Abdul-Salam - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Manager - System Analyst (Datacenter Infrastructure) at Sohar International
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Built-in SRDF helps reduce our bandwidth requirements, through compression and dedupe capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "Although they call it unified storage where you have SAN and NAS, with a NAS implementation on top of a SAN, the NAS implementation is a little complicated and clumsy. As SAN, as block storage, it is very powerful... If they could provide a very good NAS implementation, it would be better, so that customers don't have to look for other simple solutions for NAS."

What is our primary use case?

We are using the PowerMax for our core banking solution, ERP, and our payment systems, as well as middleware, ATM, and the most critical banking systems.

How has it helped my organization?

The main improvement for us is that we have seen up to 12x performance improvements after moving from earlier, mid-range Dell EMC storage to PowerMax. Some of our reports, which were long-running, are now completed in a few minutes. Something that would take two hours is completed in 15 minutes and that has improved productivity. 

We also used to get timeouts from our storage, but now, after migrating to the PowerMax, there are no timeouts because the latencies are in microseconds, compared to the milliseconds of our old solution.

Our bandwidth requirements have been reduced because of the compression and the dedupe that we are getting with the built-in SRDF. It is bandwidth-optimized. And the best part is the reverse replication. Suppose you activate your DR. When you have to come back to the main array, only the changes are synced. That is unlike many other products. Here, only the changed tracks need to be updated, making the reverse replication very fast.

Also, by enabling the compression and deduplication, we get a very good level of compression and dedupe, of 4:1, which means if you have 40 terabytes, you only need to buy 10 terabytes. There are cost savings there. And by default, thin provisioning is in place, which also gives you at least a 40 percent reduction. And because of the bandwidth optimization, the link required for the DR replication is also reduced, meaning you are saving on the bandwidth costs. We have easily saved 50 percent.

Overall, you are getting very high-performing and reliable storage.

What is most valuable?

The most important feature is the performance, because we have four directors, all of them Active-Active. (PowerMax directors support multiple functions including front-end I/O modules).

It is highly available because it has multiple controllers. All of them are unlike some of the traditional storage arrays, where you assign certain LUNs to certain controllers. Here, everything is Active-Active. You don't assign a particular disk or LUN to a particular controller. All the controllers are servicing all of the LUNs. So from an availability point of view, we don't even know if a particular controller or director has failed. And all the spare part replacement, including controllers, can be done online while systems are working. We don't need to do it during off-peak hours. We can do so during normal working hours because the performance you get from the service, due to the other controllers, is enough to take care of any failed components.

There is also a Call Home facility configured, so the system can send out alerts to the Dell EMC support team. They can dispatch spare parts based on these alerts, so it is a fully integrated system.

Another valuable feature is the DR replication technology, which is based on the Dell EMC SRDF solution. It provides a very good level of near-real-time replication. It supports synchronous as well as asynchronous. When it comes to activating the DR, it is very easy.

Then there are the compression and deduplication which 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.

In addition, the solution supports IBM Power Systems, Solaris, VMware—almost everything is supported. That's important to us because we are using multiple hardware flavors including IBM Power Systems, SPARC machines, and HPE Onyx. All of these are different classes of machines, and we have different operating systems. We have Linux and Windows on physical and we have it running on VMware. Oracle virtualization is also supported. It supports a wide combination of specialized technologies and hardware.

And the built-in QoS capabilities enable you to drill down to any particular QoS levels and define the type of performance you'll have: diamond, platinum, or gold. The result is that different performance levels can be set for individual disks. Using the QoS functionality, we can vary the performance or prioritize it based on the criticality of the performance needs.

Another nice feature is the CloudIQ app. You can even monitor things using the app on your mobile. Every five minutes, the performance statistics and the system diagnosis data are sent to the cloud and you can access them sitting anywhere. You get these statistics at your fingertips.

What needs improvement?

Although they call it unified storage where you have SAN and NAS, with a NAS implementation on top of a SAN, the NAS implementation is a little complicated and clumsy. As SAN, as block storage, it is very powerful. However, even though NAS is provided as a feature, I don't think many customers will be using a PowerMax as a NAS because NAS is normally meant for file servers or some kind of archival storage. If they could provide a very good NAS implementation, it would be better, so that customers don't have to look for other simple solutions for NAS.

Buyer's Guide
Dell PowerMax NVMe
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Dell PowerMax NVMe. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe for one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We don't have any issues with the stability. It is rock-solid.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. We recently did an upgrade. You can keep on adding disks within a shelf or even attach additional shelves.

Also, the NVMe scale-out capabilities are very important. Although we are using SSD, all-flash drives, the backend is NVMe. It is quite fast. The IOPS requirements will never reach the max. It is also future-looking storage because it supports storage class memory (SCM). That is where you can utilize the full benefits of the storage solution. Currently, we are not using SCM because it is quite expensive. At the moment, we don't need it, but the storage backend is already NVMe and the controllers are connected using InfiniBand for very high bandwidth.

It's also very easy to add or expand disks in very few steps. Everything can be done online, even the firmware updates, meaning that you don't need any downtime. It's all seamless.

How are customer service and support?

Dell EMC's technical support is excellent. The backend support is very strong, just like the implementation team. They have a dedicated team for PowerMax, like they used to have for VMAX or Symmetrix.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using a Dell EMC mid-range storage solution before. 

How was the initial setup?

It is a complex system, but the engineers and architects behind the implementation are well-versed. They're very technically competent. They're on top of the prerequisites, and there are a lot of those. For a first-timer customer the setup will be difficult, but they will help you. The implementation team is very strong. They're very clear on what needs to be done and how to do it. For us, it was a very clean implementation. We didn't have any hiccups.

It is not a one-day job. It is not a very easy installation. It requires the experts. But Dell EMC makes sure that you get a certified, real expert to do the implementation. It doesn't get done through a partner. Dell EMC themselves send their engineers for the installation.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is high-end storage and it is a bit expensive, but it is doing what it is meant for: running business-critical applications or latency-sensitive applications like ATM payments, and those kinds of core banking systems.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

There may be customers who don't utilize all the compression features of competing products, thinking they may slow the system down. I know certain customers who have bought competing products, but they keep the compression and deduplication disabled by default, or even the encryption, because they create additional overhead. That means that with those solutions, you need to have more capacity than what you need with PowerMax. The guarantee with PowerMax is that there is no compromise on performance, even if you enable compression, deduplication, and encryption.

What other advice do I have?

This particular model of storage is considered Tier 0 storage for the most mission-critical applications, the applications that require a very high level of reliability and low latency. It's also for the types of applications that require real-time replication across different sites. The solution is suitable for mission-critical applications and not for archiving, because it is not cheap.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Manager - SBR Technical Services at Reliance Industries Ltd
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Has good customer support but needs to increase storage and improve scalability
Pros and Cons
  • "Dell PowerMax NVMe's tech support is good."
  • "Dell PowerMax NVMe needs to increase storage and improve scalability."

What needs improvement?

Dell PowerMax NVMe needs to increase storage and improve scalability. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the product for a couple of months. 

How are customer service and support?

Dell PowerMax NVMe's tech support is good. 

How was the initial setup?

We can complete Dell PowerMax NVMe's deployment in a week. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate the product an eight out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementer
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Buyer's Guide
Dell PowerMax NVMe
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Dell PowerMax NVMe. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Infrastructure Lead at Umbra Ltd.
Real User
With the SCM memory, it has been set it and forget it
Pros and Cons
  • "PowerMax NVMe has made it a lot easier to understand how much we are able to provision. It has made it a lot faster to provision new things. 90% of my time for provisioning has been reduced. Also, it has made it very easy to understand and see everything behind it versus the older heritage, where Dell EMC was very convoluted and hard to get working. Things that used to take an hour, probably now take five to 10 minutes."
  • "Firmware updates are a bit painful because you have to involve their support, as opposed to having the ability to do it yourself."

What is our primary use case?

We currently use PowerMax NVMe for our file server and all our VMs. It is a SAN, so all of our storage or data sits on it. It is just a great storage appliance.

How has it helped my organization?

With the SCM memory, it has been set it and forget it. It is being used as a cache drive. There is very little configuration for us to do. We just know that it is working.

PowerMax NVMe's QoS capabilities give us a lot of visibility into taking a look at what could be a potential performance issue. However, because it is so fast, we haven't really noticed any slowdowns from the date of deployment even until today.

It is a very good storage appliance for enterprise-level, mission-critical IT workloads because of its high redundancy, parity drives. It gives us the ability to not worry about our data. Or, if something were to go wrong, e.g., a drive pops, then we have our mission-critical warranty. We get a drive the same day, then get it swapped by the next business day at the latest.

PowerMax NVMe has made it a lot easier to understand how much we are able to provision. It has made it a lot faster to provision new things. 90% of my time for provisioning has been reduced. Also, it has made it very easy to understand and see everything behind it versus the older heritage, where Dell EMC was very convoluted and hard to get working. Things that used to take an hour, probably now take five to 10 minutes.

What is most valuable?

  • The cost of the entire solution
  • Their dedupe rates
  • Ease of use
  • Simplicity

Data availability is very high. Data security is also very good. There are a lot of encryption methods available.

We use the solution’s NVMe SCM storage tier feature. There is almost no overhead or management time involved. It was kind of set it and forget it.

What needs improvement?

The visibility within the storage resource tools or understanding the utilization of the SCM memory have been pain points. We know they are being used, but it is hard to actually see them within the actual GUI.

Firmware updates are a bit painful because you have to involve their support, as opposed to having the ability to do it yourself. This is probably for the best because you don't want something to go sideways while being the only person working on this and not having external support for it.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the physical appliance for 2.5 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a very robust, stable machine. We have had no worries whatsoever.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

At this time, scalability is not applicable. I understand it is very easy to scale up. You just add on the drive shelf, then connect it in. That is really it. Now, you have all these drives available to you.

It is being used every single minute of every single day. The IOPs, the throughput data, is about 525 megabytes per second. So, it is actively being used at all times of day.

As time goes on, the usage of it will increase. That is just the nature of it being our primary storage array.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support was very good. There have been no real issues. Any questions we have had, they were able to answer and assist with. There have been no problems whatsoever.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Because it is NVMe, it is extremely fast. It is a lot faster than our old SAN. It is hard to compare it to others in the market, only because we have never owned other products within the same generation. We switched to PowerMax NVMe because of aging hardware.

Prior, we were using a regular 7200 RPM disk. As a result, it was extremely slow. The upgrade to NVMe has been much appreciated by the company. Things that used to take four to five hours are now taking 15 minutes, if that.

How was the initial setup?

It was a pretty complex process in the beginning: migrating data, verifying everything is good to go, standing up our volumes, and things of that nature. Once everything got going, it was a lot easier to understand and manage.

Deployment took about two weeks’ time, not including transfer times. With transfer times, it was closer to a month.

We set up our PowerMax, attached the source to VMware, and then migrated all of our VMs off of our old storage array into the new one. Once we verified everything was good, we turned off the old storage array and went from there.

What about the implementation team?

We did it through Dell EMC ProDeploy, which is their professional services for this type of work. Our experience with them was very good. There were a couple of hiccups here and there, but it was more related to what was shipped to us, opposed to an actual hiccup with the implementation process.

What was our ROI?

We have seen an ROI based on time saved by being able to use a faster storage array versus our really slow, old one.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

In terms of price-performance, it beat out other competitors when we were taking a look and comparing it to the market. That was one of the biggest driving points for us.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did look at HPE Nimble Storage as well as Pure Storage. Pure Storage was probably the biggest competitor. At the time, we just wanted something that was a little bit more tried and true versus a new player in the storage array game.

Pure Storage did offer a couple of very niche tools related to SAP. PowerMax NVMe just came in very aggressively with their pricing, and that ultimately won them the business. 

What other advice do I have?

PowerMax NVMe is very energy intensive, in terms of electricity. You need to spec that out properly. Just because it can fit in the rack doesn't mean it will work by sitting in the rack. You will probably need additional power, specifically just for PowerMax NVMe.

It isn't important at this very specific moment that the solution provides NVMe scale out capabilities. However, it will be once we decide to add more drives into this and expand our storage.

I would rate this solution as a nine (out of 10). There are definitely areas of improvement, but everything comes down to time and cost.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Senior System Administrator at PRASAC Microfinance Institution Limited
Real User
Gives us better storage I/O for our big apps, and the dedupe and compression work well
Pros and Cons
  • "We like the compression, dedupe, and I/O on the PowerMax. They are better than on the XtremIO."
  • "We would like more documentation, a guide to the features of the PowerMax."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for our core banking data.

How has it helped my organization?

It has improved storage I/O for our big apps and restores. And the snapshot process and data compression are better.

What is most valuable?

We like the compression, dedupe, and I/O on the PowerMax. They are better than on the XtremIO.

Snapshots make it easy to deploy production, pre-production, and UAT environments. It is easy to snapshot and reverse snapshot to other environments, compared to other storage vendors.

In addition, we have a lot of users in our core system and the PowerMax performance is very good. The I/O performance is running fine; it's not an issue.

What needs improvement?

We would like more documentation, a guide to the features of the PowerMax. We needed to use the option to reclaim storage and we had to chat with the Dell EMC team.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe for around one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Because we have just started using it, we haven't scaled up yet.

How are customer service and support?

We have opened cases with the Dell EMC team and we have chatted with them. They have provided good, fast support for us. But in some cases they did not explain the solution well.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used XtremIO. We switched because we found many of the features and the functions are better on the PowerMax than they are on the XtremIO. An example would be the snapshot. When we would do snapshots on the XtremIO, we could delete a snapshot, even when we were mapping to the host. But with PowerMax, we cannot delete a snapshot when mapping to the host.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was difficult because PowerMax has more functionality, but some of that functionality is still not clear to us.

Four people work with it on my team; all system admins.

What other advice do I have?

PowerMax is a good storage solution for the banking sector. Choose it for your core banking system, because of the dedupe and compression, the I/O, and the high availability for your data.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Sven Rudolph - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Consultant at Scitech it solutions GmbH
Consultant
Top 10
A fast and reliable product that is easy to handle and provides excellent technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "The product is very fast and reliable."
  • "The initial setup process is difficult."

What is our primary use case?

Our customers use the product for virtualization. They also use it for SAP deployments and bigger databases like PostgreSQL.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution provides an ease of handling backups and deployments. It provides a smart integration into the customer environment.

What is most valuable?

The product is very fast and reliable. It's certified for several scenarios. It is easy to handle. The UI is good.

What needs improvement?

The initial setup process is difficult.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with the product for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is the most stable system we know.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The tool is scalable until a certain point. There are only two versions available. Each has a limit, but the limit usually is never reached by our clients. Generally, the scalability is limited, but we have no problems with it.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is brilliant.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have worked with NetApp before. Over the last three or four years, we only worked with Dell. Dell is easier to set up and handle. Dell is technically more advanced than NetApp. Dell’s support is better than NetApp's most of the time. The selling process of NetApp was a nightmare.

How was the initial setup?

I rate the ease of setup a four out of ten. We have to prepare for the deployment and plan with the customer. We set up the hardware. We need Dell’s help with the software setup because we do not have access to all the tools that are needed for it.

The initial deployment and software work is done together. Afterward, we do the detailed configuration of the machine. We need one person from our organization and one from Dell for the deployment. The deployment can be done in one day. The maintenance is mostly easy. It’s done with the Copilot system. Dell checks the machine in advance and tells us whether the software version is available.

What was our ROI?

We get a return on our investment. The solution is not cheap, but it is worth buying. All our customers who bought the solution were satisfied and said they would buy it again.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price is really high. It could be better. It is a high-end product.

What other advice do I have?

We sell the solution, implement it, and support our customers. I recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
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PeerSpot user
Lead System Administrator at Central Hospital of Civil Aviation
Real User
We have not yet hit the ceiling in its efficiency, performance, and scalability
Pros and Cons
  • "We removed the need to observe whether we ran into issues with the performance of disks or number of IOPS. Previously, our Oracle Database would throw us performance errors. Now, with PowerMax, everything runs smoothly."
  • "I would like a more informative CloudIQ for iOS. What you can see via the web UI significantly differs from what you can see via the web application."

What is our primary use case?

We are a medical organization. We use PowerMax with medical ERP. We have some government projects that utilize PowerMax because we have 99.99% reliability and uptime requirements.

We are not using cloud-connected storage. However, we are using PowerMax to virtualize our local/on-premise infrastructure.

We do not have a big installation. In Russia, our company was among the first companies who purchased PowerMax appliances. Our environment is around 250 terabytes.

How has it helped my organization?

We removed the need to observe whether we ran into issues with the performance of disks or number of IOPS. Previously, our Oracle Database would throw us performance errors. Now, with PowerMax, everything runs smoothly.

I would access the solution’s built-in QoS capabilities for providing workload congestion protection at 10 (out of 10), as we are using the highest, platinum-level minimum response time from the system. The NVMe SCM storage tier feature offers crazy speeds. When we were looking for a storage solution, we were looking for the most reliable, high performance, latest solution to delay end-of-life. Our PowerMax setup everywhere enables the diamond-level setting with enabled monitoring. Until this day, we have not experienced any anomalies. We simply don’t experience workload congestion. Our primary requirement was the reliability of PowerMax, then the rest of the features, like NVMe SCM, were a nice add-on

What is most valuable?

We value maximum system uptime because our projects are associated with a government customer. We have medical ERP, which is used throughout Russia, covering 8 time zones. If it fails, then we have big problems. Therefore, the stability of the system is important for us.We are using PowerMax and VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols).

We use Power Pass, which is an additional software from Dell EMC, alongside multi-passing in our SAN network. This allows us to balance uploads and optical links of our SAN network.

What needs improvement?

I would like a more informative CloudIQ for iOS. What you can see via the web UI significantly differs from what you can see via the web application.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using PowerMax in a production environment since August 2019.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

My colleague and I are responsible for the infrastructure, network, and PowerMax storage.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In terms of storage users, we have about 1,000 people.

How are customer service and support?

We are happy with everything, especially their technical support. We had a situation where there was an outage in the data center associated with our electricity supplier. Later, when we launched the infrastructure, the support perfectly helped us with this issue.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

PowerMax exceeded our expectations. We previously used its predecessor VNX, which reached end-of-life and end-of-sale, i.e., we stopped receiving support for it. We have been using PowerMax for the last three years and have not yet hit the ceiling in its efficiency, performance, and scalability.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment took about two days. We moved in segments, checking that everything was working properly, before moving forward with the migration.

What about the implementation team?

The initial setup and integration of PowerMax were carried out by Dell EMC. We then migrated it via vSphere from our previous solution EMC VNX 5700 to PowerMax.

What was our ROI?

We don’t calculate ROI on PowerMax.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The PowerMax appliance pricing was reasonable. Dell EMC quoted us a substantial discount.

Support pricing is very high. Our support contract is about to expire and Dell EMC provided us with an extremely high renewal quote. It was four times more than the support contract for our previous EMC VNX solution.

I would suggest initially purchasing PowerMax with a longer support contract to reduce your support costs.With our previous EMC VNX solution, we were able to lock in the support costs, but we failed to do so with PowerMax. Therefore, it is more cost effective for us to purchase a new appliance with a support contract than to support PowerMax at these support cost amounts. For example, if the purchasing price was a million dollars, then the support costs a third of the total appliance cost per year.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We briefly looked at and evaluated Hitachi. However, in 2019, PowerMax didn’t have any direct competitors. There might have been a similar Huawei solution, but it was not really the same as PowerMax.

The primary reason that we went with PowerMax is because we have always preferred Dell EMC solutions. Our previous solution was a Dell EMC product and we were very satisfied with its reliability and performance until its end-of-life.

What other advice do I have?

The NVMe has great speed with an Oracle Database, but that is not that important for us.

I often use the mobile CloudIQ client, which I find very useful.

I would rate the solution as 10 out of 10. It works perfectly apart from the support costs.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Enterprise Infrastructure Services, Storage Service Manager at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
The compression and deduplication are the most valuable features because of the cost savings
Pros and Cons
  • "The compression and deduplication are the most valuable features because of the cost savings."
  • "Since the merging of EMC and Dell into Dell Technologies, there has been a hurdle that they've had to overcome, and they're not over it yet. It takes two to three times longer for things to get fixed than it did when they were separate companies. That is something that has to be fixed."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is the database and high transactional use for block storage.

How has it helped my organization?

It simplifies things, as we are using higher availability systems. We have always had a 70:30 effective rule between vital critical applications and those systems which are not critical, important, and discretionary. The Symmetrix's line has always been the go-to for our vital, critical application types. 

We are also implementing storage virtualization with VPLEX, where it is giving us the ability to move the storage to the proper platform based on the operating characteristics needed by that platform.

Symmetrix has always been a high-end, high availability system where we have never had one go down. I have never known one to go down. It is just an operational-stable platform that we still have to manage and maintain. However, it's not like some of our lower-end systems, like on the CLARiiON side of it or the Unity systems, where we have to be careful what we put on them and what we do with them because of the loading of the systems. 

This is why we need to virtualize the storage element, so we can move things to the proper platform. We are going to find that we will have more systems going from the mid-range to the higher range, specifically because of the needs of the platform. Wherein before it was driving by someone determining cost for what they wanted to pay for the storage, which overloaded and created problems for the lower-end tiers, because they're pulling too many IOPS out of that tier.

What is most valuable?

The compression and deduplication are the most valuable features because of the cost savings.

What needs improvement?

There are glitches in the system at this point in time. I don't get the information that we've traditionally gotten, things like the power report that used to be standard for all EMC components across the board. Now, you can't get them. You get a little bit here in that report and a little bit in another report, but you never get the total amount in one report which gives you the equipment, its power utilization, maximum recharge, the interfaces for the power, and what are the requirements for the interfaces on the other end, so you can know exactly what has to be connected at that point.

For how long have I used the solution?

We just started implementing the PowerMax 8000. We have them in a couple different data centers, and we are looking to put in another three in other data centers.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

So far, the scalability has been good. Normally, what we end up doing is putting in a base platform, then adding capacity. However, the capacity adds appears to vary 30 to 45 days on us being able from a time of request to a time we are able to implement, because we were using Cloud Flex. We had been on a utility model for almost six years with Dell EMC, who was one of the early adopters of that type of technology, and in the first three to four years, it saved us over $5 million in expense.

It's the whole thing of having to go out and buy a multibillion dollar array. It takes us so long to ramp up and be able to get on it, due to the lifecycle components and because of the storage virtualization side of it. It is just incredible how we can just roll in a new platform, transfer the workloads, and have it up and running in days, instead of months.

How are customer service and technical support?

We live with technical support. We employed a platform called ViPR SRM, which I think they are redoing. It allows us to take a single pane of glass for an entire storage infrastructure. This gives us a window into what's going on and problem spots that we need to work on. However, there are always times when something is breaking and we have to work with tech support to get it up and running. There have been a few cases where tech support didn't work out well and other cases where they met the margin. 

Since the merging of EMC and Dell into Dell Technologies, there has been a hurdle that they've had to overcome, and they're not over it yet. It takes two to three times longer for things to get fixed than it did when they were separate companies. That is something that has to be fixed.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Since 2016, we have been buying all-flash components and the price has been trending downwards. What we are seeing in the new products, since we went from the VMAX3 to Power Max, is the price point still drops on the overall cost of the storage. This is what we're trying to do. We're trying to get more value to our internal customers by reducing the cost of usage.

Our performance requirements were response time and what IOPS we needed out of the platform. It's exceeding what we're asking out of it when we looked at the PowerMax which we have already deployed. We are getting typical response times in half a millisecond (or 500 microseconds) lower because the target was supposed to have been the Generation 3 with 300 microseconds. We were supposed to be able to get around 250 microseconds with the PowerMax 3000. I have seen some of that happen on monitoring side. It doesn't happen all the time, but for certain applications, it does achieve going down to the 250 to 300 microsecond range.

How was the initial setup?

The migration from the VMAX arrays to PowerMax was done using our storage virtualization via VPLEX. It was just a matter of submitting the mobility jobs and keeping the queue full as long as it took to get that done. For the storage that was virtualized, that was done in a matter of days in transitioning from the old Generation 2 and Generation 3 to PowerMax.

What was our ROI?

On the Symmetrix's line, we are moving away from the VMAX2 and VMAX3 that we have and moving to the PowerMaxs 8000, as quickly as possible, because of the financial incentives. Also, the cost per gigabyte is reduced by at least a third, if not by a half overall, mostly because of the duplication.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Right now, we're doing a PoC with HPE 3PAR storage.

We currently have almost 100 percent Dell EMC storage technologies in play. We are looking at it as other vendors to see if they have comparable products, what we can use, and if there are very similar things to what we have.

I've even been to other classes for other vendors, like IBM. I have looked at IBM storage for various applications and come back to say that we are doing the best of class, so far, because what IBM recommended for the solutions does not exceed the current platforms that we current use for those storage solutions.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Solution Architect at Rackspace
Real User
A huge benefit of it has been the decreasing of our physical footprint
Pros and Cons
  • "My storage engineers are very happy with PowerMax. They are very pleased with the performance, decreased latency, and dependability. From the team, the RESTful API makes management so much easier for them versus the command line interface."
  • "A huge benefit of the PowerMax has been the decreasing of our physical footprint. We recently did a consolidation where we went from 58 tiles down to 5. If we had used just the PowerMax, we could have gone from 58 tiles down to 2 tiles, which is huge space savings. If you have 56 newly available floor tiles on a raised floor data center, which you previously had to cool and provide power to, then now, not only are my costs going down, I now have more revenue opportunities because I have more space to put new customers."
  • "I would like them to continue improving the management tools and continue moving towards a RESTful API versus CLI."
  • "They should work with the storage engineers to better tweak the management tools to give them improved visibility into their data."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case for Power Max is customer data. We host hundreds, if not thousands of applications, large and small, for hundreds of thousands of customers. It's the storage platform for our customers' online presence.

What's not on PowerMax? Because we have hundreds of thousands of customers running thousands and thousands of applications. From the small mom and pop shops running their mission-critical eCommerce site to the major Fortune 500 companies running every major database: Oracle, SQL, MySQL, Postgres, etc. We're running the big database engines, and the database is the holy grail for all online businesses. Therefore, major database applications are very important. Big eCommerce applications for very large brands are running on top of it, as well. We are running everything on it.

The role that data plays in Rackspace is two-fold because we are both a customer and a partner. As a service provider, we are monitoring millions of data points every hour for our customers. We are monitoring the health of their systems: the traditional IT monitoring, CPU, networking, storage, uptime, security, etc. We are gathering all that data and need systems where we can dump that data, then analyze it without fail, knowing that it will be there. PowerMax gives us the latency and capacity that we need at any scale for all the data that we can throw at it.

On the customer side, they are using us and our underlying PowerMax infrastructure for their mission-critical applications to do things with big data, dedupe, and other applications. Our customers are using us for the foundation of their big analytics applications.

How has it helped my organization?

There are a lot of ways that PowerMax is helping our organization function. From a storage admin standpoint, there is no longer a need to rely on the command line interface (CLI) to get data which is needed for performance monitoring and troubleshooting. When you use a CLI, you're actually requesting copies of data and impacting the performance of that production's data. With the REST API, we can do things, just ask for it, and there is the info. We are not impacting production systems.

What is most valuable?

PowerMax specifically is giving us incredible improvements in performance. Significantly decreased the latency, which is different than IOPS. I've been told by the team, "Don't focus on IOPS anymore, it's the latency. Not how fast is the data, but how quick is the data." So, we've seen great performance: Single millisecond type performance, which has been fantastic. 

Another huge benefit of the PowerMax has been the decreasing of our physical footprint. We recently did a consolidation where we went from 58 tiles down to 5. If we had used just the PowerMax, we could have gone from 58 tiles down to 2 tiles, which is huge space savings. If you have 56 newly available floor tiles on a raised floor data center, which you previously had to cool and provide power to, then now, not only are my costs going down, I now have more revenue opportunities because I have more space to put new customers.

My storage engineers are very happy with PowerMax. They are very pleased with the performance, decreased latency, and dependability. From the team, the RESTful API makes management so much easier for them versus the command line interface.

What needs improvement?

I would like them to continue improving the management tools and continue moving towards a RESTful API versus CLI. 

They should work with the storage engineers to better tweak the management tools to give them improved visibility into their data.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've used it for well over a decade and are very happy with it.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability has been fantastic on PowerMax.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Right now, we have zero concerns about scalability. It's running everything we throw at it, and we can't wait to get more.

How are customer service and technical support?

Our relationship with Dell EMC is fantastic. We have very smart storage engineers, and they in turn work with Dell EMC's very smart storage engineers. We have zero complaints. We don't ever have a question that doesn't get answered.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

As a major service provider, who has been working with Dell EMC for well over a decade, hosting mission-critical applications for important brands and businesses, along with some health institutions, where access to data is literally a life or death, we have to go with a system that we can trust without fail. PowerMax has been giving that to us.

How was the initial setup?

One of the things that we learned right away about PowerMax during the setup is that regardless of your awareness of data type, structure, or compression, we starting seeing benefits immediately.

Rackspace is running a 1G, 2G, and 3G Dell EMC storage systems, then we added PowerMax into our array farm. So, we are migrating some data into the new PowerMaxs, and it has been smooth as silk.

What was our ROI?

I'm going to give PowerMax a ten out of ten just for the savings that I've heard about. From reclaiming data center space which is so tightly constrained these days, it will pay for itself in a short amount of time, which is fantastic. Anything we can do to get more out of our current physical data center space helps us a ton, and PowerMax has helped enable that.

PowerMax is giving us significant improvements in Oracle and VMware. We are seeing between four to eight times improvements in latency, which is serious numbers. 

What other advice do I have?

Look at Dell EMC storage solutions. They have been around for a long time and are time-tested. The R&D department is constantly improving its offerings with better features, better performance, great return on investment for your purchases, and amazing support. Dell EMC bends over backwards to help its partners and customers get what they need out of this stuff. It's time-tested and trusted.

PowerMax gives our storage engineers everything they need to do their jobs successfully.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Dell PowerMax NVMe Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Dell PowerMax NVMe Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.