Dell SC Series vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell SC Series and IBM FlashSystem 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.
To learn more, read our detailed Dell SC Series vs. IBM FlashSystem Report (Updated: March 2023).
685,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"I like how easy it is to discover an issue and either resolve that issue or fine-tune that app to premium support to find that resolution.""The speed is great. That's probably number one in terms of features we appreciate.""The speed of data retrieval is the most valuable feature. We mostly use it for our SAP database and we are getting good IO from the hard drive.""I like some basic features like Snapshot, FlexClone, and advanced features such as SnapMirror, and SnapVault. They also recently enhanced the market with Cloud Volumes ONTAP. I think that NetApp is a very good product.""One of the main features that we love about the system is the ability to create snapshots. NetApp makes a lot of snapshots in a short space of time. Also, the speed of data recovery with NetApp, at the time we need it, is an important feature that we love.""We have had issues before on our infrastructure where 20 to 30 percent of the people would come to us pointing the finger at the storage technology or storage back-end. That is now virtually zero.""Using System Manager for green management or command line interface, we have a single point for managing the cluster. It is much easier to manage. It is very seamless. The product is robust and solid.""This solution helps accelerate demanding enterprise applications. VMware workloads, the database, and Oracle Solaris are hosted on AFF, which means that our primary priority workloads are on AFF and that the secondary ones are on FAS. That includes the SAN national cloud."

More NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) Pros →

"I've found the stability to be very good.""It had many features, like a snapshot, replication, on-the-file RAID levels, mix-and-match files, those kinds of things.""The Dell support is helpful and the response is quick. The agents' knowledge is very good.""Customers are most impressed with SC's provisioning because you don't need to buy a large amount of storage upfront. It's pay-as-you-grow. It also has solid compression and duplication features.""One of the most valuable features is the capability to switch between all-flash to hybrid, which have have actually done for one of our arrays. We started with the hybrid, with the limited if I'm not mistaken, and then over a period of time, we swapped all the hybrids with the SSDs. This was one of the big features because it gave us the capability to not stick with just one kind of media. Secondly, since it has sorted clustering, we were able to bring in the newer boxes and have it all clustered together. These were the two main features that we really looked into, which benefited our use case from an expansion/growth perspective. Another valuable feature is the ease of management.""What is most valuable about the Dell EMC SC Series system was its reliability.""The flexibility of this solution has been valuable for our business.""The setup is straightforward."

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"IBM's technical support do excellent work.""Installing FlashSystem is very easy. It takes less than half an hour, and I can handle it all myself.""One of the valuable features is the performance, it is one of the best in the market.""The solution is very easy to configure and use.""It's a mature product. It's like a BMW that evolves consistently.""The performance is very good and we use this product to enhance our core system.""No queuing and high ops, speed, and performance.""The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem are performance and security."

More IBM FlashSystem Pros →

Cons
"Another issue is that for smaller customers, NetApp doesn't have enough disk sizes. You begin with a 980-gigabyte disk and the next size is 3.8 terabytes. There aren't any disk sizes in between. Competitors have more choices in disk sizes.""We have been seeing some challenges around the application layer implementation. We are having some teething problems now with the cooperation between the application layer and backups to things, like SnapCenter. This may be a question of product maturity.""When it comes to the connectivity on the back end, where the hardware is concerned—the cabling and the like—it could also be simplified to ease the communication between the nodes and between the other components of the infrastructure. I still find that a little bit complicated.""From my perspective, everything works well. They've already announced that they have some features in their next release that make the existing investment more usable, by adding software features to your existing legacy hardware investment.""It used to give us the volume where LANs should be placed when we created a LAN in the older version. However, in the newer version of ONTAP, it does not give where to place the LAN in the volume. So, that liberty has been taken away. If that was there again, it would be very good.""The NetApp support could be better.""The initial setup has a lot more steps in it than are probably necessary for a base deployment, unlike other vendors where it's more straightforward. It could be a little bit more streamlined.""During the initial setup, you need to know what you are doing."

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"The SC Series doesn't support NVMe storage.""Dell could improve the upgrading process.""The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series.""The price could be improved.""What I understand is that this is a 13 year old architecture, so it has lived its life and they're phasing it out. Honestly, we were initially struggling with the integration with VMware (but it was fixed with the VMware 6.5) and, then, it was around a 10GB network. At that time, it had the longevity to go to 100GB as well. It got us thinking about, when we go into the containerized architecture, what do we need to do to fix the infrastructure?""In some customer cases, customers experienced more performance or latency.""While the scalability is good, there are certain limitations.""The lack of reporting would be the main issue."

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"The deduplication and compression ratio is not very good. It's not reaching a very high ratio.""The interface of this solution could be improved.""Our model does not support compression or deduplication.""The initial setup is complex.""This solution could be improved by offering greater amounts of storage.""The design is a little old-fashioned and could be updated. The rack is very primitive and designed in an older style.""The price is very costly.""The only issue my team faced was transferring the data from the old system to IBM FlashSystem, which is an area for improvement in the solution."

More IBM FlashSystem Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "We benefited from implementing all-flash by reducing our data center footprint. We took it from 30 racks to just over five. This is one of the biggest savings for us."
  • "The licensing and pricing are fine. As a reseller for the product, we need to make the differentiation in the minds of the customer. They are not just buying some tool that does only one thing, e.g., showing a LAN for a customer. The pricing is fair for what it is."
  • "In addition to simplifying the management across a mix of solutions, AFF simplifies the cost. That was one of the main reasons we purchased AFF."
  • "NetApp AFF is an expensive product, although not compared to other vendors."
  • "The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. But if you have to buy any more disk space, it can be quite expensive."
  • "The list price of AFF is too expensive... they need to be careful with the pricing of the new NVMe disks. They are way too expensive."
  • "I looked at other vendors for other potential projects and thought NetApp's pricing was very competitive."
  • "There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost. The cost is very high compared to other devices."
  • More NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Pricing depends on varying life cycles."
  • "We have the basic license for the use of this solution and it is a permanent license. The overall cost could be less, it is expensive."
  • "The SC Series was priced fairly. I wouldn't call it either expensive or cheap because we had a very tight budget, so if they were able to fit in that type of budget, they met our expectations."
  • "This solution could be better priced in comparison with other vendors."
  • "The pricing is reasonable, but it is expensive."
  • More Dell SC Series Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I find the pricing of the solution to be very reasonable."
  • "You purchase it as a bundle and the price is comparable."
  • "The solution requires a license and could be less expensive."
  • "Overall the price of the solution is expensive and this includes the license."
  • "The cost of the IBM FlashSystem is lower than the HPE solution."
  • "The pricing may be a bit higher than other brands. If you compare the IBM FlashSystems in midrange with Dell EMC in midrange, IBM costs a bit more, but I prefer IBM because it has more specs that I can benefit from."
  • "The cost is pretty high in terms of licensing. We pay at least $100,000 USD in licensing fees for the storage."
  • "The price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable."
  • More IBM FlashSystem Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Well, Is one thing NetApp Storage has vs other brand is the mix of protocol CIFS with NFS booth working together in the… more »
    Top Answer:This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended cost… more »
    Top Answer:The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matters… more »
    Top Answer:It had many features, like a snapshot, replication, on-the-file RAID levels, mix-and-match files, those kinds of things.
    Top Answer:Pricing is market-related and is flexible for the solution. Pricing depends on varying life cycles.
    Top Answer:Dell could improve the upgrading process. It was the lifecycle that made it very short. You'd upgrade the disk, and in… more »
    Top Answer:As with any engineered solution, it depends on your needs.   However, the bottom line is that for their target markets… more »
    Top Answer:The solution is very easy to configure and use.
    Top Answer:The price is a little bit high so is rated a six out of ten. There is always room for improvement on the solution's… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
    SC Series Storage, Compellent
    IBM Storwize
    Learn More
    Overview

    NetApp All Flash FAS (AFF) is a storage infrastructure that contains only flash memory drives instead of spinning-disk drives. NetApp All Flash FAS (AFF) addresses enterprise storage requirements with best-in-class data management, higher performance, and flexibility. All Flash FAS systems accelerate your operations without sacrificing the effectiveness, dependability, or adaptability of your IT infrastructure, since they are built on ONTAP data management software. As an enterprise-grade all-flash array, the NetApp All Flash FAS (AFF) manages and safeguards your critical data, making your datacenter’s transition to flash simple and painless.

    NetApp All Flash FAS (AFF) is a robust, scale-out platform designed for virtualized environments and can be deployed as an independent system or a high-performance tier in a NetApp ONTAP configuration.

    NetApp All Flash FAS Features

    NetApp AFF has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Cloning and Snapshot copies combined with native space efficiency can lower storage expenses.
    • Near-zero performance impact for snapshot copy creation, cloning, and replication.
    • Application-consistent Snapshot copies simplify app management.
    • Synchronous replication using NetApp MetroCluster software, a feature that is only available from NetApp in the all-flash array market and provides zero RPO and close to zero RTO for workloads that are mission-critical.
    • Support for at-rest data encryption and an onboard key manager to help secure your data through easier key management.
    • NetApp SnapMirror replication software reduces overall system costs by replicating to any type of FAS/AFF system, whether it is all-flash, hybrid, or HDD, on premises or in the cloud.

    NetApp All Flash FAS Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing NetApp AFF. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Change the economics of your data center with flash - you'll consume 11 times less electricity, require 11 times less rack space, and spend 67 percent less on support compared to a data center using HDDs.
    • Manage data with a single piece of software for SAN and NAS settings, including flash, disk, and the cloud.
    • Within 10 minutes, you can provision storage and serve data.
    • Inline data reduction technology can reduce SSD storage by 5 to 10 times on average.
    • Protect your data using the system's best-in-class integrated data protection suite.
    • Scale out to 24 nodes, 367PB of effective capacity, and 4 million IOPS without causing disruption.
    • Accelerate applications with up to 12 times more IOPS and 20 times faster response thanks to NetApp ONTAP FlashEssentials.

    Reviews from Real Users

    NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its handling of read and write operations and its high-capacity drives. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    Harish M., Senior Consultant at a tech services company, writes of the solution, “The most valuable feature is its ability to handle high-intensity read and write operations. It works very well in terms of this.” He adds, “We recently started using the volume encryption feature, which is helpful because there are some federal projects that require data at rest to be encrypted.”

    Another PeerSpot reviewer, a director at an IT Infrastructure Services department at a university, notes, “In terms of the footprint, it is far more efficient. It has smaller, higher-capacity drives than our older unit. In terms of space, power, and cooling, it has simplified things.”

    Dell EMC SC Series arrays provide a unified platform for the ultimate in performance, adaptability and machine-driven efficiency. SC Series software delivers modern features that help you meet aggressive workload demands using the fewest drives necessary. With an open, future-ready design, SC Series storage integrates seamlessly with applications and infrastructure, enabling you to scale on a single platform and add capabilities without forklift upgrades.

    IBM FlashSystem products are enterprise computer data storage systems that store data on flash memory chips. Unlike storage systems that use standard solid-state drives, IBM FlashSystem products incorporate custom hardware based on technology from the 2012 acquisition of Texas Memory Systems. This hardware provides performance, reliability, and efficiency benefits versus competitive offerings.

    Offer
    Learn more about NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS)
    Learn more about Dell SC Series
    Learn more about IBM FlashSystem
    Sample Customers
    Acibadem Healthcare Group, AmTrust Financial Services, Citrix Systems, DWD, Mantra Group
    TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric
    Celero, Friedhelm Loh Group, Clarks, Mingkang Natregro Health Food Group, Sofia, Etisalat Fights Fraud, UF Health Shands Hospital, Generali, Elecon Engineering Company Limited, Ventiv , Technology, CPFL Energia, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., SciQuest, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, Paddy Power, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Interconnect Services, Severstal IP-Only AB, PVU Group GmbH
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company15%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Energy/Utilities Company9%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company22%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Healthcare Company16%
    Manufacturing Company16%
    Pharma/Biotech Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company21%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm28%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Government9%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business12%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise75%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise60%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business47%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise35%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise56%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise48%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business28%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise57%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell SC Series vs. IBM FlashSystem
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. IBM FlashSystem and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
    685,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell SC Series is ranked 16th in All-Flash Storage with 10 reviews while IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 39 reviews. Dell SC Series is rated 8.6, while IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Dell SC Series writes "The performance was staggering and more than what we paid for". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem writes "Reliable and easy to configure with simple data migration capabilities ". Dell SC Series is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Pure Storage FlashArray, IBM System Storage DS8000 Series and Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series, whereas IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, HPE Primera and HPE Nimble Storage. See our Dell SC Series vs. IBM FlashSystem report.

    See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.

    We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.