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 sales and executive support have been outstanding compared to the rest of the market... My upgrade paths have been simple on the Pure... It's a lot simpler to implement and a lot simpler to manage."
"It has been very stable. I have not seen or heard of downtime storage issues after moving over to 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."
"This solution is very scalable."
"Having fast storage allows actual servers to perform in high capacity so we don't have slowdowns on our applications."
"The compression and deduplication features help to make the best use of the capacity."
"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both."
"The scalability is good."
"The UI is very easy to use. We can add volumes and manage them easily."
"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 find the service level option to provision storage very valuable. The ability to define different service levels for storage groups helps us in prioritizing our workload at the infrastructure level."
"We're consolidating two to three arrays down to one which means that our data center footprint has decreased by like 90%. So we're saving 90% of our space, and it also is much better on power and everything else in our data center. And on top of that, the performance is much, much better than our older arrays."
"We are able to provide storage at the right service levels without overmanaging it."
"We can consistently replicate mainframe and open system and have a single recovery point."
"The number one most valuable feature is reliability. I want to go home at the end of the day and come in the next day knowing it works, especially since we have storage offshore."
"The product is very fast and reliable."
"The most valuable feature is the speed."
"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."
"The high performance and high availability improved our overall processes."
"It is a very stable product. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten because we did not face any issues in the last three years."
"It's easy to use, has good stability, and many features."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its upgrades, as we don't have to do much homework because of its different controllers."
"A key feature is that compared to storage systems that we've been familiar with over decades, IBM simply does not fail. The reason is that IBM is the only manufacturer that engineers its own flash module, and there is a key architectural difference from everything else that we have seen in the market. The difference is that the flash module has the computational capability, which allows reliability and capacity enhancements to be uploaded from the main controllers and run in each module. So, each of the flash drives becomes its own little storage system, and that is extremely effective architecture. In this field, with this type of system, IBM has made a statement. They've never had one of these modules cause an outage. So, the failure rates on these things are just in a whole different universe from what we were accustomed to."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is easy to use and comes with good performance."
"With scalability, I have run into a little problem with our last upgrade. There were some undocumented limitations to the number of drives that our controller could run on. So, instead of putting in a new data pack as we had anticipated, we had to keep adding and removing to get up to the capacity that we needed to be. What should have been a one day process (or a few hours) turned into a month and a half process."
"One thing I'd like to see in a future release is integration between their main storage array and what they call their FlashBlade product; to be able to snapshot directly from the primary array into multiple different backup copies on FlashBlade."
"The initial setup of the product is complex."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"Beyond a certain amount of petabytes, you have to have a separate system. Basically, it's not infinitely scalable."
"It is not possible to create a cluster on top of multiple arrays."
"The scalability of the solution is not as good as it probably could be."
"There are scenarios with very specific functionality around VMware integration particularly to do with the way we'd like to manage LUNs in VMware. The tools are pretty good but there's room for improvement there."
"The initial setup process is difficult."
"I would like a more informative CloudIQ for iOS. What you can see via the web UI significantly differs from what you can see via the web application."
"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."
"The installation of equipment needed support's help."
"We have issues that we don't know about, which Dell EMC fixes."
"We would like more documentation, a guide to the features of the PowerMax."
"Remove the need for physical or hardwired virtual servers to run consistency groups, instead make the expensive array controllers handle that."
"I hear from people on my team that they would like improved reporting. While there are some decent tools for doing reporting, they would like to see a lot more built-in functionality. This way when they are logged into the interface everyday doing basic management tasks, they could also see some statistics on what is their storage pool usage and will be their projected usage with their current data growth. They want to be able to see more detailed stats on how they are using the system and have forecasting."
"The storage system itself should have built-in capabilities for different ransomware attacks."
"Other vendors have included a block and file system. IBM doesn't include a file system. And yet, it's very necessary for all organizations' networks to have file systems. We have other systems for the file system, however, ideally, we would like to have one system with these features."
"The support 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."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is an expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved."
"The efficacy of the GUI in IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe could be enhanced, and it would be beneficial to include a feature that can prevent ransomware attacks."
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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