We performed a comparison between Dell PowerMax NVMe 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 compression and deduplication features help to make the best use of the capacity."
"We find the ease of usability and setup valuable."
"The code upgrades are very smooth."
"The solution offers amazing performance."
"This is the best all-flash storage array on the market."
"We've been using FlashArray's snapshot for backups. Their replication across sites and response time are also excellent."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are the management view of the solutions, ease of provision, and deprovision, it is fantastic."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are simplicity, ease of use, and dashboard management."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerMax NVMe is its replication feature."
"We find the service level option to provision storage very valuable. The ability to define different service levels for storage groups helps us in prioritizing our workload at the infrastructure level."
"Based on our experience with VMAX, there isn't any hardware failure or something like that in PowerMax. Performance-wise also, everything is fine. We haven't faced any performance issues or any hardware failure. Its performance is great as compared to VMAX. Its I/O per second rate is higher than the old model."
"The performance is very good on our servers. It's superior. And the QoS capabilities for providing work congestion protection are also important because about 99 percent of our servers are production servers."
"The uptime is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"You can use PowerMax for all workloads and consolidation. We have used it to scale thousands of VMs."
"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."
"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."
"There are many valuable features of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMele I have found to meet my needs. Specifically, the maintenance cycle is a standout feature of this solution. The main component of the IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is the maintenance of the batteries, which have a predetermined and reliable four-year life cycle. This is in stark contrast to other solutions that may use spinning disks, which can fail unexpectedly, causing unwanted downtime and maintenance. Having a predictable maintenance cycle is a significant advantage and has made this solution a preferred choice for me."
"The most valuable feature of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is the snapshot. We use it daily for all of the storage units."
"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."
"It is a very stable solution."
"Good performance with a user-friendly UI."
"Its ease of use, performance, and hardware compression is very useful feature."
"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."
"The solution could improve by having a multi-tenant feature."
"The price could be better."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"We need to add more storage in Pure Storage FlashArray with the cluster mode activated for us to have better performance."
"In the configuration, which we brought in or tested it in, it has a very limited config as far as the array goes. That said, it still did more than our anticipation."
"Currently, the solution fails to support file screening."
"Automation could be simplified."
"We have had some trouble with the VMAX-to-PowerMax migration, but the VMAX box will be powered down after the migration. The PowerMax boxes are working fine and we don't have any issues with them."
"Dell PowerMax NVMe is costly compared to other solutions."
"We brought up this question to the implementation engineer. We were comparing use cases where a customer is using RecoverPoint, then goes to PowerMax. In our previous setup with XtremIO, we were using RecpverPoint and keeping snapshots for 30 days, every few seconds. With PowerMax, I requested this for every 15 minutes, keeping it for a week. The engineer's answer was, "There will be too many snapshots. It might slow down the system." This is specifically for the use cases where there is RecoverPoint. While PowerMax works with RecoverPoint, and you can use it, there should be some way where you can have even more snapshots and not to worry about performance and system cache."
"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."
"Although they call it unified storage where you have SAN and NAS, with a NAS implementation on top of a SAN, the NAS implementation is a little complicated and clumsy. As SAN, as block storage, it is very powerful... If they could provide a very good NAS implementation, it would be better, so that customers don't have to look for other simple solutions for NAS."
"They can make the GUI better, especially for the ones that come out of the box. We did encounter a bit of difficulty in setting up the storage. We had to deploy Solutions Enabler on a Linux machine to be able to fully interact with the storage. They need to upgrade the web interface for the management of the storage that comes out of the box. The management interface for NFS is also a bit old and not very intuitive."
"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."
"I would like a more informative CloudIQ for iOS. What you can see via the web UI significantly differs from what you can see via the web application."
"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."
"Deduplication and compression should be improved."
"The ZIO interface could be improved."
"The support could be better."
"The solution's compression feature could be better."
"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."
"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."
"There is a tool provided by IBM for repairing batteries which can only be utilized by those who have an IBM technical advisor under service contract. However, for individuals who do not have such a contract, the tool can be difficult to use and requires a zip file copy. I believe that it would be greatly beneficial if the tool were made more user-friendly and accessible for all individuals who need to repair batteries."
Dell PowerMax NVMe is ranked 7th in All-Flash Storage with 26 reviews while IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is ranked 11th in All-Flash Storage with 10 reviews. Dell PowerMax NVMe is rated 8.6, while IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell PowerMax NVMe writes "Allows us to define different service levels for storage groups to prioritize our workload at the infrastructure level, and provides remarkable value in terms of compression and deduplication". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe writes "A game-changer product that doesn't fail, and as compared to the prior generation products, takes about 20% of space and uses about 85% less energy". Dell PowerMax NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and Huawei OceanStor, whereas IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, IBM FlashSystem, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, HPE Primera and HPE Nimble Storage. See our Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors and best NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays vendors.
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