Dell SC Series vs IBM System Storage DS8000 Series comparison

"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."

"I can mix and match the drives, using older mechanical devices and the latest SFP drives in a single solution with different enclosures."

"With auto-tiering, it's easier to understand than most arrays, knowing that all of your writes go to the tier that you specify, with easy-to-create storage profiles."

"Most valuable features have been the system customization with it, the performance you receive, and their CoPilot Support (or Dell EMC Storage Support)."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to replicate. We are running a financial company and it needs to be available 24/7. We can't afford any downtime."

"Dell SC Series offers a lot of performance, being one of the best performing storages Dell ever made."

"The most valuable features are the with back-end dedupe, and the thin nodes. For a 20TB or 60TB, we're using almost a one-to-two ratio."

"The most valuable feature is the speed for the end-user."

"The high throughput feature is the most powerful thing in this product."

"The Global Copy and Global Mirror features are the solution's most valuable aspects."

"The ease of use could be improved. It took me a while to learn it."

"This solution could be improved if overall performance was improved and operated with a higher speed and supported a higher volume of RAM."

"The administration and support (on the way that they delivered) was a little bit slow."

"Overall, I'd like to see more synergy between Dell EMC's higher-tier platforms and their mid-tier platforms. What I have said, constantly, to my partners at Dell EMC is that the clear articulation of the path is really important to us. In that vein, what I'd also like to see is, with the migration strategy that's built into this product, a lot more attention paid to Dell's - in particular - legacy platforms and how we get from some of our legacy EMC platforms onto this platform with a straight-through migration and scaling strategy, not host-based migrations and not piecemeal... Dell EMC would do well to focus more on my ability to skip a generation, rather than having me take individual hops because I can't greenfield my way into a software-defined data center fast enough. This journey of multiple hops is not helpful."

"Technical support should respond more quickly because the turnaround time is very high."

"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?"

"One option I would like to see is, when you're up on the view-screen, to be able to incorporate getting to what HPE call the iLO, the Integrated Lights-Out. To be able to get that instead of having to go back and trying to find IP addresses and re-institute those would be good. It would be good to be able to that put on the initial splash screen."

"If Dell SC Series could have supported the protocol NVMe over TCP, that would have been great. It does not."

"The solution should embedded replication switches into the hardware instead of using them externally."

"The GUI isn't as user-friendly as other options."

"It's absolutely affordable. Again, not having to do a forklift upgrade like some of the others have had to do in the past, it's very affordable for our customers and they continue to buy."

"This product is too expensive compared to others, and I don't see any value in using it."

"This solution could be better priced in comparison with other vendors."

"Always keep in mind, this is not just a enclosure with disks is a complete SAN as a service. There is software, license, and storage in one single solution."

"It is one of the most cost effective systems for us. We have been able to run it longer than most, getting the most benefit and money out of it."

"Pricing depends on varying life cycles."

"The pricing is reasonable, but it is expensive."

"The scalability seems a bit more expensive than even buying a brand new one so far. That has been kind of a drawback."

"The license is very expensive."