We evaluated PowerMax against IBM FlashSystem 9200R and against the Huawei Dorado V6. At that time, Huawei did not have the VMware certification due to US policies and enforcement, but Dorado now has VMware certification. That's why we rated the PowerMax highest.

We're in the Request for Proposal (RFP) process. The RFP is not closed. Dell is one of the vendors we're considering, and we're working with them to figure out migration and other technical details. They're not the only vendor; we're also considering IBM, Hitachi and others.

We looked at three other vendors, including NetApp, but we were looking for block storage. I've always felt NetApp is great for file storage, but I look elsewhere if I want block storage. And while their presentations were impressive, there wasn't a compelling reason to choose them. They weren't any cheaper. There wasn't anything that stood out about them that made us want to take a closer look.

We also looked at Kaminario, but we had questions about whether they'd still be around in five years to provide support. There were many positives I liked about it, and the price was low. It was like an off-brand version of a Pure array in a lot of ways. Just by playing with it, you could tell it was a year or two behind what Pure Storage was selling.

We also looked at Pure Storage, and I thought Pure Storage had the best mix of cost and ease of use for an organization our size. I felt like it was probably the best choice, but the corporate leadership overruled my recommendation based on the "No one ever gets fired for buying IBM" theory. My CIO was feeling like, "He's a software developer, so he's not very hardware or vendor savvy." He didn't know much about Pure Storage and felt more comfortable sticking with EMC.

NetApp and Pure Storage are the biggest ones we looked at for block storage. 

For other storage, like file, print, and object , there are a dozen others that are always trying to differentiate themselves on price. They want to do a proof of concept and we do those with them. But what I'll tell them up front is, "I know your products are great. They're going to work great in our lab. You don't really have to send me a piece of equipment for me to test it. I know it's going to work. You guys wouldn't be in business if they didn't work. So let's get down to the cost of it." And when we get to the cost of it, it's just not compelling enough to make a switch.

But as far as features go, I don't find there is a huge difference.

We evaluated products from Pure, NetApp, and Kaminario.

We have been with Dell EMC since the beginning of business. We adopted them from a server perspective, then we adopted their storage lines. 

There may be customers who don't utilize all the compression features of competing products, thinking they may slow the system down. I know certain customers who have bought competing products, but they keep the compression and deduplication disabled by default, or even the encryption, because they create additional overhead. That means that with those solutions, you need to have more capacity than what you need with PowerMax. The guarantee with PowerMax is that there is no compromise on performance, even if you enable compression, deduplication, and encryption.

We did look at HPE Nimble Storage as well as Pure Storage. Pure Storage was probably the biggest competitor. At the time, we just wanted something that was a little bit more tried and true versus a new player in the storage array game.

Pure Storage did offer a couple of very niche tools related to SAP. PowerMax NVMe just came in very aggressively with their pricing, and that ultimately won them the business. 

We briefly looked at and evaluated Hitachi. However, in 2019, PowerMax didn’t have any direct competitors. There might have been a similar Huawei solution, but it was not really the same as PowerMax.

The primary reason that we went with PowerMax is because we have always preferred Dell EMC solutions. Our previous solution was a Dell EMC product and we were very satisfied with its reliability and performance until its end-of-life.

Right now, we're doing a PoC with HPE 3PAR storage.

We currently have almost 100 percent Dell EMC storage technologies in play. We are looking at it as other vendors to see if they have comparable products, what we can use, and if there are very similar things to what we have.

I've even been to other classes for other vendors, like IBM. I have looked at IBM storage for various applications and come back to say that we are doing the best of class, so far, because what IBM recommended for the solutions does not exceed the current platforms that we current use for those storage solutions.

We reviewed a few other solutions. NetApp was one of them. What made us go with Dell was a combination of the offering that we saw and the price point at which that was being offered to us by Dell. So, the combination of the offering in terms of the storage features and the fact that Dell offered us competitive pricing at that point were the main reasons.

At the time we were choosing this product, they and a few others were the only ones boasting of having a true NVMe experience. At that point, they had also introduced the SCM into the mix that lowered the platinum latency to about less than 0.04 milliseconds. Those were the things that really attracted us to this storage solution.

We did look at other options. We tested it head-to-head with two other vendors in a lab with identical conditions. We basically looked at the top five storage vendors on the market and shortlisted three.

The cons were the fact that it was really an internal process. Qualifying a new platform, through engineering and getting that through governance and architecture is a detailed and time consuming process. Those were the cons. In terms of pros, the technological features available, including the compression ratios, were excellent. The performance itself, the out-and-out, the horsepower of the platform, is where PowerMax did significantly outperform the other solutions we put it up against. However, most importantly, it was that uptime and availability which pushed it ahead. The inline deduplication and compression capabilities also significantly outperformed its competitors.

Our solution is focused using Dell technologies.

Our management is satisfied with PowerMax. There had been a discussion with IBM about obtaining a storage solution from them but when we saw the power that PowerMax had, we opted for the next version of it instead.

We were initially doing a PoC and comparing PowerMax against other arrays: NetApp, XtremIO X2, and Pure. We were doing a performance benchmark and it came in second compared to XtremIO X2, so it did a good job.

We generally do a PoC. In this case, we went directly to the PowerMax because we felt it was a good solution. Our upper management chose it.

We also considered Hitachi since they were our current vendor.

We didn't look at other solutions.

We did some research and talked to Dell EMC. We asked what solution they recommended, since we are a Dell EMC shop.

We looked at Hitachi and NetApp, but it really boiled down to our relationship with Dell EMC and the portfolio of the product.

This solution’s architecture influenced our buying decision because of all the data services incorporated, especially the LAN technology. This allows us to replicate from one site to another.

We also considered Pure Storage.

We have always used Dell EMC. We have evaluated the technologies from some of the other vendors. We have done numerous proof of concepts, and we have done some real hard proof of concepts. Either in the architectural design stage, or in the engineering stage, some of those particular products do not meet the rigorous testing that we do in these types of scenarios and environments.

Alternatives in the Dell EMC portfolio are primarily XtremIO and Unity. However, PowerMax is the only product which can meet the uptime and latency requirements.

When it's mainframe there are only three: IBM, Hitachi, and Dell EMC. The arrays at this level are all fairly competitive.

IBM doesn't support VMware the way that we needed it to. 

Hitachi and EMC were neck and neck. What won it out was Dell EMC's relationship with our sales team.

PowerMax was the shortlist.

We have used VMAX in other places. It has helped because it has various options for data protection. I have worked on DMX3, DMX4, and VMAX 10K. I am a fan of VMAX because it is really good. There are various command line options that allow you to do a lot of things.

Most of the products are the same and have similar features. There could even be some which might be better. However, one thing that I always liked about Dell EMC is the support, which is really good. If there is an issue and you can get somebody to resolve it, that is the most important thing. Many products have the same features, e.g., snapshot, replication, and data compression, but the support from Dell EMC is one of the best.

We looked at Dell EMC and Pure Storage.

The other vendor on our shortlist was HPE and we went with Dell EMC because, with all the tests, it seemed to be the best array.

There are very few other products on the market which I've run into that can give performance at this level of availability.

Yes, Huawei. 

We have multiple solutions, but we're mostly an HDS F-Series company as well as Dell EMC.

It beats the Unities and XtremIOs. Compared with those products, it's been good.

We're integrated pretty tightly with Dell EMC, so there was really no exploring outside of Dell EMC.

IBM was the competitor. Ultimately, it came down to price.

We considered Dell EMC and NetApp.