Dell PowerMax NVMe vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe comparison

Dell Technologies and IBM are both solutions in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category. Dell Technologies is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.5, while IBM is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.7. Dell Technologies holds a 9.1% mindshare in N, compared to IBM’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of IBM users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Dell PowerMax NVMe and IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe are top contenders in the NVMe storage market. Dell PowerMax NVMe has an upper hand in support and pricing, while IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe excels in feature offerings and perceived value.

Features: Dell PowerMax NVMe has strong performance, scalability, and integration capabilities. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is noted for its performance, scalability, and AI-driven management features. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe's innovative features offer a slight edge in user reviews.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerMax NVMe users suggest enhancing simplicity and cost management. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe users recommend better reporting tools and more competitive pricing. IBM should focus more on cost-effectiveness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerMax NVMe is praised for straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe receives positive deployment feedback but has mixed reviews on customer service responsiveness. Dell has an advantage in customer service satisfaction.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerMax NVMe is favored for competitive setup cost and quick ROI. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe, though initially more expensive, offers long-term value and return on investment. Users feel IBM's ROI justifies the investment despite higher costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

February 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 2.5%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax NVMe is 9.1%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is 1.7%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

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Haseeb Khalid Sheikh

Senior Manager Enterprise Solutions at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

End-to-end NVMe capabilities helps improve availability, performance, and capacity

The solution's most valuable feature is the data reduction ratio. You can store a 5:1 ratio of your data in Dell PowerMax NVMe. For example, if you have 200 terabytes of usable capacity, you can save up to five times of data on that capacity. That means you can save one petabyte of data on just 200 terabytes of usable capacity. The solution's end-to-end NVMe capabilities have improved our operations. Everything is fast, and you don't have to map your storage to old hybrid storage technologies. Our organization has experienced positive change, and the solution has improved our uptime, availability, performance, and capacity.

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Mohamed-Hassan

Microfinance at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Steady performance, responsive support, and high availability

If we add a shell, the scalability depends on a legacy protocol and not the IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe which is a setback. At the previous bank, I worked at we had approximately 9,000 users. We are using the solution at its full capacity. I rate the scalability of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe a seven out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"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."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"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."

"It's faster and more resilient."

"There is no management overhead involved in optimizing performance. It does it so well on its own. We don't have to manage much at all. It really is like a set it and forget it solution. My storage engineers love the system. It is a lot less work than our previous systems, which weren't bad by any means. There is not nearly as much management as before. So, we are saving dozens of hours per month for our storage team, and that is a real cost in our business."

"It is easy to manage and upgrade."

"The tool is a fast-performing asset. It can perform millions of transactions within a second. I like the tool's architecture as well."

"It significantly simplifies storage."

"CloudIQ has become an optimal tool for us to get the full picture of all the different arrays, from mid-tier all the way up. It gives us that single view and the ability to launch the Unisphere. That is really is powerful in being able to manage the array."

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

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pros

"It is a very stable product. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten because we did not face any issues in the last three years."

"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 FlashCore modules support more value to the architecture due to their unique characteristics."

"Its ease of use, performance, and hardware compression is very useful feature."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its upgrades, as we don't have to do much homework because of its different controllers."

"The most valuable feature of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is the snapshot. We use it daily for all of the storage units."

"What I like about the product are its high availability, maximum efficiency in performance, and its ability to handle a high level of I/O operations."

"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is one of the leading storage systems in the world...I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten."

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe pros

Cons

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

"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."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"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."

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"There is room for improvement in terms of integration with various service providers for public clouds."

"We would like more documentation, a guide to the features of the PowerMax."

"It's a relatively new product, but for the next release I would like to see higher bandwidth on the front-end adapters. This would allow even greater scalability for critical workloads and consolidation for non-critical workloads. The hosts may not require that level of I/O performance today. However, it allows us to scale physical non-cloud environments without large investment."

"I think management is where PowerMax is weakest. We're still managing it like we managed EMC arrays in the early 2000s. There's a slicker, fancier GUI that does more things, but at the end of the day, you still have to dig into the command line and issue a lot of the same commands that we still were using almost 20 years ago."

"There are so many configurations in the tool that cannot be done by anyone who is not a Dell personnel."

"The one area for improvement in Dell PowerMax NVMe would be to align the features of the on-premises version with those available in the cloud, as this would provide added value and flexibility."

"The main challenge with the product was to have control over the simultaneous failures of controllers. For recovery, manual intervention is required."

"The tool is costly compared to other similar products. The product's pricing needs to be improved. I would like the product to include the replication feature in its future releases."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe cons

"The pricing should be more competitive."

"There is a tool provided by IBM for repairing batteries which can only be utilized by those who have an IBM technical advisor under service contract. However, for individuals who do not have such a contract, the tool can be difficult to use and requires a zip file copy. I believe that it would be greatly beneficial if the tool were made more user-friendly and accessible for all individuals who need to repair batteries."

"There could be a possibility of not requiring to buy a new box while upgrading to a newer version."

"The solution's compression feature could be better."

"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.""

"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."

"The solution's compression needs to be improved, as it's not the best."

"The efficacy of the GUI in IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe could be enhanced, and it would be beneficial to include a feature that can prevent ransomware attacks."

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"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."

"It scales enormously, but it's expensive to do so."

"The pricing is competitive. I would rate the pricing of the solution a six out of ten."

"Dell is expensive compared to other products and I would rate its pricing a four out of ten."

"The cost of the solution is quite noticeable, but it provides a good fit regarding the price of the hardware and all of the required licenses."

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

"We hope that with the combination of both NVMe and SCM the next PowerMax will be much cheaper that the one which we acquired."

"The pricing for this solution is good compared to other products in the market."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Compared to its competitors, IBM's offering is the most cost-effective."

"The solution's price is competitive."

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing an eight."

"The price of the FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is reasonable."

"Compared to other solutions, the cost of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is reasonable, with a one-time payment of around $70,000. However, additional support is available for $25,000 for three years. The overall maintenance cost is steep."

"There are pricing options from the mid-rand to the high-range, of which the suitability depends upon the requirements."

"The price of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is less than Dell. For upgrades, the Dell solutions are more expensive."

"The product has an average cost."

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

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What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

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What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?

Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell of...

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What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

First, it's an enterprise storage solution. This is very important for us. Another important feature is replication.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

The price is starting from $500,000. It's expensive.

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?

The storage serves the virtual environment. Most of our applications run in the virtual environment, and it serves ne...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?

The tool is expensive, though I do not know the specific licensing costs.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?

The solution's compression needs to be improved, as it's not the best. Furthermore, support from the partner could al...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 34% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 27% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell PowerMax NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 32% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 24% of the time

HPE Primera vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

March 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe

March 2025

Download Dell PowerMax NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

March 2025

Download IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

IBM FlashSystem 9100, FlashSystem 9100

Overview

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.

Pure Storage

Dell PowerMax is the industry’s most secure mission-critical storage platform. With NVMe Dynamic Fabric technology, PowerMax breaks from traditional storage limitations, enabling seamless integration with cloud-native and legacy applications. Designed with a powerful scale-up and scale-out architecture, PowerMax supports mission-critical applications at scale with zero downtime and ultra-low latency. The latest PowerMaxOS 10 release harnesses AI-driven efficiencies for trusted performance, capacity, and security. By choosing PowerMax, you can trust in a secure, intelligent, and always modern storage solution that unlocks the full potential of your data to drive business success.

Dell Technologies

IBM FlashSystem 9100 combines the performance of flash and Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) end-to-end with the reliability and innovation of IBM FlashCore technology and the rich features of IBM Spectrum Virtualize - all in a powerful 2U enterprise-class storage system. Providing intensive data driven multicloud storage capacity, FlashSystem 9100 is deeply integrated with the software defined capabilities of IBM Spectrum Storage allowing you to easily add in the multicloud solutions that best support your business.

IBM

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

February 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

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