Dell PowerMax NVMe Reviews

It's mainly when it's driven to performance and high availability, that's the main two use cases that we actually address with the systems. 

The main feature that we are looking into for some storage is the DDoS features as well as transparent failover and failback in terms of high availability. That's the main topic that we're dealing with with these systems, but at our customer sites.

Besides reliability and so on and serviceability also in different countries.

The new versions, like the Power Store, which is coming up, are mainly in the midrange perspective. Because we have a lot of customers from the KMA, which means that we have, like, they typically buy Enterprise-class features with midrange storage, basically, and we don't have typical sizes like the PowerMAX from the solutions, we have either Pure for the higher customers or we have different systems like VNX and Unity and so on from the Dell EMC side.

Dell needs to offer more midrange storage options with enterprise-class features similar to the PowerMAX.

Additionally, the NVMe benchmark could include more features, such as built-in transparent failover.

We are a Dell partner, and we are a pure professional partner, an elite partner as well. 

So, we have been working with this solution for more than 12 years.

We sell the systems and we have been selling them for 10 years now. It depends on whether we sell new systems to our customers or upgrade them. We're basically looking into past solutions that still are ongoing and running, but mainly when we go to new solutions, then it's the latest version that the customers actually can have.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. It is suitable for medium and enterprise-level businesses. 

We're dealing with Dell Storage, which we sell to our customers.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy. 

The deployment time depends on whether you have to do the migration as well, but it's hours to days max.

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

It is quite expensive. 

When it comes to Dell, we prefer to go for Pure Storage, which is more, in our terms, more reliable and simple to use for our customers. 

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Our customers are using it for telecom.

The high availability that other systems don't have. In other systems, there is an owner in the storage processes. But for PowerMAX, there is no owner. All the process storage is passed to all nodes without ownership. So, there is no response feature in the storage in PowerMax. In the other systems, there is a response, which is a very nice feature. No systems have such a feature.

The initial setup could be easier.

I have been working with the solution since the last year. 

The PowerMax solution has been very stable, in my experience. I have been using it for four to ten years and have only had two issues related to internal storage processes. One was a planned maintenance issue, and the other was a CBU failure. Both issues were quickly resolved with no data loss. Once again, it's a very nice feature. You can go with the upgrade without storage records. So it will not affect the production servers.

The product is scalable. 

The initial setup is not difficult. But it's not easy to have access to this material. I'm having a problem right now in this implementation in order to find the procedure generator in order to initialize the system. It's not updated on the website. So, sometimes you suffer from getting the material of the software. You need to have a discussion with the support and the way the account team is in order to provide you with such material.

The deployment thing is different from customer to customer. It depends upon the requirements. But it's fairly easy to deploy. The deployment, once initiated, is easy. There is no problem related to that.

I would rate the deployment process of this solution a five out of ten.

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

For the customers, I advise them to test it and check the features because it has very nice features. It has some features that don’t exist in other solutions, such as the migration for the new PowerMax 2500 and 8500. There will be no more data migration except for licensing the nodes and the old nodes and installing the new nodes. It's a very nice feature, and in the future, there will be no technical attachments and no better migration. It will be very easy for them to implement the new solutions in addition to the other solutions. As for the partners, they have to make sure that they have their knowledge and enrich their knowledge in PowerMax because PowerMax is not an easy solution. They have to understand it to implement it easily.

I would rate PowerMax NVMe a nine out of ten. 

Dell PowerMax NVMe is an enterprise storage designed for bigger customers that require resilient and powerful storage solutions. It ensures seamless management of large database workloads that need high performance and low latency in data handling and responsiveness.

I have been highly satisfied with the resiliency and scalability of the solution.

It is more expensive compared to midrange storage options.

I have been working with Dell PowerMax NVMe for the last four years. 

I am highly satisfied with the stability of the solution. I would rate it ten out of ten.

It allows great flexibility regarding scaling options to adapt to evolving storage needs, ensuring organizations can meet their growing data demands without major disruptions. I would rate it ten out of ten. 

We are overall satisfied with the customer service provided by their support team. I would rate it eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup can be somewhat complex as it requires specialized knowledge. I would rate it seven out of ten. 

The basic deployment can be done in one day, as it easily integrates with existing Dell EMC storage platforms and software. Usually, it will require following certain steps regarding the configuration and installment in the data center of the customer, connecting the storage to the infrastructure, and initializing it.

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. We are fairly satisfied with it as we didn't have any need for additional subscriptions and licenses.

I would suggest thoroughly evaluating all of the benefits of Dell PowerMax NVMe and checking if it provides good value for the money because it might not be feasible for organizations with budget constraints. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten. 

It's our primary storage and it replaced some older and slower storage.

The most valuable aspects include the remote replication features. It allows us to protect our data using different data centers and replicate bi-directionally between our two main data centers.

Simpler management would probably be my biggest ask. Some of the management features could be simplified and that's probably the main thing they need to address.

I've been using this product for three years. 

It's very stable.

We do have two main data centers and we have a PowerMax in each one. It is our primary storage so pretty much everything we have is on it.

We do not plan to increase usage at this time.

They need to make it easier to get to higher levels of support.

Positive

We previously used other Dell products, such as the BNXs and XtremIO. 

We switched mainly to gain access to the top-of-the-line model and we had more money to spend.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward.

It's a multi-step process. We had a hardware guy come out for a day and install it. Then a couple of weeks later, an implementation person set some things up. We slowly phased it in over a month or so.

There's not a lot of maintenance. It's usually just me, or, if I need to do a code upgrade, I just call down.

From Dell, there was a couple of hardware personnel and then an implementer. From my side, it was just me and one other staff member.

It's hard to quantify ROI for me. I'm not an accountant.

They're finally getting the licensing right where it's not a la carte so much anymore. That said, it is pretty expensive. 

We evaluated products from Pure, NetApp, and Kaminario.

I'd rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We work in robotics and we need better response times. Our primary reasons for buying this solution are our SQL and Oracle databases, to improve the performance in running queries and their response times.

It has simplified our operations when it comes to troubleshooting. We're on-call every time there is an issue and I can show them, 100 percent, that there is no problem on the storage side. I can show them there is no issue here.

The solution has helped to improve our services, in the medical field.

The response time, compared to XtremIO, is far better.

I would like to see better provisioning of storage from PowerMax, as well as automation. If you have a cluster with 15 datastores you have to back and select everything for report groups, as an example. You have to create 15 datastores and bundle them in a storage group. If there was some automation of this process, a script or a workflow, to configure everything, that would be great.

Unisphere could be improved and I would also like to see a real-time, graphical view of metrics. I don't know how far back in time we can look, but if we could see the performance from two months or three months back, and how it is performing now, that would be helpful.

It's stable, like VMAX, which has been pretty stable for the last few years.

We had XtremIO but we have been a Dell EMC user for a long time. The solution's architecture influenced our buying decision because of the performance and storage growth. With XtremIO we have had storage growth issues.

The setup is pretty straightforward. With VxBlock 1000, everything is pre-installed.

The application folks are happy.

We didn't look at other solutions.

I would recommend this product. For us, this is the best product.

The primary use case is block storage.

We are planning on deploying mission-critical applications on this solution for redundancy and performance.

Our time to response has increased significantly with the new storage tier (SSD).

We have probably replaced eight racks of equipment with one rack of equipment. So, we have seen significant cost savings and performance.

It was easy for teams to pick up the technology with very limited exposure and training, then implement and support it.

As per performance, being able to consolidate down some of our older DMZ technologies into one platform.

My team has found the Unisphere to be a valuable tool.

We haven't had any issues with the solution in the six months that it has been live. So, the stability has been very good.

We are getting ready to add to it already, so it is very scalable.

The technical support has been very supportive when we have had to call and ask for their assistance, especially during the installation of the equipment.

Our performance requirements were more about the availability and the performance, since we are running mission-critical applications. We have to have low disk latency to meet the application's performance for our Oracle Databases.

The initial setup was very straightforward. It was easy to implement. They implemented it through their normal processes in a very timely manner.

The migration process from the older VMAX arrays to PowerMax was fairly seamless. When the team came in, they migrated data from one to the other. The process was simple.

A reseller, Advisex, worked with us on the deployment. We have a close partnership with them and had a good experience.

We are happy with what we have.

My role involves being a system integrator, providing optimal solutions to various sectors like public, airlines, banking, and commercial financial, all within Dell's technology portfolio.

Investing in Dell PowerMax has impacted our operational costs positively, although the actual savings depend on factors like the experience of the engineers implementing the product and the support level chosen.

Dell PowerMax NVMe has been a significant enhancement for data handling in my industry. Its improved security features and data calculation capabilities make it a valuable solution for our customers. The most critical feature of Dell PowerMax NVMe for performance enhancement is its strong network support and integration with other vendors, along with its efficient use of hardware components like CPU and memory. Data reduction technologies in PowerMax have been highly beneficial for our company, allowing us to optimize storage and reduce costs by consolidating files

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.

I have been using Dell PowerMax NVMe for the past eight years.

I would rate the stability nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability ten out of ten.

The support has been great.

Positive

The decisive factor in choosing Dell PowerMax over other storage solutions was its ease of use and suitability for enterprise-level data management. It aligns well with the needs of big organizations and offers robust features for AI-driven projects and machine learning initiatives.

Setting up and configuring Dell PowerMax NVMe typically takes about three days. However, if there's migration involved from existing systems to the new PowerMax, that process can extend to around one to two weeks, depending on the complexity and scale of the migration project.

Deploying PowerMax has been straightforward and flexible, especially in integrating with other technologies and vendors.

The pricing might be a bit high for small organizations, so it's more suitable for larger enterprises.

I highly recommend Dell PowerMax NVMe for enterprise-level data management.  My experience with Dell PowerMax NVMe has been excellent, especially compared to other vendors I've worked with in the past, such as VMware, Cisco, and Oracle.

Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten. 

The primary use case is for Tier 0 applications. It is meant for applications which are absolutely mission-critical, when you can't compromise your system performance. We have customers who use it across the board for just mission-critical applications, high availability, and guaranteed performance.

I have customers who are using this for large Oracle and SQL applications and European SAP types of infrastructures. They are integrating PowerMax with ProtectPoint for additional data protection of their data. They are also automating the backup and recovery of those systems through AppSync, which is another product for keeping everything protected in an automated way.

It's a zero light loss upgrade. So, they're upgrading the system without losing any type of light from the communications of the system. Also, it has zero interruption of upgrades.

The most valuable feature is its global cache, which allows for uncompromised performance. 

It offers a high level of availability, so pretty much near zero downtime.

It is the best platform for just seeing and getting visibility into performance and capacity utilization. It has very positive management. Through CloudIQ and others integrations that Dell EMC provides, visibility has excellent predictive health metrics that we can look at.

I would like to see continued visibility and analytics in the platform.

There is nothing more stable in the market today.

It is very scalable. Depending on what platform you go with, it has both a scale up and scale out architecture. You can scale without compromising performance by adding additional compute nodes to the front-end which allows it pretty much uncompromised capacity expansion and scale-out.

The technical support is excellent. It's a very immediate, high level of support. The Mission Critical ProSupport response team that Dell EMC has is the highest level of support.

We looked at this system because we analyzed applications and workloads, then understood our customer's business requirements. It is understanding that there is a need for low latency and zero downtime. We were previously using a combination of VNX and Unity.

When we looked at PowerMax, it was extremely low latency: five submillisecond types of latency. From a general performance perspective, most of these systems that we are designing tend to be more than 100,000 IOPS for input/output operations per second. The other thing is that it handles these types of IOPS with very large block sizes. If you really understand your data, it's very easy to optimize it on PowerMax, and it is exceeding our requirements.

The initial setup is straightforward with Dell EMC Services. An organization with this type of investment would want to install it themselves. Therefore, with Dell EMC services, it's very easy to get going.

The migration from older VMAXs to PowerMax is extremely straightforward, as it's a zero downtime migration. You can move systems from one VMAX platform to a PowerMax platform with zero downtime and 100 percent of the data migration compatibility. We typically do that coupled with Dell EMC services, as well. They have a very dialed in process for taking that data over to a brand new platform.

We used resellers for the deployment, as we are resellers. We always use resellers, because that is the best option that customers have.

We are implementing PowerMax at a much lower ROI than maintaining maintenance on legacy systems. We have actually seen return on investment in as low as two years from an ROI perspective by leveraging PowerMax for consolidation of workloads, as well as consolidation of maintenance contracts, where they might have across multiple legacy platforms.

From a general capital investment, it's one of the higher price points in the market. It depends on the size and software features that you would include in a system. So, the cost varies dramatically.

The cost has room for improvement.

Alternatives in the Dell EMC portfolio are primarily XtremIO and Unity. However, PowerMax is the only product which can meet the uptime and latency requirements.

Engage a reseller to analyze the workloads and do the data-driven architecture behind it. Use the data to drive the solution and make sure it meets your requirements.

There is so much innovation in it. They have been very relevant in terms of the Tier 0 workforce. It really differentiates itself in the market.

It meets the needs of what we're trying to do from a file level perspective for performance and capacity.

If you live and breathe by your data, there are a lot of features in PowerMax which allow you to protect yourself from ransomware and other types of relevant threats today. It is not just about a platform for running mission-critical apps. It's also protecting mission-critical apps through features that prevent ransomware infection. If you get infected, it allows for recovery of that data without having to pay the ransom fee or other alternatives.