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.
"Support has been helpful."
"With Pure Storage, we don't see any latency or IOPS. It has been a very seamless integration."
"Very stable; no worries about how much it can handle."
"It allows engineers to focus on other things rather than doing the more manual tasks. It automates tasks, so the ease of use is extreme. It simplifies the storage."
"We've had to use tech support on a number of occasions. They did everything remotely and talked us all the way through. They fixed the issue within 30 minutes. Every single time we contact them, they're perfect. I would give their technical support a ten out of ten."
"The back-end data reporting for Pure Storage is phenomenal. The data that you can see on the performance of your customers' array, so you can be proactive about upgrades or enhancements, and is a phenomenal tool to have access to as a partner. I haven't seen this type of stuff out of anything of the other storage systems."
"The deduplication in the array combined with its snap technologies allows the product to be remotely/manually controlled or scheduled."
"It's very fast and very easy to use. It performs well and is both flexible and compatible. We like it because it's easy to use."
"It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The optimization of the cache memory of each engine and the use of persistent memory."
"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 performance is very good. Our predominant workloads are all less than 5 milliseconds and it's most common to have a sub-1-millisecond response time for our applications. In terms of efficiency, we've turned on compression and we're able to get as high as two-to-one compression on our workloads, on average."
"We are most interested in cloud utilization."
"PowerMax, with version 9.02, which we installed recently, has some very good features, such as CloudIQ."
"We removed the need to observe whether we ran into issues with the performance of disks or number of IOPS. Previously, our Oracle Database would throw us performance errors. Now, with PowerMax, everything runs smoothly."
"We like the compression, dedupe, and I/O on the PowerMax. They are better than on the XtremIO."
"The performance of the solution is good."
"HPE Primera is an all-flash storage product that's very stable and has a higher storage capacity. It can also give better ROI compared to NetApp."
"The product is stable."
"The interface is simplified."
"HPE Primera is scalable."
"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."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"One of the most valuable features is the ease of deployment."
"I would rate this solution an eight. To make it a ten it would have to be a little cheaper."
"The price should be lower."
"We do have an issue with the vCenter integration. Pure Storage says it has a lot of free space, but vCenter says its completely full. This is because their dedupes are saved as space, but Vcenter still detects the disk as completely full. So, we do have an issue with that."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"I want to learn more about command line usage which I have not explored much yet. However, there are many automated solutions for repetitive tasks. I would like to see additional features like performance monitoring, configuring of alerts, and the customization of alert thresholds in the next release."
"I would love for them to have a hyper-converged solution."
"There's always an opportunity for new feature functionality."
"It would be nice to have a better view of the allocated capacity on their Platform as a Service solution because we have to do some manual calculations to understand how much we are going to pay every month to use the storage that is allocated."
"Dell should work on their marketing strategies to make the product more visible on the market. They should promote the product's compatibility with IBM, as not everyone knows it."
"We've had a couple of little things come up, but for the most part, they've been pretty stable."
"Some of the management features could be simplified and that's probably the main thing they need to address."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in the replication. It's an important requirement for us."
"If you go to Pure or you go to NetApp, they deliver in one month. If you go to Dell or HP, they will take up to six months for delivery. This is not a business model for today."
"We are very interested in NVMe over Fibre Channel, which I understand is on the horizon. We would like to see that come to fruition."
"Although they call it unified storage where you have SAN and NAS, with a NAS implementation on top of a SAN, the NAS implementation is a little complicated and clumsy. As SAN, as block storage, it is very powerful... If they could provide a very good NAS implementation, it would be better, so that customers don't have to look for other simple solutions for NAS."
"One of the drawbacks of the model we purchased is that it is not running NVMe drives. Even though they say that it is NVMe-ready, it is still on the SSD drives. The model that we purchased has only eight hard drives, and only the ones on the top could work on NVMe. The rest of them are still on the SSD. Its competitors, such as EMC and Pure Storage, are moving or have already moved to NVMe. HPE should improve this solution for NVMe. HPE should also improve IOs in this solution. IOs in HPE are weaker than Hitachi and Pure Storage."
"Only HPE can manage the product."
"Primera should be more user-friendly."
"Some application solutions can be more acceptable on the HPE Primera site."
"We've encountered issues in the past where maintaining a read-only state is essential to prevent data encryption when VPN access is impacted."
"On the controller side, I would like to see NAS capabilities."
"Increasing the IOPS and throughput values would make the product even better. Improving the scalability of HPE Primera is also recommended."
"The solution could improve by having seamless migration from other storage systems. The process should be made easier."
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 Dell VMAX All Flash, whereas HPE Primera is most compared with HPE 3PAR StoreServ, HPE Nimble Storage, Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform. See our Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. HPE Primera report.
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