Dell SC Series vs Dell XtremIO comparison

Dell SC Series and Dell XtremIO are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell SC Series is ranked #18 with an average rating of 9.0, while Dell XtremIO is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.0. Dell SC Series holds a 0.7% mindshare in AFS, compared to Dell XtremIO’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Dell SC Series users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Dell XtremIO users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Dell XtremIO and Dell SC Series are enterprise storage solutions targeting different needs. Dell SC Series generally offers more robust features, while Dell XtremIO excels in ease of deployment and management.

Features: Dell XtremIO is noted for its performance and scalability, easy deployment, and efficient management. Dell SC Series stands out with advanced data management options, greater flexibility, and tiered storage capabilities that optimize resources and performance.

Room for Improvement: Dell XtremIO could benefit from more competitive pricing and additional features. Dell SC Series users suggest that the interface could be more intuitive, the system's complexity can be a barrier, and the initial setup cost is high.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell XtremIO has a straightforward deployment process and responsive customer support. Dell SC Series might require more time to deploy due to its complexity, but has comprehensive support services.

Pricing and ROI: Dell XtremIO is viewed as a cost-effective option with a quick ROI. Dell SC Series involves higher initial setup costs, but its advanced features justify the investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell SC Series vs. Dell XtremIO Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. Dell XtremIO

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 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 SC Series is 0.7%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell XtremIO is 0.7%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

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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Steven McClendon

Data Center Server & Storage Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Superior platform with excellent snapshots and cost-saving auto-tiering

I'm a big fan of the SC Series platform. Its feature set is superior to some of the other platforms. The snapshots on SC are excellent, allowing for multiple snapshot schedules for any one system. The auto-tiering functionality intelligently moves new data to the highest performance tier and then progresses it down to less expensive tiers over time, providing cost savings for customers.

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Stanislaw Jagielski

Trainer, Storage Consultant at Oxon

Efficient and straightforward setup boosts data management capabilities

Scalability is a significant feature of Dell XtremIO, as it is easy to expand and manage. It provides a lot of features suited for complex systems, such as scalability and the ability to define multi-domain systems, which are beneficial for data management and storage separation. It is efficient from the customer's point of view, offering deduplication at both the volume and file levels. The configuration and setup are straightforward, provided one has knowledge in setting up network infrastructure like VLANs. It is easy to install, use, and configure, making it a reliable product.

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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 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 Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"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."

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"It was very easy to install, maintain, and provides excellent manageability."

"I can mix and match the drives, using older mechanical devices and the latest SFP drives in a single solution with different enclosures."

"The performance benefits weren't surprising, we expected that. What we didn't expect were the densification benefits that we got out of going all-flash. We're able to put more applications on the arrays because of how all-flash performs. The way some of the application profiles have responded to all-flash has been really pleasing."

"One time, we had a drive fail and we were notified before we even saw it on the device."

"It's very scalable, especially with federation. If you outgrow the number of spindles that a unit can support, depending on the model, you can go into federation."

"Performance-wise it's high speed. It's also more stable and scalable."

"The setup is straightforward."

"A valuable feature is the performance of the auto-tiering. It will move hot data up to your fastest Tier 1 or move your slow data down. Data progression is what it's called. With the auto-tiering you can have multiple tiers, you can have your Tier 1 be either spinning or flash, all the way down to 7.2K. It will change the RAID on the fly so your writes come in at RAID 10. After they sit for a while, they get converted to RAID 5, then they'll cool off and move down the tiers. Your performance is kept going, while the cold data is moved to your slow, non-performance tiers."

More Dell SC Series pros

"Very good IOPS performance"

"Performance and deduplication. This is a very robust block storage option that offers both performance and data optimization."

"The most valuable feature of Dell EMC XtremIO is the data protection (DP) group, it is one of the most advanced features in these types of arrays. The dedupe and compression that this array provides both do a superb job."

"Dell XtremIO is good for databases and huge workloads."

"Xtrem10's features are more simple to implement. The integration and interface are also good."

"It was very easy and straightforward to setup."

"The performance is good, which is important."

"The program is very stable."

More Dell XtremIO pros

Cons

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

"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."

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

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

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"If Dell SC Series wasn't being phased out, adding an NVMe tier and secure snapshots like those on the PowerStore platform would be beneficial."

"Licensing, especially on the storage line, could use some simplification. It's not terrible, but, for example, with the Isilon series, they've gone to completely a la carte. A la carte is very difficult to traverse, as to what you need. It would be more beneficial, at least from my point of view as a customer, if they did it more like car companies do, where there are package lines"

"One option I would like to see is, when you're up on the view-screen, to be able to incorporate getting to what HPE call the iLO, the Integrated Lights-Out. To be able to get that instead of having to go back and trying to find IP addresses and re-institute those would be good. It would be good to be able to that put on the initial splash screen."

"In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage."

"The interface could be improved. It should have an application point of view."

"I would like to see higher compression, dedupe, faster I/O, and bigger drives."

"While the scalability is good, there are certain limitations."

"It's not very efficient anymore. There are better products out there."

More Dell SC Series cons

"XtremIO needs to be lower priced. It also needs better endpoints and scalability."

"I believe having more replication options comparatively to VMAX (other than RecoverPoint) would be great."

"The interface could be simplified for beginners to ease the configuration of special objects in the system."

"XtremIO is coming to its end of life."

"The product could be improved by reducing the pricing and having better organization in their technical support team."

"The product is highly expensive. Additionally, there is a significant lack of training, support documents, and forums available for Dell XtremIO, making troubleshooting difficult for third-party individuals."

"We've encountered challenges in integrating other products with Dell Xtremio, as it tends to be more vendor-locked. This means we can't easily explore other solutions that might work alongside Dell."

"In the next release, the solution could have better integration and if we can host assets on the cloud, such as NetApp has the NetApp volumes, which we can host on the cloud directly called NetApp CVO (cloud volume ONTAP). Dell EMC should come up with something purely on the cloud rather than manage services."

More Dell XtremIO cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The product is expensive."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"We have found the solution to be affordable."

"The SC Series was priced fairly. I wouldn't call it either expensive or cheap because we had a very tight budget, so if they were able to fit in that type of budget, they met our expectations."

"Pricing depends on varying life cycles."

"Always keep in mind, this is not just a enclosure with disks is a complete SAN as a service. There is software, license, and storage in one single solution."

"There are costs involving the solution, vendor fees and product safety which are additional."

"This product is too expensive compared to others, and I don't see any value in using it."

"Compared to other solutions out there, it's affordable."

"We have the basic license for the use of this solution and it is a permanent license. The overall cost could be less, it is expensive."

More Dell SC Series pricing and cost advice

"Pricing and licensing are in line with other products from other manufacturers. You get what you pay for."

"You can get a two-year or three-year license for the tool. You can also opt for a perpetual-based licensing model, which can be renewed on a yearly or two-year basis."

"Too high priced for the Brazil market."

"This solution is a little bit pricey."

"With some workloads that benefit from compression and deduplication, costs are actually better than some tier 2 subsystems (while latency remains <1ms)."

"It is costly but worth it."

"XtremIO is pretty straightforward about pricing. However, you need to look at your data so you can estimate, with the advice of DEL EMC, what data reduction ratio you will reach. In our case, a 3:1 reduction ration gave us a positive case compared to other storage arrays."

"It's not cheap, but it absolutely gets the job done. I don't have any real comment regarding licensing specifically."

More Dell XtremIO pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user182013

Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at Rubrik

May 1, 2015

Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR

Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

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.

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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.

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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 ...

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What do you like most about Dell SC Series?

I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell SC Series?

Cost considerations are crucial when choosing between solutions like Dell and NetApp. Sometimes Dell offers better pe...

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What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?

In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage. If I want...

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell EMC XtremIO?

The feature I like most about Dell Xtremio is its hardware quality compared to other vendors. It's clear they're cont...

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

Pricing is hard to determine as it depends on the given configuration. XtremIO offers features that justify a potenti...

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What needs improvement with Dell XtremIO?

The interface could be simplified for beginners to ease the configuration of special objects in the system. While the...

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 Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell SC Series

Compared 60% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell SC Series

Compared 9% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell SC Series

Compared 9% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell SC Series

Compared 9% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell SC Series

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell SC Series Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 26% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 15% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 7% of the time

More Dell XtremIO Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell XtremIO

April 2025

Download Dell XtremIO product report

Also Known As

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

SC Series Storage, Compellent

Dell EMC XtremIO Flash, Dell EMC XtremIO X2, XtremIO, XtremIO X2

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 EMC SC Series arrays provide a unified platform for the ultimate in performance, adaptability and machine-driven efficiency. SC Series software delivers modern features that help you meet aggressive workload demands using the fewest drives necessary. With an open, future-ready design, SC Series storage integrates seamlessly with applications and infrastructure, enabling you to scale on a single platform and add capabilities without forklift upgrades.

Dell Technologies

Bring all-flash, scale-out storage to your enterprise applications with EMC XtremIO. Purpose-built for flash, XtremIO storage arrays are amazingly fast. Delivering high IOPS at less than 1 millisecond latency is just the start. EMC XtremIO helps you harness the power of flash storage by building in innovations like content-based data placement and dual-stage metadata.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric

Raiffeisen Bank Bulgaria, Wentworth-Douglas Hospital

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. Dell XtremIO

April 2025

Free Report: Dell SC Series vs. Dell XtremIO

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. Dell XtremIO and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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