Dell XtremIO vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

"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."

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"The solution is scalable."

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

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

"Scalability is a significant feature of Dell XtremIO, as it is easy to expand and manage."

"Xtrem10's features are more simple to implement. The integration and interface are also good."

"The speed is extremely valuable."

"The solution's most valuable features are the inline data reduction and deduplication."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its high performance."

"It is scalable."

"The most valuable features include the easy manageability of snapshots and its excellent performance in large-scale workloads."

"The most valuable feature of Dell EMC XtremIO is the data protection (DP) group, it is one of the most advanced features in these types of arrays. The dedupe and compression that this array provides both do a superb job."

"The most valuable feature in demand is virtualization and its support storage of virtualization features."

"IBM FlashSystem is flexible, quick, and has a solid design."

"It is simple to make an update."

"The GUI is very easy and performance is also good."

"One of the valuable features is the performance, it is one of the best in the market."

"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression."

"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."

"IBM FlashSystem is the best solution for storage virtualization."

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

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

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

"When we upgraded the capacity from five to ten TB, the price of the disks was high."

"The product is highly expensive. Additionally, there is a significant lack of training, support documents, and forums available for Dell XtremIO, making troubleshooting difficult for third-party individuals."

"The solution needs to be simplified. When you integrate your storage with other systems, could use a little bit of automation."

"The product is highly expensive."

"I would like to see the ease of deployment and built-in Metro clustering."

"Native data replication: To replicate data between XtremIO devices, you need to use EMC’s RecoverPoint appliances to move the data."

"It needs a way to determine the deduplication of each LUN and what the impact would be if we were to move data from one LUN to another."

"We've encountered challenges in integrating other products with Dell Xtremio, as it tends to be more vendor-locked. This means we can't easily explore other solutions that might work alongside Dell."

"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."

"The pricing could be improved, but I think it's getting better and better with each version. IBM needs to implement NAS storage again, as this is a big flaw. Dell EMC is very good at this and if you compared them based on NAS storage, Dell EMC would win right away. IBM's solution for NAS storage is very complicated. We don't have a storage box that provides file sharing from itself, we have to put software on it and go through a whole complicated process. It should be simplified."

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

"The solution's infrastructure technology level could be PCI Express 5 instead of PCI Express 4 for the next version."

"The solution is quite expensive. That's one of the downsides to using it."

"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."

"In IBM FlashSystem, data reduction is an area with shortcomings where improvements can be made in the future."

"The GUI needs some improvement."

"The product is expensive."

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

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

"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."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

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

"Licensing is approximately $200,000 per year."

"You can get a two-year or three-year license for the tool. You can also opt for a perpetual-based licensing model, which can be renewed on a yearly or two-year basis."

"The license for XtremIO is in the box, so you don't have to buy anything."

"The price of the solution should be reduced. The price matches the price of a VMAX service but it does not have the capability of a VMAX service. However, the prices of Dell EMC XtremIO can be reduceable."

"It's not cheap, but it absolutely gets the job done. I don't have any real comment regarding licensing specifically."

"It is great when a product can deliver high-end performance capabilities while offering a very competitive price point."

"This is the best flash array on the market for high-end workloads, so expect to pay for that. But the support subscription cost is fixed for seven years, which made it easier for us to plan on the maintenance costs."

"XtremIO is an all-flash array, which means it's a costly solution. When compared with general mid-range storage solutions, this is more expensive. As far as I know, there are no additional costs besides the license."

"I'd rate the basic licensing and the Virtualize software a ten out of ten, and the extra Spectrum and other an eight out of ten."

"This solution is expensive compared to other solutions."

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

"Pricing can be considered as per market competition."

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

"The pricing has been very competitive for the last few years. IBM got to the point where they changed the pricing model and we feel very comfortable with the pricing. It's very competitive. Over the last two years, IBM has been coming up with all kinds of interesting promos, especially for the SMB systems. That makes it very competitive price-wise and in terms of performance..."

"The price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable."

"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."