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 duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The solution is scalable."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"The latency is good."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"Its flexibility is valuable because we have had some moments where we had to adapt, and it has been quite flexible."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution is very easy to implement."
"I find all of the Dell PowerStore features to be valuable."
"It's a great product. Integrating PowerStore with the IT workflow is easy."
"The main feature of Dell PowerStore is its support for NVMe as well as hybrid solutions."
"Gives us flexibility, performance, and ease of use. It also has some very good compression capabilities. We were looking for a solution that was easy to install in our VMware environment, that was flexible. PowerStore X is a type of a VMware cluster that you install inside your environment. If you have a VMware environment, like we have in production, it's easy to install and use."
"The PowerStore's compression ratio is even higher than the Unity system."
"The solution is stable."
"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 setup and installation is much simpler now, because Dell has standardized the configure process."
"The solution has a wide variety of valuable features. The data progression works well. We use the snapshot functionality quite a bit and really like it."
"It had many features, like a snapshot, replication, on-the-file RAID levels, mix-and-match files, those kinds of things."
"This solution is easy to use."
"It has good dedupe and compression. Also, the built-in data migration capabilities are pretty good, as is the federation. When we started migrating the workloads from different storage platforms, like NetApp and XtremeIO, it helped us in moving to that direction."
"Easy management of volumes: You can create volumes and easily assign them to VMware clusters, increasing their size."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"We need better data deduplication."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"It is on the expensive side."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"The software layer has to improve."
"The UI should be a little more user-friendly to manage."
"With PowerStore, we have to choose between block storage and NAS functionality."
"There is no Synchronize replication feature on the storage."
"It was very new when we first deployed it a year ago. Even the upgrade processes and knowing what to expect, as well as documentation, could be more robust."
"The only thing is that with PowerStore, we don't have a solution for the file object."
"Where the system needs to improve is by adding more enterprise features like replication on other sites. We would also like it to be much more aligned with the VMware version. For example, today we have two different versions of VMware ESXi running to keep the PowerStore online. It would be better if the software cycling was faster."
"It's also only supported with a limited amount of switches."
"PowerStore's management console could be improved."
"The SC Series doesn't support NVMe storage."
"In some customer cases, customers experienced more performance or latency."
"I would like to see an integrated key manager in the controllers. Currently, it's an external product. It would be nice to have the option of having a built-in key for self-encrypting drive features."
"The cost of the solution could be better."
"The lack of reporting would be the main issue."
"I would like to see higher compression, dedupe, faster I/O, and bigger drives."
"While there's always room for improvement in everything, I can't really think of a specific feature of the solution that requires immediate attention."
"It's not very efficient anymore. There are better products out there."
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, Pure Storage FlashArray, NetApp AFF and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, whereas Dell SC Series is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Huawei OceanStor, HPE Nimble Storage and NetApp AFF. See our Dell PowerStore vs. Dell SC Series report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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