We performed a comparison between Dell PowerMax NVMe and NetApp AFF based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"The latency is good."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The optimization of the cache memory of each engine and the use of persistent memory."
"It significantly simplifies storage."
"The most valuable feature is its global cache, which allows for uncompromised performance."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerMax NVMe is its replication feature."
"For the migration process from the older VMAX arrays to PowerMax, we VMotioned everything. It was easy."
"Enterprise Cloud Storage is the most valuable feature, along with the data services which come with it, plus the deduplication and compression."
"We use ESRS for our call-home, and a lot of times, Dell EMC will respond to the issue before we even know it."
"Based on our experience with VMAX, there isn't any hardware failure or something like that in PowerMax. Performance-wise also, everything is fine. We haven't faced any performance issues or any hardware failure. Its performance is great as compared to VMAX. Its I/O per second rate is higher than the old model."
"It has improved performance for our enterprise applications, data analytics, and VMs. These improvements are a result of all-flash, throughput, reliability, compression, etc."
"Efficient and easily scalable all-flash storage solution, significantly reducing latency, optimizing data management, and providing cost savings for businesses"
"The ease of use, the SnapMirror capabilities, the cloning, and the efficiencies are all good features."
"I like how easy it is to discover an issue and either resolve that issue or fine-tune that app to premium support to find that resolution."
"The most valuable features of the solution are speed, performance, and reliability."
"The tool's most valuable feature is SVM. I also like the speed and response of the filers."
"We do a lot of financial modeling. We have a large compute cluster that generates a lot of files. It is important for us to get a quick response back for any type of multimillion file accesses across the cluster at one time. So, it's a lot quicker to do that. We found that solid-state performs so much better than than spinning drives, even over multiple clusters."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the deduplication and the ability to move data to different clouds."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"We need better data deduplication."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"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."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"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."
"PowerMax Storage needs improvement in the area of monitoring tools. It should have more functions and more complicated analysis options inside the monitoring tools."
"I would like to see continued visibility and analytics in the platform."
"I believe it would be of great benefit to work on the customization of the pricing structure for different enterprises and their specific needs."
"I'd like to see the dedup and compression improve. Two to one is not very good. We should be getting something like three, four, or five to one."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"We've had a couple of little things come up, but for the most part, they've been pretty stable."
"The price cap of Dell PowerMax NVMe is very high."
"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."
"I have experienced slow responses several times, if the ticket has only been opened in portal."
"The initial setup has a lot more steps in it than are probably necessary for a base deployment, unlike other vendors where it's more straightforward. It could be a little bit more streamlined."
"On the roadmap, NetApp is improving the solution's storage efficiency, compression algorithms to achieve more space savings, and the management interfaces. We are looking forward to these feature additions in the next release."
"There is room for improvement with the user interface. There are a few things that cannot be done in the GUI. We do a lot of things through the CLI, but that's grown out of a lack of ability to do them in the GUI. An example is QTrees. You can manage them within the GUI, but the GUI is missing a few options."
"FC and ATTO bridges are still needed for cross datacenter replication."
"There is no direct storage attachment available. Most configurations require additional switches for data access."
"With some of the larger clusters being able to do a patch upgrade is helping. They still take three, four hours by the time you get the night started, finish things up, do the upgrade."
"The admin tools and the integration with other products and clouds can be improved. It should also be easier to identify and troubleshoot problems in this solution. It takes a long time, and it should be improved."
Dell PowerMax NVMe is ranked 8th in All-Flash Storage with 66 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 281 reviews. Dell PowerMax NVMe is rated 8.8, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell PowerMax NVMe writes "Simplified storage provisioning for us, enabling us to assign any volumes in two to three minutes". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". Dell PowerMax NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, IBM FlashSystem, Dell Unity XT, Pure Storage FlashArray and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Pure Storage FlashArray and VMware vSAN. See our Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. NetApp AFF report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors and best NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays vendors.
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