Dell EqualLogic PS series vs IBM XIV comparison

Dell Technologies and IBM are both solutions in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category. Dell Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.3, while IBM is ranked #10. Dell Technologies holds a 4.3% mindshare in MS, compared to IBM’s 3.2% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Dell EqualLogic PS series

Read 20 Dell EqualLogic PS series reviews

676 Views
669 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

IBM XIV

Read 6 IBM XIV reviews

385 Views
381 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Dell EqualLogic PS series

IBM XIV

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

IBM XIV and Dell EqualLogic PS Series are competing in the storage solutions market. IBM XIV seems to have the upper hand with its data reliability and performance, while Dell EqualLogic PS Series offers impressive virtualization and scalability features.

Features: IBM XIV provides robust scalability, focusing on data reliability and easy integration into IT ecosystems. Dell EqualLogic PS Series offers advanced virtualization, automatic load balancing, and simplified management.

Room for Improvement: IBM XIV could benefit from more competitive pricing, enhanced automation features, and better integration with third-party tools. Dell EqualLogic PS Series might improve on providing deeper analytical insights, more advanced data protection features, and enhanced interoperability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM XIV offers straightforward deployment with reliable customer service, ensuring operational continuity. Dell EqualLogic PS Series provides seamless deployment with comprehensive support options, facilitating quick implementation.

Pricing and ROI: IBM XIV requires a higher initial setup cost but delivers favorable ROI through performance and efficiency. Dell EqualLogic PS Series boasts a competitive pricing structure and strong ROI, appealing to businesses focused on cost-effectiveness.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell EqualLogic PS series vs. IBM XIV Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Dell EqualLogic PS series vs. IBM XIV

March 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 884,873 peers since 2012

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

Dell EqualLogic PS series

Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IBM XIV

Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

10th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of Dell EqualLogic PS series is 4.3%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM XIV is 3.2%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dell EqualLogic PS series	4.3%
IBM XIV	3.2%
Other	92.5%

Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

Featured Reviews

Khuram Ayyaz

Network Executive at Virtual University

Has enabled uninterrupted access to educational platforms and simplified storage management

Dell EqualLogic PS series is easily scalable, and we can add extra boxes and storage. It was easy to deploy during COVID. Deploying Dell EqualLogic PS series is straightforward, with no complexity involved. Dell EqualLogic PS series is a good product. We did not experience any failures in the last six to seven years, and it is still running as our storage for offline data. There are snapshot capabilities in data protection available, but we did not use that feature because it consumes much space. We have only 150 terabytes of space and simply use it to create volumes without utilizing it for snapshots. We use thin provisioning in Dell EqualLogic PS series, but I did not explore that feature further.

Read full review

Ajith Kandaramage

IT Operation Engineer at HNB

Good value for money but issues with modular scaling

IBM XIV's most valuable features are NVME, especially when it comes to de-duplication, compression, and responsiveness I've been using IBM XIV for two and a half years. IBM XIV is stable. IBM XIV's scalability is adequate for our requirements, but because it's modular, you can't scale to larger…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Dell's technical support is very good."

"We were attracted by the flexibility of being able to put in a new shelf whenever we needed to, to expand."

"The solution has been working well overall."

"If you have one datacenter fail, the VMs will start to run inside the other data center."

"It is stable and scalable."

"Before deploying it, we used public clouds for our services, facing latency and other issues with other vendors; after deploying this cluster, we were very satisfied and relieved."

"You can always trust it. It is stable."

"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

More Dell EqualLogic PS series pros

"Very easy to produce reporting data (Snaps). Very easy and fast for provisioning devices and Remote mirroring."

"Hands down, this is the easiest storage platform on the market to manage."

"The performance and robustness of the systems are very good."

"IBM XIV's most valuable features are NVME, especially when it comes to de-duplication, compression, and responsiveness."

"Installation is amazingly easy."

"As it spreads, a chuck of 1MB across the board means using all available spindles on the backend."

Cons

"When they deployed our cluster, they did not provide any documentation or low-level or high-level diagrams. They simply came, mounted the servers, and started installation without documentation, which is a negative point on the vendor side."

"The only challenging part in the tool was related to some site recovery area. In order to exploit the site recovery area, my company had to purchase additional VMware products."

"It is at the end of support and no longer supported. We have to move our VMware to another storage platform, and we have decided to use Dell PowerStore. We like Dell's products, and it is a new platform with a lot of features."

"There is no option for mixing RAID types in one device."

"The searchable online documentation is missing."

"The performance isn't as good as, for example, Nimble."

"6510 and 6610 have two iSCSI connections in each controller. Why do 6110xxx members have only one, and why do the same members have the possibility of having an active iSCSI interface in the passive controller? It could make a lot of noise with a failover."

"If I need to have more space or more capacity, I need to replace the product. It would be ideal if we could scale without replacing the box itself."

More Dell EqualLogic PS series cons

"I would rather have a web GUI served directly from the unit, and a CLI accessible directly through SSH."

"IBM XIV's scalability is adequate for our requirements, but because it's modular, you can't scale to larger requirements."

"I encountered stability (performance) issues during enclosure or disk rebuild. Also some power supply issues due to malfunctions of circuits. Sometimes "internal" Snap sessions hang and consume pool capacity."

"Until the drive is replaced, the pool_resizing is locked."

"This product was not a good fit for our organization as we have a ton of latency sensitive applications and XIV was not able to keep up with IO + latency demand."

"The change form synchronous mirroring to asynchronous (and vice versa) without reconfiguration from scratch would be helpful."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't think I would say that the product is less expensive...The product's price is not an issue for our company, considering the relationship we have with Dell and the customer support we receive."

"Licensing is pretty straightforward."

"Initial packages include all upgrades and services."

"I didn't buy it. It was another person seven years ago. So, I don't really know, but all storage platforms cost a lot of money. It is probably in the mid-range, but you get what you pay for."

"Dell EqualLogic PS series can improve its scale-out feature. Sometimes the customer has a limited budget for storage expansion. When they want to expand their capacity, they need to buy a complete controller plus storage capacity, which sometimes is out of their budget. If Dell EqualLogic PS series support could scale up the environment in which only hard drive extension controllers should be supported, then customers can expand within a lower budget."

"All features are out of the box. The license will be in the virtual, OS, or application layer."

"Price-wise, the solution is cheap. I rate it a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."

"It seemed expensive at first, but the durability lowered the cost of ownership dramatically over time."

More Dell EqualLogic PS series pricing and cost advice

"If you are going to use the product behind an SVC, IBM will price the units lower, since you are likely not to use any of the advanced copy services."

"No-license-required policy, unlike others where you need a license for everything. Just pay once and forget about licenses."

"Licensing is straightforward."

"We have a five-year total cost of ownership where we pay an initial amount and then annually for maintenance."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	7

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell EqualLogic PS series?

The technical support for the solution was really good.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell EqualLogic PS series?

I do not have anything in mind regarding new capabilities for Dell products at this time.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Dell EqualLogic PS series?

We are essentially a university, and we have deployed Dell EqualLogic PS series in our data centers to run our production sites, student portals, websites, our on-premises portal, and campus manage...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliance vs Dell EqualLogic PS series

Compared 16% of the time

Nexsan BEAST vs Dell EqualLogic PS series

Compared 15% of the time

NEC D8 series vs Dell EqualLogic PS series

Compared 15% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs Dell EqualLogic PS series

Compared 13% of the time

More Dell EqualLogic PS series Competitors

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs IBM XIV

Compared 21% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs IBM XIV

Compared 20% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs IBM XIV

Compared 18% of the time

XIO Hyper ISE vs IBM XIV

Compared 18% of the time

More IBM XIV Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell EqualLogic PS series

March 2026

Download Dell EqualLogic PS series product report

Buyer's Guide

Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

March 2026

Download IBM XIV product report

Also Known As

EqualLogic PS series

XIV

Overview

EqualLogic PS Series arrays bring a new level of performance to service more of your most demanding applications and virtualization requirements, while delivering the simplicity of the EqualLogic management experience. Featuring six array configurations, including 2U/2.5" drive options with All Flash and Hybrid Arrays, it is ideal for companies and organizations with growing data and performance needs.

Dell Technologies

IBM XIV is a high-end, grid-scale storage system that excels in tuning-free consistent performance, ease of use and exceptional data economics, including inline, and IBM Real-time Compression. IBM XIV is ideal for hybrid cloud, offering predictable service levels for dynamic workloads, simplified scale management, including in multi-tenant environments, flexible consumption models — and robust cloud automation and orchestration through OpenStack, RESTful API and VMware. It offers security and data protection through hot encryption, advanced mirroring and self-healing and investment protection with perpetual licensing.

IBM

Sample Customers

FAW Foundry, AW Engineering, Unimat, eLongNet Information Technology, BDO Brasil, Odyssey Space Research

Celero, NaviSite, Technische Universit_t Mªnchen, Netflix Inc., Muhr und Bender KG, Pelephone Communications

Buyer's Guide

Dell EqualLogic PS series vs. IBM XIV

March 2026

Free Report: Dell EqualLogic PS series vs. IBM XIV

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell EqualLogic PS series vs. IBM XIV and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Dell EqualLogic PS series vs. IBM XIV report.

See our list of best Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) vendors.

We monitor all Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.