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 8.3. Dell Technologies holds a 0.8% 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: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. IBM FlashSystem

January 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 February 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 0.8%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FlashSystem is 6.7%, down from 6.9% 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 system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

"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 reliability."

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

"I appreciate the performance."

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The setup is straightforward."

"The flexibility of this solution has been valuable for our business."

"The solution has a wide variety of valuable features. The data progression works well. We use the snapshot functionality quite a bit and really like it."

"It is fast and performs well."

"I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits my customers. It's highly advantageous due to its affordability. The operational aspect is also noteworthy. Additionally, its availability and performance are commendable. The speaker are also equally powerful."

"I've found the stability to be very good."

"Customers are most impressed with SC's provisioning because you don't need to buy a large amount of storage upfront. It's pay-as-you-grow. It also has solid compression and duplication features."

"It is suitable for small or medium businesses."

More Dell SC Series pros

"They have a virtualization feature and, even if you do not want to buy that feature, you can have it as a trial for two to three months. If you have another brand of storage from another company, you can use this tool to transfer all your data from the old system to the new Storwize system, which really shortens the migration time."

"This solution is convenient, user-friendly, convenient and reliable."

"The most valuable features were the performance of the array, i.e., very low latency and high IOPS. Plus, the management interface is very easy to use."

"The most valuable feature is reliability."

"The performance monitoring feature is useful as it can report in 15 minute intervals by hour, day, week, month, or by a custom date range."

"Data deduplication is one of the most valuable features of this solution."

"The most valuable feature is that is supports a high IOPS rate."

"The all-flash storage has tier replication capabilities."

More IBM FlashSystem pros

Cons

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

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

"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."

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

"The software layer has to improve."

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"This solution could be improved if overall performance was improved and operated with a higher speed and supported a higher volume of RAM."

"If Dell SC Series could have supported the protocol NVMe over TCP, that would have been great. It does not."

"It's not very efficient anymore. There are better products out there."

"Technical support should respond more quickly because the turnaround time is very high."

"The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series."

"I don't think the solution is very scalable."

"Snapshots in VMware. You can’t do snapshots since the storage itself does that. Therefore, some apps (Veeam, for example) don’t work well with this kind of tiering storage."

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

More Dell SC Series cons

"The solution is not able to replicate data in one-to-many scenario."

"The technical support in my region is satisfactory but it could improve. Support is very important for customers and downtime is very critical for us. We would like onsite or complete technical support which can help us to minimize our downtime or if problems occur."

"I think the only thing the developers can look at, is that it is limited to 25 gigabytes currently. In the next release they might want to increase that."

"The support could improve by allowing you to speak to someone when you call rather than them calling you back. However, once we do have contact with one of their technicians they are excellent."

"Include an option to upload the support package to the IBM ECuRep when opening an IBM PMR."

"The design is a little old-fashioned and could be updated. The rack is very primitive and designed in an older style."

"There is room for improvement in the troubleshooting part, specifically related to IBM Spectrum for Insight."

"Customization features must be improved."

More IBM FlashSystem cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

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

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

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

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

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

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Always keep in mind, this is not just a enclosure with disks is a complete SAN as a service. There is software, license, and storage in one single solution."

"We have found the solution to be affordable."

"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."

"We have reviewed many platforms over the years. It is probably the best solution for its value."

"There are costs involving the solution, vendor fees and product safety which are additional."

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

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

"It's a very affordable solution."

More Dell SC Series pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is reasonable."

"It pays to go back and get the best price you can from your supplier. The first offer is not always at the best discount."

"I find the pricing of the solution to be very reasonable."

"The price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable."

"There are no licensing fees, it is a one-time purchase of the IBM FlashSystem."

"They've been much more aggressive in the last five, six years than they were before that."

"The total storage capacity vs price is still quite high for the IBM Flash Array."

"I price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable and competitive."

More IBM FlashSystem pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

23%

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 33% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% 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 9% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% 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 11% 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 25% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 7% 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

February 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series

February 2025

Download Dell SC Series product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem

February 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

January 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: January 2025.

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