We performed a comparison between Dell EMC PowerStore and Pure Storage FlashArray based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Both products received high marks from users. Pure Storage FlashArray has a slight edge in the comparison due to its superior customer support.
"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."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"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."
"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 way you're able to manage all your PowerStores as one solution is very good for us. PowerStore enables you to federate or cluster multiple appliances with automated load balancing. In terms of management, it's helpful that we can do it from a single interface where we're able to manage multiple PowerStores. When you have multiple PowerStores it works intelligently by running the workloads based on the needs of the infrastructure."
"For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance."
"Typically, high-performance and high-availability features, such as application snapshots and remote and local replication, are highly valued."
"A particularly valuable feature is its simplicity."
"Currently, the features of replication and deduplication have been very important to us."
"The solution's technical support is excellent. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"This solution is very useful to us as we use it internally for all of the services that we need. We use it as a lab and we showcase new technology to the customers and how it can help them going forward."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is the all-NVMe flash storage. This is the most powerful feature of this series. It supports compression and duplication leads."
"It is all-flash. This makes it a lot faster than the rest of what we have, as it is able to drive high I/O loads, which is big for us."
"Pure Storage is extremely reliable — it's never failed."
"The back-end data reporting for Pure Storage is phenomenal. The data that you can see on the performance of your customers' array, so you can be proactive about upgrades or enhancements, and is a phenomenal tool to have access to as a partner. I haven't seen this type of stuff out of anything of the other storage systems."
"The top-tier support and reliable storage are the most valuable features of this solution."
"It's reduced our overhead management time on storage, since it is so simple to get in and just provision a volume, present it to the host, and then you are done."
"Having an intuitive user interface to get things running is great."
"As soon as we introduced our first Pure Storage FlashArray, the first benefit was at least twice the performance increase. Our production databases simply ran twice as fast with no other change."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are management and administration user-friendliness, provisioning, and performance."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"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."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"The software layer has to improve."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"The solution only does thin provisioning."
"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."
"Where the system needs to improve is by adding more enterprise features like replication on other sites. We would also like it to be much more aligned with the VMware version. For example, today we have two different versions of VMware ESXi running to keep the PowerStore online. It would be better if the software cycling was faster."
"More demonstration and training options are needed."
"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."
"While using Dell PowerStore's interface in our organization, we sometimes miss out on some information."
"The NAS part is very poor. It's very basic. Even Dell EMC has said that to us. We are waiting for version 3 of PowerStore for that. This must be improved and it is in the roadmap."
"I feel like there is too much automation; the user doesn't have any manual input."
"I would like to migrate to the cloud in the future and know how that would actually work with this product."
"From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable."
"I would like to see active replication. I know that it's available now but I haven't tried it yet. I hope that it works."
"We would like to see better troubleshooting aspects. It helps us if we can find out where the problem is. Right now, it's difficult. Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint the issue. If they had more visibility and more troubleshooting feature built into the tool that would really help."
"They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth."
"Its price needs improvement. Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"They are doing some stuff with containers and an object search. These could be improved, because containers is one of the main topics that we are talking with our customers about."
Dell PowerStore is ranked 1st in All-Flash Storage with 47 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. Dell PowerStore is rated 8.6, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of Dell PowerStore writes "It has a very strong NAS that can support a lot of big, heavy environments". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". Dell PowerStore is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, NetApp AFF, Dell PowerMax NVMe and Huawei OceanStor Dorado, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem, VMware vSAN and Dell Unity XT. See our Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashArray report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.