Dell PowerMax NVMe Reviews

• Performance
• Replication time
• It's become easier to use
• Dedup and compression

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 setup was pretty straightforward. It wasn't that hard.

We bought it from a reseller and we used some services from Dell EMC. Our experience with them was pretty good. They showed us the basics and got us started.

It has reduced our footprint in different physical locations.

The health checks and problem solving are its most valuable features.

The stability is good. We never have any issues.

The scalability is great.

The technical is very good. It is easy to contact someone. They have a great team that helps us.

Our performance requirements were that it has to be always stable.

Setting up PowerMax with VMAX is always complex. The support from Dell EMC helped made a difference.

Dell EMC helped us with the deployment.

It is a really good product. We never max out on the performance.

We are a partner installer.

It significantly simplifies storage.

• The ease of install
• The ease of maintenance
• Expandability

There is some room to grow, especially with some of the installation quirks.

As an installer, I've seen a lot of different things. It's mostly stable. It's had its fair share of quirks, but support has always been there to help us get around those quirks.

The scalability is incredible. It's great.

I use technical support frequently. Support has been relatively great across the board. There have been some language barrier issues in the early morning hours. They transfer calls to China, and there are some translation issues, but they know their stuff. You just have to let them go and type because you don't understand what they are saying.

The build process is relatively straightforward.

Talk to other people who have the people. It has been a great experience for most of my customers.

It's pretty much where it needs to be. For the most part, it is solid.

We host mission-critical applications, SAP applications, and disaster recovery applications on this storage itself because of its resiliency, absence of a single point of failure, and optimal performance. We host SAP data, which is the most critical data of any organization, for ourselves and our customers on Dell PowerMax NVMe. 

With Dell PowerMax NVMe technology, we can achieve significant automation. The system allows seamless integration of more compute power and system resources into the storage. We can host different applications on the fly. The best part is it works on Service Level Objectives (SLOs). For instance, SAP is a critical application accessed by all internal users of an organization, so it requires minimal response time. Dell PowerMax NVMe allows us to define specific response times for particular applications integrated with storage. We can prioritize SAP data access while assigning different response times to less critical applications. This feature greatly improves user experience by providing seamless access with minimal response time.

The implementation of end-to-end NVMe has improved performance by more than 20%, particularly beneficial for I/O intensive applications such as SAP hosted on the Oracle database. We can also fine-tune the applications with the least response time so that the user experience is great. Overall, the performance has improved by more than 20% because of NVMe. It is a niche technology. It is being used by all the storage vendors nowadays.

It is a fantastic Dell EMC product ever competing with all the vendors. It stands out in terms of performance. You can ask for mission-critical application workloads. 

The Dell PowerMax family is evolving with new NVMe technology. Data is written through the cache before being written to the disks. NVMe provides additional fast cache, similar to random access memory (RAM), which improves overall system performance and read/write experience for users. 

The system features dense DAEs (Disk Array Enclosures), allowing for multiple petabytes in one storage unit. It accommodates bigger capacity drives within a single storage system, providing a smaller footprint with larger capacity. 

Dell PowerMax or Symmetrix is a block-level storage and unified storage, supporting both NAS and SAN. One area for improvement would be integration with public cloud services. Many users are inclined towards hybrid cloud solutions, but it remains primarily an on-premises solution. Compared to competitors such as NetApp, which integrates with public cloud hyperscalers (GCP, Azure, AWS), Dell PowerMax lacks in this aspect. Integration with a public cloud would provide an added advantage and give it an edge over other vendors.

Dell PowerMax NVMe is a recent product in the Symmetrix family by Dell. The product evolved from DMX (with variants DMX3, DMX4) to VMAX (with variants VMAX3, different families 10k, 100k, 200k), and finally to Dell PowerMax. It has been more than a decade since I have been working with it.

The solution is highly stable. Dell proactively releases patches when new bugs are discovered. These patches can be applied on the fly without requiring software upgrades or system downtime. The engineering code is stable, and the solution rates an eight out of ten for stability.

It features dense DAEs and allows for on-the-fly scalability. Volumes can be defined to grow to any level without impacting overall performance. With substantial CPU power and cache memory, integrating new applications doesn't affect existing users accessing the storage. It provides a highly scalable, redundant, and reliable solution.

It is being used in a global organization with about 10,000 users. Our clients are medium to large organizations.

Dell support for Dell PowerMax is exceptional, rating a perfect 10 out of 10. The support team is highly capable and provides excellent service. They are amazing.

Positive

Compared to previous DMX solutions in the Symmetrix family, Dell PowerMax offers significant improvements. While DMX had smaller disk array enclosures limited to 15 disks, Dell PowerMax features dense DAEs accommodating more than 15 drives. Additionally, DMX used Direct Matrix where each controller had dedicated compute power and cache memory. In contrast, Dell PowerMax distributes compute power, CPU, and cache across the storage, allowing any controller to utilize available resources.

I did not deploy it myself. Dell PowerMax deployment involves certain restrictions as it operates with a bin file configured based on specific requirements. The deployment process requires vendor involvement, though users can participate in learning and integrating devices. Other Dell storage solutions allow more user configuration, but Dell PowerMax maintains a limitation requiring vendor liaison for deployment.

In terms of maintenance, it is fully redundant. Maintenance is not really needed. Even the upgrades are nondisruptive, but to be on the safer side, we do plan the maintenance.

The solution has demonstrated significant time savings. During a DCDR setup and migration from VMAX to Dell PowerMax, what was planned as a two-day downtime was completed in just three to four hours.

Dell offers various pricing models, including a pay-as-you-go option where storage is provided without upfront charges, billing only for used capacity. As a 360° partner, significant discounts are available. The higher cost compared to other vendors is justified by additional features, vendor-managed upgrades, and superior support services.

Go for it if you are looking for good support. However, you have to see its cost. It is the best solution in the market. If cost is not a constraint, Dell is your go-to vendor.

Dell has a lot of disaster recovery solutions. In addition to hosting mission-critical applications, you can have quite nice DR solutions.

Overall, I would rate it a ten out of ten.