Dell VMAX vs. Pure Storage FlashArray

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Dell VMAX
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
Dell VMAX All Flash is the latest iteration in the former Symmetrix series of enterprise flash array storage, available in the Dell VMAX 250F edition, or the Dell EMC VMAX 950F edition.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 VMAXPure Storage FlashArray
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Dell VMAXPure 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
Community Pulse
Dell VMAXPure Storage FlashArray
Considered Both Products
Dell VMAX
Chose Dell VMAX
The EMC array is a lot more robust, but the PURE array does almost the same with about a tenth of ease from the configuration. It really depends on the type of backend servers that you need to support as to whether you need a EMC array or a PURE array.
Pure Storage FlashArray
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
Really the deduplication and compression ratio has been all over these guys. The speed on the flash storage seems more customized if I may say and our deployments were smooth. Nothing against these guys since we work with all at the same level, but there are very notable perks …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage offers better support plans, simple UI and easy upgrade options. It can be more pricey but, you get what you pay for and Pure is very competitive when it comes to pricing for features/value. Win-Win-Win!
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
It's faster and more affordable.
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
They all came late to the Flash game and are struggling to keep up. Colleagues I talked to at the beginning of the all-Flash Array explosion talked about how stable Pure Storage arrays were compared to those trying to enter the market. Since then, I haven't bothered looking …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
The Forever Flash offering from Pure is the deal maker. We will always have new controllers every 3 years and will not need to ever purchase new or upgrade our array.
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
EMC XtremIO, but PURE storage is still the best array tested so far insterm of its architecture.
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
All those guys are losers. Definitely, there are no alternatives. This is like EV cars. You can buy whatever, but Tesla is still the reference. Spending money elsewhere is okay because rates are 0%, but this remains crazy. Why pay more for less? All the features are not as good …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
We did a bake off between the (then) EMC array and Pure Storage. Pure's active/passive infrastructure meant that recovery time from a major hardware failure such as a controller failure was measured in seconds. The EMC array took much longer to recover, and we didn't see the …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
Dell/EMC support was not as effective as Pure Storage's. Within days of selecting Pure Storage FlashArray, we had a team of technicians helping implement the array, integrate it with our existing systems, and test migration of VMware datastore to the array for proof-of-concept …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray cost was better than the others and offered more features.
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
We tested our Pure arrays agents a few alternatives. They're the only ones that built their platform to be future proof and had the simplest licensing agreement of the bunch (there was none!).
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray was chosen due to the performance, reduced management complexity, and support features as compared to other solutions. Some vendors did not offer a support model that fit, compatibility with legacy HPUX, or offered the compression and dedupe features. …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
Deduplication provided a key differentiator. Total cost was less for Pure. Complexity and ease of management were significantly less for Pure.

Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
My organization leverages both Pure and not-Pure platforms. Larger enterprise arrays such as vmax use all flash. The pure x70s have easily held their performance and reliability against the Xtremios and VMAXes.
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
We choose Pure storage FlashArray over all of these competitors because we found better Performance, Price, and Support.
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
The ease of use and snapshot technologies were a big plus for the Pure Storage FlashArray.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Dell VMAXPure Storage FlashArray
Enterprise Flash Array Storage
Comparison of Enterprise Flash Array Storage features of Product A and Product B
Dell VMAX
9.8
9 Ratings
7% above category average
Pure Storage FlashArray
9.3
154 Ratings
2% above category average
Flash Array Performance9.89 Ratings10.0154 Ratings
Flash Array Integration9.69 Ratings9.0144 Ratings
Data Compression9.79 Ratings8.0153 Ratings
Non-Intrusive Upgrades9.98 Ratings10.0148 Ratings
Simplicity9.98 Ratings10.0154 Ratings
Power Savings9.98 Ratings9.0131 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Dell VMAXPure Storage FlashArray
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

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Medium-sized Companies
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 9.2 out of 10
Dell SC Series / Compellent (discontinued)
Dell SC Series / Compellent (discontinued)
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 9.2 out of 10
Dell VMAX
Dell VMAX
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Dell VMAXPure Storage FlashArray
Likelihood to Recommend
9.7
(9 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
7.0
(2 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 VMAXPure Storage FlashArray
Likelihood to Recommend
Dell Technologies
Dell EMC VMAX All-Flash Storage is a very powerful storage that easily manages huge data transactions with high IO processing speed. This Storage is well suited for critical production environments because response times are much better. This storage enables direct data backup. It's always up and running during updates because it creates a redundant connection from the controller.
Read full review
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
  • It creates a fully redundant connection from multiple controllers that are always up even during updates.
  • Once setup there is little to no adjustments that need to be made to the storage array. All that's needed is volume updates.
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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.
Read full review
Cons
Dell Technologies
  • Initial configuration are bit difficult need some experience resource to manage it.
  • We faced issue with vendor support during major impact.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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
The best part about this array is that once you have it configured it is pretty much done. There is little to no other configurations to be done other than normal volume adjustments. Support is great as they understand this array very well. The updates are very hands-off and are done solely by support. You contact them and then there are no other changes done on the end-user's side.
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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
Read full review
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
  • Dell EMC VMAX All Flash Storage provides the hybrid cloud solution
  • Dell EMC VMAX All Flash Storage provides the great storage capacity with data security
  • Data Migration from other storage, data compression, stability
Read full review
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.
Read full review
ScreenShots