Dell PowerFlex vs. Pure Storage FlashArray

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Dell PowerFlex
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Dell PowerFlex (formerly VxFlex) software-defined storage solutions aim to enable transformational agility for organizations looking to modernize their datacenter operations. The vendor states PowerFlex enables extreme flexibility, massive scalability, and enterprise-class performance and resiliency while simplifying infrastructure management and operations.N/A
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Pure Storage in Mountain View, California offers all-flash array data storage promising affordability, high availability, and consistent performance.N/A
Pricing
Dell PowerFlexPure Storage FlashArray
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Dell PowerFlexPure Storage FlashArray
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
Dell PowerFlexPure Storage FlashArray
Enterprise Flash Array Storage
Comparison of Enterprise Flash Array Storage features of Product A and Product B
Dell PowerFlex
-
Ratings
Pure Storage FlashArray
9.3
154 Ratings
2% above category average
Flash Array Performance00 Ratings10.0154 Ratings
Flash Array Integration00 Ratings9.0144 Ratings
Data Compression00 Ratings8.0153 Ratings
Non-Intrusive Upgrades00 Ratings9.9148 Ratings
Simplicity00 Ratings10.0154 Ratings
Power Savings00 Ratings9.0131 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Dell PowerFlexPure Storage FlashArray
Small Businesses
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.6 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.6 out of 10
Dell SC Series / Compellent (discontinued)
Dell SC Series / Compellent (discontinued)
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Score 9.0 out of 10
Dell VMAX
Dell VMAX
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Dell PowerFlexPure Storage FlashArray
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(207 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(25 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(16 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(75 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(3 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(6 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
User Testimonials
Dell PowerFlexPure Storage FlashArray
Likelihood to Recommend
Dell Technologies
Definitely would recommend this unit or this family of units into most peoples organizations. Especially if you're starting fresh with a whole dedicated SAN and dont have to move a ton of data over to these (though that is possible, it is very messy). If you're moving from existing storage, then you will have to be prepared for some sore spots!
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Pure Storage
When you need speed, it's FAST, especially for MS SQL databases. If you are having bottlenecks, you can spend your time finding it in the code because it's not Pure Storage. Love the data reduction and duplication. We can store so much more on this unit than the base physical size. Love the data snapshots. When you need to complete copy your entire environment for testing etc. Nothing is easier, a few clicks and you are done. Extremely helpful for testing and training.
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Pros
Dell Technologies
  • Gets all your (SAN) ducks in a row, and makes it easy with a single pane of glass
  • The usual good dell support if you're paying for the right support level
  • It can get expensive with options added but base price is pretty competitive
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Pure Storage
  • The Pure Array does data reduction particularly well. We've seen a 7x reduction on some of our volumes.
  • It is easy to get used to the system after coming from other storage arrays.
  • It has some welcome additions such as a smartphone app that makes it easier to view your cases, etc.
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Cons
Dell Technologies
  • Costs are high, especially when having to replace multiple old SAN's with the one type
  • There is alot of down time when you have to push updates out to the units
  • Not sure we still have the full hang of all the functions as there's some pretty deep functions that are not explained well
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Pure Storage
  • Reporting is too general. Being a tech nerd, I want to be able to see the nitty-gritty details. I also need to be able to define canned sets of reports for problem application systems.
  • Pricing is a bit higher then some of their direct competitors .
  • Seriously, I have nothing else.
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Likelihood to Renew
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
It has so far been a very fast and stable product. We have had wonderful support when we have needed it and the account manager and engineer attached to our organization have been very responsive with any questions and concerns we have had.
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Usability
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
The install went smoothly, and the engineer explained every step along the way. The next couple of days he checked in to make sure that migration was running as planned. The user interface is designed with usability in mind. You don't need a dedicated "Storage Silo" to manage this product. For smaller IT departments that need to support many different workloads, this could not be a better feature
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Reliability and Availability
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
We have never had an outage with Purestorage. Yes we have had 2 drives go out but replacements were installed so fast there wasn't any issues. We have had a NVRAM module replaced but were noticed from Pure they were sending a replacement because they were predicting a failure so pure was proactive preventing any issues. Knowing Pure is monitoring our device 24x7 gives us peace of mind.
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Performance
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
The corporation has a very diverse data load and when we migrate from a hybrid storage to pure all-flash, significant gains have already been observed. Latency always remains below 1 ms regardless of the load and volumetry used. Application performance also depends heavily on whether or not the code is more permormatic and network access infrastructure. The product has been meeting expectations
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Support Rating
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
Pure Support is timely and communicative. They are always ready to assist and very skilled at what they do, no matter the time of day. Even at 12:10 a.m. on New Years Day when your array has a hiccup that causes some errors in your environment, they will be on the phone with you in an instant. If they are unable to determine the cause right away, because things appear to be normal, they will take your environment's configuration, lab it up in their support environment and then research until they figure out what caused the problem. Even if it takes 3 months. True story.
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In-Person Training
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
Excellent training and really you don't need that much. We received training at the Pure offices and also on site when the product was installed. Simple things like how to login to the GUI interface, how to setup users, how to create volume and mount it. How to make a snapshot, how to copy it and mount it. Really is pretty self explanatory on how to do things with the GUI interface. We were expecting complicated base on other vendor products, we got super simple.
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Online Training
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
Great videos and documentation. There is a common theme with PureStorage, "Keep it elegantly simple". They have great support network and great support user groups. Documentation has been very helpful with providing auditors with methods and procedures on security and other ways the product works. Great documentation on setting PureStorage to be the most effective with VM's, SQL Server, and other products.
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Implementation Rating
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
The install was very quick. The engineer that Pure sent said that if we started by 10 am we would be done by lunchtime, and he was not kidding.
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Alternatives Considered
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
Pure Storage FlashArray came up as being the most cost-effective of the lot plus the extras added like call-home support were very welcome. The competitors' options were a lot more expensive and the call-home support added a lot more to the already high costs.
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Scalability
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
The product suite scales well and the FA in particular can service any need for all but the most demanding file protocol environments
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Return on Investment
Dell Technologies
  • Money saved in having a bunch of other competing storage units
  • All kinds of time saved for our admins that have to deal with storage
  • The units look good and give you that futurey data center vibe!
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Pure Storage
  • Thanks to the deduplication that is built into the product we are seeing great reduction in total space required by consolidating similar data types on the same array.
  • Our users are very pleased with the performance.
  • The replication allowed us to move our workload from to another data center with minimal downtime.
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ScreenShots