We performed a comparison between Dell PowerMax NVMe and Dell SC Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The solution is scalable."
"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"We're consolidating two to three arrays down to one which means that our data center footprint has decreased by like 90%. So we're saving 90% of our space, and it also is much better on power and everything else in our data center. And on top of that, the performance is much, much better than our older arrays."
"It's faster and more resilient."
"Key features include performance, replication time, and dedup and compression."
"It allows us to protect our data using different data centers and replicate bi-directionally between our two main data centers."
"The speed and the compatible interface with IBM are the most valuable features of the PowerMax product."
"We were able to move away from a middleware solution for high availability, going right to snapshots and data replication on arrays."
"We find the service level option to provision storage very valuable. The ability to define different service levels for storage groups helps us in prioritizing our workload at the infrastructure level."
"It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is the speed for the end-user."
"I've found the stability to be very good."
"The product offers good performance and is quite powerful."
"Easy management of volumes: You can create volumes and easily assign them to VMware clusters, increasing their size."
"There's some new stuff coming with 7.3, which just got released, where they're spreading the sparing across the whole array, rather than having a dedicated spare disk, and have it sit there and do nothing until one of them dies, and then it kicks in - and having to rebuild all of that. Now, they'll do the sparing across all the disks and they say that is going to add not only space but performance to the array, with 7.3."
"The Dell support is helpful and the response is quick. The agents' knowledge is very good."
"The performance benefits weren't surprising, we expected that. What we didn't expect were the densification benefits that we got out of going all-flash. We're able to put more applications on the arrays because of how all-flash performs. The way some of the application profiles have responded to all-flash has been really pleasing."
"Its leading feature is the price-performance ratio, which is very good."
"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."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"The software layer has to improve."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"I would like to see the rack change. They have defaulted to the standard rack, so our fiber cables are crowded when we shut our back door."
"Dell PowerMax NVMe needs to increase storage and improve scalability."
"The tool needs to improve its performance. Today's applications are demanding a response rate of one millisecond or below. The product should also look into AI integration."
"PowerMax's software is highly stable, but we faced two hardware issues in one year. We had a failure of the storage director module, and the physical disk failed on another occasion. Dell EMC should improve its hardware quality."
"I would also like to see a real-time, graphical view of metrics. I don't know how far back in time we can look, but if we could see the performance from two months or three months back, and how it is performing now, that would be helpful."
"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."
"There are some stability issues that we just recently experienced. We hope the next release will solve these problems."
"The price could be lower, and we are unhappy with the price."
"We had times that we needed a file service solution. We've used FluidFS, but it's a solution that is being transitioned out."
"I would like to see an integrated key manager in the controllers. Currently, it's an external product. It would be nice to have the option of having a built-in key for self-encrypting drive features."
"The initial setup is somewhat complex and should be made simpler to do."
"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?"
"The price could be improved."
"An issue we had was that the controller went down during an upgrade because of their upgrading the code. One side of the switch was down."
"The cost of the solution could be better."
"The interface could be improved. It should have an application point of view."
Dell PowerMax NVMe is ranked 8th in All-Flash Storage with 66 reviews while Dell SC Series is ranked 24th in All-Flash Storage with 49 reviews. Dell PowerMax NVMe is rated 8.8, while Dell SC Series is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Dell PowerMax NVMe writes "Simplified storage provisioning for us, enabling us to assign any volumes in two to three minutes". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Dell SC Series writes "Automated architecture that proactively optimizes your database ". Dell PowerMax NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, IBM FlashSystem, Dell Unity XT, Pure Storage FlashArray and Huawei OceanStor Dorado, whereas Dell SC Series is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Huawei OceanStor and IBM System Storage DS8000 Series. See our Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell SC Series report.
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