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Dell PowerPath vs Pure Storage FlashArray comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 PowerPath
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (3rd)
Pure Storage FlashArray
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Dell PowerPath and Pure Storage FlashArray aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Dell PowerPath is designed for Storage Software and holds a mindshare of 10.2%, up 8.1% compared to last year.
Pure Storage FlashArray, on the other hand, focuses on All-Flash Storage, holds 6.4% mindshare, down 8.6% since last year.
Storage Software
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Derrick Brockel - PeerSpot reviewer
A resilient and reliable solution that has many load-balancing technologies and provides high availability
People who want to buy the solution must create a scorecard of Dell PowerPath against other products. They must run database tests. They must consider factors like pricing, performance, ease of use, visibility, and reliability. They must also run tests to understand which product recovers faster. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
Nabeel Sayegh - PeerSpot reviewer
Supercharges enterprise storage by way of highly optimized hardware, comprehensive data management and a feature rich interface.
During their early years, I was a member of Pure's Customer Advisory Board. In addition, when we first adopted Pure, they did not have replication GA yet. We got into their beta testing program and help them work out certain issues with that technology. One weakness I can say the array has, still to this day, is limited control on scheduling snapshots. Depending on the type of replication schedule you are building, you may or may not have control on specifying the start time of a given replication schedule. This is not a very big problem in the grand scheme of things, but something nonetheless that has bothered me about the scheduler in general. Another area for improvement would be automatic host alias creation. Other platforms such as EMC Unity/PowerStore will automatically detect the host name, create a alias for it and associate the logged in HBA's to it. Pure does not do this for you and as a result, requires manual configuration. This can be very time consuming especially when you are deploying a large number of new servers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It provides a high availability and will increase the performance of any server or operating system."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that disaster recovery scenarios are very good and easy to use in Dell PowerPath since it is available in a simplified form."
"The user interface is good."
"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."
"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."
"The product is very reliable."
"The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is migration without disruptions."
"It gives us capacity planning."
"The solution is very reliable."
"This solution has improved our organization in the way that we used to see latency but now with this solution we don't. It also has good performance. Latencies have come down for our performance in the SQL databases. We can put a lot more in a lot less in terms of space savings. We also save data center space have good deduplication."
"Their REST API is wonderful, well-documented, and easy to use."
"Scalability is one of the best features. You can quickly add more. You can swap out the drives with larger sizes, you can add more shelves. All of that is perfect - the whole concept of keeping it modular..."
"The initial setup is very straightforward. You simply plug it in and turn it on."
"We put a fair amount of stress on it because we run sequel workloads and we run web applications where the same web files are hit over and over. We have had almost zero stability issues with that SAN, that has been really great for us."
"The management features are well organized and they have a very good dashboard."
 

Cons

"While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective."
"Customers do not choose PowerPath unless they have Unix or Linux."
"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Although PowerPath is very mature and has been on the market for more than 15 years there are still a lot of bugs that have been profiled with PowerPath, specifically, during any OS upgrade."
"The technical support is good but they are not available all the time."
"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."
"The solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."
"From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable."
"We would like to see better troubleshooting aspects. It helps us if we can find out where the problem is. Right now, it's difficult. Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint the issue. If they had more visibility and more troubleshooting feature built into the tool that would really help."
"Improved reporting on the deduplication and compression functionality would be beneficial."
"It is a bit expensive."
"It was not proactive communication."
"In terms of the future, I have been excited by some of the copy data management stuff that they're talking about building into the environment. There are feature sets where I've done a lot of automation work. So, I am always looking forward to extensions of their API. They're also talking about a phone home centralized analytics database being used as a centralized management console with a list of new cloud features, but this doesn't seem finalized."
"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."
"The interface lacks the same level of control as some other arrays I've used."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is a little bit expensive."
"The price of the solution is fair."
"The solution is expensive."
"I rate the product's price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is affordable, and ten is really expensive. Dell PowerPath is an expensive tool."
"Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution."
"There are no additional costs associated with the product."
"It could always be lower, but it's okay."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"The cost was initially high, but once more people were using it, the costs came down. This was because the University was reselling it to other departments."
"The price, in general, is around $100,000, however, I know it costs more."
"I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."
"The price of the Pure Storage Flash Array is too high and there needs to be more contact clarity. We went with the Evergreen plan and I don't have clarity on what am I supposed to pay each year or every three years. There was not much contract clarity."
"My organization has a yearly license, but I believe that Pure Storage FlashArray has capacity-based licenses as well. I'm definitely happy with the pricing."
"It is cost-effective because after buying a subscription, they provide a service to upgrade hardware for free. They are providing so many features. When you consider the features provided, it is cost-effective."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Healthcare Company
13%
Government
12%
Retailer
11%
Educational Organization
34%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell PowerPath?
The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerPath?
The product is a little bit expensive. It is a little pricey because it provides multipathing with other OSs. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.
What needs improvement with Dell PowerPath?
The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR. When we use 3PAR storage, we have to use another technology to load balance. The product must be integrated with other products l...
Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Storage. It may be more expensive, but it should pay for itself for its functionalit...
What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashArray?
We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
Well...you know the old saying, you get what you pay for. I wont lie...Pure is no cheap. I could easily buy another vendors AFA (all flash array) and possible save some $$$, but I wouldn't get ever...
 

Also Known As

PowerPath
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Healthcare Residential Service Company
Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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