We performed a comparison between Dell SC Series and IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe 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."The availability and ease of use are the big features."
"It's actually very stable"
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the support."
"The predictive performance analytics is a very good feature, as our system is performing better than before."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides."
"The sales and executive support have been outstanding compared to the rest of the market... My upgrade paths have been simple on the Pure... It's a lot simpler to implement and a lot simpler to manage."
"It does efficient work of storing data while still delivering the performance that you would normally expect from a higher priced solution."
"It is easy to manage. You don't have to have the same people who used to manage the Dell EMC arrays because the solution is more intuitive."
"It is fast and performs well."
"It had many features, like a snapshot, replication, on-the-file RAID levels, mix-and-match files, those kinds of things."
"The product offers good performance and is quite powerful."
"Connecting it up, you can run it within a few hours."
"The most valuable feature is the speed for the end-user."
"In terms of stability, it's good enough. It's okay."
"With auto-tiering, it's easier to understand than most arrays, knowing that all of your writes go to the tier that you specify, with easy-to-create storage profiles."
"It is easy to use, expand the hard drives, add storage, and set up replication."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is one of the leading storage systems in the world...I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The most valuable feature is the speed."
"The solution is more available for IOPS warehousing, resolving issues, and reporting than other products."
"It is a very stable product. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten because we did not face any issues in the last three years."
"A key feature is that compared to storage systems that we've been familiar with over decades, IBM simply does not fail. The reason is that IBM is the only manufacturer that engineers its own flash module, and there is a key architectural difference from everything else that we have seen in the market. The difference is that the flash module has the computational capability, which allows reliability and capacity enhancements to be uploaded from the main controllers and run in each module. So, each of the flash drives becomes its own little storage system, and that is extremely effective architecture. In this field, with this type of system, IBM has made a statement. They've never had one of these modules cause an outage. So, the failure rates on these things are just in a whole different universe from what we were accustomed to."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is easy to use and comes with good performance."
"It's easy to use, has good stability, and many features."
"It is a bit expensive."
"We do have an issue with the vCenter integration. Pure Storage says it has a lot of free space, but vCenter says its completely full. This is because their dedupes are saved as space, but Vcenter still detects the disk as completely full. So, we do have an issue with that."
"Most of our upgrades have not been as smooth as they should have been."
"Going forward, don't complicate things for the customers."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"The one major gripe I have is that there is no snapshotting enabled by default on the SAN."
"Having something native in the Pure Storage ecosystem would make it integrated and in one single company, and we wouldn't have to work with multiple organizations."
"Larger capacity and more storage ports would be the two things I'd like to see."
"The administration and support (on the way that they delivered) was a little bit slow."
"While there's always room for improvement in everything, I can't really think of a specific feature of the solution that requires immediate attention."
"The interface could be improved. It should have an application point of view."
"We have seen some degraded throughput with mixed workloads. We have been working with Dell EMC to correct some of these latency issues."
"Compellent comes in the form of a component that's not true of a unified storage platform."
"The initial setup is somewhat complex and should be made simpler to do."
"The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series."
"In some customer cases, customers experienced more performance or latency."
"The efficacy of the GUI in IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe could be enhanced, and it would be beneficial to include a feature that can prevent ransomware attacks."
"I'd like to be able to connect to tape drives behind the storage device to back up the tape if need be. We have all of our storage running in all-flash, and we make a copy on tape. Currently, when we want to hook up tape drives, we have to add some extra equipment, which is a little bit complex. We want IBM to add a feature where we could install a tape into the storage so that we can connect it through a single pane of glass. We'd like to have a feature in the IBM flash storage system so that we can connect backup tape drives through the IBM storage system and we can manage the backup tape from the storage system."
"IBM's support is not good. I experienced a big problem where I opened the console IBM Storage and would see that something was broken. I called the call centers, and I said, "I have a problem. My drive is not working." They want me to give them the serial number, I gave it to them and they told me "I cannot find your product. Your product is not here.""
"IBM is currently not offering volume-based encryption or compression, while other brands or IBM's competitors are doing it."
"In the future, the limitation is upgrading the same storage by adding a shelf to the desk. There is a limitation in the backend connection between the storage and extended shelf."
"The ZIO interface could be improved."
"The support could be better."
"Other vendors have included a block and file system. IBM doesn't include a file system. And yet, it's very necessary for all organizations' networks to have file systems. We have other systems for the file system, however, ideally, we would like to have one system with these features."
Dell SC Series is ranked 24th in All-Flash Storage with 49 reviews while IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is ranked 13th in All-Flash Storage with 19 reviews. Dell SC Series is rated 8.4, while IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Dell SC Series writes "Automated architecture that proactively optimizes your database ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe writes "Steady performance, responsive support, and high availability". Dell SC Series is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Huawei OceanStor and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, IBM FlashSystem and HPE Primera. See our Dell SC Series vs. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe report.
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