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Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell PowerStore
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), NAS (2nd), Enterprise SAN (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
IBM FlashSystem
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
NAS (4th), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Brian Ricci - PeerSpot reviewer
It's constantly enhanced and has impressive reliability and data compression
The maintenance is a bit expensive. The service and support are there for three years, but after the third year, it is pretty pricey for renewal. I hope Dell addresses that. Everything is pricey these days anyway. It is not like the old days of Compellent. We used to be able to see the metrics for our customers. On Compellent, we could look up that customer and see all the metrics. That is not allowed for us now. We cannot do that anymore. I have to be explicitly allowed by the customer to do that, and some companies' security does not allow that.
Raanan Sitton - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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 features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"PowerStore has helped us reduce our Capex by 20% to 40%."
"The platform's reliability and built-in replication between disk systems have made our customers happy. It has worked consistently well over the years."
"The simplicity and performance are great."
"Dell PowerStore is very simple to implement, and its user interface is very simple."
"The most valuable feature is the unwavering performance."
"The product is reliable and stable."
"The most valuable feature is the functionality of the integration between the storage and the domain."
"The most valuable features are the three-to-one data reduction and the ability to scale out and up."
"Most of the features for the reduction in data compression are useful. It is also very easy to use and administer. Its performance is also good."
"FlashSystem offers proven technology in a compact package."
"The valuable feature is autoscalling."
"This solution is convenient, user-friendly, convenient and reliable."
"The most valuable features are flexibility and performance."
"It's a mature product. It's like a BMW that evolves consistently."
"It is simple to make an update."
"IBM's technical support do excellent work."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"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."
"It is on the expensive side."
"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."
"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."
"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"The management UI is pretty decent and gets the job done, but the upgrade process is challenging."
"When it comes to Dell PowerStore, I would like to see more integration and more security features included. It's unfortunate that the solution does not feature Flash trace."
"The customer support is slow and has room for improvement."
"I would like to see a Snapshot feature. Currently, it is unable to occupy the capacity."
"The support team doesn't always provide adequate assistance. So, there is room for improvement in the support."
"With PowerStore, we have to choose between block storage and NAS functionality."
"You cannot delegate permissions."
"We'd like to see some improvements on the security side."
"There is room for improvement in the troubleshooting part, specifically related to IBM Spectrum for Insight."
"AHV is Acropolis Hypervisor – A relatively new Hypervisor, robust and stable as VMware vSphere, has built-in advanced analytics and powerful operations, Self Service Portal and components for DevOps included, managed by a single pane of glass (Prism) via HTML5 and it is free of charge – That is why Nutanix is so advanced and revolutionary."
"It is slightly more expensive, however, it all depends on your supplier."
"The solution is not easy to use and could improve."
"I know they have a flashcopy manager, but it is extra software, an additional license, and some customers don't like to add addition costs to their infrastructure. If IBM could create, or include snapshot management within the GUI, that would really be helpful."
"When you provision a datastore auto-format takes a long time"
"The solution is not easy to implement. It takes a lot of time to study the product and it's a little complicated in general."
"IBM FlashSystems is lagging in optimizing storage technologies."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."
"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."
"It is easy to work with Dell from the licensing perspective."
"In terms of licensing, my organization has Dell Technologies End User License Agreement (EULA), but I don't know exactly how it works, though it is a big bundle of licenses for Dell Data Domain, Dell EMC Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Dell ECS, and all such kinds of storage arrays."
"The solution’s pricing is always too high."
"The price is high compared to the Tunisian market."
"The pricing is good. There's no need to pay for a license; it's all-inclusive."
"The pricing structure and licensing model of Dell PowerStore are pretty decent. It's pretty competitive."
"The pricing structure and licensing model of Dell PowerStore are very good and I like it. We chose it because it was reasonably priced and met our requirements"
"The software features are included in the pricing without any additional purchase requirements."
"They've been much more aggressive in the last five, six years than they were before that."
"Our customers would like IMB FlashSystem to be less expensive."
"Pricing can be considered as per market competition."
"I would rate the pricing of this solution a four out of five."
"You purchase it as a bundle and the price is comparable."
"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."
"Among IBM, Dell EMC, and Pure Storage, IBM is the cheapest. The price is also based on our location, the size of our entity, and our regular annual purchases from them. We are a very big IBM customer, so we normally get very high discounts. We are not a big customer of Pure Storage. We don't buy that much from Pure Storage per year. Everything is included in the price. There is no extra license for different functions."
"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..."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

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.
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 ...
What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated managem...
What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell of...
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...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
PowerStore
IBM Storwize
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Information Not Available
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. IBM FlashSystem and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.
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