We performed a comparison between Dell SC Series and IBM FlashSystem 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 most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."
"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 most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"The setup is straightforward."
"The performance benefits weren't surprising, we expected that. What we didn't expect were the densification benefits that we got out of going all-flash. We're able to put more applications on the arrays because of how all-flash performs. The way some of the application profiles have responded to all-flash has been really pleasing."
"I've found the stability to be very good."
"Most valuable features have been the system customization with it, the performance you receive, and their CoPilot Support (or Dell EMC Storage Support)."
"It's very scalable, especially with federation. If you outgrow the number of spindles that a unit can support, depending on the model, you can go into federation."
"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 most valuable features are the with back-end dedupe, and the thin nodes. For a 20TB or 60TB, we're using almost a one-to-two ratio."
"It is easy to use, expand the hard drives, add storage, and set up replication."
"IBM FlashSystem is the best solution for storage virtualization."
"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem are performance and security."
"The most valuable feature is reliability."
"Ability to manage third-party arrays and virtualise them: One screen to control multiple arrays. Simplified administration."
"The maintenance service and support from IBM is very good."
"Flash disk with Easy Tier option"
"The performance monitoring feature is useful as it can report in 15 minute intervals by hour, day, week, month, or by a custom date range."
"The power systems are very reliable if you are running 24/7 operations. For ongoing mission-critical applications, it's the best solution."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"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."
"The software layer has to improve."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"The lack of reporting would be the main issue."
"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."
"While the scalability is good, there are certain limitations."
"The interface could be improved. It should have an application point of view."
"An issue we had was that the controller went down during an upgrade because of their upgrading the code. One side of the switch was down."
"I would like to improve the processing ability."
"The initial setup is somewhat complex and should be made simpler to do."
"I don't think the solution is very scalable."
"It is slightly more expensive, however, it all depends on your supplier."
"The product needs to improve their scalability."
"In the next release having the next level of high-speed performance would be great."
"With regards to the IBM V7000 storage system, where we have multiple tiers of storage, a heat map would show I/O distribution across the tiers of storage."
"GUI interface should be enhanced more as there is some issues in copy services."
"If you want to expand, you cannot expand the disc enclosure. You have to buy a total individual node. Sometimes, this is difficult because we are just looking for capacity and not a node."
"The customer's expectations are what they get on the cloud, they're expecting even in the on-premises deployments, going forward."
"When you provision a datastore auto-format takes a long time"
Dell SC Series is ranked 25th in All-Flash Storage with 49 reviews while IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 106 reviews. Dell SC Series is rated 8.4, while IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Dell SC Series writes "Automated architecture that proactively optimizes your database ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem writes "An easy GUI and simple provisioning but our model does not support compression". Dell SC Series is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Huawei OceanStor, NetApp AFF and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, Dell Unity XT and NetApp AFF. See our Dell SC Series vs. IBM FlashSystem report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
