Dell PowerMax NVMe vs NetApp NVMe AFF A800 comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category. Dell Technologies is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.5, while NetApp is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.5. Dell Technologies holds a 8.8% mindshare in N, compared to NetApp’s 2.7% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Dell PowerMax NVMe and NetApp NVMe AFF A800 are leading storage solutions. NetApp NVMe AFF A800 is preferred for its advanced features, despite its higher cost, while Dell PowerMax NVMe is noted for its competitive pricing and customer support.

Features: Dell PowerMax NVMe is recognized for its robust performance, scalability, and automation capabilities. NetApp NVMe AFF A800 stands out with its data management features, high throughput, and operational efficiency.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerMax NVMe users face challenges with complexity and monitoring tools. NetApp NVMe AFF A800 users report issues with operating system updates and initial setup difficulties.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerMax NVMe deployment requires intensive planning, with responsive customer support. NetApp NVMe AFF A800 has a simpler deployment process with slower customer service response times.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerMax NVMe offers a cost-effective solution with good ROI. NetApp NVMe AFF A800 is more expensive but yields high ROI due to superior storage efficiencies.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. NetApp NVMe AFF A800 Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. NetApp NVMe AFF A800

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 NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 2.6%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax NVMe is 8.8%, down from 13.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp NVMe AFF A800 is 2.7%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

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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Tanveer Rahman

Chief Technical Office at Novotel Ltd.

A scalable solution that serves as a storage for the cloud services opted by organizations

My company uses NetApp NVMe AFF A800 as storage for our cloud The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a product that is fast and provides a fast I/O. The product's performance has some shortcomings, making it an area that could be a little better. I don't expect to see additional…

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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 system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

"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."

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

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

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

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

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"It is very stable. We expect superior performance and reliability from this particular storage system."

"The SRDF site-to-site replication for the volumes is the most important feature for us. That enables us to do site recovery and replication for our VMware infrastructure."

"PowerMax NVMe has made it a lot easier to understand how much we are able to provision. It has made it a lot faster to provision new things. 90% of my time for provisioning has been reduced. Also, it has made it very easy to understand and see everything behind it versus the older heritage, where Dell EMC was very convoluted and hard to get working. Things that used to take an hour, probably now take five to 10 minutes."

"The most valuable feature is its global cache, which allows for uncompromised performance."

"The solution has good operability and easy scalability."

"NVMe technology improves input/output performance."

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

"It offers a high level of availability, so pretty much near zero downtime."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pros

"Over the eight years, we've been using NetApp with ONTAP, we've never lost a bit of data, and we've only experienced a few minutes of downtime in that entire time."

"The most valuable features are stability and performance."

"The storage features are valuable."

"During the use cases of the solution, its reliability and suitability are the best."

"We find the product to be very flexible."

"Low latency is the most valuable feature."

"The product can be scaled vertically as well as horizontally."

"NetApp NVMe AFF A800 is easier to use than some other solutions and the UI is very good to use for day-to-day activities. Overall, the solution has good technology."

More NetApp NVMe AFF A800 pros

Cons

"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."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"We need better data deduplication."

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

"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."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"We had challenges again with the initial setup. I don't know if there was a gap during the requirement-collection phase, but the box was partially delivered to us with missing parts and it delayed the implementation by about 60 days. It was not as smooth as I would have hoped."

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

"We have had some trouble with the VMAX-to-PowerMax migration, but the VMAX box will be powered down after the migration. The PowerMax boxes are working fine and we don't have any issues with them."

"The GUI interface is very complicated and could be improved by streamlining the number of steps in the process."

"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."

"The installation of equipment needed support's help."

"I would like to see the rack change. They have defaulted to the standard rack, so our fiber cables are crowded when we shut our back door."

"Support of the product can be slow and an administrative challenge: planning, scheduling, and overseeing data center access for a Dell EMC rep. One improvement could be to enable a self-maintenance option. The requirements that we go through to get Dell EMC onsite to replace failed drives, power supplies, and other small redundant parts can be unnecessarily complex. If simplified, they could send us the parts, then we could replace them much faster, more easily, and truly within the SLA parameters."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe cons

"Stability is an area with a certain shortcoming where the solution needs to improve"

"The cost of the solution is quite high. It would be ideal if they could adjust it so that it's a but less."

"The technical support has room for improvement."

"The product's performance has some shortcomings, making it an area that could be a little better."

"The initial setup should be easier, and more like a plug-and-play approach."

"The product’s UI could be better."

"The support can take a few days to have a response. However, the response that we do receive is very informative."

"Increasing the RAM, and including physical cords would be beneficial."

More NetApp NVMe AFF A800 cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Negotiate hard and consider the commercial advantages/benefits to Dell EMC for onboarding your product."

"The pricing is comparable to other vendors."

"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."

"The pricing for this solution is good compared to other products in the market."

"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 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."

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

"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."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Considering the requirements and the situation, I don't feel that this is an expensive product."

"The solution is expensive."

"There are licenses for the use of this solution, such as commercial licenses."

"I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten."

"Though NetApp NVMe AFF A800 may seem like a highly-priced product, it is not extremely expensive."

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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

Manufacturing Company

23%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Educational Organization

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?

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

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp NVMe AFF A800?

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a product that is fast and provides a fast I/O.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp NVMe AFF A800?

Though NetApp NVMe AFF A800 may seem like a highly-priced product, it is not extremely expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp NVMe AFF A800?

The product's performance has some shortcomings, making it an area that could be a little better. I don't expect to s...

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

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell PowerMax NVMe Competitors

NetApp ASA vs NetApp NVMe AFF A800

Compared 26% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp NVMe AFF A800

Compared 19% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs NetApp NVMe AFF A800

Compared 15% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs NetApp NVMe AFF A800

Compared 9% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp NVMe AFF A800

Compared 5% of the time

More NetApp NVMe AFF A800 Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

April 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe

April 2025

Download Dell PowerMax NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

April 2025

Download NetApp NVMe AFF A800 product report

Also Known As

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

Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

No data available

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

Your data is a gold mine. Get the most out of it - faster - with AFF A800. Designed for NVMe media, further accelerated with NVMe/FC connectivity to the host, AFF A800 all-flash systems deliver an incredible sub-200 microsecond latency. Providing more than 11.4M IOPS and 300GB/s throughput in a single cluster, AFF A800 redefines the limit of what’s possible with artificial intelligence and deep learning.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. NetApp NVMe AFF A800

April 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. NetApp NVMe AFF A800

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. NetApp NVMe AFF A800 and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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