Dell PowerMax Reviews

We use Dell PowerMax NVMe since Dell services were very good, and the product configuration suited our needs. It was easy to integrate into our infrastructural environment since we had other Dell servers.

Dell PowerMax NVMe has been a well-suited solution for us, being compatible with our existing infrastructure and aiding in seamless service.

The solution is easy to use with applications that are user-friendly. It also offers ease of accessibility.

There is room for improvement in adjusting into the existing infrastructure easily without much of the technical contribution.

I have been using Dell PowerMax NVMe for approximately eight years.

The stability of Dell PowerMax NVMe is high; I would rate it nine out of ten.

Scalability is an important feature, and I would rate Dell PowerMax NVMe eight out of ten on scalability.

Customer service and support are excellent. I would rate them ten out of ten.

I did not use a different solution before Dell PowerMax NVMe.

The initial setup was moderately difficult; there were a couple of areas where support was required.

The deployment was done by a third-party integrator.

The return on investment has been more than three times in monetary terms.

The pricing was quite competitive and the lowest among the competition.

I evaluated NetApp and IBM storage solutions.

I would recommend this solution to other people.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We are one of the largest telco companies in Pakistan. We use Dell PowerMax NVMe for telecom IT, which includes different workloads hosted on different systems. We use systems like UNIX, VMware, Windows, and Linux to map Dell PowerMax NVMe.

The solution's most valuable feature is the data reduction ratio. You can store a 5:1 ratio of your data in Dell PowerMax NVMe. For example, if you have 200 terabytes of usable capacity, you can save up to five times of data on that capacity. That means you can save one petabyte of data on just 200 terabytes of usable capacity.

The solution's end-to-end NVMe capabilities have improved our operations. Everything is fast, and you don't have to map your storage to old hybrid storage technologies. Our organization has experienced positive change, and the solution has improved our uptime, availability, performance, and capacity.

The solution should integrate better with OpenShift and Kubernetes architecture. We also use OpenShift in our environment, and I had some problems integrating Dell PowerMax NVMe with the OpenShift Kubernetes environment. The solution's integrations and usability could be better.

I have been using Dell PowerMax NVMe since June 2021.

Dell PowerMax NVMe provides high stability and availability if it's designed and deployed properly. We didn't have even a single outage in the four years we used the tool.

The solution's data reduction is so good that we didn't feel the need to scale it. Dell PowerMax NVMe falls into the enterprise domain. It is recommended for enterprise customers and customers who want their mission-critical workloads hosted on enterprise storage.

Mid-tier storage is available only for mid-tier customers. For all enterprise customers, PowerMax fits very well in terms of availability, capacity, and performance.

Dell has very flexible technical support. You can open SRs ranging from one to five severity levels, and even their live chat is available for Dell PowerMax NVMe. We often open it if there is a very severe issue. I think the solution's technical support is phenomenal.

One of Dell PowerMax NVMe's top competitors in the Pakistan market is the Huawei Dorado 8000, which people have deployed in large numbers. As a telco, we have also deployed Huawei Dorado 8000, but Dell PowerMax NVMe stands out in terms of performance.

We are a customer, and the initial setup was done by the Dell customer engineers. We were not involved in the solution's deployment. We were just involved in the migration process.

The tool has improved our performance KPIs, response time, throughput, and solution IOPS. We don't have to worry about the performance of our workloads when they are hosted on Dell PowerMax NVMe because it automatically adjusts performance profiles according to our desired SLAs.

Since Dell PowerMax NVMe is an enterprise storage, its price is premium.

I would recommend the solution only to enterprise users who have the budget.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We're trying to converge a lot of storage equipment, around ten units, from two different locations into redundant PowerMax sites. We need to converge all the VNX and HVAs from Hitachi to something like enterprise storage like PowerMax.

During the Request for Proposal (RFP) process with Dell, we know that the throughput of PowerMax will be convenient for us and it will handle our data center workloads.

We already have NVMe in the company, and we're very satisfied with NVMe technology within PowerMax that impacted our IO performance. 

First, it's an enterprise storage solution. This is very important for us. 

Another important feature is replication. 

However, many features are common across vendors such as Hitachi. Whether it's replication and encryption, we find the same features with IBM or Hitachi. There are minor differences, but not significant.

Replication is important because we replicate some data. Encryption is also crucial. Additionally, data reduction is vital. The more the storage can reduce data volume, the lower the cost.  

Good documentation is important. We currently have a lot of documentation from Dell.

Configuration could be easier to manage, and implementation should be easier to install and configure. 

Dell can improve the Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance. Sometimes, when we need to replace a component, the SLA says four hours, but for some reason, the technician doesn't arrive until the next business day or even six to eight hours later before the case is placed. So, focusing on respecting the SLA is where Dell could improve.

PowerMax is still in the evaluation stage. However, I do have experience with other Dell products such as PowerStore. 

We can scale it out easily, but it is a bit tricky to scale up. When we scale up with Dell PowerStore, it has a "cluster" approach, but scaling closer isn't clustering. It's more like unified management of two or three "folks." Dell calls it a cluster because there's no I/O shredding, zoning, or LAN data shredding, which would be true clustering.

Dell support is crucial. It's important to us that the vendor responds and respects the SLA. We don't anticipate any problems with Dell, so we consider them a good vendor and a good business partner.

Dell can improve the Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance. Sometimes, when we need to replace a component, the SLA says four hours, but for some reason, the technician doesn't arrive until the next business day or even six to eight hours later before the case is placed. So, focusing on respecting the SLA is where Dell could improve.

Positive

We've been using Dell EMC midrange storage for a few years now.

We're moving from older Dell platforms, previously known as EMC. We're transitioning from VNX, including VNX 7600, 5600, and 5400, to newer storage platforms, primarily Dell EMC PowerMax.

I have also used Dell EMC Data Protection Advisor (DPA).

The pricing is comparable to other vendors. There aren't significant price differences. Since the price is high, a few hundred thousand dollar difference between vendors isn't a major deciding factor. So, they're comparable, but it's more about the support, implementation, and configuration of their product.

We're in the Request for Proposal (RFP) process. The RFP is not closed. Dell is one of the vendors we're considering, and we're working with them to figure out migration and other technical details. They're not the only vendor; we're also considering IBM, Hitachi and others.

considering it's an enterprise storage solution, I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

I use the solution in my company for mission-critical core banking applications.

If you ask me, technically, the tool is the same as most of the vendors have the same thing. If you ask me about Huawei, I can tell you about the tool's many features.

Dell PowerMax NVMe's advantage is just the support.

The tool's disadvantages are its cost and lack of ease of use. According to the latest market trends, certain technologies are lacking.

The main challenge with the product was to have control over the simultaneous failures of controllers. For recovery, manual intervention is required.

The tool's cost, active controller part, installation, maintenance, scalability, and recovery parts can be considered for improvement.

I have been using Google Cloud for five years. I have a Dell PowerMax NVMe 8000 and a Dell PowerMax NVMe 8500. I was a partner integrator with Dell. I have twenty-four years of storage experience.

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

It is not a very scalable solution. Other vendors offer much more scalability options than Dell PowerMax NVMe.

There is something called transfer of ownership known as LUN tagging, but other boxes don't offer such a feature.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

The solution's technical support was good, and it is one of the tool's main advantages. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

I am also a solution architect for Huawei.

We are talking with one of our vendors and customers, who were keen to get involved with OPSWAT. With most vendors, whenever there is an NFS and compliant storage, all the products offer support. I just wanted to understand why only a few products are listed in Google's support portal.

I have been using Huawei for almost seven and a half years now. Prior to that, I was a business partner of HP and Oracle. I was Dell's partner for almost ten years. Before that, I was IBM's partner for five and a half years.

The product's initial setup phase is okay. If you compare Dell's setup phase, Huawei is convenient and easy to install.

For Dell's installation phase, around two people are required. For Huawei's installation phase, one person is required. Huawei's installation can be managed remotely. I am a solution architect, so I don't do the deployments now.

There is no ROI. I have seen the tool used, and pretty much all the vendors are the same.

The tool is very expensive. I rate the tool's price as a one out of ten.

We are talking with one of our vendors and customers, who were keen to get involved with OPSWAT. With most vendors, whenever there is an NFS and compliant storage, all the products offer support. I just wanted to understand why only a few products are listed in Google's support portal.

The tool has a fully symmetric architecture, so it offers an active controller there. Controller failure is not something that we can withstand, especially if there are two simultaneous controller failures. With the other vendors right now, considering what we are working for, tools can support up to seven controller failures, which is so for any banking operations.

I don't know how the tool's real-time machine-learning capability has impacted our company.

The maintenance of Dell PowerMax NVMe requires companies to have resources along with extensive technology experience. It is the same for any vendor.

I have not really seen any AI features in the tool.

For the technical specifications, I can rate the tool as a seven out of ten.

I rate the overall tool as a seven out of ten.

I use the solution in my company, specifically the SAN storage in the core banking applications for our banks running in Bahrain and Egypt. Most of the projects were the same for billing applications and core banking.

The most valuable features of the solution are its compression ratio, performance, desk support, seamless configuration, the software's native migration, the NDM, and open replicators, which are very good advantages of the tool I experienced during the projects I implemented.

There are so many configurations in the tool that cannot be done by anyone who is not a Dell personnel. Not everything can be done by a partner in the tool. Handling file changes and modifying some configurations regarding mainframe integration with Dell PowerMax cannot be managed by Dell and not the partners.

Dell has to allow partners or give authorization for the partners to do some configuration for Dell PowerMax. If you need to do something in a BIN file, you need to get approval from Dell, but I feel you should be able to do it by yourself as a partner. I don't understand why one needs to engage Dell in every single detail regarding any integrations with mainframe work, integrations with third-party storage, or BIN file changes when you can do it yourself. I also don't understand why a partner should need to engage with Dell and pay a professional service to Dell for everything. Dell can be more friendly, like in the case of PowerStore or PowerScale. There are many storages Dell has been releasing, and even PowerProtect can do everything. Only Dell PowerMax has a lot of problems.

There are some limitations to the tool when you want to migrate data from third-party storage. Not all third-party storages are supported to be connected to Dell PowerMax NVMe. There are so many old operating systems that are no longer supported by Dell PowerMax, like Oracle Solaris 10, Windows 2000, and Windows 8.

I have been using Dell PowerMax NVMe from 2018 or 2019. My company serves as an implementer and a partner of Dell.

It is a very stable solution. The tool is 100 percent stable. The tool is stabler than any other storage in the market.

The tool's scalability is very good because Dell PowerMax supports scaling up configurations, like attaching enclosures to the processors using some links, so it is also quite easy.

I like the solution's technical support. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

I have used Hitachi's storage, specifically the high-end ones, along with Pure Storage and IBM. SAN storage is still at the top of the pyramid. The difference between Dell and other storage revolves around performance and scalability. Dell PowerMax NVMe offers the best performance compared to other vendors.

The product's initial setup phase is easy. Only a script running in the management module control station is required to deploy the tool, so it is very quite easy.

For racking and stacking, it might need two or more people, especially if the hardware is more and if there are many expansions of multiple engines. It might need two or three people to stack it because it is quite heavy. I think one person is enough if it is only one controller and one expansion.

From an enterprise storage perspective, I think it is an expensive tool, but it is the best product. I think it is expensive and the cost one must pay for the best solution.

I have never gone too deep to figure out the need to use the end to end NVMe technology in PowerMax but I was suffering for the past three or four years. Many customers share Dell PowerMax because they think it is an NVMe, but the switches and servers connected to PowerMax weren't supporting NVMe. We weren't taking advantage of the feature itself in PowerMax because the servers and switches weren't NVMe- supported appliances.

I have not used the tool's real-time machine-learning capability.

Most of the maintenance involves replacing ports, which can be replaceable. When it comes to engines and modules and something big like the processor or something, we need a customer engineer from Dell or an authorized partner to help us.

The tool can support AI because it offers the maximum performance that you can get from a SAN or enterprise storage. If the customer wants to use some AI applications, I think Dell PowerMax NVME is sufficient for all the computing.

I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

We are using the solution's application and snapshot feature.

The solution should include more AI features to make it smarter.

I have been using Dell PowerMax NVMe for a couple of years.

Dell PowerMax NVMe is a very stable solution.

The solution has limited scalability. Around three users use Dell PowerMax NVMe in our organization.

I rate the solution’s scalability a seven out of ten.

The solution’s technical support is good.

Positive

Operation-wise, the deployment takes 20 minutes. Our process may take longer for approval. It may take a couple of days.

IBM and Hitachi are Dell PowerMax NVMe's competitors. I would recommend the solution to other users.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Dell PowerMax NVMe is an enterprise storage designed for bigger customers that require resilient and powerful storage solutions. It ensures seamless management of large database workloads that need high performance and low latency in data handling and responsiveness.

I have been highly satisfied with the resiliency and scalability of the solution.

It is more expensive compared to midrange storage options.

I have been working with Dell PowerMax NVMe for the last four years. 

I am highly satisfied with the stability of the solution. I would rate it ten out of ten.

It allows great flexibility regarding scaling options to adapt to evolving storage needs, ensuring organizations can meet their growing data demands without major disruptions. I would rate it ten out of ten. 

We are overall satisfied with the customer service provided by their support team. I would rate it eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup can be somewhat complex as it requires specialized knowledge. I would rate it seven out of ten. 

The basic deployment can be done in one day, as it easily integrates with existing Dell EMC storage platforms and software. Usually, it will require following certain steps regarding the configuration and installment in the data center of the customer, connecting the storage to the infrastructure, and initializing it.

The cost of the solution is quite noticeable, but it provides a good fit regarding the price of the hardware and all of the required licenses. We are fairly satisfied with it as we didn't have any need for additional subscriptions and licenses.

I would suggest thoroughly evaluating all of the benefits of Dell PowerMax NVMe and checking if it provides good value for the money because it might not be feasible for organizations with budget constraints. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten. 

Our primary use case for PowerMax is hosting our VMware environment with VMware SRM hosted on and connected to both. The PowerMax does the SRDF replication for VMware SRM, and some of the workload on it is for the physical environment that consists of Unix, AIX, and Sun Solaris. In addition to that, we have physical Windows and Linux servers as well. We have 1,200-plus virtual machines hosted on PowerMax.

We have two PowerMax 8000s, each deployed at a different site. The capacity of the PowerMax at the primary site is 500 terabytes, and approximately 200 terabytes at the DR site.

We are coming from the VMAX environment where the storage provisioning was a bit complex. We had to create volumes manually from the command line. But with the introduction of the PowerMax, it's a piece of cake for us. We can assign whatever volumes we want in two to three minutes. Storage provisioning has become very simple for us and is a real improvement.

The SRDF site-to-site replication for the volumes is the most important feature for us. That enables us to do site recovery and replication for our VMware infrastructure.

Along with that, the NVMe response time is very good. We used to have a VMAX 20K but we have just upgraded, and moved two or three generations ahead to PowerMax, and the response time is great. Because we are coming from a hybrid storage scenario, the performance of NVMe is a huge upgrade for us. The 0.4 millisecond response time means our application works great and we are seeing huge performance improvements in our VMware and physical environments.

Regarding data security, EMC has introduced CloudIQ solution with the PowerMax environment, and that enables live monitoring of the telemetry and security data array of the PowerMax. CloudIQ also has a feature called Cybersecurity. That monitors for security vulnerabilities or security events that are occurring on the array itself. That feature is very helpful. We have been able to do some vulnerability assessment tests on the array, which have helped us to resolve issues regarding data security and security vulnerabilities. We are not using the encryption feature of the PowerMax, because we didn't order the PowerMax configuration for it.

CloudIQ helps the environment and lets us manage the respective connected environments. A good feature in CloudIQ is the health score of each connected infrastructure. It gives you timely alerts and informs you when a health issue is occurring on the arrays and needs to be fixed. Those reports and health notices are also sent to Dell EMC support, which proactively monitors all the infrastructure and they will open service requests themselves.

In terms of efficiency, the compression we are currently receiving is 4.2x, which is very good efficiency. We are storing 435 terabytes of data in just 90 TB. In addition to what I mentioned about the NVMe performance, which is very good, we were achieving 150k IOPS on the VMAX, but on the PowerMax the same workload is hitting 300k-plus IOPS. That is sufficient for the workload and means the application is performing as required, according to the SLAs as defined on the PowerMax.

When it comes to workload congestion protection, we have not faced any congestion yet in our environment. We have some spikes on Friday evenings, but they are being handled by PowerMax dutifully. It can beautifully handle up to 400k IOPS, even though it is only designed for 300k IOPS. That is another illustration of its good performance.

The CloudIQ features still need to be improved because CloudIQdoes not support PowerProtect DD capacity, although it is working well overall.

Their mobile app also still needs improvement. 

In addition, the web GUI is good and shows all the related reports, but I would like to see more granularity in the reports, and reporting on CloudIQ should be done in the web GUI interface.

There is also room for improvement in the PowerMax architecture and hardware itself. They should design the PowerMax on the basis of PCIe 4.0. I would like to see the possibility of an NVMe drive that operates on PCIe 4.0 and not PCIe 3.0. The design could be very much better if they did some R&D and introduced a version based on PCIe 4.0.

I manage the IT infrastructure of a telco company in Pakistan. I look after the servers and storage infrastructure and I've been with the company for the last eight years. Recently, we have deployed PowerMax, PowerProtect DD and PowerScale Isilon, with the help of Dell EMC and their partners.

In terms of availability, Dell EMC claims PowerMax will give you six nines. We have not faced a single issue in the last six months with PowerMax. The storage has been very stable for us and it's performing well. It's giving us the right amount of uptime and availability.

The NVMe scale-out capabilities were a factor we had in mind when we were evaluating the PowerMax against competitors, including IBM and Huawei. The scale-out capabilities are very important. We have 4 TB of cache with four directors right now, and we can add capacity in the future. If that capacity is met and we need to add more engines for our workload, we can do that very easily.

We are not currently using the NVMe SCM storage tier feature, but that is in the pipeline. If there is a high-demand workload in the future, we will consider the SCM storage.

Dell EMC's support for PowerMax has worked great for us. If we have to open a severity-one, we call their support line. Other than that, the support portal works great. If we have to open a severity-two, or they open a service request with the proper severity, the infrastructure and storage support are very good. They will escalate an issue to the next level when required, as well.

There is some margin for improvement in that they should develop an application for support where you could see support tickets and escalate them if you want.

Positive

I was involved from the initial design to the product evaluation from different vendors, and I was involved in the whole migration project through to its conclusion.

Dell EMC dedicated project managers and members of its professional services team to handle all of our migration from VMAX to the PowerMax without any hassle. And all of our data was successfully migrated within 1.5 months. It was a very good experience for us. There was no downtime and it was a totally non-disruptive migration for VMware, AIX, Windows, and Linux. Only some of the Solaris environment experienced a disruption because we had to reboot the servers. The rest of the migration was non-disruptive and the deployment was very good for us.

For maintenance and admin of the solution, two people report to me. They manage the PowerMax series along with me as the team lead. On the user side, there are different stakeholders. We provision storage to them and then they map the storage to various OSs for VMware, Linux, Solaris, AIX, and Windows. That team is a bit larger and has separate departments, with approximately 25 to 30 people.

We evaluated PowerMax against IBM FlashSystem 9200R and against the Huawei Dorado V6. At that time, Huawei did not have the VMware certification due to US policies and enforcement, but Dorado now has VMware certification. That's why we rated the PowerMax highest.

The solution is very stable and performs well. If you are doing research, look at the architecture of all the available vendors. Evaluate every storage solution with respect to architecture, the NVMe version they are using, and the hardware which they are using.

Out of 10, I would give PowerMax a nine. It has worked very well for us.

My role involves being a system integrator, providing optimal solutions to various sectors like public, airlines, banking, and commercial financial, all within Dell's technology portfolio.

Investing in Dell PowerMax has impacted our operational costs positively, although the actual savings depend on factors like the experience of the engineers implementing the product and the support level chosen.

Dell PowerMax NVMe has been a significant enhancement for data handling in my industry. Its improved security features and data calculation capabilities make it a valuable solution for our customers. The most critical feature of Dell PowerMax NVMe for performance enhancement is its strong network support and integration with other vendors, along with its efficient use of hardware components like CPU and memory. Data reduction technologies in PowerMax have been highly beneficial for our company, allowing us to optimize storage and reduce costs by consolidating files

The one area for improvement in Dell PowerMax NVMe would be to align the features of the on-premises version with those available in the cloud, as this would provide added value and flexibility.

I have been using Dell PowerMax NVMe for the past eight years.

I would rate the stability nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability ten out of ten.

The support has been great.

Positive

The decisive factor in choosing Dell PowerMax over other storage solutions was its ease of use and suitability for enterprise-level data management. It aligns well with the needs of big organizations and offers robust features for AI-driven projects and machine learning initiatives.

Setting up and configuring Dell PowerMax NVMe typically takes about three days. However, if there's migration involved from existing systems to the new PowerMax, that process can extend to around one to two weeks, depending on the complexity and scale of the migration project.

Deploying PowerMax has been straightforward and flexible, especially in integrating with other technologies and vendors.

The pricing might be a bit high for small organizations, so it's more suitable for larger enterprises.

I highly recommend Dell PowerMax NVMe for enterprise-level data management.  My experience with Dell PowerMax NVMe has been excellent, especially compared to other vendors I've worked with in the past, such as VMware, Cisco, and Oracle.

Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten. 

It's mainly when it's driven to performance and high availability, that's the main two use cases that we actually address with the systems. 

The main feature that we are looking into for some storage is the DDoS features as well as transparent failover and failback in terms of high availability. That's the main topic that we're dealing with with these systems, but at our customer sites.

Besides reliability and so on and serviceability also in different countries.

The new versions, like the Power Store, which is coming up, are mainly in the midrange perspective. Because we have a lot of customers from the KMA, which means that we have, like, they typically buy Enterprise-class features with midrange storage, basically, and we don't have typical sizes like the PowerMAX from the solutions, we have either Pure for the higher customers or we have different systems like VNX and Unity and so on from the Dell EMC side.

Dell needs to offer more midrange storage options with enterprise-class features similar to the PowerMAX.

Additionally, the NVMe benchmark could include more features, such as built-in transparent failover.

We are a Dell partner, and we are a pure professional partner, an elite partner as well. 

So, we have been working with this solution for more than 12 years.

We sell the systems and we have been selling them for 10 years now. It depends on whether we sell new systems to our customers or upgrade them. We're basically looking into past solutions that still are ongoing and running, but mainly when we go to new solutions, then it's the latest version that the customers actually can have.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. It is suitable for medium and enterprise-level businesses. 

We're dealing with Dell Storage, which we sell to our customers.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy. 

The deployment time depends on whether you have to do the migration as well, but it's hours to days max.

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

It is quite expensive. 

When it comes to Dell, we prefer to go for Pure Storage, which is more, in our terms, more reliable and simple to use for our customers. 

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.