We performed a comparison between Dell SC Series and Pure Storage FlashArray based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"The latency is good."
"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."
"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"The solution is scalable."
"Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"They have a feature called Live Migrate; it's been very, very useful."
"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."
"Technical support is very good. I do use it from time to time and it's always excellent."
"The most valuable features are the with back-end dedupe, and the thin nodes. For a 20TB or 60TB, we're using almost a one-to-two ratio."
"With auto-tiering, it's easier to understand than most arrays, knowing that all of your writes go to the tier that you specify, with easy-to-create storage profiles."
"Connecting it up, you can run it within a few hours."
"Its leading feature is the price-performance ratio, which is very good."
"It has good dedupe and compression. Also, the built-in data migration capabilities are pretty good, as is the federation. When we started migrating the workloads from different storage platforms, like NetApp and XtremeIO, it helped us in moving to that direction."
"It does efficient work of storing data while still delivering the performance that you would normally expect from a higher priced solution."
"Its array houses our entire production environment."
"Their technical support is excellent. It's the best out of any of the vendors we work with."
"The scalability is good."
"The scalability options are very nice because you can scale it much better and faster. The scalability was there in the previous environment also, but this is far better than what we had before. It basically helps the user in case they are looking for more storage. We can scale it much faster."
"The availability and ease of use are the big features."
"Performance is the most valuable feature."
"The stability is perfect. The reliability is 100% and the latency is always lower than 1 millisecond."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"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."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"It is on the expensive side."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"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."
"We can definitely see a need for it being a multi-controller system for customers who want to scale beyond the current capability. That's always a downside. A lot of the new systems are scaling vertically, they scale out, and the Compellent, of course, is controllers with shelves under it, so you don't scale out with it, unless you add another one. But if you do, they don't talk to each other, like some of the other solutions that we sell."
"We have seen some degraded throughput with mixed workloads. We have been working with Dell EMC to correct some of these latency issues."
"This product should be a lot more user-friendly."
"The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series."
"The lack of reporting would be the main issue."
"The initial setup is somewhat complex and should be made simpler to do."
"It would be helpful if the solution offered higher performance, at least on the back end."
"I would like to improve the processing ability."
"I would like some form of QoS implemented. As a service provider, it would be beneficial to have it."
"I can't see where they can make anything better, unless, of course, they lower their prices even more."
"Pricing could be better in comparison to other solutions."
"A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad."
"The scalability of the solution is not as good as it probably could be."
"In the configuration, which we brought in or tested it in, it has a very limited config as far as the array goes. That said, it still did more than our anticipation."
"I would like to see them lower the costs."
"Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."
Dell SC Series is ranked 24th in All-Flash Storage with 49 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. Dell SC Series is rated 8.4, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of Dell SC Series writes "Automated architecture that proactively optimizes your database ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". Dell SC Series is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Huawei OceanStor and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and VMware vSAN. See our Dell SC Series vs. Pure Storage FlashArray report.
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