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.
"Very efficient storage"
"The deduplication in the array combined with its snap technologies allows the product to be remotely/manually controlled or scheduled."
"It simplifies building out the storage."
"It worked flawlessly."
"With Pure Storage, we don't see any latency or IOPS. It has been a very seamless integration."
"I like FlashArray's ActiveCluster as well as its snapshot and cloning capabilities."
"The most valuable features are extremely low latency, high IOPS with VMware, inline deduplication and compression."
"Very stable; no worries about how much it can handle."
"It is very stable. We expect superior performance and reliability from this particular storage system."
"It is a true, stable product."
"PowerMax, with version 9.02, which we installed recently, has some very good features, such as CloudIQ."
"The optimization of the cache memory of each engine and the use of persistent memory."
"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."
"We are most interested in cloud utilization."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the performance and compression. The most useful tool is CloudIQ."
"The most valuable feature of HPE Primera is its performance and simple replication."
"HPE provides good support through their customer service."
"The product has better replication features than the previous products."
"The initial setup is simple."
"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."
"One of the most valuable features is the ease of deployment."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."
"I would like to see data tiering to AWS."
"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current. I think it's bundled with the deduplication and other compression factors. We need more user interfaces for forecasting in this software and more interfaces need to be integrated with this array management tool."
"There are a lot of things to improve."
"Beyond a certain amount of petabytes, you have to have a separate system. Basically, it's not infinitely scalable."
"Pure Storage will have issues with positioning in the near future since its a relatively new company. For now, customers need a PoC to trust using the solution, as it can't stand on its brand name alone. They need to improve Pure Storage's marketing."
"There's always an opportunity for new feature functionality."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services. There are increasingly more and more services coming out from AWS but there are also certain constraints where we can't move everything over to a cloud as well. We would like for things that are on-premise to be easily integrated with AWS."
"There are some stability issues that we just recently experienced. We hope the next release will solve these problems."
"The initial setup process is difficult."
"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."
"Dell PowerMax NVMe needs to increase storage and improve scalability."
"When it comes to Oracle and database workloads, data reduction could be a little bit better. Some of the competition, like Pure, have post-processes which do additional deduplication and compression on the backside; everything is in-line and then they do a secondary process. It would be a good option if you could start getting 5:1 or 6:1 data reduction on database workloads."
"The initial setup was complex. ESRS is a very complex solution to put into our environment, because it requires external access to the Internet. That's a very tough thing for us to do, because we are a PCI and PII company. We store a lot of data for people which is personal. Therefore, going out to the Internet is not our preferred path."
"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 solution does not use new versions of OS and patches. Its installation is also difficult. The solution is not as fast as other storage in the market."
"We've encountered issues in the past where maintaining a read-only state is essential to prevent data encryption when VPN access is impacted."
"The solution could improve by having seamless migration from other storage systems. The process should be made easier."
"HPE Primera's pricing model is an area of concern and can be considered for improvement."
"We would like to have more flash storage and its stability. This is an area of challenge for us."
"The IOPS and throughput could be better. That's the only drawback compared to other vendors."
"The interface needs to be more user-friendly in that sense that installation and management are still a bit on the high end."
"The product's stale snapshots feature needs improvement."
"HPE Primera is not good enough as a storage solution as it does not provide a good NAS storage."
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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