Why flash-only platforms from VAST Data and Pure Storage are being tested by industry-wide supply constraints – and how Dell PowerScale is built to deliver.
Key takeaways:
- Flash prices are climbing by 60% to 120%,¹ while hard-disk drive (HDD) pricing is only slightly increasing.
- Dell PowerScale helps mitigate industry component shortage risks with a media-flexible architecture and lifecycle-aware automated tiering across flash and HDD.
- Dell’s global, resilient supply chain and deep, long-term supplier relationships allow PowerScale customers to keep scaling when others cannot.
The data infrastructure market has entered a new phase. In South Africa, a rapid data infrastructure boom is driven by AI and cloud adoption. The market is expected to grow to $1.44 billion by 2031.
A critical aspect of this growth is that AI has fundamentally reshaped the demand for flash, memory, and storage media. As AI workloads consume a growing share of enterprise-grade NAND, availability is tightening, prices are rising, and lead times are extending across the industry. This reflects a structural shift in supply and demand rather than a temporary disruption.
In some segments, flash prices are climbing by 60% to 120%,¹ while hard-disk drive (HDD) pricing is slightly increasing. In fact, it is estimated that the price gap between HDD and all-flash will increase from a cost ratio of 1:4 to 1:10 this year.¹ As the cost gap widens, enterprises are re-evaluating infrastructure assumptions formed in a very different market environment – particularly those built around flash-only designs.
As data volumes and retention requirements continue to grow, South African organisations are increasingly focused on applying flash performance precisely where it delivers the most value. Platforms like Dell PowerScale were designed with this flexibility in mind, in contrast to providers that require all data to reside on flash, regardless of cost, availability, or workload profile.
Platforms from VAST Data and Pure Storage were built around an assumption of abundant, cost-stable flash. As industry conditions shift, those designs offer limited room to adjust.
Flash-only architectures inherently concentrate risk:
- They lack the ability to tier across media types.
- They amplify cost exposure as flash prices rise.
- They are more sensitive to supply disruptions.
As supply tightens, some vendors are now encouraging customers to reuse or reclaim existing flash media to maintain capacity. While this may address near-term constraints, it introduces risk into environments that depend on consistent performance and high availability.
Flash media has finite endurance. As devices age, wear accumulates and performance behaviour becomes less predictable. Reintroducing aging flash into AI and mission-critical environments increases exposure to failures, downtime, and data unavailability – risks that scale alongside data growth.
These challenges are further compounded in architectures that depend on specialised NAND-based SCM cache tiers to sustain performance. Because these components are often single-sourced and not broadly available as interchangeable parts, constrained access can limit deployment options and slow expansion, regardless of downstream capacity.
Together, these factors are prompting enterprises to re-evaluate flash-only assumptions and prioritise platforms designed with media flexibility and architectural resilience from the outset.
Dell PowerScale: Designed for flexibility across the data lifecycle
Modern infrastructure strategies emphasise precision – applying the right performance characteristics to the right data at the right time.
With Dell PowerScale, customers are not required to adopt a single media strategy. PowerScale enables choice across performance and cost tiers within one unified platform, allowing organisations to balance speed, scale, and economics as requirements evolve.
PowerScale supports all-flash, hybrid, and HDD-optimised nodes within a single namespace. The OneFS operating system automatically places data on the appropriate tier – NVMe for performance-sensitive workloads, hybrid tiers as access patterns shift, and high-capacity HDD for long-term retention – while applications continue to interact with a single file system. Built-in data reduction technologies, backed by the industry’s best scale-out file data reduction guarantee,² further improve efficiency by reducing the effective cost of storage without compromising performance or accessibility.
As flash prices rise more rapidly than HDD, this combination of intelligent tiering and guaranteed efficiency helps organisations align infrastructure investment with workload value – delivering scale and simplicity while helping maintain control over cost.
What this means for planning AI infrastructure
In South Africa and around the globe, infrastructure decisions are increasingly shaped by variability – in pricing, availability, and workload demand.
With PowerScale, Dell combines media-flexible architecture with a world-class, globally resilient supply chain, enabling customers to plan and build with confidence as conditions evolve.
The ability to deliver consistently, even as markets shift, reflects long-term investment in both platform design and operational readiness.
In an AI-driven environment where assumptions are being tested, platforms designed for flexibility and backed by dependable supply chains are positioned to support sustained growth.
If supply constraints, pricing volatility, or deployment delays are affecting your data strategy, connect with your Dell account team to discuss how Dell PowerScale can help you continue moving forward quickly.
1Flash storage prices are surging – why auto-tiering is now essential – Information Age
2Based on Dell analysis of public information on data reduction guarantees and efficiency-related features including data reduction, storage capacity, data protection, hardware, space, lifecycle management efficiency, and ENERGY STAR- certified configurations, March 2025. Actual data reduction results will vary. See terms and conditions for details at: dr-guarantee-tc-powerscale.pdf (delltechnologies.com)
