We performed a comparison between Dell PowerMax NVMe and HPE Primera 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, HPE Primera came out ahead of Dell PowerMax NVMe. Even though both products have multiple valuable features and similar support quality, users found complications with Dell PowerMax NVMe's deployment and dislike its licensing model, evaluating the solution as expensive.
"It worked flawlessly."
"We have seen savings in our storage. The speed of deployment has gone from several days to a few minutes. This product has reduced that time into minutes, simplifying storage for us."
"The most valuable features in Pure Storage FlashArray are deduplication and active cluster."
"It reduces space and the polar consumption. It also accelerates the application."
"It helps to simplify storage because it has an easy front-end to access everything."
"Provides fast access and is user-friendly."
"It is fast and reliable. It works."
"One of the lesser sung advantages was when we started running our interface engine on Pure Storage. The ability to process messages and pass them through in our organization skyrocketed purely because of a disk that I owned which we were getting out of Pure Storage."
"The high availability that other systems don't have. In other systems, there is an owner in the storage processes. But for PowerMAX, there is no owner. All the process storage is passed to all nodes without ownership. So, there is no response feature in the storage in PowerMax. In the other systems, there is a response, which is a very nice feature. No systems have such a feature."
"It was easy for teams to pick up the technology with very limited exposure and training, then implement and support it."
"The SRDF replication piece is probably the best feature. It's useful for maintaining recoverability in the event of a disaster."
"PowerMax, with version 9.02, which we installed recently, has some very good features, such as CloudIQ."
"The compression and deduplication are always on. We get more than 4:1 capacity savings using them. The efficiency benefits from compression and deduplication are through a specialized hardware module within the storage itself, and that means there is no overhead to the compression and dedupe."
"Based on our experience with VMAX, there isn't any hardware failure or something like that in PowerMax. Performance-wise also, everything is fine. We haven't faced any performance issues or any hardware failure. Its performance is great as compared to VMAX. Its I/O per second rate is higher than the old model."
"It allows us to protect our data using different data centers and replicate bi-directionally between our two main data centers."
"It is a very stable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"Our customers have given very positive feedback about InfoSign, which is the management software for this solution."
"The high availability was most valuable because they come with what's called 100% data availability. With special terms, they license and guarantee 100% data availability. That was probably one of the key features or components that HPE was offering with that model."
"All of the capabilities of the hardware such as replication, snapshot, and the specific features are all included from the start as opposed to being on another license."
"We sold Primera to a public university, and they're happy with it. They have been using it for about four months with no significant problems."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the artificial intelligence for the storage inside of the software and firmware because customers do not like functionalities which require manual interruption."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It is stable and reliable."
"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."
"The technical support is okay, but could be improved."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"In the next version of this program, I would like to see increased security, higher encryption, and faster throughput."
"Currently, the solution fails to support file screening."
"I would like to get a weekly report of how our storage has been used, and if there is any storage sitting there not being used."
"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."
"Pure Storage support could be a little better."
"Dell needs to offer more midrange storage options with enterprise-class features similar to the PowerMAX."
"We have issues that we don't know about, which Dell EMC fixes."
"If the solution had more power-saving capabilities, it would be quite nice."
"There are definitely some improvements that can be made to the CloudIQ."
"The initial setup was complex, as it is a complex system and you have to learn a lot."
"There are some stability issues that we just recently experienced. We hope the next release will solve these problems."
"We brought up this question to the implementation engineer. We were comparing use cases where a customer is using RecoverPoint, then goes to PowerMax. In our previous setup with XtremIO, we were using RecpverPoint and keeping snapshots for 30 days, every few seconds. With PowerMax, I requested this for every 15 minutes, keeping it for a week. The engineer's answer was, "There will be too many snapshots. It might slow down the system." This is specifically for the use cases where there is RecoverPoint. While PowerMax works with RecoverPoint, and you can use it, there should be some way where you can have even more snapshots and not to worry about performance and system cache."
"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."
"Primera should be more user-friendly."
"There are certain shortcomings in the technical support offered by HPE where improvements are required."
"The solution could prove the reporting."
"We cannot use this storage for critical applications and data."
"Only HPE can manage the product."
"HPE Primera's deduplication area is not as good as the one offered by Dell PowerStore, making it an area where improvements are required."
"We used to receive hardware errors a lot of times. The ambient temperatures rise rate was approximately 35 to 55 degrees, but when it was approximately 27 or 28, we used to get errors a lot."
"We have not had a good experience with support from HPE Primera. They can improve."
Dell PowerMax NVMe is ranked 8th in All-Flash Storage with 66 reviews while HPE Primera is ranked 7th in All-Flash Storage with 38 reviews. Dell PowerMax NVMe is rated 8.8, while HPE Primera is rated 8.4. 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 HPE Primera writes "A highly stable and easy-to-configure solution that provides excellent features that enable smooth migration". Dell PowerMax NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, IBM FlashSystem, Dell Unity XT, Huawei OceanStor Dorado and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, whereas HPE Primera is most compared with HPE 3PAR StoreServ, HPE Nimble Storage, Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF and HPE Alletra. See our Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. HPE Primera report.
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