Dell PowerMax NVMe Reviews

We use it for our testing and development environments.

It is a hyper-converged solution, which has easy deployment. It is easy to manage and upgrade.

It doesn't need shared storage.

There are some stability issues that we just recently experienced. We hope the next release will solve these problems.

We probably needed more time to test the solution.

Stability is okay for now. However, but if you are using over 80 percent of the storage, that will become a problem.

Scalability is very good. We just added another node with computing too, so it is pretty good.

The technical support is good.

We previously used Cisco HyperFlex and Dell EMC VNXe. Both of these solutions are out-of-date.

The initial setup was not straightforward, though it was pretty easy. We did have Dell EMC come onsite and help us, which was good.

We worked with Dell EMC directly for the deployment. Our experience with them was pretty good.

We did some research and talked to Dell EMC. We asked what solution they recommended, since we are a Dell EMC shop.

I would recommend this product to other customers. It is a very good solution for a remote office, a test environment, and maybe, production. It is not that big.

We have a lot of other Dell EMC solutions: Unity, Isilon, and VxRail.

We run a Medicaid data warehouse on a massive enterprise Oracle shop. Therefore, we have a lot of Oracle on PowerMax. We run a big analytics for the New York State Department of Health using Oracle Big Data.

Because of the Big Data analytics, we require immense IOPS, which the PowerMax handles quite well. Our sole purpose in life is to provide endpoint analytics.

We consolidate a lot of various disparate storage arrays into one enterprise solution.

We primarily use Unisphere for managing and monitoring.

Enterprise Cloud Storage is the most valuable feature, along with the data services which come with it, plus the deduplication and compression.

We are very interested in NVMe over Fibre Channel, which I understand is on the horizon. We would like to see that come to fruition in its ability to traverse the Fibre Channel SAN.

The solution is rock solid.

It is a solid platform.

The technical support is very good. We have the ESRS call-home function, and it's been rock solid since day one.

I have always used Symmetrix and VMAX. Then, it was just a natural progression into the PowerMax solution.

The initial setup is very straightforward. We had a team come in and get everything setup. It was handled very professionally. We had a project manager assigned to the account. It was very smooth.

We used the PowerPath solution for the migration, which allowed us to seamlessly migrate from one storage array to another.

We have impeccable uptime in our data center with very strict SLAs. We have had zero downtime.

We run a big Oracle shop, as well as VMware, which is very high performing. It exceeds our needs.

Our costs for the product are three million.

We looked at Hitachi and NetApp, but it really boiled down to our relationship with Dell EMC and the portfolio of the product.

This solution’s architecture influenced our buying decision because of all the data services incorporated, especially the LAN technology. This allows us to replicate from one site to another.

Our SLAs are extremely tight, and we've had zero issues. I would highly advise going with the PowerMax.

The number one most valuable feature is reliability. I want to go home at the end of the day and come in the next day knowing it works, especially since we have storage offshore.

I would like to see the rack change. They have defaulted to the standard rack, so our fiber cables are crowded when we shut our back door.

It is reliable at the end of the day.

It is not complex for us because we have done so many of them. We have a lot of people with experience now.

We also considered Pure Storage.

It is a product that people take for granted.

This would be for leveraging the purchase of PowerMax storage system through a service provider, who would deliver the capacity of PowerMax on a service catalog basis. The storage capacity would be offered as a block service and the utilization of the PowerMax would be delivered on a revised written basis.

This will certainly be leveraged to deploy non-critical and mission-critical applications in our environment, in which we have plenty of both at this point in time.

We expect it to deliver exceptional performance and capacity utilization metrics. This is one of the reasons we are evaluating PowerMax 2000 and PowerMax 8000 at this point in time.

The most valuable features are compression, deduplication, and NVMe-based back-ends for flash technologies. 

I would like it to support NVMe over Fabrics, because that is the next item for consideration on the NVMe roadmap. PowerMax supports NVMe on the back-end, but when it starts supporting NVMe over Fibre Channel, suddenly various hosts can directly communicate with PowerMax, and with NVMe-oF, as well. Suddenly, Gen 6 and Gen 7 switchers will be able to help facilitate that particular communication channel.

It is very stable. We expect superior performance and reliability from this particular storage system.

We expect it to scale.

We are slowly moving towards simplifying our current complex environment, but we are not there yet.

In the past, we have been using the various versions and families of VMAX. Now, we are moving more towards PowerMax and newer versions of technology as they get released onto the Dell EMC roadmap. We have been using VMAX based platforms for many years. Suddenly, PowerMax has evolved from the lineage of VMAX. Therefore, we expect Dell EMC to continue to build upon it. 

In terms of the engineering aspects of the performance requirements, we have a variety of applications requiring a certain level of IOPS, response times, and a minimum microsecond latencies. While we understand that PowerMax can deliver to these expectation from a performance standpoint, we will certainly undergo some rigorous proof of concepts (PoCs) with the PowerMax systems to make sure that our current understanding of PowerMax capabilities, from a performance standpoint, meets our expectations.

We are not yet done any setup of PowerMax systems. We are still working on the integration plans.

We have always used Dell EMC. We have evaluated the technologies from some of the other vendors. We have done numerous proof of concepts, and we have done some real hard proof of concepts. Either in the architectural design stage, or in the engineering stage, some of those particular products do not meet the rigorous testing that we do in these types of scenarios and environments.

Use PowerMax.

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.

Mainframe and open system storage that replicates consistently.

We are a financial services organization, so we are data and investments. It is what our company uses to run. However, I don't know that PowerMax, or VMAX, is anything special compared to other products that we have our data on.

A lot of our critical applications are mainframe and open system-based, and they spread between those two. So, we need a platform like PowerMax to be able to recover in a DR scenario.

We can consistently replicate mainframe and open system and have a single recovery point.

I started using CloudIQ two days ago, and all it's been doing is filling up my phone with alerts that aren't worthwhile. There is something going on there that the array is flagging things as inappropriate that aren't really impactful.

I would like to have Snapchat scheduling and the ability to modify that instead of erase a schedule, then recreate it. There are way better ways to do that. 

Support for SRDF consistency groups within the GUI, instead of making that the command line. 

Remove the need for physical or hardwired virtual servers to run consistency groups, instead make the expensive array controllers handle that.

The management interface needs improvement. It shouldn't be as hard to do some of the functions as it is. Also, it shouldn't need Windows Servers to run a million dollar array.

From a host IO standpoint, the stability has been very good. 

From a replication standpoint, we're actually a company who turned up a bug in the brand new PowerMax. That makes me a little jaded.

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

The technical support has been good. When we did run into an issue, once I told them what the problem was, they were able to come up with a solution to fix the problem moderately quickly.

We came off VMAX. Our performance requirements were to just match the VMAX levels. I find the array is doing that for host IO.

Since we were already on VMAX, our decision was related to a data center move and protecting our data. Prior to that, just getting on the VMAX product line and came from IBM. That was a look at all the mainframe products, which was a cost and functionality play. We picked the product that seemed to have the best cost and functionality with longest term company relationship.

The initial setup was complex. I found out you can't make the new arrays talk to other arrays on a customer level. You have to reach out to Dell EMC support to do that. It's the only array in my environment where I can't, as a customer, make those changes. That's one of the things that slowed down our install.

The migration from VMAX to PowerMax wasn't much of a migration because it was a DR target. We just changed our SRDF.

We used a reseller to purchase it, but I believe it was Dell EMC badged people who did the install.

The experience wasn't great. The install, in my mind, meant a usable box. The install that I got was a plugged in box. Then, it's like, "Oh, but we still have to do these five steps." I was under a time crunch, so that was a surprise.

When it's mainframe there are only three: IBM, Hitachi, and Dell EMC. The arrays at this level are all fairly competitive.

IBM doesn't support VMware the way that we needed it to. 

Hitachi and EMC were neck and neck. What won it out was Dell EMC's relationship with our sales team.

It's effective at doing what you need it to do. It's fairly high-powered, but the management interface has a long way to go to be made simple and easy to use.

If you have mainframe, you have few choices, and this is a good choice. If you don't have mainframe, there are a lot of products on the market which are much easier to use. It depends on your requirements. 

SRDF/A is quite good, but even other cheaper arrays have synchronous and asynchronous replication. I don't know that I would look at a product line for this unless your needs are either enormous that you need a box this big or mainframe centric.

The Unisphere has gotten a lot better. It is fairly easy to dig into and find things. It has been a long time coming, but it's there.

From a storage point of view, our primary uses are as our primary storage which provides all of the capacity for our databases, applications, and most of our mission-critical work at the moment.

We're planning on moving our most critical databases onto the PowerMax to take advantage of all the new features and functions, as well as the ability for it to grow into the future to continue to provide that top level of performance.

Data plays a very important role in our business. It allows us to make good decisions and react to our customers' needs. The PowerMax is going to be where we put the most critical data so we can get the fastest results from that investment.

One of the valuable features is that less work needs to be done on the arrays now, compared with what used to be. I used to spend most of my day managing the array. Now I'm more managing the interconnections and the flows of data, and not worrying about the feeds and speeds anymore.

We've been doing testing before implementing for our Oracle Databases and we're seeing much better performance than we were with the previous generation.

We're using a combination of Unisphere and CloudIQ. 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.

With it being part of the Symmetrix family over the years, we don't have a worry at all about it being stable and serviceable. It's been many years since we've had a hardware issue with any VMAX array, and I don't see the PowerMax being any different.

For us, it has enormous scale in the way it can grow with our needs. Starting out as small as we are, with just a small PowerMax 2000, it is amazing how much capacity we can get in such a tiny footprint.

Support from Dell EMC has been phenomenal. Getting the box up and running was very simple, and any time we have a problem we get the right engineers working on it.

We had been using the VMAX line prior, and this was just a case of capacity and performance growth. We refreshed our environment to get the most performance we can out of our applications.

The architecture - using the NVMe on the back end, with the designed use Storage Class Memory, and NVMe end-to-end in the future - really influenced us in not wanting to go backward with our purchase. Rather, we wanted to buy a future-looking device that we can keep growing into, to get our value out of that investment.

The installation of the PowerMax was very straightforward; probably the easiest implementation of an array that we've done so far.

We did it ourselves.

PowerMax was the shortlist.

This should be on your shortlist. You should really take look at PowerMax. They're reliable. They do everything you could possibly want and much more. They have a lot of features that other arrays just don't.

We'd rate it as a ten. It has done everything that we've asked it to do and much more.

The best feature is the protection - PowerMax NVMe is volume-based and replicates data, so it's very comfortable for us to use.

The GUI interface is very complicated and could be improved by streamlining the number of steps in the process, as the new storage UIs have done.

I've been using this solution for eight months.

PowerMax NVMe is stable.

This is a scalable solution.

I'm happy with Dell's technical support - we have a private support contact that ensures we get good support.

Positive

I would rate PowerMax NVMe six out of ten.