Dell PowerFlex Reviews

We haven't yet faced any challenge per se. It's pretty much just like handling a riskier controlled environment anyway, which we had experience with already. There's nothing special about it in terms of handling. That's why it's okay as a solution.

The stability has been good.

We've had no issues with scaling the solution. 

Technical support seems to be decent.

We've had some issues around the licensing. There were some issues in terms of using the VMware license. The VMware license was locked along with the box. Therefore, even if you want, you can't use it for some other purpose. That was the only challenge for us.

The initial setup was not simple or straightforward.

I've used the solution for a little more than a year now. 

I have found the solution to be stable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The scalability of the product is pretty good. If you need to expand it, you can do so.

We have been dealing with them for some time and we are happy with the product. There's no issue from that perspective.

The initial setup was not easy. The supplier or the seller that we had gone through helped us in setting things up. After setting up through them, however. the Day-2 operations were not so complicated.

We used a vendor to assist in the initial setup.

They need to offer some flexibility in terms of the licensing of the VMware component along with the solution.

We are just an end-user and a customer. We don't have a business relationship with Dell. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. 

We use this solution to manage software-defined infrastructure and for rapid provisioning of computer storage.

The API catalog helps us use Ansible automation. We still have to build custom providers for PowerFlex Manager to use Ansible, but what we developed has enabled us to provision computer storage power for less than 16 hours.

The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited. 

It would be great to get earlier access to beta builds because we have to develop providers on our own. The APIs and enablers for custom automation could also be improved. 

I have used this solution for eight months.

This is a stable solution. 

The solution is not as scalable as it should be.

I would rate support for this solution a three out of ten. Considering how much we use PowerFlex Manager, it can only account for a hundred nodes. We need a lot more than that. We provide a lot of input to Dell for product enhancements.  The solution is not as scalable as it should be.

Negative

The initial setup of this solution is complex and requires a lot of maintenance. We use Dell and have internal resources to handle maintenance. If there was more tooling in services to facilitate workload management across the Dell infrastructure, that would really help.

The cost of this solution is fair. 

I would advise those setting up this solution to design their data center infrastructure in a way that enables upgrades quickly.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten. 

The solution has the benefits of any hyper-converged infrastructure but also has good hardware integration. It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place. Upgrading is easy, you do not need to check all of the components in your infrastructure, when you upgrade the solution handles everything.

When checking some of the components in the RCM during upgrades, it can be difficult, you have to check and upgrade the software-defined storage because it will get out of scale with the virtualization with VMware. You always have to consider this during upgrades but the process should be simplified.

I have been using the solution for approximately two years.

The solution is stable.

With this solution you can upgrade and scale up your environment very easy, it is used in enterprise organizations that have large environments.

I have found the technical support very good.

The installation is complex.

Dell came with engineers and integrators to do the deployment for us.

The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors.

For those who want to scale their environment, manage all the environment from a single point, and have to only deal with a single vendor this solution might be for you. If you need these requirements from a business perspective as operations management, the operational cost could be lower but I would advise speaking to professional deployment teams before you do anything.

I rate Dell EMC PowerFlexRev a nine out of ten.

We are customers of Dell and I'm the general manager of our company. 

The solution saves a lot of space in the data center and that is a key advantage for us. The other advantage is the kind of contingency that it provides within itself, the flexibility of utilizing the resources as and when needed. It basically reduces manual effort and increases efficiency, both in terms of space utilization, as well as resource utilization.

I think the kind of restrictions in terms of VMware licensing is frustrating. I might have some spare licenses which I would like to utilize, but it's not possible so it requires purchasing a different license that's locked with a particular box.

I've been using this solution for one year. 

The solution is scalable. It's a consolidated system and we have around 7,000 users. 

We are generally satisfied with the customer support. 

The manpower required for set up is between one and two people. 

I'd like to see better license management with flexibility in terms of license usage.

We considered Nutanix and another product from HP but that was more from an exploration point of view.

I would suggest looking at VxRail rather than PowerFlex. There are some differences between the two and I think we're going to move to VxRail as a future investment.

I rate this solution eight out of 10.