We performed a comparison between Dell PowerStore and IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."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."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"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."
"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."
"Has a great mapping feature."
"The solution is extremely stable."
"When compared to Pure Storage, Dell PowerStore's cost was quite attractive."
"The way you're able to manage all your PowerStores as one solution is very good for us. PowerStore enables you to federate or cluster multiple appliances with automated load balancing. In terms of management, it's helpful that we can do it from a single interface where we're able to manage multiple PowerStores. When you have multiple PowerStores it works intelligently by running the workloads based on the needs of the infrastructure."
"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."
"The most valuable feature is that it is easy to use this frame. I am a SAN administrator, but I was able to train my colleague, who had only been a VMware administrator, on the PowerStore in about half a day. Now he's autonomous in assigning volumes and creating data stores..."
"For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance."
"It provides a big benefit when upgrading a new VMware environment. For example, in a big environment with 10 to 30 ESXs, you can take everything and put that into PowerStore. So, it is cost-effective, which is very important and has been massive for us. You reduce almost 80% from the hardware and work directly from PowerStore. Building hardware, especially in a big VMware environment, is a big issue for my organization."
"The most valuable feature of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is the snapshot. We use it daily for all of the storage units."
"It's easy to use, has good stability, and many features."
"The solution is more available for IOPS warehousing, resolving issues, and reporting than other products."
"The most valuable feature is the speed."
"A key feature is that compared to storage systems that we've been familiar with over decades, IBM simply does not fail. The reason is that IBM is the only manufacturer that engineers its own flash module, and there is a key architectural difference from everything else that we have seen in the market. The difference is that the flash module has the computational capability, which allows reliability and capacity enhancements to be uploaded from the main controllers and run in each module. So, each of the flash drives becomes its own little storage system, and that is extremely effective architecture. In this field, with this type of system, IBM has made a statement. They've never had one of these modules cause an outage. So, the failure rates on these things are just in a whole different universe from what we were accustomed to."
"There are many valuable features of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMele I have found to meet my needs. Specifically, the maintenance cycle is a standout feature of this solution. The main component of the IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is the maintenance of the batteries, which have a predetermined and reliable four-year life cycle. This is in stark contrast to other solutions that may use spinning disks, which can fail unexpectedly, causing unwanted downtime and maintenance. Having a predictable maintenance cycle is a significant advantage and has made this solution a preferred choice for me."
"The storage serves the virtual environment. Most of our applications run in the virtual environment, and it serves nearly 30% of the bank's capacity."
"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe are its steady performance and usefulness in high-traffic environments."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"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."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"PowerStore's management console could be improved."
"It needs more mature code."
"The upgrades themselves are running fine, but after the upgrade is when we have a problem. With the update to 1.4, we had a head crash. They told us, 'This is a known issue. Please upgrade to 2.' We upgraded to 2 and, one week later they told us, 'Yeah, there are some issues in 2.0.0. You can lose data. Please upgrade to 2.0.1.' Overall, they need to make the system stable."
"The pricing could be lower. It is very expensive."
"Dell PowerStore is a good solution overall, but some models could support hypervisors better by allowing for more customization and flexibility for customer needs."
"Horizontal scaling has room for improvement."
"While using Dell PowerStore's interface in our organization, we sometimes miss out on some information."
"Reporting is an area that could be improved. It's very simplistic sometimes, and some of the very technical guys on my team want to see more of the details and be able to massage the report a little bit better."
"I would like to see IBM products become more affordable because they can be quite expensive, which limits their accessibility to a broader customer base."
"The pricing should be more competitive."
"Other vendors have included a block and file system. IBM doesn't include a file system. And yet, it's very necessary for all organizations' networks to have file systems. We have other systems for the file system, however, ideally, we would like to have one system with these features."
"IBM's support is not good. I experienced a big problem where I opened the console IBM Storage and would see that something was broken. I called the call centers, and I said, "I have a problem. My drive is not working." They want me to give them the serial number, I gave it to them and they told me "I cannot find your product. Your product is not here.""
"I'd like to be able to connect to tape drives behind the storage device to back up the tape if need be. We have all of our storage running in all-flash, and we make a copy on tape. Currently, when we want to hook up tape drives, we have to add some extra equipment, which is a little bit complex. We want IBM to add a feature where we could install a tape into the storage so that we can connect it through a single pane of glass. We'd like to have a feature in the IBM flash storage system so that we can connect backup tape drives through the IBM storage system and we can manage the backup tape from the storage system."
"The tool's architecture is complex. It also needs to add data utilization reports."
"The storage system itself should have built-in capabilities for different ransomware attacks."
"The ZIO interface could be improved."
Dell PowerStore is ranked 1st in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays with 47 reviews while IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is ranked 5th in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays with 19 reviews. Dell PowerStore is rated 8.6, while IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Dell PowerStore writes "It has a very strong NAS that can support a lot of big, heavy environments". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe writes "Steady performance, responsive support, and high availability". Dell PowerStore is most compared with Dell Unity XT, IBM FlashSystem, Pure Storage FlashArray, NetApp AFF and Dell PowerMax NVMe, whereas IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is most compared with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, IBM FlashSystem, HPE Primera, Dell PowerMax NVMe and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Dell PowerStore vs. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe report.
See our list of best NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays vendors and best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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