We performed a comparison between Dell PowerMax NVMe and Pure Storage FlashArray 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."The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is scalable."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"The product is very fast and reliable."
"The solution has good operability and easy scalability."
"For the migration process from the older VMAX arrays to PowerMax, we VMotioned everything. It was easy."
"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."
"The SRDF replication piece is probably the best feature. It's useful for maintaining recoverability in the event of a disaster."
"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."
"We are most interested in cloud utilization."
"The most valuable feature is the performance and compression. The most useful tool is CloudIQ."
"The initial setup was straightforward in the way that it was a database vacuum storage."
"We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."
"On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the most comfortable pricing, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"Pure Storage is extremely reliable — it's never failed."
"The speed is the most valuable feature, along with the ease of getting it connected. We were able to get it online in less than a day."
"The sales and executive support have been outstanding compared to the rest of the market... My upgrade paths have been simple on the Pure... It's a lot simpler to implement and a lot simpler to manage."
"We are very happy with the data deduplication and compression ratio that we have on the platform."
"They are quite responsive and our local team was pretty good."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"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."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"It is on the expensive side."
"I would like them to continue improving the management tools and continue moving towards a RESTful API versus CLI."
"The main feature that I personally want to see is the possibility to upgrade to the next generation without changing all the components and just change the engine, relying on the compatibility matrices between two different generations. Meaning that we could just keep the enclosure and upgrade the engine, integrating the enclosure to the existing pool, then adding automation tools for orchestration."
"There are some stability issues that we just recently experienced. We hope the next release will solve these problems."
"We had challenges again with the initial setup. I don't know if there was a gap during the requirement-collection phase, but the box was partially delivered to us with missing parts and it delayed the implementation by about 60 days. It was not as smooth as I would have hoped."
"Setting up PowerMax with VMAX is always complex."
"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."
"The initial setup process is difficult."
"If you go to Pure or you go to NetApp, they deliver in one month. If you go to Dell or HP, they will take up to six months for delivery. This is not a business model for today."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions. For example, if I want to use this storage for a backup from the cloud, I want to have integration with the cloud vendors, such as Microsoft, Oracles, or Amazon. It could be available as an API to allow seamless integration. Additionally, the solution could improve by having native integration with a cloud provider, such as VMware or Microsoft, this would reduce the need to use third-party solutions to complete the task."
"The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality."
"With scalability, I have run into a little problem with our last upgrade. There were some undocumented limitations to the number of drives that our controller could run on. So, instead of putting in a new data pack as we had anticipated, we had to keep adding and removing to get up to the capacity that we needed to be. What should have been a one day process (or a few hours) turned into a month and a half process."
"Having something native in the Pure Storage ecosystem would make it integrated and in one single company, and we wouldn't have to work with multiple organizations."
"In the next release I would like to see integration into other third-party player providers like Google."
"It's not so scalable. It's got moderate scaling capabilities right now. The clustering technology needs a bit of work, they need to improve that."
"I would like to see them lower the costs."
"Some services could be inserted directly into the SAN, so Pure Storage could complete with the HyperFlex."
Dell PowerMax NVMe is ranked 8th in All-Flash Storage with 66 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. Dell PowerMax NVMe is rated 8.8, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. 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 Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". Dell PowerMax NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, IBM FlashSystem, Dell Unity XT, Huawei OceanStor Dorado and Dell XtremIO, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and INFINIDAT InfiniBox. See our Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Pure Storage FlashArray report.
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