Dell SC Series vs HPE Primera comparison

Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #18 with an average rating of 9.0, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.1. Dell Technologies holds a 0.7% mindshare in AFS, compared to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 4.3% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

The Dell SC Series and HPE Primera are strong competitors in the storage solution market. Based on data comparisons, HPE Primera generally has the upper hand due to its advanced capabilities and high availability, despite the higher cost.

Features: Dell SC Series offers scalability, high performance, and competitive pricing, which resonate well with users. HPE Primera provides high availability, comprehensive integration with virtual environments, and a range of advanced features that make it a powerful choice.

Room for Improvement: Dell SC Series needs enhanced documentation, increased frequency of updates, and improved reliability. HPE Primera would benefit from reducing complexity, providing more user-friendly management tools, and streamlining configuration processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell SC Series is known for easy deployment with some initial configuration challenges and high responsiveness in customer service. HPE Primera, while requiring more expertise for deployment, offers comprehensive onboarding support which users find valuable for addressing complex issues.

Pricing and ROI: Dell SC Series has a lower initial setup cost and provides a quicker ROI, appealing to budget-conscious users. HPE Primera, with a higher cost, is seen as a worthwhile investment for its advanced features and long-term benefits. Satisfaction rates with pricing and ROI are higher for Dell SC Series, although those needing advanced functionality find HPE Primera’s costs justified.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell SC Series vs. HPE Primera Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. HPE Primera

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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

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 SC Series is 0.7%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Primera is 4.3%, down from 5.4% 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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Taufeeq Rauf

Head of IT at NATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL FACILITATION TECHNOLOGIES (PVT.) LTD.

Offers a simple user interface and is useful for data replication

I use HPE Primera for mission-critical applications. My company uses the product as a storage solution for our machines. The availability of HPE Primera in our company is critical for us, considering that we operate in an HA environment where we can't have downtime since we need to deal with cheque clearance for banks. The product's interface is simple to use. I am satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The ease of use of the product's interface has directly had an impact on our company's operations, along with the improvement in the availability and performance of machines. Compared to HPE Primera, I work with a much more reliable storage solution like Dell PowerStore. Compared to HPE Primera, Dell PowerStore's features related to deduplication are very good, and it also offers a physical storage capacity of eight TB, which can be expanded up to forty TB. I would recommend the product to others who plan to use it only after taking into consideration their usage and requirements. From the price and performance point of view, Dell PowerStore is a better choice. I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

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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

"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

"I appreciate the performance."

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

"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 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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The user interface is good, I would rate it a nine out of ten."

"Everything is sub-5 MS for us. What I've found is that, with all-flash, when an app from my business is slow, I pretty much know it's them and not me. It leads to a performance conversation that has really hit an interesting threshold point where we are better than what they need. So now we get to have that "refactoring your application" conversation a lot quicker because now the performance on the infrastructure side isn't in question anymore."

"It had many features, like a snapshot, replication, on-the-file RAID levels, mix-and-match files, those kinds of things."

"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."

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

"Easy management of volumes: You can create volumes and easily assign them to VMware clusters, increasing their size."

"With federation, you can have multiple systems across sites. You can treat them as one, and with a live migration, volumes don't go down. You can move them from site to site, doing maintenance, and keep your environment up."

"The process of reallocating data from fast disks (SSD or SAS) to slow disks (SATA) gives you better performance and better use of resources."

More Dell SC Series pros

"The product is stable."

"One of the most valuable features is the ease of deployment."

"The interface is simplified."

"The performance is very good."

"In my opinion, HPE is making good progress and moving ahead with InfoSight, which is predictive analytics and artificial intelligence."

"The product has better replication features than the previous products."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy."

"The performance of the solution is good."

More HPE Primera pros

Cons

"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."

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

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

"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."

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

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

"The software layer has to improve."

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The cost of the solution could be better."

"There's always room for improvement in the operating code."

"An issue we had was that the controller went down during an upgrade because of their upgrading the code. One side of the switch was down."

"In some customer cases, customers experienced more performance or latency."

"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."

"I don't think the solution is very scalable."

"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."

More Dell SC Series cons

"The price of the product is an area of concern. From an improvement perspective, the solution should be made more affordable in terms of price."

"HPE Primera's deduplication area is not as good as the one offered by Dell PowerStore, making it an area where improvements are required."

"We face challenges with false alarms, particularly daily alerts related to replication link breaks. I'm not happy with the customer service and support."

"The product’s price needs improvement."

"Primera should be more user-friendly."

"This solution would be expensive for small business and it could be priced more competitively for that market."

"The IOPS and throughput could be better. That's the only drawback compared to other vendors."

"The reporting console can be improved with out of the box reports."

More HPE Primera cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"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."

"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."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"The product is expensive."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"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."

"It is one of the most cost effective systems for us. We have been able to run it longer than most, getting the most benefit and money out of it."

"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."

"The maintenance is usually pretty good. It's not like some of the others where they increase it in the fourth, fifth, or sixth years."

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

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

"Pricing depends on varying life cycles."

"This solution could be better priced in comparison with other vendors."

More Dell SC Series pricing and cost advice

"HPE Primera is a little bit higher than Dell PowerStore...HPE Primera costs around 80,000 USD."

"It is basically in the mid-range of the price. It is not cheaper than Hitachi, but it is cheaper than Pure Storage. There are no additional costs. Everything was taken care of in the price."

"I rate the product's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"The license for HPE Primera is all-inclusive."

"There is only a one-time license purchase needed and no additional costs. If HP could reduce the training cost, then that would be advantageous to the seller."

"Because it has high availability, the cost is above average. The cost depends upon the sizing, and every customer has a different size. It is slightly above average in terms of cost compared to its competitors, but the value add was that they could know what their maintenance cost was going to be going forward. They knew what their renewal or expansion costs would be."

"The solution’s pricing is affordable and worth the money."

"It’s a reasonable choice. When compared to other options, we've found it to be accessible and within our means."

More HPE Primera pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

23%

University

Financial Services Firm

Government

Educational Organization

46%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

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.

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?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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

Which would you choose - HPE Nimble Storage or HPE Primera?

HPE Nimble is a versatile synced WAN San solution. It is easy to use and doesn’t require much training for admins. Th...

See all answers

What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?

HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspectiv...

See all answers

What do you like most about HPE Primera?

For over a year, I have not seen any downtime in the product.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 34% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% 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

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell SC Series

Compared 71% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell SC Series

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell SC Series

Compared 10% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell SC Series

Compared 9% of the time

More Dell SC Series Competitors

HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 34% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs HPE Primera

Compared 17% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 10% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE Primera

Compared 9% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs HPE Primera

Compared 5% of the time

More HPE Primera Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

February 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series

February 2025

Download Dell SC Series product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Primera

February 2025

Download HPE Primera product report

Also Known As

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

SC Series Storage, Compellent

Primera

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

HPE introduces HPE Primera, a new storage platform designed to deliver superior simplicity, availability, and performance for mission-critical applications
HPE Primera advances the HPE Intelligent Data Platform, a portfolio of products and solutions designed to help customers transition from delivering storage to unlocking business value with intelligent data

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. HPE Primera

January 2025

Free Report: Dell SC Series vs. HPE Primera

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