Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerVault comparison

Dell PowerStore and Dell PowerVault are both solutions in the Enterprise SAN category. Dell PowerStore is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8, while Dell PowerVault is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3. Dell PowerStore holds a 33.6% mindshare in ES, compared to Dell PowerVault’s 32.2% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell PowerStore users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Dell PowerVault users who would recommend it.

Dell PowerStore

Read 119 Dell PowerStore reviews

24,481 Views
1,469 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Dell PowerVault

Read 23 Dell PowerVault reviews

2,573 Views
1,158 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Dell PowerStore

Dell PowerVault

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

Dell PowerVault and Dell PowerStore compete in the storage solutions category, targeting small to medium businesses and enterprises seeking advanced scalability and performance, respectively. PowerStore appears to have the upper hand due to its performance, adaptability, and integration capabilities.

Features: Dell PowerVault provides reliable storage with RAID systems and data deduplication software, making it cost-effective for basic needs. Its lack of standout features limits it to smaller operations. Dell PowerStore excels with NVMe storage, high compression, and excellent scalability, catering to varied workloads and providing robust VMware integration.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerVault needs enhancements in memory cache, protocol support, and scalability. Its deduplication and compression features are missing, necessitating better integration with existing IT infrastructure. Dell PowerStore faces challenges with its complex upgrade process, high pricing, and limited replication capabilities, suggesting a need for improved software updates and cybersecurity features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both PowerVault and PowerStore are easy to deploy in on-premises settings, but PowerStore also offers cloud compatibility. Customer service is highly rated for both, though PowerVault's technical support response times are slower than PowerStore's more satisfactory service.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerVault is affordable, offering a substantial ROI for small businesses. In contrast, Dell PowerStore, though more expensive, justifies its cost with advanced features and performance, positioning itself as a valuable investment for scalable, robust storage needs. Both products yield considerable returns, with PowerVault focusing on cost-effectiveness and PowerStore on advanced features and flexibility.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerStore vs. Dell PowerVault Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. Dell PowerVault

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:

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerStore

Ranking in Enterprise SAN

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

119

Ranking in other categories

Data Warehouse (4th), NAS (1st), All-Flash Storage (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)

Dell PowerVault

Ranking in Enterprise SAN

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Fibre Channel (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Enterprise SAN category, the mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 33.6%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerVault is 32.2%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise SAN

Featured Reviews

Hassan_Zaki

Senior Presales Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Integrated AI and clustering enhance storage operations effectively

I promote and recommend Dell PowerStore for all workloads to my clients and customers. Most of my customers have one appliance per site. Approximately 80% of my customers have Dell PowerStore implemented in their data centers. We always use CLS as another Dell solution for cybersecurity and data security. The CLS is integrated with the Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain, not with Dell PowerStore. Windows, Linux, and some customers use Red Hat or SUSE. We have many operating systems working with Dell PowerStore in the same environments and data centers. CloudIQ and Storage IQ are used by some customers, but Apex AIOps has not been widely adopted yet. Dell PowerStore has integration with VMware and Kubernetes. Most workloads work fine and have very good integration with Dell PowerStore, except for one or two specific workloads in the market. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell PowerStore a nine.

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SigfridCecillon

Director at Arsium

Offers good stability and simplicity

The room for improvement lies in the responsiveness and real-time feedback of the web server setup. We could set up the installation through a web server, but it's not very reactive on the web server. For example, when you launch a task, and you don't know exactly if the task has begun or if the task is in progress, or if it's finished. You have to wait for three to five to ten minutes to be sure that the task is running or in progress or finished. So at that point, it's not very good. For the rest, we have a good organization for the platform. And it's working everywhere. Another area of improvement is duplication.

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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

"Pricing is very good. It's very competitive against those of all the others that I looked at in the marketplace, such as Hitachi, IBM, HP, and Pure. Dell is right there in the mix as far as providing the best price point as well as meeting the performance requirements that we have."

"Dell PowerStore is very easy to deploy."

"The use of NVMe is notable, and the speed and performance it provides are commendable."

"The solution is very easy to implement."

"Overall, Dell PowerStore is very competitive in the market and able to beat the competition."

"The data encryption is good and available in a standard license. There are snapshot and backup capabilities."

"The software upgrades are all included for no additional charge."

"The most valuable feature is the encryption in the loop because we can manage data center data from a different perspective, reducing the space used while growing data using the same equipment."

More Dell PowerStore pros

"Dell PowerVault is user-friendly and easy to deploy."

"The most valuable features are stability and response time."

"For us, the initial setup was easy."

"The storage has been good."

"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerVault is its performance."

"I like the tool's CloudIQ feature."

"Dell PowerVault offers valuable full flash storage."

"PowerVault comes with free software that performs functions like data deduplication and replication, which is cost-effective and delivers added value to the product."

More Dell PowerVault pros

Cons

"Reporting is an area that could be improved. It's very simplistic sometimes, and some of the very technical guys on my team want to see more of the details and be able to massage the report a little bit better."

"When it comes to Dell PowerStore, I would like to see more integration and more security features included. It's unfortunate that the solution does not feature Flash trace."

"Upgrading an old model to a new one can be complex, particularly when using VMware."

"The cost of technical support is high."

"If I could improve Dell PowerStore, I would suggest that integrations into backup platforms be a little more streamlined."

"The only area I can highlight for improvement is that the 4:1 data reduction target has not been reached. This may be due to an issue with Dell EMC's initial analysis of data compression. As a result, we have had to add new physical disks to reach our goal of total available disk space."

"The upgrades themselves are running fine, but after the upgrade is when we have a problem. With the update to 1.4, we had a head crash. They told us, 'This is a known issue. Please upgrade to 2.' We upgraded to 2 and, one week later they told us, 'Yeah, there are some issues in 2.0.0. You can lose data. Please upgrade to 2.0.1.' Overall, they need to make the system stable."

"The solution’s security and technical support could be improved."

More Dell PowerStore cons

"The tool needs to improve its UI."

"We could set up the installation through a web server, but it's not very reactive on the web server. For example, when you launch a task, and you don't know exactly if the task has begun or if the task is in progress, or if it's finished. You have to wait for three to five to ten minutes to be sure that the task is running or in progress or finished. So at that point, it's not very good."

"The implementation process takes a while."

"If the solution came with a synchronous application, it would be particularly advantageous for small businesses operating across multiple sites."

"PowerVault doesn't integrate with Active Directory. Other storage solutions offer SAN and NAS unified storage in a single appliance, but PowerVault is only SAN."

"I would like Dell to improve on the configuration of the disk groups. Only one group is expandable. Once you configure the other disk group types, you cannot expand them. It limits scalability. If you want maybe to grow a disk group, you lose information, and then you need to build it up again, which is not a good use case for customers."

"Dell PowerVault could improve by having a higher cache and file protocol support added."

"Dell PowerVault is block-oriented storage only."

More Dell PowerVault cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As compared to others, PowerStore is cheaper."

"Pricing depends on the model and negotiation. Sometimes we manage to get good discounts, sometimes not."

"Dell PowerStore charges for the hardware warranty every three years. The price will depend on the storage model or how much hardware it has."

"There are no separate licenses required as all the basic licenses are included in the bundle."

"It is easy to work with Dell from the licensing perspective."

"Dell PowerStore is more expensive than Dell EMC Unity All Flash. Dell PowerStore's performance metrics were way higher than what Dell EMC Unity All Flash offered."

"Dell PowerStore is not a cheap solution."

"PowerStore's pricing is reasonable."

More Dell PowerStore pricing and cost advice

"The cost, compared to other solutions, is on the higher end."

"Dell PowerVault's price is the tool's main attraction."

"I would rate the pricing model a nine out of ten, with one being expensive and ten being cheap."

"I rate the product price a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high."

"I rate Dell PowerVault a six or seven out of ten for pricing."

"I rate the solution's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"The price of Dell PowerVault could be reduced. It is more expensive than some IBM solutions."

"It is important to remember that the retail price may seem high, but the final price is usually different."

More Dell PowerVault pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?

PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and next-gen apps. It is only Flash and can support many workloads from today's app...

See all answers

How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?

Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated management of resources feature provides a more simple administration. I found the flex...

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

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell PowerVault?

Dell PowerVault offers valuable full flash storage.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerVault?

I rate the solution's pricing a seven to eight out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell PowerVault?

The product is generally stable, but there have been instances, to my knowledge, where we faced issues in the controller during software upgrades. The availability is not at the desired level durin...

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 15% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 13% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 9% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 8% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell PowerStore

Compared 7% of the time

More Dell PowerStore Competitors

HPE StoreOnce vs Dell PowerVault

Compared 14% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Dell PowerVault

Compared 10% of the time

Lenovo Storage V Series vs Dell PowerVault

Compared 4% of the time

ExaGrid EX vs Dell PowerVault

Compared 2% of the time

Huawei OceanStor SNS vs Dell PowerVault

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell PowerVault Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore

July 2025

Download Dell PowerStore product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerVault

July 2025

Download Dell PowerVault product report

Also Known As

PowerStore

PowerVault

Overview

Dell PowerStore stands out for its high performance, flexibility, and easy integration with VMware. It offers notable data compression and deduplication capabilities while providing powerful NVMe support and machine learning to optimize IT operations.

Dell PowerStore is designed to offer a comprehensive approach to IT infrastructure by enhancing performance and simplifying management. It is particularly suitable for companies that require scalable solutions to increase compute or capacity independently. Featuring built-in intelligence, PowerStore allows efficient storage consolidation and reduced footprint, while integration with CloudIQ enhances monitoring and analytics. However, there are areas for improvement, such as stability, enterprise features, and the user interface. Pricing is high, and support responsiveness needs attention. Organizations primarily use PowerStore for VMware environments, storage, and data protection, supporting high-performance databases and VMware workloads. It is utilized in data centers for disaster recovery and hybrid setups.

What are the key features of Dell PowerStore?

Flexibility: Independently scales compute or capacity
High Performance: Offers powerful NVMe support and machine learning
Integration: Easily integrates with VMware
Data Efficiency: Provides data compression and deduplication
Simplified Management: Built-in intelligence for efficient storage management

What benefits should users consider?

Performance Optimization: Enhance IT operations with machine learning
Scalability: Increase compute or storage capacity as needed
Integration Potential: Improve efficiency with VMware and CloudIQ
Data Protection: Reliable for disaster recovery and hybrid environments

In industries like IT, finance, and healthcare, Dell PowerStore supports efficient data management and enhances infrastructure performance. Organizations leverage it to manage extensive data, streamline virtualization processes, and facilitate migration from legacy systems, while integrating cloud and on-premises infrastructures for improved operations.

Dell Technologies

PowerVault MD3 storage arrays help you cost-effectively address the challenges of data growth with versatile solutions that are optimized for smaller-scale storage consolidation, flexible virtualization projects and high business continuity.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Dayco, FAW Foundry, University of Cambridge, Finder, Stadtwerke Pforzheim GmbH & Co.

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerStore vs. Dell PowerVault

July 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerStore vs. Dell PowerVault

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. Dell PowerVault and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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