Dell SC Series vs VAST Data comparison

Dell Technologies and VAST Data are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #27 with an average rating of 9.3, while VAST Data is ranked #20 with an average rating of 10.0. Dell Technologies holds a 0.9% mindshare in AFS, compared to VAST Data’s 2.9% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VAST Data users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Dell SC Series and VAST Data are prominent choices in the storage market. VAST Data seems to have the upper hand due to its high performance and advanced storage capabilities.

Features: Dell SC Series is known for its scalable architecture, comprehensive data management, and positive feedback about user experience. VAST Data is noted for high performance, advanced storage capabilities, and innovative features that many users find advantageous.

Room for Improvement: Dell SC Series users indicate areas for improvement such as better integration with third-party tools, enhancements in system reliability, and improved support. VAST Data users suggest improvements in documentation, support for additional protocols, and better user guidance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell SC Series is recognized for straightforward deployment processes, though customer service experiences vary. VAST Data is praised for efficient deployment and consistent customer support, providing a slight advantage in service quality.

Pricing and ROI: Dell SC Series offers competitive pricing but is perceived to provide only moderate ROI. VAST Data, while more expensive, delivers superior ROI due to its advanced performance, making it worth the additional cost.

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

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. VAST Data

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 January 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 0.9%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VAST Data is 2.9%, up from 2.5% 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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Alan Powers

HPC CTO at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Stability-wise, a device that has been up and running for years

The failover capability and resiliency are some of the solution's valuable features. The big thing is resilience because it has richer coding in it, so multiple devices can't fail. Also, one can still access a number of CBoxes that can allow one to access their file system. Once a device fails, it fails the transparency of the end-user, and it just starts using another resource. The encryption capability, the snapshots, along with a whole bunch of features make the tool valuable. VAST Data keeps adding more and more features all the time.

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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

"I appreciate the performance."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

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

"The solution is scalable."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."

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

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"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 Dell support is helpful and the response is quick. The agents' knowledge is very good."

"It is easy to use, expand the hard drives, add storage, and set up replication."

"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."

"Most valuable features have been the system customization with it, the performance you receive, and their CoPilot Support (or Dell EMC Storage Support)."

"I think that Dell EMC is one of the best technical support services in Ukraine."

"There's some new stuff coming with 7.3, which just got released, where they're spreading the sparing across the whole array, rather than having a dedicated spare disk, and have it sit there and do nothing until one of them dies, and then it kicks in - and having to rebuild all of that. Now, they'll do the sparing across all the disks and they say that is going to add not only space but performance to the array, with 7.3."

"The interface is easy to use which makes the product user-friendly."

More Dell SC Series pros

"The solution is useful for machine learning and scientific applications, including computer simulations."

"This has been one of the most reliable storage systems that I have ever used."

Cons

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

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

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

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

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

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

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

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series."

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

"This product should be a lot more user-friendly."

"What I understand is that this is a 13 year old architecture, so it has lived its life and they're phasing it out. Honestly, we were initially struggling with the integration with VMware (but it was fixed with the VMware 6.5) and, then, it was around a 10GB network. At that time, it had the longevity to go to 100GB as well. It got us thinking about, when we go into the containerized architecture, what do we need to do to fix the infrastructure?"

"Some menus aren't so intuitive."

"I would like to see an integrated key manager in the controllers. Currently, it's an external product. It would be nice to have the option of having a built-in key for self-encrypting drive features."

"The initial setup is somewhat complex and should be made simpler to do."

"The administration and support (on the way that they delivered) was a little bit slow."

More Dell SC Series cons

"The read/write ratio is an area in the solution with some flaws and needs improvement."

"The write performance could be improved because it is less than half of the read performance."

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."

"The product is expensive."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"We have found the solution to be affordable."

"We have reviewed many platforms over the years. It is probably the best solution for its value."

"The pricing of Dell EMC Compellent is competitive."

"It has a good price point and offers some value-added enterprise features."

"The scalability seems a bit more expensive than even buying a brand new one so far. That has been kind of a drawback."

"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."

"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."

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

More Dell SC Series pricing and cost advice

"We acquired VAST Data as a one-time, capital purchase."

"Price-wise, VAST Data is not the cheapest, not the most expensive one."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

24%

Financial Services Firm

University

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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?

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

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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 ...

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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?

If Dell SC Series could have supported the protocol NVMe over TCP, that would have been great. It does not. Additiona...

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What do you like most about VAST Data?

The solution is useful for machine learning and scientific applications, including computer simulations.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VAST Data?

Price-wise, VAST Data is not the cheapest, not the most expensive one.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VAST Data?

The read/write ratio is an area in the solution with some flaws and needs improvement.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 38% 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 15% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell SC Series

Compared 68% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell SC Series

Compared 12% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell SC Series

Compared 12% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell SC Series

Compared 9% of the time

More Dell SC Series Competitors

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs VAST Data

Compared 12% of the time

NetApp AFF vs VAST Data

Compared 10% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs VAST Data

Compared 10% of the time

Qumulo vs VAST Data

Compared 9% of the time

Databricks vs VAST Data

Compared 8% of the time

More VAST Data Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

December 2024

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series

January 2025

Download Dell SC Series product report

Buyer's Guide

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

December 2024

Download VAST Data product report

Also Known As

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

SC Series Storage, Compellent

No data available

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Pure Storage

Dell Technologies

VAST Data

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.

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.

Innovation to break decades of data storage trade-offs.

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric

Norwest Venture Partners, General Dynamics Information Technology, Ginkgo Bioworks

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. VAST Data

January 2025

Free Report: Dell SC Series vs. VAST Data

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. VAST Data and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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