, Information Technology Security at a retailer with 5,001-10,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor report

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers see Pure FlashArray X NVMe as a justified premium investment due to performance and comprehensive licensing.

Dell PowerMax is costly yet competitive, appreciated for total ownership value, offering various pricing models and potential savings.

Huawei OceanStor offers competitive pricing and valuable features, though its licensing model may increase costs, yet remains cost-effective.

While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.

Enes SUZER

Manager, System Infrastructure & Security at Organik Kimya San. ve Tic. A.S.

The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

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

VijayShankar

Senior Administrator/IT Systems & Cloud Operations at Etisalat

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

The higher cost compared to other vendors is justified by additional features, vendor-managed upgrades, and superior support services.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

It is the best choice for large projects in terms of price and features compared to midrange solutions.

Gianpaolo-Mazzola

Presales Engineer at Project Informatica srl

The price is starting from $500,000.

Mohamed Abdel Salam

Senior Sells at Enterprise Sigma Technology

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

Huawei is priced competitively, encouraging companies to consider it over other products.

reviewer2507187

Manager, Information Technology Security at a retailer with 5,001-10,000 employees

Huawei OceanStor's pricing is very aggressive, making it highly competitive.

reviewer2236056

Product Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor report

Valuable Features

Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers exceptional performance, reliability, scalability, and seamless VMware integration, enhancing workload efficiency and user experience.

Dell PowerMax offers advanced performance, security, and efficiency through NVMe, data reduction, and seamless integration, supporting diverse workloads.

Huawei OceanStor offers scalable, high-performing storage with easy management, strong support, and competitive pricing for diverse business needs.

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

Gokhan Dikmen

Vice President of product at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The platform's robust features include excellent sustainability tracking, and a comprehensive dashboard offering insights into IOPS, bandwidth, performance, and virtual activities.

SajithEruvangai

IT System Specialist - Operations & Infrastructure at Daman

Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure FlashArray X NVMe report

NVMe provides additional fast cache, similar to random access memory (RAM), which improves overall system performance and read/write experience for users.

Jasdevjuneja

Works

Dell PowerMax NVMe is very supportive of our operational growth since we require daily performance from our core banking systems and need to facilitate data movement efficiently.

Moin-Shah

System and Storage Admin at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The key benefits of using Dell PowerMax, quantified in terms of saved hours and saved costs, is having one single platform that provides functionality to all of our internal customers.

reviewer2706717

Senior Manager, Disaster Recovery, Storage & UNIX Systems at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Dell PowerMax report

Huawei OceanStor offers good IOPS and is reliable and energy-efficient.

reviewer2507187

Manager, Information Technology Security at a retailer with 5,001-10,000 employees

The main selling point of Huawei OceanStor is its ability to handle all storage protocols, including block, file, and object.

reviewer2236056

Product Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Huawei OceanStor report

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax is 4.1%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huawei OceanStor is 2.2%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

Read full review

MayankChauhan

Lead Consultant - Cloud & Infrastructure Services at Infosys

Delivers essential support and performance for intensive operations in real-time environments

Our infrastructure is spread across the private as well as a public cloud. Our requirement was that the IOPS latency should not be more than one millisecond. If anything goes beyond one millisecond, it's a problem for us. We wanted a system that could handle the transactions and meet our latency requirements. There are performance benefits for sure. The amount of deduplication and compression offered by Dell PowerMax is quite good, especially with databases. Dell PowerMax delivers optimum performance and reliable support, integral for handling failures and ensuring operational continuity. The performance capacity optimization and support we receive from Dell are also valuable.

Read full review

ChukwuemekaOnyemelukwe

Infrastructure Administrator - Server, Storage & Virtualization at MicroAccess Ltd

Uses a proprietary technology with simple interface and has easy deployment

If you are not generating a substantial amount of data, the available storage space might suffice, making scalability less of a concern. However, if your data generation increases and you require more storage, Huawei OceanStor offers solutions to expand your storage capacity. Expanding storage resources can involve additional costs and configuration efforts. Acquiring more storage solutions and ensuring their integration with your existing setup might require a significant investment of time and resources. While this process can be complex, it allows for seamless scalability as your data storage needs grow. I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

Read full review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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?

When comparing Dell PowerMax NVMe with other vendors, such as IBM enterprise solutions, the price is relatively higher.

See all answers

What do you like most about Huawei OceanStor?

Huawei OceanStor has the capability of SSDs, high-performance disks, and higher disk support.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Huawei OceanStor?

Huawei OceanStor's pricing is very aggressive, making it highly competitive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Huawei OceanStor?

Huawei currently lacks a solution for high-performance AI, unlike other companies like DDN, WekaIO, or IBM BlueStore....

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 28% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 19% 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

Compared 27% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 13% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 10% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell PowerMax Competitors

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs Huawei OceanStor

Compared 23% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs Huawei OceanStor

Compared 18% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Huawei OceanStor

Compared 13% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Huawei OceanStor

Compared 8% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series vs Huawei OceanStor

Compared 2% of the time

More Huawei OceanStor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

June 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

July 2025

Download Dell PowerMax product report

Buyer's Guide

Huawei OceanStor

July 2025

Download Huawei OceanStor product report

Also Known As

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

Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

OceanStor Dorado V3 All-Flash Storage System, OceanStor 18000 V3 Series Storage Systems, OceanStor 6800 V3 Storage System

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 offers robust performance, reliability, and efficient data handling. It is recognized for its compression, deduplication, and NVMe technology, significantly benefiting data centers with its advanced replication and uptime.

PowerMax is equipped to handle mission-critical applications, providing impressive performance metrics with low latency and high IOPS capacity. Its CloudIQ and Unisphere interfaces enhance manageability, while REST API support simplifies storage management. Users in sectors like healthcare, finance, and telecommunications leverage its capabilities for database management, high-transaction block storage, and disaster recovery. However, opportunities for improving deduplication efficiency, interface complexity, and automation remain.

What are the key features of Dell PowerMax?

Data Reduction: Combines compression and deduplication for efficient storage use.
NVMe Technology: Enables swift data handling with high throughput.
CloudIQ and Unisphere: Streamlines manageability and control.
REST API Support: Simplifies integration with management tools.
High Availability: Ensures consistent uptime across platforms.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Performance Metrics: Look for low latency and high IOPS as indicators.
Reliability: Consistent operations with minimal interruptions.
Manageability: Efficient control over storage environments.
Cost Efficiency: Note any potential savings in data processing and storage.

Industries utilize Dell PowerMax to support diverse environments like VMware, Oracle, and PostgreSQL. It serves multiple sectors such as healthcare, finance, and government, aiding in data storage consolidation, disaster recovery, and high-availability hosting for critical systems and applications.

Dell Technologies

OceanStor Dorado V3 is the industry's first all-flash storage that puts NVMe into commercial use. It is specially designed for enterprises' mission-critical businesses, meeting the most-demanding performance and reliability requirements of databases, VDI, server virtualization, and SAP HANA.

Huawei

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Piraeus, Clinique Univeritaires Saint-Luc

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. Huawei OceanStor

July 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax vs. Huawei OceanStor

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