Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe comparison

Dell Technologies and Pure Storage are both solutions in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category. Dell Technologies is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.5, while Pure Storage is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.6. Dell Technologies holds a 9.6% mindshare in N, compared to Pure Storage’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Pure Storage users who would recommend it.

Dell PowerMax NVMe

Read 75 Dell PowerMax NVMe reviews

2,732 Views
1,843 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Read 34 Pure FlashArray X NVMe reviews

862 Views
437 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Dell PowerMax NVMe

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Dell PowerMax NVMe and Pure FlashArray X NVMe are leading enterprise storage solutions. Pure FlashArray appears to have an advantage in simplicity and cost-effectiveness, whereas Dell PowerMax offers extensive enterprise features and longevity.

Features: Dell PowerMax NVMe offers advanced replication, encryption, and end-to-end NVMe support. It is known for its robust performance, security features, and integration capabilities. Pure FlashArray X NVMe focuses on simplicity and innovative data reduction technologies, with high operational efficiency and an easy-to-use interface.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerMax NVMe could improve in ease of management, cost efficiency, and user experience. Pure FlashArray X NVMe needs enhancements in support responsiveness, feature customization, and support structure.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerMax NVMe is straightforward to deploy, but users need better configuration guidance and customer support. Pure FlashArray X NVMe boasts rapid deployment and intuitive setup but some report delays in customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerMax NVMe has higher initial setup costs but offers robust ROI through enterprise features and longevity. Pure FlashArray X NVMe is more cost-effective initially, with all-inclusive pricing and efficient ROI through reduced management costs.

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

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe

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

Dell PowerMax NVMe

Ranking in All-Flash Storage

9th

Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

3rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Ranking in All-Flash Storage

16th

Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

7th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category, the mindshare of Dell PowerMax NVMe is 9.6%, down from 16.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 2.5%, 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

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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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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CloudIQ has become an optimal tool for us to get the full picture of all the different arrays, from mid-tier all the way up. It gives us that single view and the ability to launch the Unisphere. That is really is powerful in being able to manage the array."

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

"Based on our experience with VMAX, there isn't any hardware failure or something like that in PowerMax. Performance-wise also, everything is fine. We haven't faced any performance issues or any hardware failure. Its performance is great as compared to VMAX. Its I/O per second rate is higher than the old model."

"The SRDF replication piece is probably the best feature. It's useful for maintaining recoverability in the event of a disaster."

"It is a true, stable product."

"The number one most valuable feature is reliability. I want to go home at the end of the day and come in the next day knowing it works, especially since we have storage offshore."

"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 UI is very easy to use. We can add volumes and manage them easily."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pros

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

"The solution is scalable."

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

"I appreciate the performance."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

Cons

"There are definitely some improvements that can be made to the CloudIQ."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"I would like to see more development in the cloud environment. It would be good if it comes in the cloud kind of setup."

"The disadvantage of PowerMax is its cost."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe cons

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

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

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

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

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

"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."

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

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is competitive, but they need to have a different price for West Africa. They can do better with the price point to allow us to scale even more. We wanted to migrate our entire storage infrastructure to PowerMax, which would require us to buy more capacity, and from the price point, it didn't attract us."

"The tool is very expensive."

"The PowerMax appliance pricing was reasonable. Dell EMC quoted us a substantial discount."

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

"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."

"The cost has room for improvement."

"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."

"Dell is expensive compared to other products and I would rate its pricing a four out of ten."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

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

"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."

"The product is expensive."

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

"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."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 offerings and integrated into the PowerStoreOS. The installation and setup have a ...

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?

The price of Dell PowerMax depends on the project size. It is the best choice for large projects in terms of price and features compared to midrange solutions.

See all answers

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?

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

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 26% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 11% 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

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell PowerMax NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 38% 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 15% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe

January 2025

Download Dell PowerMax NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

January 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Also Known As

Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

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

Learn More

Dell Technologies

Pure Storage

Overview

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.

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.

Sample Customers

Rackspace, Open Line

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe

January 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe

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