We performed a comparison between Dell PowerMax NVMe and NetApp NVMe AFF A800 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."I like its speed. It has all the features that I need."
"There was a dramatic improvement in operating costs just as a result of the environmentals and space, let alone the cost of the unit itself."
"We like the speed. It's very low latency. In virtualization, you can mask lots of problems, and even in code you can mask lots of problems, with low latency. It's just pure speed and low latency."
"It's reduced our overhead management time on storage, since it is so simple to get in and just provision a volume, present it to the host, and then you are done."
"The mobile app is very helpful."
"The amount of data that I have moved to it from legacy storage has enabled us to retire units that are three or four times the physical size."
"Their support system has insight into errors on our SAN fabric that we can't see. They've brought attention to and raised awareness for us about things that we couldn't see, when we were experiencing problems."
"On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the most comfortable pricing, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"It offers a high level of availability, so pretty much near zero downtime."
"The compression and deduplication are always on. We get more than 4:1 capacity savings using them. The efficiency benefits from compression and deduplication are through a specialized hardware module within the storage itself, and that means there is no overhead to the compression and dedupe."
"They're basically tanks. You could take a baseball bat to the thing, and it's still going to keep running and doing what it's supposed to do. We've had a couple of part failures, and you can pretty much replace any part on that thing at any time during the day in the middle of production without worrying about anything happening."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We like the compression, dedupe, and I/O on the PowerMax. They are better than on the XtremIO."
"I have been highly satisfied with the resiliency and scalability of the solution."
"NetApp NVMe AFF A800 is easier to use than some other solutions and the UI is very good to use for day-to-day activities. Overall, the solution has good technology."
"The product can be scaled vertically as well as horizontally."
"The most valuable features are stability and performance."
"We find the product to be very flexible."
"The storage features are valuable."
"During the use cases of the solution, its reliability and suitability are the best."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a product that is fast and provides a fast I/O."
"You can easily scale up, and scale-out."
"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 are many features which need to be added, particularly on the replication side."
"The only time that we had problems with it was that there was a bug in the VVol implementation but, outside of that, it has been flawless."
"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."
"A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad."
"I want to learn more about command line usage which I have not explored much yet. However, there are many automated solutions for repetitive tasks. I would like to see additional features like performance monitoring, configuring of alerts, and the customization of alert thresholds in the next release."
"Its price needs improvement. Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth."
"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."
"It's a relatively new product, but for the next release I would like to see higher bandwidth on the front-end adapters. This would allow even greater scalability for critical workloads and consolidation for non-critical workloads. The hosts may not require that level of I/O performance today. However, it allows us to scale physical non-cloud environments without large investment."
"I would like to see more development in the cloud environment. It would be good if it comes in the cloud kind of setup."
"Setting up PowerMax with VMAX is always complex."
"Dell needs to offer more midrange storage options with enterprise-class features similar to the PowerMAX."
"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 tool is costly compared to other similar products. The product's pricing needs to be improved. I would like the product to include the replication feature in its future releases."
"PowerMax's software is highly stable, but we faced two hardware issues in one year. We had a failure of the storage director module, and the physical disk failed on another occasion. Dell EMC should improve its hardware quality."
"The product's performance has some shortcomings, making it an area that could be a little better."
"Stability is an area with a certain shortcoming where the solution needs to improve"
"Sometimes, it takes a while to get somebody competent on the other end of the line. They do have engineers in multiple time zones around the world. However, their level-one support is not always the best."
"The product’s UI could be better."
"The cost of the solution is quite high. It would be ideal if they could adjust it so that it's a but less."
"Increasing the RAM, and including physical cords would be beneficial."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"The initial setup is complex."
Dell PowerMax NVMe is ranked 8th in All-Flash Storage with 66 reviews while NetApp NVMe AFF A800 is ranked 17th in All-Flash Storage with 10 reviews. Dell PowerMax NVMe is rated 8.8, while NetApp NVMe AFF A800 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 NetApp NVMe AFF A800 writes "Very easy to manage, highly stable and offers robustness of the CLI, API, and GUI ". Dell PowerMax NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, IBM FlashSystem, Dell Unity XT, Huawei OceanStor Dorado and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas NetApp NVMe AFF A800 is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Huawei OceanStor Dorado, NetApp ASA and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform. See our Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. NetApp NVMe AFF A800 report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors and best NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays vendors.
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