We performed a comparison between Dell EMC Powermax and Dell EMC PowerStorebased 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, our reviewers consider Dell EMC PowerStore to be a superior solution. The setup is simpler, and although the price is on the higher side, most users consider it to be worthwhile for the high performance.
"We put a fair amount of stress on it because we run sequel workloads and we run web applications where the same web files are hit over and over. We have had almost zero stability issues with that SAN, that has been really great for us."
"The most valuable feature is its data reduction."
"Data reduction and compression. Sub millisecond latency."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides."
"It has made working with storage as easy and simple as it should be."
"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both."
"Processes that used to take 40 minutes to two hours can be completed in five minutes."
"Performance, dedupe, and that it works well with database workloads are its most valuable features."
"It offers a high level of availability, so pretty much near zero downtime."
"The compression and deduplication are the most valuable features because of the cost savings."
"We can consistently replicate mainframe and open system and have a single recovery point."
"We use ESRS for our call-home, and a lot of times, Dell EMC will respond to the issue before we even know it."
"I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy."
"I have been highly satisfied with the resiliency and scalability of the solution."
"The most valuable feature is the performance and compression. The most useful tool is CloudIQ."
"We are happy with the monitoring that Dell EMC is doing for us. They have helped us to identify many issues during the routine checks, issues which we were not aware of."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"I find all of the Dell PowerStore features to be valuable."
"It is very easy to use. Access is very friendly. It shows you a lot of important information at the first glance. It has been very easy to use."
"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."
"There is no complicated configuration for queries and calls. You just create a model and go."
"The product's initial setup phase was very easy."
"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."
"For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance."
"One thing I'd like to see in a future release is integration between their main storage array and what they call their FlashBlade product; to be able to snapshot directly from the primary array into multiple different backup copies on FlashBlade."
"We would like to see better troubleshooting aspects. It helps us if we can find out where the problem is. Right now, it's difficult. Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint the issue. If they had more visibility and more troubleshooting feature built into the tool that would really help."
"Beyond a certain amount of petabytes, you have to have a separate system. Basically, it's not infinitely scalable."
"Going forward, don't complicate things for the customers."
"The internal garbage collection process has been fixed recently in some OS updates so it is more efficient but that could be just a little better."
"With scalability, I have run into a little problem with our last upgrade. There were some undocumented limitations to the number of drives that our controller could run on. So, instead of putting in a new data pack as we had anticipated, we had to keep adding and removing to get up to the capacity that we needed to be. What should have been a one day process (or a few hours) turned into a month and a half process."
"Had some issues with Purity not being entirely compatible with VMware ESXi."
"Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases."
"I would like it to support NVMe over Fabrics, because that is the next item for consideration on the NVMe roadmap. PowerMax supports NVMe on the back-end, but when it starts supporting NVMe over Fibre Channel, suddenly various hosts can directly communicate with PowerMax, and with NVMe-oF, as well. Suddenly, Gen 6 and Gen 7 switchers will be able to help facilitate that particular communication channel."
"There are definitely some improvements that can be made to the CloudIQ."
"I hear from people on my team that they would like improved reporting. While there are some decent tools for doing reporting, they would like to see a lot more built-in functionality. This way when they are logged into the interface everyday doing basic management tasks, they could also see some statistics on what is their storage pool usage and will be their projected usage with their current data growth. They want to be able to see more detailed stats on how they are using the system and have forecasting."
"There is also room for improvement in the PowerMax architecture and hardware itself. They should design the PowerMax on the basis of PCIe 4.0. I would like to see the possibility of an NVMe drive that operates on PCIe 4.0 and not PCIe 3.0."
"Remove the need for physical or hardwired virtual servers to run consistency groups, instead make the expensive array controllers handle that."
"We had challenges again with the initial setup. I don't know if there was a gap during the requirement-collection phase, but the box was partially delivered to us with missing parts and it delayed the implementation by about 60 days. It was not as smooth as I would have hoped."
"PowerMax Storage needs improvement in the area of monitoring tools. It should have more functions and more complicated analysis options inside the monitoring tools."
"The GUI interface is very complicated and could be improved by streamlining the number of steps in the process."
"The customer service and support are bad."
"With PowerStore, we have to choose between block storage and NAS functionality."
"Data reduction needs improvement."
"The support is not very good."
"While using Dell PowerStore's interface in our organization, we sometimes miss out on some information."
"More demonstration and training options are needed."
"The setup process could be improved. We had some issues regarding configuration and the time it took to do things. It wasn't specifically the people we worked with, but more the process and how it's done. They can work on that."
"After the smooth launch of the product in our company, only the areas around upgrades are a bit problematic. In our organization, we face difficulties when updating the product."
Dell PowerMax NVMe is ranked 8th in All-Flash Storage with 66 reviews while Dell PowerStore is ranked 1st in All-Flash Storage with 46 reviews. Dell PowerMax NVMe is rated 8.8, while Dell PowerStore is rated 8.6. 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 Dell PowerStore writes "It has a very strong NAS that can support a lot of big, heavy environments". Dell PowerMax NVMe is most compared with IBM FlashSystem, Dell Unity XT, Huawei OceanStor Dorado, Dell XtremIO and HPE Primera, whereas Dell PowerStore is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, NetApp AFF, Huawei OceanStor Dorado and HPE Nimble Storage. See our Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell PowerStore report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors and best NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays vendors.
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