We performed a comparison between Dell PowerMax NVMe and Pure Storage FlashArray 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."Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"First, it's an enterprise storage solution. This is very important for us. Another important feature is replication."
"The best feature is the protection - PowerMax NVMe is volume-based and replicates data, so it's very comfortable for us to use."
"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."
"It is very stable. We expect superior performance and reliability from this particular storage system."
"We are most interested in cloud utilization."
"The product is very fast and reliable."
"The most valuable feature is the performance and compression. The most useful tool is CloudIQ."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is test performance. It helps us store large amounts of data along with providing us faster retrieval of data."
"We find the ease of usability and setup valuable."
"It has made working with storage as easy and simple as it should be."
"It gives us capacity planning."
"Performance is the most valuable feature."
"It simplifies the overall management. We don't have to worry about storage anymore."
"It's very fast and very easy to use. It performs well and is both flexible and compatible. We like it because it's easy to use."
"Data reduction and compression. Sub millisecond latency."
"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."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"The software layer has to improve."
"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."
"It is on the expensive side."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"There is some room to grow, especially with some of the installation quirks."
"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."
"Dell needs to offer more midrange storage options with enterprise-class features similar to the PowerMAX."
"There are some stability issues that we just recently experienced. We hope the next release will solve these problems."
"I hear from people on my team that they would like improved reporting. While there are some decent tools for doing reporting, they would like to see a lot more built-in functionality. This way when they are logged into the interface everyday doing basic management tasks, they could also see some statistics on what is their storage pool usage and will be their projected usage with their current data growth. They want to be able to see more detailed stats on how they are using the system and have forecasting."
"The initial setup process is difficult."
"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."
"Some of the management features could be simplified and that's probably the main thing they need to address."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services. There are increasingly more and more services coming out from AWS but there are also certain constraints where we can't move everything over to a cloud as well. We would like for things that are on-premise to be easily integrated with AWS."
"I would like to see the NAS add-on component become more fault-tolerant than just a single virtual machine running inside the array. I'm unwilling to use it for that reason."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions. For example, if I want to use this storage for a backup from the cloud, I want to have integration with the cloud vendors, such as Microsoft, Oracles, or Amazon. It could be available as an API to allow seamless integration. Additionally, the solution could improve by having native integration with a cloud provider, such as VMware or Microsoft, this would reduce the need to use third-party solutions to complete the task."
"They have a product, FlashBlade, which is their object storage integration, and that's something that we haven't integrated with yet. This might be an area for additional focus as it would play into scalability, because the very nature of object storage is that it's infinitely scalable."
"The time-to-market could be better at times, but I think that's true for all vendors of hardware."
"Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."
"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."
"There are a lot of things to improve."
Dell PowerMax NVMe is ranked 8th in All-Flash Storage with 66 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. Dell PowerMax NVMe is rated 8.8, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. 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 Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". Dell PowerMax NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, IBM FlashSystem, Dell Unity XT, Huawei OceanStor Dorado and Dell XtremIO, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and Huawei OceanStor Dorado. See our Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Pure Storage FlashArray report.
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