We performed a comparison between Dell PowerStore and Dell SC Series based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Dell PowerStore came out ahead of Dell SC Series. Although both products have good service and support and have brought positive ROI, SC Series is more difficult to deploy and has more areas that require improvements.
"The solution is scalable."
"The latency is good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"It's a great product. Integrating PowerStore with the IT workflow is easy."
"There is no complicated configuration for queries and calls. You just create a model and go."
"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."
"Dell PowerStore is an easy and fast tool to work through our company's data."
"The most valuable feature of the solution for me is the deduplication part, especially since most of the servers in our organization are Windows-based servers."
"Pricing is very good. It's very competitive against those of all the others that I looked at in the marketplace, such as Hitachi, IBM, HP, and Pure. Dell is right there in the mix as far as providing the best price point as well as meeting the performance requirements that we have."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"Dell EMC PowerStore is scalable."
"The setup is straightforward."
"A valuable feature is the performance of the auto-tiering. It will move hot data up to your fastest Tier 1 or move your slow data down. Data progression is what it's called. With the auto-tiering you can have multiple tiers, you can have your Tier 1 be either spinning or flash, all the way down to 7.2K. It will change the RAID on the fly so your writes come in at RAID 10. After they sit for a while, they get converted to RAID 5, then they'll cool off and move down the tiers. Your performance is kept going, while the cold data is moved to your slow, non-performance tiers."
"The solution is stable; we've had no problems at all."
"The process of reallocating data from fast disks (SSD or SAS) to slow disks (SATA) gives you better performance and better use of resources."
"They have a feature called Live Migrate; it's been very, very useful."
"Technical support is very good. I do use it from time to time and it's always excellent."
"Connecting it up, you can run it within a few hours."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to replicate. We are running a financial company and it needs to be available 24/7. We can't afford any downtime."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"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."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"It is on the expensive side."
"I would like to see a Snapshot feature. Currently, it is unable to occupy the capacity."
"The support team doesn't always provide adequate assistance. So, there is room for improvement in the support."
"It doesn't support SSD or Flash."
"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."
"When it comes to Dell PowerStore, I would like to see more integration and more security features included. It's unfortunate that the solution does not feature Flash trace."
"Horizontal scaling has room for improvement."
"We would consider this solution if the pricing is competitive with other options, as it offers a very good solution. However, the current price is slightly higher than the competition."
"The price is on the higher side."
"In terms of additional features, I would like to see some kind of I/O meter, to indicate what we are using in terms of performance. I would like to see automation with that, where it would give me the trends. I want to know those things easily, to help me know where issues are going to occur."
"The interface could be improved. It should have an application point of view."
"We can definitely see a need for it being a multi-controller system for customers who want to scale beyond the current capability. That's always a downside. A lot of the new systems are scaling vertically, they scale out, and the Compellent, of course, is controllers with shelves under it, so you don't scale out with it, unless you add another one. But if you do, they don't talk to each other, like some of the other solutions that we sell."
"Overall, I'd like to see more synergy between Dell EMC's higher-tier platforms and their mid-tier platforms. What I have said, constantly, to my partners at Dell EMC is that the clear articulation of the path is really important to us. In that vein, what I'd also like to see is, with the migration strategy that's built into this product, a lot more attention paid to Dell's - in particular - legacy platforms and how we get from some of our legacy EMC platforms onto this platform with a straight-through migration and scaling strategy, not host-based migrations and not piecemeal... Dell EMC would do well to focus more on my ability to skip a generation, rather than having me take individual hops because I can't greenfield my way into a software-defined data center fast enough. This journey of multiple hops is not helpful."
"It's not very efficient anymore. There are better products out there."
"This product should be a lot more user-friendly."
"In some customer cases, customers experienced more performance or latency."
"From a performance point of view, it's getting a bit old."
Dell PowerStore is ranked 1st in All-Flash Storage with 47 reviews while Dell SC Series is ranked 24th in All-Flash Storage with 49 reviews. Dell PowerStore is rated 8.6, while Dell SC Series is rated 8.4. 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 Dell SC Series writes "Automated architecture that proactively optimizes your database ". Dell PowerStore is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, NetApp AFF, Pure Storage FlashArray and HPE Alletra, whereas Dell SC Series is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Huawei OceanStor, NetApp AFF and HPE Nimble Storage. See our Dell PowerStore vs. Dell SC Series report.
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