Dell PowerMax NVMe vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

"The latency is good."

"The solution is scalable."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerMax NVMe is its replication feature."

"It allows us to protect our data using different data centers and replicate bi-directionally between our two main data centers."

"It is easy to manage and upgrade."

"We are using the solution's application and snapshot feature."

"It's faster and more resilient."

"The smaller footprint of the device has been really nice. We have gone from eight bays to one bay. Having one floor tile in our data center has been pretty awesome. A lot less power and HVAC cooling is being consumed."

"It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"The support team was very cooperative and responsive."

"The Flash core models offer amazing performance."

"The feature I find most valuable, is the deduplication, because the nature of the data that we are using in our current environment, has a lot of replicated data."

"We are a 100% satisfied with the stability of the solution."

"The technical support for this solution is good. They used to help us when the motherboard of Power Systems broke. Their response times are really fast."

"It's very easy to manage."

"The speed, performance, and stability are the best features of IBM FlashSystem."

"The valuable features are high availability, compression, and a failover mechanism. It's a very highly available storage solution."

"The maintenance service and support from IBM is very good."

"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."

"The software layer has to improve."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"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."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."

"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Remove the need for physical or hardwired virtual servers to run consistency groups, instead make the expensive array controllers handle that."

"The initial setup was a little bit complicated."

"The initial setup was complex, as it is a complex system and you have to learn a lot."

"If you go to Pure or you go to NetApp, they deliver in one month. If you go to Dell or HP, they will take up to six months for delivery. This is not a business model for today."

"The solution should include more AI features to make it smarter."

"With regards to the IBM V7000 storage system, where we have multiple tiers of storage, a heat map would show I/O distribution across the tiers of storage."

"The deduplication and compression ratio is not very good. It's not reaching a very high ratio."

"They don't offer subscription-based payments."

"The pricing needs to be more competitive."

"When you provision a datastore auto-format takes a long time"

"AHV is Acropolis Hypervisor – A relatively new Hypervisor, robust and stable as VMware vSphere, has built-in advanced analytics and powerful operations, Self Service Portal and components for DevOps included, managed by a single pane of glass (Prism) via HTML5 and it is free of charge – That is why Nutanix is so advanced and revolutionary."

"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."

"I have looked at a few pages of a report I download and I saw a graph there regarding software-defined vendors. IBM is not in a good position on this graph. I know that they are working very hard on this, to make it much better and to get to a level where it's not only hardware but also software to provide a complete solution."

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"Our costs are on a yearly basis."

"The pricing is comparable to other vendors."

"Dell offers various pricing models, including a pay-as-you-go option where storage is provided without upfront charges, billing only for used capacity. As a 360° partner, significant discounts are available."

"I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe a five out of ten for pricing."

"Since Dell PowerMax NVMe is an enterprise storage, its price is premium."

"In terms of price-performance, it beat out other competitors when we were taking a look and comparing it to the market. That was one of the biggest driving points for us."

"The price is really high."

"The pricing for this solution is good compared to other products in the market."

"There are no licensing fees, it is a one-time purchase of the IBM FlashSystem."

"If five is a good price and one is a high price, I would rate the price a two or three out of five."

"I price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable and competitive."

"Among IBM, Dell EMC, and Pure Storage, IBM is the cheapest. The price is also based on our location, the size of our entity, and our regular annual purchases from them. We are a very big IBM customer, so we normally get very high discounts. We are not a big customer of Pure Storage. We don't buy that much from Pure Storage per year. Everything is included in the price. There is no extra license for different functions."

"The integration is already included in the license cost of IBM FlashSystem. The integration is very easy. You get the IBM storage core with all software, firmware, and upgrades. EMC provides the features in the box, but they are not free for customers. There is a licensing cost for features. We have yearly licensing, but IBM has also provided a new option where you pay as you go. They provide a big box, and I pay, for example, for 10 terabytes. If I exceed 10 terabytes, IBM will charge for the new storage after 10 terabytes. It is a good opportunity in the market for using the storage as a cloud and paying as you go."

"The price is a little bit high so is rated a six out of ten."

"They've been much more aggressive in the last five, six years than they were before that."

"IBM V7000 has a new license and price structure which provides intuitive licensing based on the functions customers wish to enable and use the most."