"We have been able to consolidate storage into Pavilion. Pavilions are our only SANs because it is a bring your own disk solution. When new drives come out, we are able to take out half of the drives in the system, put in new drives, move our VMs over to the new drives, take the other drives out, and populate those with new drives. Then, we are suddenly twice as dense as we were before. NVMe flash is only going to get denser and cheaper so we can make use of that every couple of years by just throwing newer disks into it at a fraction of the cost of a new SAN."
"There's lots of flexibility in how we use the resources while also maintaining a small footprint."
"The high performance is very valuable, as well as the enterprise reliability features."
"The most valuable feature of Dell EMC XtremIO is the data protection (DP) group, it is one of the most advanced features in these types of arrays. The dedupe and compression that this array provides both do a superb job."
"Xtrem10's features are more simple to implement. The integration and interface are also good."
"A valuable feature of XtremIO is that, in terms of administration, it's simple and manageable."
"The performance is good, which is important."
"The Metro clustering and solid-state performance, are the most valuable features of this solution."
"IBM FlashSystem has been stable in our operations."
"One of the valuable features is the performance, it is one of the best in the market."
"IBM FlashSystem is a flexible solution with plenty of features."
"The compression and deduplication features are the most valuable."
"One of the most valuable features is that it's very easy to use and configure. It used to be more difficult, but now it's almost flawless."
"I like most of the features. Its speed, performance, and availability are valuable. We are implementing the data reduction technology the most."
"The installation is nice and easy."
"No queuing and high ops, speed, and performance."
"In our current configuration, we can only run the line controllers in high availability, active-standby mode, whereas we would like to see active-active implemented."
"I would like to see the management layer improved."
"The rail system that Pavilion uses to mount up into a standard Dell or APC cabinet extends further back than normal rails, and they cover up the zero PDU slot. So, I don't like the rail system that comes with the device. That is my biggest complaint."
"XtremIO needs to be lower priced. It also needs better endpoints and scalability."
"If you are looking at flash storage solutions, XtremIO doesn't offer any unique features. Most of my customers are migrating their workload from XtremIO to other formats because of this."
"Scalability is something that can be improved because there is an issue when it comes to mixing versions."
"I would like to see the ease of deployment and built-in Metro clustering."
"In the next release, the solution could have better integration and if we can host assets on the cloud, such as NetApp has the NetApp volumes, which we can host on the cloud directly called NetApp CVO (cloud volume ONTAP). Dell EMC should come up with something purely on the cloud rather than manage services."
"The customer's expectations are what they get on the cloud, they're expecting even in the on-premises deployments, going forward."
"The pricing could be improved, but I think it's getting better and better with each version. IBM needs to implement NAS storage again, as this is a big flaw. Dell EMC is very good at this and if you compared them based on NAS storage, Dell EMC would win right away. IBM's solution for NAS storage is very complicated. We don't have a storage box that provides file sharing from itself, we have to put software on it and go through a whole complicated process. It should be simplified."
"The Data Reduction Pools (DRP) support could be better."
"We use some open-source tools for monitoring, such as Grafana and it should be bundled along with IBM FlashSystem."
"They can include Amazon file system S3 protocol in the upcoming releases. It is a cloud file system. IBM FlashSystem doesn't have this feature in the box for high-end or mid-range. We have got requests for this from customers because we need to use S3 for EDI application storage. At the beginning of every year, IBM releases firmware. When I find any bugs in the firmware during the year, I am unable to find any information from IBM regarding the bug. I need to open a ticket, and the IBM engineering team makes a patch only for me. This patch is not public. By creating a customized patch for a client, they don't really solve the issue for everyone. If multiple users have the same bug, IBM should upload the patch on the official website so that we can download it. IBM FlashSystem has a monitoring tool in the box, but it is not advanced. I need a more advanced tool for more advanced equations and monitoring. All top three storage vendors, that is, EMC, IBM, and Pure Storage, don't have a powerful monitoring tool. To monitor our box to show the statistics for I/Os and latency, I need to pay for extra software. The built-in monitoring storage is not mature enough to handle all requests and generate all reports that I need. They can include the functionality to stretch a cluster natively without using any additional boxes. In addition, there are some features that EMC has integrated with the box. These features are not available in IBM FlashSystem."
"This product lacks some of the options we wanted. For example, expansion was difficult and it required a lot of patching to be done."
"Their technical support needs improvement in terms of reachability for the clients and response times. They should be more responsive and have more online platforms for support. They should make more technical information available online. There could be some kind of documentation community."
"The GUI for monitoring performance metrics could provide better visibility. For example, it doesn't let me segregate the IOPS per volume."
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Dell EMC XtremIO is ranked 21st in All-Flash Storage Arrays with 5 reviews while IBM FlashSystem is ranked 7th in All-Flash Storage Arrays with 29 reviews. Dell EMC XtremIO is rated 7.4, while IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Dell EMC XtremIO writes "Useful data protection group, effective compression, and stable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem writes "Good performance, energy efficient with a small form factor, helpful support". Dell EMC XtremIO is most compared with Dell EMC PowerStore, Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC SC Series, Pure Storage FlashArray and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Pure Storage FlashArray, Dell EMC PowerStore, Dell EMC Unity XT, HPE Nimble Storage and NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS). See our Dell EMC XtremIO vs. IBM FlashSystem report.
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