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Dell PowerStore vs Zadara comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell PowerStore
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), NAS (2nd), Enterprise SAN (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
Zadara
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
33rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (17th), Compute Service (11th), Public Cloud Storage Services (15th), File and Object Storage (21st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 17.5%, up from 15.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zadara is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Hamed Mohamed - PeerSpot reviewer
Straightforward with great snapshots and no complicated configuration
The usage of the system is very straightforward. It is simple and easy to use. It has great snapshots. I can take a million snapshots and also schedule the timing. There is no complicated configuration for queries and calls. You just create a model and go. This generation of the product, overall, has been very nice. It is stable. The solution can scale.
Kirubel Behailu - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhancing storage management efficiency with user-friendly experience
Our customers are using Zadara for their research and development environments. We provide infrastructure for government projects, but we are often not fully aware of their specific usage.  I typically use it for our infrastructure and offer both Zadara and Microsoft Azure to our customers Zadara…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."
"The solution is scalable."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"Overall, we're quite happy with the product because we can move the data that is stored on more than 10 of our current storage devices to a single PowerStore."
"The solution's most valuable features are its form factor and switching to NVMe."
"We have implemented Dell PowerStore for small sites needing mirrored storage. To ensure high availability, the storage is set up in two different locations, possibly in the same building but far apart."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable features of Dell PowerStore are the resilience, scalability, flexibility of expansion, and ease of managing the entire solution including the servers and storage."
"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."
"The main feature of Dell PowerStore is its support for NVMe as well as hybrid solutions."
"The platform's reliability and built-in replication between disk systems have made our customers happy. It has worked consistently well over the years."
"It provides very satisfactory storage performance."
"Zadara is a fully-fledged platform, and our customers are happy with its use."
"One of the most useful features is that they provide iSCSI as a service."
"The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use."
"A nice feature is the immutable object storage, which can be used in conjunction with Veeam."
"It's very easy to expand and compared to other storage systems that we've used, it's a lot more expandable and a lot more flexible in how it's deployed."
"The processing is much faster with this product."
"One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage compute instances in there. Being able to integrate with compute, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"It is on the expensive side."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"It needs more mature code."
"The solution’s security and technical support could be improved."
"The customer service and support are bad."
"It doesn't support SSD or Flash."
"Having all the services consolidated makes it hard to scale."
"After upgrades, there were a few bugs in the product, and it can be considered as an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Dell PowerStore has just caught up to some of the competition by introducing METRO nodes a few months ago while the competition has had the feature for years."
"Could use some additional automation."
"The initial setup of the solution is complex."
"Some of the features are a little bit slow to come to market."
"There is room for improvement in pricing as it is currently quite expensive."
"The range of support of VMware could be better. It can support Windows, however, it cannot support other operating systems like IBM AIX. This needs to improve."
"The management interface is more geared towards end-users rather than a service partner like ourselves, and there are improvements that can be made around that."
"Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves."
"There are still some storage features that they lack. For example, other vendors implemented the auto-tiering feature a long time ago, while Zadara Storage Cloud is just coming out with this feature today. So, they are a little bit late compared to the market."
"Currently, when we do firmware upgrades, it sometimes causes issues and is not as nondisruptive as desired."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"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."
"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."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"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."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"Pricing depends on the model and negotiation. Sometimes we manage to get good discounts, sometimes not."
"Dell PowerStore has been priced aggressively, especially when compared to other NVMe storage options. It is likely one of the most cost-effective options for organizations seeking a pure NVMe play in terms of pricing."
"There's still a cap on the upgrade path, where you can consume all the engines within the frame before you have to go to another frame... Normally, we exceed the IOPS on the frames before we can ever exhaust the storage, so anything they can do to help us avoid stranded storage capacity, capacity that we couldn't get to, would be beneficial."
"If we use the 500 or 1000, the licensing and pricing are reasonable. PowerStore can compete with any vendor and the price isn't that expensive."
"Dell PowerStore charges for the hardware warranty every three years. The price will depend on the storage model or how much hardware it has."
"With compression, we were able to have a solution within our company's budget. We include a clause in the contract with Dell that states if the compression ratio is not met, we will adjust the workload accordingly."
"We purchased it with a five-year warranty."
"Licensing is very simple. Everything is included in the basic license. There are no concerns about having to pay to add a feature. Everything is there."
"The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."
"One of the factors that ruled out several providers was cost. They were way too expensive for the volume of data that we needed and the speed at which we needed to be able to manage it. There aren't a lot of providers that can do that."
"The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."
"If you just take the street price of Zadara Storage Cloud and look up the price or cost per hour, then you could think that Zadara Storage Cloud is extremely expensive or a solution only for enterprise use. That is not true. You need to compare the entire system. This means that you don't stop looking at just the street price, but you need to consider all the features, requirements, and costs of support as well as the extra cost that other vendors have. Other players just play with hidden, additional costs. Everything is included in Zadara Storage Cloud's licensing cost; what you get is what you pay for."
"The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using."
"It is a nice licensing model and it makes it quite simple because we just pay for what we use, and the bill that comes shows us exactly what customers are using what resources."
"For our use, it's appropriately priced and overall, it's proved to be very cost-effective against other tier-one vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Retailer
6%
 

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.
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 ...
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...
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 managem...
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...
What needs improvement with Zadara?
There is room for improvement in pricing as it is currently quite expensive. Adding AI capabilities could enhance the...
What is your primary use case for Zadara?
Our customers are using Zadara for their research and development environments. We provide infrastructure for governm...
What advice do you have for others considering Zadara?
If companies have the budget, I recommend Zadara for small business classes due to its robust performance and user-fr...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
PowerStore
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Information Not Available
Time, Inc. A&E Network, The Washington Post, News UK, McGraw Hill, Gilt, Toshiba, Deloitte, VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. Zadara and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.