We performed a comparison between Dell PowerMax NVMe and IBM FlashSystem based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, IBM FlashSystem came out ahead of Dell PowerMax NVMe. Although both products are set up similarly and are described as high-end, Dell PowerMax NVMe has a licensing model that most users dislike and requires improvements in its support response times.
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"The solution is scalable."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"There is no management overhead involved in optimizing performance. It does it so well on its own. We don't have to manage much at all. It really is like a set it and forget it solution. My storage engineers love the system. It is a lot less work than our previous systems, which weren't bad by any means. There is not nearly as much management as before. So, we are saving dozens of hours per month for our storage team, and that is a real cost in our business."
"PowerMax NVMe has made it a lot easier to understand how much we are able to provision. It has made it a lot faster to provision new things. 90% of my time for provisioning has been reduced. Also, it has made it very easy to understand and see everything behind it versus the older heritage, where Dell EMC was very convoluted and hard to get working. Things that used to take an hour, probably now take five to 10 minutes."
"The smaller footprint of the device has been really nice. We have gone from eight bays to one bay. Having one floor tile in our data center has been pretty awesome. A lot less power and HVAC cooling is being consumed."
"It is a very stable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"It's faster and more resilient."
"I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy."
"Key features include performance, replication time, and dedup and compression."
"The response time, compared to XtremIO, is far better."
"IBM FlashSystem is a flexible solution with plenty of features."
"The speed of the unit is its best feature. It performs very well."
"It is simple to make an update."
"The most valuable features in IBM FlashSystem are IOPS, performance, duplication, and compression."
"This solution is convenient, user-friendly, convenient and reliable."
"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem are performance and security."
"We are a 100% satisfied with the stability of the solution."
"One of the valuable features is the performance, it is one of the best in the market."
"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."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"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."
"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."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"We would like more documentation, a guide to the features of the PowerMax."
"There is room for improvement in terms of integration with various service providers for public clouds."
"Some of the management features could be simplified and that's probably the main thing they need to address."
"The GUI interface is very complicated and could be improved by streamlining the number of steps in the process."
"The price could be lower, and we are unhappy with the price."
"The initial setup was complex, and we had experienced people working on it."
"The NVMe integration could be improved."
"The initial setup was complex. ESRS is a very complex solution to put into our environment, because it requires external access to the Internet. That's a very tough thing for us to do, because we are a PCI and PII company. We store a lot of data for people which is personal. Therefore, going out to the Internet is not our preferred path."
"The solution's pricing is a bit high so there is room for improvement."
"The GUI for monitoring performance metrics could provide better visibility. For example, it doesn't let me segregate the IOPS per volume."
"I think the only thing the developers can look at, is that it is limited to 25 gigabytes currently. In the next release they might want to increase that."
"Our model does not support compression or deduplication."
"The security features can be improved such that the encryption does not affect performance in any way."
"One area for improvement is in the GUI, where host clusters are not properly dealt with. With Hypervisor host clusters, all hosts must see the same volumes in the same order. Using the concept of a “host-group” has been around (even with IBM) for many years, so why not with the V7000?"
"The solution's infrastructure technology level could be PCI Express 5 instead of PCI Express 4 for the next version."
"IBM FlashSystems is lagging in optimizing storage technologies."
Dell PowerMax NVMe is ranked 8th in All-Flash Storage with 66 reviews while IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 106 reviews. Dell PowerMax NVMe is rated 8.8, while IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Dell PowerMax NVMe writes "Simplified storage provisioning for us, enabling us to assign any volumes in two to three minutes". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem writes "An easy GUI and simple provisioning but our model does not support compression". Dell PowerMax NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Pure Storage FlashArray, Huawei OceanStor Dorado and Dell XtremIO, whereas IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, Dell Unity XT, NetApp AFF and HPE Primera. See our Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. IBM FlashSystem report.
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