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.
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are the management view of the solutions, ease of provision, and deprovision, it is fantastic."
"I find two features of Pure Storage most valuable. The first is the "safe mode" function, and the second is its simplicity."
"Their REST API is wonderful, well-documented, and easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is its high stability level."
"Has also helped simplify storage for us. The other person we put in there, took about a week to implement. And we had both arrays set up within around four hours with a thirty minute drive time between the two locations."
"The most valuable feature is replication."
"The most valuable feature is that maintenance is free."
"The reliability is very good."
"It was easy for teams to pick up the technology with very limited exposure and training, then implement and support it."
"There is no management overhead involved in optimizing performance. It does it so well on its own. We don't have to manage much at all. It really is like a set it and forget it solution. My storage engineers love the system. It is a lot less work than our previous systems, which weren't bad by any means. There is not nearly as much management as before. So, we are saving dozens of hours per month for our storage team, and that is a real cost in our business."
"Dell PowerMax NVMe has good scalability and performance."
"The SRDF replication piece is probably the best feature. It's useful for maintaining recoverability in the event of a disaster."
"PowerMax NVMe has made it a lot easier to understand how much we are able to provision. It has made it a lot faster to provision new things. 90% of my time for provisioning has been reduced. Also, it has made it very easy to understand and see everything behind it versus the older heritage, where Dell EMC was very convoluted and hard to get working. Things that used to take an hour, probably now take five to 10 minutes."
"The optimization of the cache memory of each engine and the use of persistent memory."
"The stability is amazing. Zero downtime reported over the last years."
"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."
"One of the most valuable features is the ease of deployment."
"There has been a lot of changes in HPE Primera OS, and most of the time any package related to it is simple to upgrade. It does not require any support for the operation. The customer can easily deploy any code directly from the GUI which is very good. Additionally, we have individual storage we can allocate and easily manage."
"In my opinion, HPE is making good progress and moving ahead with InfoSight, which is predictive analytics and artificial intelligence."
"The most valuable feature of HPE Primera is its performance and simple replication."
"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 product's initial setup phase was easy."
"The interface is simplified."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups."
"This product has only two active controllers, whereas other solutions can have more. This is something that needs to improve."
"The one major gripe I have is that there is no snapshotting enabled by default on the SAN."
"I would like the ability to swap out the network adapters into it. So, without taking out the whole controller, I would like to be able to swap adapters. This would make things easier."
"I think replication is one area that still needs improvement. Earlier, Pure Storage FlashArray only had IP-based replication. There was no API-based replication, but they have enhanced the feature now. However, they need to work on API replication for C-type of arrays."
"We have not seen a reduction in our TCO nor have we seen ROI."
"The solution could improve by having a multi-tenant feature."
"We would like to see more development on their Copy Automation Tool (CAT) for Oracle, as well as better integration for our customers running Oracle VM."
"I'd like to see the dedup and compression improve. Two to one is not very good. We should be getting something like three, four, or five to one."
"I would like to see more development in the cloud environment. It would be good if it comes in the cloud kind of setup."
"I would like the scalability to improve, as it requires additional footprints."
"The initial setup was complex, and we had experienced people working on it."
"The technical support is lacking. We are working with Dell EMC to get some better understanding of this."
"Setting up PowerMax with VMAX is always complex."
"Since the merging of EMC and Dell into Dell Technologies, there has been a hurdle that they've had to overcome, and they're not over it yet. It takes two to three times longer for things to get fixed than it did when they were separate companies. That is something that has to be fixed."
"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."
"HPE Primera is not good enough as a storage solution as it does not provide a good NAS storage."
"The IOPS and throughput could be better. That's the only drawback compared to other vendors."
"The solution could improve by having seamless migration from other storage systems. The process should be made easier."
"Primera should be more user-friendly."
"We would like to have more flash storage and its stability. This is an area of challenge for us."
"Only HPE can manage the product."
"We cannot use this storage for critical applications and data."
"The product’s price needs improvement."
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 HPE Alletra. See our Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. HPE Primera report.
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