We performed a comparison between Dell PowerMax NVMe and IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The compression and deduplication features help to make the best use of the capacity."
"The stability of Pure Storage is very very good."
"It worked flawlessly."
"The stability is very good. I've done destructive testing on it and never had any type of storage outages from it."
"It is all-flash. This makes it a lot faster than the rest of what we have, as it is able to drive high I/O loads, which is big for us."
"The most valuable features in Pure Storage FlashArray are deduplication and active cluster."
"The most valuable feature is its data reduction."
"The speed of the Pure FlashArray is very, very fast and nothing in the market can compare to it."
"Dell PowerMax NVMe's tech support is good."
"The uptime is the most valuable feature."
"It is very stable. We expect superior performance and reliability from this particular storage system."
"The PowerMax software and CloudIQ let us get an inside view of our compression and compaction, as well as our usage of the storage."
"We are most interested in cloud utilization."
"It significantly simplifies storage."
"The SRDF replication piece is probably the best feature. It's useful for maintaining recoverability in the event of a disaster."
"We are able to provide storage at the right service levels without overmanaging it."
"What I like about the product are its high availability, maximum efficiency in performance, and its ability to handle a high level of I/O operations."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is easy to use and comes with good performance."
"The storage serves the virtual environment. Most of our applications run in the virtual environment, and it serves nearly 30% of the bank's capacity."
"There are many valuable features of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMele I have found to meet my needs. Specifically, the maintenance cycle is a standout feature of this solution. The main component of the IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is the maintenance of the batteries, which have a predetermined and reliable four-year life cycle. This is in stark contrast to other solutions that may use spinning disks, which can fail unexpectedly, causing unwanted downtime and maintenance. Having a predictable maintenance cycle is a significant advantage and has made this solution a preferred choice for me."
"The most valuable feature of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is the snapshot. We use it daily for all of the storage units."
"IBM FlashSystem provides the same software on each box, including virtualized solutions."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is one of the leading storage systems in the world...I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten."
"The high performance and high availability improved our overall processes."
"I feel like there is too much automation; the user doesn't have any manual input."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better."
"There's always an opportunity for new feature functionality."
"There are many features which need to be added, particularly on the replication side."
"It is not possible to create a cluster on top of multiple arrays."
"We would like more extended historical data to help with some of the capacity planning. This is something that we are asking for all the time. E.g., what was the historical performance of this particular volume? So, we would like more historicals."
"The scalability of the solution is not as good as it probably could be."
"Part of our company works on Dell EMC because Pure Storage did not have synchronous applications when we were purchasing our products."
"The initial setup was complex, as it is a complex system and you have to learn a lot."
"Support of the product can be slow and an administrative challenge: planning, scheduling, and overseeing data center access for a Dell EMC rep. One improvement could be to enable a self-maintenance option. The requirements that we go through to get Dell EMC onsite to replace failed drives, power supplies, and other small redundant parts can be unnecessarily complex. If simplified, they could send us the parts, then we could replace them much faster, more easily, and truly within the SLA parameters."
"We've had a couple of little things come up, but for the most part, they've been pretty stable."
"It's a relatively new product, but for the next release I would like to see higher bandwidth on the front-end adapters. This would allow even greater scalability for critical workloads and consolidation for non-critical workloads. The hosts may not require that level of I/O performance today. However, it allows us to scale physical non-cloud environments without large investment."
"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."
"We have had some trouble with the VMAX-to-PowerMax migration, but the VMAX box will be powered down after the migration. The PowerMax boxes are working fine and we don't have any issues with them."
"There is room for improvement in the replication. It's an important requirement for us."
"I would like to see continued visibility and analytics in the platform."
"The ZIO interface could be improved."
"The storage system itself should have built-in capabilities for different ransomware attacks."
"There could be a possibility of not requiring to buy a new box while upgrading to a newer version."
"The solution's compression feature could be better."
"IBM's support is not good. I experienced a big problem where I opened the console IBM Storage and would see that something was broken. I called the call centers, and I said, "I have a problem. My drive is not working." They want me to give them the serial number, I gave it to them and they told me "I cannot find your product. Your product is not here.""
"In the future, the limitation is upgrading the same storage by adding a shelf to the desk. There is a limitation in the backend connection between the storage and extended shelf."
"The pricing should be more competitive."
"I would like to have replication functionality built directly in the product, rather than having to use a separate device for this."
Dell PowerMax NVMe is ranked 8th in All-Flash Storage with 66 reviews while IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is ranked 13th in All-Flash Storage with 19 reviews. Dell PowerMax NVMe is rated 8.8, while IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is rated 8.8. 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 9100 NVMe writes "Steady performance, responsive support, and high availability". Dell PowerMax NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, IBM FlashSystem, Dell Unity XT, Huawei OceanStor Dorado and Dell XtremIO, whereas IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, IBM FlashSystem and HPE Primera. See our Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors and best NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays vendors.
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