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.
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"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 latency is good."
"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"It is efficient and very simple for our administrators to use."
"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 able to provide storage at the right service levels without overmanaging it."
"The compression and deduplication are the most valuable features because of the cost savings."
"A huge benefit of the PowerMax has been the decreasing of our physical footprint. We recently did a consolidation where we went from 58 tiles down to 5. If we had used just the PowerMax, we could have gone from 58 tiles down to 2 tiles, which is huge space savings. If you have 56 newly available floor tiles on a raised floor data center, which you previously had to cool and provide power to, then now, not only are my costs going down, I now have more revenue opportunities because I have more space to put new customers."
"You can use PowerMax for all workloads and consolidation. We have used it to scale thousands of VMs."
"The PowerMax software and CloudIQ let us get an inside view of our compression and compaction, as well as our usage of the storage."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of HPE Primera is its performance and simple replication."
"Our customers have given very positive feedback about InfoSign, which is the management software for this solution."
"HPE Primera provides me with system reliability and 100% data reliability. The storage is good and is consistently reliable and scalable, allowing me to use it whenever needed. The overall performance is great. The product is stable. The customer service and support is excellent. It's a commendable solution, especially suitable for online transactions. It is reliable in meeting data requirements."
"HPE Primera has good integration. All the users are using HP servers and some systems, such as Synergy, which integrate well into the solution."
"The initial setup is simple."
"It is stable and reliable."
"In my opinion, HPE is making good progress and moving ahead with InfoSight, which is predictive analytics and artificial intelligence."
"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."
"The software layer has to improve."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"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."
"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"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."
"I would like it to support NVMe over Fabrics, because that is the next item for consideration on the NVMe roadmap. PowerMax supports NVMe on the back-end, but when it starts supporting NVMe over Fibre Channel, suddenly various hosts can directly communicate with PowerMax, and with NVMe-oF, as well. Suddenly, Gen 6 and Gen 7 switchers will be able to help facilitate that particular communication channel."
"We had challenges again with the initial setup. I don't know if there was a gap during the requirement-collection phase, but the box was partially delivered to us with missing parts and it delayed the implementation by about 60 days. It was not as smooth as I would have hoped."
"Remove the need for physical or hardwired virtual servers to run consistency groups, instead make the expensive array controllers handle that."
"Support of the product can be slow and an administrative challenge: planning, scheduling, and overseeing data center access for a Dell EMC rep. One improvement could be to enable a self-maintenance option. The requirements that we go through to get Dell EMC onsite to replace failed drives, power supplies, and other small redundant parts can be unnecessarily complex. If simplified, they could send us the parts, then we could replace them much faster, more easily, and truly within the SLA parameters."
"The technical support is lacking. We are working with Dell EMC to get some better understanding of this."
"The initial setup was complex, as it is a complex system and you have to learn a lot."
"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."
"The solution could prove the reporting."
"We have not had a good experience with support from HPE Primera. They can improve."
"We would like to have more flash storage and its stability. This is an area of challenge for us."
"The file server embedded in Pure, the GUI, and the tracking and reporting features are better with Pure Storage."
"We face challenges with false alarms, particularly daily alerts related to replication link breaks. I'm not happy with the customer service and support."
"The solution has good performance but it could improve further."
"I would like to see improved training offered with HPE Primera."
"The pricing is very high."
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, Pure Storage FlashArray and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, 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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