Dell PowerStore vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell PowerStore and Pure Storage FlashBlade 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.
To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,857 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The speed of the Pure FlashArray is very, very fast and nothing in the market can compare to it.""Their support system has insight into errors on our SAN fabric that we can't see. They've brought attention to and raised awareness for us about things that we couldn't see, when we were experiencing problems.""Our storage phones home. It is smart and intelligent in that aspect, which has been huge for us. We don't have to be storage administrators.""The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are management and administration user-friendliness, provisioning, and performance.""We also like the compactness, the small footprint. It takes up very little space in a data center and uses little power.""It is an easy to use product for all of my team members.""One of the features that my customers are really interested in is immutable snapshots. There are immutable snapshots to which your applications can be reverted back if you are hit by some kind of ransomware threat or malicious attack. That's kind of a key deal, and it is one of the selling points I use to point out to my customers the value and the features that Pure Storage brings to the table.""Performance, deduplication, compression, and fast response time for requests from servers and applications."

More Pure Storage FlashArray Pros →

"Currently, the features of replication and deduplication have been very important to us.""Has a great mapping feature.""It is very easy to use. Access is very friendly. It shows you a lot of important information at the first glance. It has been very easy to use.""Its flexibility is valuable because we have had some moments where we had to adapt, and it has been quite flexible.""Gives us flexibility, performance, and ease of use. It also has some very good compression capabilities. We were looking for a solution that was easy to install in our VMware environment, that was flexible. PowerStore X is a type of a VMware cluster that you install inside your environment. If you have a VMware environment, like we have in production, it's easy to install and use.""I have found the most valuable part of Dell PowerStore is the price.""The simplicity and ease of use have been very valuable features. I have a very small team, and only half of the team is well versed in the HP product. Whereas if I bring PowerStore in, everyone can learn it because it will be new on the floor.""The initial setup was straightforward."

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"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services.""The initial setup is pretty quick.""It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does.""The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great.""It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy.""We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to.""The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage.""It performs well and it is also very fast."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Pros →

Cons
"It's not so scalable. It's got moderate scaling capabilities right now. The clustering technology needs a bit of work, they need to improve that.""The primary drawback is the cost, which can be prohibitive for small configurations.""As partners, we should have the option to download the software, rather than have to go back through Pure to obtain it.""I want to learn more about command line usage which I have not explored much yet. However, there are many automated solutions for repetitive tasks. I would like to see additional features like performance monitoring, configuring of alerts, and the customization of alert thresholds in the next release.""Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases.""We haven't seen ROI yet.""I’d love to view the average, minimum and maximum performance in the reports (Analysis tab - Performance) but it is only graphics and you need to export data in CSV to find this information.""With scalability, I have run into a little problem with our last upgrade. There were some undocumented limitations to the number of drives that our controller could run on. So, instead of putting in a new data pack as we had anticipated, we had to keep adding and removing to get up to the capacity that we needed to be. What should have been a one day process (or a few hours) turned into a month and a half process."

More Pure Storage FlashArray Cons →

"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.""While using Dell PowerStore's interface in our organization, we sometimes miss out on some information.""You cannot delegate permissions.""Many customers are looking for a cyber recovery feature included in PowerStore. We would like to see this added in a future release.""I do not like having to use VPLEX for synchronous replication, as opposed to having the store software built-in.""I have not seen anything specific. The only thing I can think of that needs improvement is the price.""The storage could be improved. I would like a feature for how to best secure an appliance and the storage since we are connecting the container to the public cloud. I would like them to develop another level of security, making it more secure than from what they have now.""Reporting is an area that could be improved. It's very simplistic sometimes, and some of the very technical guys on my team want to see more of the details and be able to massage the report a little bit better."

More Dell PowerStore Cons →

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration.""In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does.""I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now.""I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes.""They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution.""On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge.""It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release.""I have not seen ROI."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
  • "There is always room for negotiation."
  • "The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."
  • "It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
  • "For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
  • "We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)."
  • "It is a cheaper solution."
  • "Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
  • More Pure Storage FlashArray Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The price is not cheap, but it's worth it for the features you get from the storage. If you can afford it, you are probably buying the best solution that you can have for this virtual environment."
  • "There's still a cap on the upgrade path, where you can consume all the engines within the frame before you have to go to another frame... Normally, we exceed the IOPS on the frames before we can ever exhaust the storage, so anything they can do to help us avoid stranded storage capacity, capacity that we couldn't get to, would be beneficial."
  • "When we compared it with the other solutions, the pricing of PowerStore was equal. The pricing is good."
  • "The price of Dell EMC PowerStore could be better, it is a bit expensive."
  • "We only have a single machine and we are currently using half of the hard disk slots. We have asked for an upgrade for the rest of the hard disks but, from my point of view, it costs too much. We have 12 to 15 hard disks inside and if we try to upgrade only the hard disks, it costs the same as the complete system. This is something I don't understand."
  • "We are happy with the pricing that we get from Dell."
  • "Licensing is very simple. Everything is included in the basic license. There are no concerns about having to pay to add a feature. Everything is there."
  • "The licensing for this solution is good and is in the mid-range tier."
  • More Dell PowerStore Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We used a reseller for the purchase."
  • "Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."
  • "I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."
  • "Our licensing is renewed annually."
  • "Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."
  • "The price is a little high."
  • "In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."
  • "The price of this solution could be made more affordable."
  • More Pure Storage FlashBlade Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure… more »
    Top Answer:We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
    Top Answer:We have customers who use a three-year or five-year license. We also have customers who use Evergreen.
    Top Answer:PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and… more »
    Top Answer:Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated management… more »
    Top Answer:Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell… more »
    Top Answer:The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is… more »
    Top Answer:Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    PowerStore
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray is the world’s first enterprise-class storage array that runs exclusively on the nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) protocol for memory access and storage. It represents a totally state-of-the-art type of storage technology. It offers users shared accelerated storage that delivers cutting-edge features in the realms of performance, simplicity, and consolidation. Pure Storage is fresh and modern today and will be for the next decade. Without forklift upgrades or planned downtime, Pure Storage takes the work out of storage ownership and delivers unprecedented customer satisfaction.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is built with simplicity and reliability in mind. The solution can be implemented and optimized in hours, as opposed to other similar solutions that can take days. It has no moving parts, which removes areas where it could potentially be vulnerable to suffering errors. It is highly stable and gives users the ability to manage system shutdowns in a way that  prevents data loss.

    Benefits of Pure Storage FlashArray

    Some of the benefits of using Pure Storage FlashArray include:

    • A much higher level of speed than similar pieces of technology. Pure Storage FlashArray maximizes the speed at which data can be transferred while at the same time minimizing system latencies that might slow the transfer down. Additionally, it offers users quick memory read and data access speeds.

    • A higher bang for your buck in terms of the storage capabilities you get for the money you pay. They are smaller in size than more standard storage technologies, but they offer flash memory, which enables users to store larger amounts of data than the current standard.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Pure Storage FlashArray is a highly effective piece of storage technology which stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its overall robustness and the value that it offers by way of its reliability and ease of use. It provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with this solution. Pure Storage FlashArray’s reliability and ease of use make it a highly valuable solution. 

    PeerSpot user Prabakaran K., a technical consultant at Injazat Data Systems, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."

    PeerSpot user Jason D., a cloud solutions architect at a tech services company, notes three features that make this solution valuable when he writes, "We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."

    Dell EMC PowerStore is a midrange next-generation data storage solution. It is designed with a data-centric, intelligent, and adaptable infrastructure and helps consolidate storage and virtual server environments. The Dell EMC PowerStore platform includes two major configurations, including PowerStore T and PowerStore X. Dell EMC PowerStore enables you to deploy the appliance and consolidate data and applications and supports both flash and SCM Optane devices.

    Dell EMC PowerStore Offers:

    • Value
    • Flexibility
    • Simplicity

    Dell EMC PowerStore Features

    Some of the most powerful Dell EMC PowerStore features include:

    • Data-centric design: Dell EMC PowerStore is designed to optimize system performance, scalability, and storage efficiency to support any workload.

    • Intelligent automation: Intelligent automation helps simplify management as well as optimize system resources. Through a programmable infrastructure, it also enables you to easily monitor, analyze, and troubleshoot the environment.

    • Adaptable architecture: Because it has an adaptable architecture, Dell EMC PowerStore is able to provide speed and application mobility and offer flexible deployment models.

    • Scalability: Dell EMC PowerStore can be scaled up and scaled out.

    • Data-in-place upgrades: By providing data-in-place upgrades, you gain a modernized infrastructure without any downtime involved and without impacting applications.

    Dell EMC PowerStore Benefits

    Some of the benefits of using Dell EMC PowerStore include:

    • Flexible deployment: Dell EMC PowerStore is made to modernize the core, edge, and cloud without disruption, leading to flexible deployment.

    • Pay-per-use: Dell EMC PowerStore offers a range of flexible purchase options.

    • Any workload: Because Dell EMC PowerStore is designed to leverage next-gen innovations, it can work with any workload.

    • Programmable infrastructure: Dell EMC PowerStore streamlines application development and also automates storage workflows through integration with VMware and a broad ecosystem of leading management and orchestration frameworks, enabling you to provision services directly from the application tool sets that you use most frequently.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Dell EMC PowerStore users who are currently using the solution.

    PeerSpot user Maurizio D., who is a CTO at Universita' degli Studi di Pisa, says it "Gives us flexibility, performance, and ease of use. It also has some very good compression capabilities. We were looking for a solution that was easy to install in our VMware environment, that was flexible. PowerStore X is a type of a VMware cluster that you install inside your environment. If you have a VMware environment, like we have in production, it's easy to install and use."

    Another PeerSpot user, Jorg L., who is an IT Administrator at a construction company, mentions "For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance."

    "The administration tools take advantage of machine learning and make recommendations to the admins, and that makes the administration easier," says a Chief Information Officer at a computer software company. He also comments that “Overall, we've benefited from the dedupe, compression, and replication, the advanced technology, of this frame. It's all better than what we had in the previous generation of XtremIO appliances, and above what we were getting in the Dell EMC Unitys.”

    FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

    Sample Customers
    Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
    Information Not Available
    ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization31%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Construction Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Government8%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company18%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Energy/Utilities Company12%
    University12%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization36%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise57%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise40%
    Large Enterprise42%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise52%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise58%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise45%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,857 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell PowerStore is ranked 1st in All-Flash Storage with 46 reviews while Pure Storage FlashBlade is ranked 16th in All-Flash Storage with 31 reviews. Dell PowerStore is rated 8.6, while Pure Storage FlashBlade is rated 8.8. 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 FlashBlade writes "A high-performing and scalable solution that improves data performance for S3 workloads". Dell PowerStore is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, NetApp AFF, Dell PowerMax NVMe and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas Pure Storage FlashBlade is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), VAST Data, MinIO, Red Hat Ceph Storage and HPE Synergy. See our Dell PowerStore vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade 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.