IBM FlashSystem and Dell PowerStore are two leading enterprise storage solutions. Dell PowerStore appears to have the upper hand due to its scalability and advanced features.
Features: IBM FlashSystem's valuable features include exceptional integration capabilities, robust performance, and ease of setup. Dell PowerStore stands out with its scalability, automation, and advanced user-friendly features.
Room for Improvement: Users suggest IBM FlashSystem could enhance its documentation, customer training, and user support. Dell PowerStore users point to a need for more detailed error reporting, advanced analytics, and deeper insights.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM FlashSystem is favored for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. Dell PowerStore is noted for its efficient deployment process and thorough customer support. Both products perform well, but Dell PowerStore edges out with its supportive infrastructure.
Pricing and ROI: IBM FlashSystem is viewed as cost-efficient with a good ROI and lower setup costs. Dell PowerStore, although generally more expensive, offers superior features and long-term value, making it worth the investment.
Rather than Pure just saying it's Cisco's problem, call Cisco, they actually got on with a TAC engineer and talked us through it.
The guys in South Africa, and they're very, very good.
What I like about Pure Storage technical support is that when you enter a request, you immediately get a response.
If it's a serious issue, they respond in four hours.
With regard to post-deployment support, if we have any needs and call them, they respond within minutes.
I got an email within 15 minutes saying 'you had an unexpected node failure, and do you need help?'
Customers of alternatives like Dell and Hitachi enjoy more reliable and comprehensive support services directly from vendors rather than third-party subsidiaries.
IBM customer support is responsible, efficient, and responsive, though it is expensive.
I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center.
We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency.
We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC.
Overall, they need to make the system stable.
If a customer finds out SSD is not supported, they will look for another option.
If you want to delve into where your I/Os are going, the reporting might need more in-depth information to make informed decisions.
Despite marketing promises, these features do not function effectively and can impact performance.
There is room for improvement in the troubleshooting part, specifically related to IBM Spectrum for Insight.
We also have an X90R2 with two petabytes of NVMe in it which fits in about six rack units of space.
We are able to push the X70 way past our current needs from a throughput and IOPS perspective – without any degradation on latency.
We have also performed storage and controller upgrades live with zero downtime.
The magic is that we could do that with the data in place, inside the frame, keeping the drive.
The design for scalability of the solution is perfect.
The most valuable features of PowerStore are its scale up and scale out.
For larger enterprises, scalability is an issue as the price becomes prohibitive.
The problem arises when migrating data to a later IBM FlashSystem version due to issues with firmware compatibility.
While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.
The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.
We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees.
Dell is right there in the mix as far as providing the best price point, as well as meeting the performance requirements that we have.
There are a lot of solutions similar to PowerStore in regards to networking capacity and their prices are very cheap compared to PowerStore.
Likely the cost is $400,000 whereas IBM may be $250,000.
To install or upgrade any software features, the cost is high, which makes it challenging for smaller companies who do not require advanced features like deduplication or compression typically needed by larger organizations.
We have gone through multiple software upgrades, as well as completely non-disruptive hardware upgrades.
During the eight years, there have been no problems such as hardware failure or stopping.
There was one minor issue when the M70s were first released – but they have been 100% stable since.
We have not even had to call support since putting it into production.
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
I would rate the stability of Dell PowerStore a ten out of ten.
Customers have infrastructure that is 100% stable.
Going from a legacy vendor to Pure Storage, we saw reductions in MRP reports previously running at six hours going to 30 minutes.
The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance.
The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use.
One of the main characteristics of PowerStore is that it is like another piece of VMware, so you can run applications on top, applications that have direct access to the storage.
Dell's built-in intelligence is the best because it can also calculate how much data is needed for storage beforehand and if you need to add more drives or anything.
Another important feature is the power of this frame. It's very powerful. We have almost less than a millisecond of response time, all the time, even during backup windows.
There is built-in compression, a data reduction feature, and artificial intelligence-driven insights that calculate warnings and errors to redirect to customers automatically.
IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is offered at a very low cost in Israel, which is advantageous for small companies.
Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.
Dell EMC PowerStore is a midrange next-generation data storage solution. It is designed with a data-centric, intelligent, and adaptable infrastructure and helps consolidate storage and virtual server environments. The Dell EMC PowerStore platform includes two major configurations, including PowerStore T and PowerStore X. Dell EMC PowerStore enables you to deploy the appliance and consolidate data and applications and supports both flash and SCM Optane devices.
Dell EMC PowerStore Offers:
Dell EMC PowerStore Features
Some of the most powerful Dell EMC PowerStore features include:
Dell EMC PowerStore Benefits
Some of the benefits of using Dell EMC PowerStore include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Dell EMC PowerStore users who are currently using the solution.
PeerSpot user Maurizio D., who is a CTO at Universita' degli Studi di Pisa, says it "Gives us flexibility, performance, and ease of use. It also has some very good compression capabilities. We were looking for a solution that was easy to install in our VMware environment, that was flexible. PowerStore X is a type of a VMware cluster that you install inside your environment. If you have a VMware environment, like we have in production, it's easy to install and use."
Another PeerSpot user, Jorg L., who is an IT Administrator at a construction company, mentions "For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance."
"The administration tools take advantage of machine learning and make recommendations to the admins, and that makes the administration easier," says a Chief Information Officer at a computer software company. He also comments that “Overall, we've benefited from the dedupe, compression, and replication, the advanced technology, of this frame. It's all better than what we had in the previous generation of XtremIO appliances, and above what we were getting in the Dell EMC Unitys.”
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.
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