Dell SC Series vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

Dell Technologies and IBM are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #18 with an average rating of 9.0, while IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.5. Dell Technologies holds a 0.7% mindshare in AFS, compared to IBM’s 6.7% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of IBM users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

IBM FlashSystem and Dell SC Series are two prominent products in the storage market. While IBM FlashSystem is appreciated for its performance, Dell SC Series stands out due to its extensive features.

Features: IBM FlashSystem is known for its speed, efficiency, and reliability. Dell SC Series offers versatile functionality, extensive integration options, and a comprehensive feature set giving it an edge over IBM FlashSystem.

Room for Improvement: IBM FlashSystem users suggest improvements in manageability, reporting tools, and software tools. Dell SC Series needs better upgrade processes, reduced complexity, and enhanced system updates.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM FlashSystem is straightforward to deploy and supported by strong customer service. Dell SC Series has a more complex deployment process but offers comprehensive support services.

Pricing and ROI: IBM FlashSystem is cost-effective with a favorable ROI, justifying its initial setup cost. Dell SC Series is more expensive but considered a worthwhile investment due to its advanced features and long-term benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell SC Series vs. IBM FlashSystem Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. IBM FlashSystem

March 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 April 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 0.7%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FlashSystem is 6.7%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

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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Steven McClendon

Data Center Server & Storage Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Superior platform with excellent snapshots and cost-saving auto-tiering

I'm a big fan of the SC Series platform. Its feature set is superior to some of the other platforms. The snapshots on SC are excellent, allowing for multiple snapshot schedules for any one system. The auto-tiering functionality intelligently moves new data to the highest performance tier and then progresses it down to less expensive tiers over time, providing cost savings for customers.

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Raanan Sitton

Vice President Sales at BELOCAL LTD

Offers cost-effective storage for small companies with budget constraints

IBM FlashSystem 5300 is offered at a very low cost in Israel, which is advantageous for small companies. However, other features like deduplication and compression do not perform effectively. The price sensitivity makes it a viable option for clients with budgetary constraints, as it allows us to secure deals based on the cost rather than advanced performance.

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

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"The solution is scalable."

"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."

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

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"It's very scalable, especially with federation. If you outgrow the number of spindles that a unit can support, depending on the model, you can go into federation."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to replicate. We are running a financial company and it needs to be available 24/7. We can't afford any downtime."

"With federation, you can have multiple systems across sites. You can treat them as one, and with a live migration, volumes don't go down. You can move them from site to site, doing maintenance, and keep your environment up."

"I can mix and match the drives, using older mechanical devices and the latest SFP drives in a single solution with different enclosures."

"The Dell support is helpful and the response is quick. The agents' knowledge is very good."

"The process of reallocating data from fast disks (SSD or SAS) to slow disks (SATA) gives you better performance and better use of resources."

"Its feature set is superior to some of the other platforms."

"It has good dedupe and compression. Also, the built-in data migration capabilities are pretty good, as is the federation. When we started migrating the workloads from different storage platforms, like NetApp and XtremeIO, it helped us in moving to that direction."

More Dell SC Series pros

"The performance is very good and we use this product to enhance our core system."

"The valuable feature is autoscalling."

"Installing FlashSystem is very easy. It takes less than half an hour, and I can handle it all myself."

"The most valuable features in IBM FlashSystem are IOPS, performance, duplication, and compression."

"Speed (IOPS/second) – It is most vital for applications that need low latency and high speed for transferring the data."

"The performance of the solution is noteworthy."

"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression, which together, enable you to have more space."

"IBM's technical support do excellent work."

More IBM FlashSystem pros

Cons

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

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

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

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The lack of reporting would be the main issue."

"I would like to have 100% functionality through the web app."

"The initial setup is somewhat complex and should be made simpler to do."

"We have seen some degraded throughput with mixed workloads. We have been working with Dell EMC to correct some of these latency issues."

"Some menus aren't so intuitive."

"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 SC Series doesn't support NVMe storage."

"The administration and support (on the way that they delivered) was a little bit slow."

More Dell SC Series cons

"Events/log analysis tools."

"Their technical support needs improvement in terms of reachability for the clients and response times. They should be more responsive and have more online platforms for support. They should make more technical information available online. There could be some kind of documentation community."

"The product needs to improve their scalability."

"The solution is quite expensive. That's one of the downsides to using it."

"The GUI needs some improvement."

"Cloud file sharing is an area that needs improvement."

"Sometimes the performance is effective but it gets resolved in the process."

"GUI interface should be enhanced more as there is some issues in copy services."

More IBM FlashSystem cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"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."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"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 product is expensive."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The scalability seems a bit more expensive than even buying a brand new one so far. That has been kind of a drawback."

"We were able to afford two tiers of flash storage at a price where the competition was giving us one tier or just a handful of discs."

"It's a very affordable solution."

"The SC Series was priced fairly. I wouldn't call it either expensive or cheap because we had a very tight budget, so if they were able to fit in that type of budget, they met our expectations."

"It has a good price point and offers some value-added enterprise features."

"It is one of the most cost effective systems for us. We have been able to run it longer than most, getting the most benefit and money out of it."

"The pricing is reasonable, but it is expensive."

"It's absolutely affordable. Again, not having to do a forklift upgrade like some of the others have had to do in the past, it's very affordable for our customers and they continue to buy."

More Dell SC Series pricing and cost advice

"The price depends of the technology that our customers need. The price can come at a lower cost but this may increase as storage is added."

"The cost is pretty high in terms of licensing. We pay at least $100,000 USD in licensing fees for the storage."

"IBM V7000 has a new license and price structure which provides intuitive licensing based on the functions customers wish to enable and use the most."

"The price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable."

"The pricing has been very competitive for the last few years. IBM got to the point where they changed the pricing model and we feel very comfortable with the pricing. It's very competitive. Over the last two years, IBM has been coming up with all kinds of interesting promos, especially for the SMB systems. That makes it very competitive price-wise and in terms of performance..."

"This solution is expensive compared to other solutions."

"This is an expensive product and if the price were reduced it would be better."

"The price is a little bit high so is rated a six out of ten."

More IBM FlashSystem 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

Computer Software Company

22%

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

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 do you like most about Dell SC Series?

I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell SC Series?

Cost considerations are crucial when choosing between solutions like Dell and NetApp. Sometimes Dell offers better pe...

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What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?

In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage. If I want...

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What do you like most about IBM FlashSystem?

It is simple to make an update.

See all answers

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

Many factors affect purchasing directly from IBM, often involving a multi-step process. Customers, especially in bank...

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What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem?

The GUI needs some improvement. An additional function that could be helpful is reducing the time it takes to delete ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 32% 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

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell SC Series

Compared 70% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell SC Series

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell SC Series

Compared 10% of the time

More Dell SC Series Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 24% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM FlashSystem Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

March 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series

March 2025

Download Dell SC Series product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem

March 2025

Download IBM FlashSystem product report

Also Known As

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

SC Series Storage, Compellent

IBM Storwize

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 EMC SC Series arrays provide a unified platform for the ultimate in performance, adaptability and machine-driven efficiency. SC Series software delivers modern features that help you meet aggressive workload demands using the fewest drives necessary. With an open, future-ready design, SC Series storage integrates seamlessly with applications and infrastructure, enabling you to scale on a single platform and add capabilities without forklift upgrades.

Dell Technologies

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.

IBM

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric

Celero, Friedhelm Loh Group, Clarks, Mingkang Natregro Health Food Group, Sofia, Etisalat Fights Fraud, UF Health Shands Hospital, Generali, Elecon Engineering Company Limited, Ventiv , Technology, CPFL Energia, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., SciQuest, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, Paddy Power, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Interconnect Services, Severstal IP-Only AB, PVU Group GmbH

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. IBM FlashSystem

March 2025

Free Report: Dell SC Series vs. IBM FlashSystem

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. IBM FlashSystem and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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