Dell PowerMax Reviews

Dell PowerMax NVMe is an enterprise array that gives you maximum throughput. It's not a mid-range or small array. Dell PowerMax NVMe can handle a minimum of one petabyte.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerMax NVMe is its replication feature. The replication was configured directly on the array, and we didn't need any separate replication switch.

Dell PowerMax NVMe will have one administration login for DBA. So if you log in, the DBA can see the performance of the database in the storage area level. I have not seen this feature in any other storage vendors.

Dell PowerMax NVMe is costly compared to other solutions.

I have been working with Dell PowerMax NVMe for three years.

We didn't experience any downtime or shutdown with Dell PowerMax NVMe. I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe a nine out of ten for stability.

Dell PowerMax NVMe is a scalable solution. I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe ten out of ten for scalability.

The solution's technical support is really good. Dell PowerMax NVMe's technical support is our benchmark with all other support vendors.

Positive

I have worked with other solutions like Hitachi, HP 3PAR, and IBM storage. Dell PowerMax NVMe makes it easy for a technical or non-technical person to see the performance. If you need to dig deeply into the performance analysis, you'll have more options in Dell PowerMax NVMe than other vendors.

The solution's initial setup was easy because an implementation engineer helped us with everything.

It took two to three hours to deploy Dell PowerMax NVMe.

I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe a five out of ten for pricing.

You need proper technical knowledge to use Dell PowerMax NVMe. A classroom session will help users acquire more technical knowledge to explore and use the array. So it's not easy to dive deep in without technical knowledge. An instructor-led session would be helpful for users before using the array for the first time.

Overall, I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe a nine 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.

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 customers are using it for telecom.

The high availability that other systems don't have. In other systems, there is an owner in the storage processes. But for PowerMAX, there is no owner. All the process storage is passed to all nodes without ownership. So, there is no response feature in the storage in PowerMax. In the other systems, there is a response, which is a very nice feature. No systems have such a feature.

The initial setup could be easier.

I have been working with the solution since the last year. 

The PowerMax solution has been very stable, in my experience. I have been using it for four to ten years and have only had two issues related to internal storage processes. One was a planned maintenance issue, and the other was a CBU failure. Both issues were quickly resolved with no data loss. Once again, it's a very nice feature. You can go with the upgrade without storage records. So it will not affect the production servers.

The product is scalable. 

The initial setup is not difficult. But it's not easy to have access to this material. I'm having a problem right now in this implementation in order to find the procedure generator in order to initialize the system. It's not updated on the website. So, sometimes you suffer from getting the material of the software. You need to have a discussion with the support and the way the account team is in order to provide you with such material.

The deployment thing is different from customer to customer. It depends upon the requirements. But it's fairly easy to deploy. The deployment, once initiated, is easy. There is no problem related to that.

I would rate the deployment process of this solution a five out of ten.

The pricing is competitive. I would rate the pricing of the solution a six out of ten.

For the customers, I advise them to test it and check the features because it has very nice features. It has some features that don’t exist in other solutions, such as the migration for the new PowerMax 2500 and 8500. There will be no more data migration except for licensing the nodes and the old nodes and installing the new nodes. It's a very nice feature, and in the future, there will be no technical attachments and no better migration. It will be very easy for them to implement the new solutions in addition to the other solutions. As for the partners, they have to make sure that they have their knowledge and enrich their knowledge in PowerMax because PowerMax is not an easy solution. They have to understand it to implement it easily.

I would rate PowerMax NVMe a 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.

Dell PowerMax NVMe needs to increase storage and improve scalability. 

I have been using the product for a couple of months. 

Dell PowerMax NVMe's tech support is good. 

We can complete Dell PowerMax NVMe's deployment in a week. 

I rate the product an eight out of ten. 

We mainly use it for databases.

The speed and the compatible interface with IBM are the most valuable features of the PowerMax product.

Dell should work on their marketing strategies to make the product more visible on the market. They should promote the product's compatibility with IBM, as not everyone knows it.

I have been using this solution for four years.

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten.

It is a scalable product. There are over 1000 users in my company.

The customer service was okay. We contact customer support in case of firmware updates; they do that for us. So we contact them. It's okay now. For PowerMax, the support was good because it is enterprise technology. But for other Dell products, the support is worse.

Positive

I have worked with similar products like HP. We made a switch because PowerMax is compatible with IBM's solution. HP, we are using for the other platform.

Before PowerMax, we used internal disks. So it's the first external service for this solution.

The initial setup is easy. We are using PowerMax 2000 with fiber channel connectivity, and it was easy to set up.

The internal team deployed it. It took around a day to deploy the solution completely. We installed it in the physical location, but Dell support has to initialize the storage.

The price was good, that's why we chose PowerMax. We got a five-year pricing model, and therefore, we have five years of support. After five years, of course, if we want to use the support, we have to order support for the next years.

People should test it before buying. I tested this solution and found it suitable for us. However, the solution depends on the specific application and configuration. So, testing before buying is essential.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We have two PowerMax arrays. One is at our primary data center. The other is in the secondary data center, and they replicate back and forth to each other. We use them to store a lot of databases and files, but we don't have as much on them as we used to because our CIO is outsourcing a lot. We have taken a lot out of the data center recently, so there isn't as much on them as we intended when we bought them but I think it's mostly databases, file shares, and some one-off applications. It's all virtualized on VMware as well.

PowerMax improved our storage performance and allowed us to consolidate our old storage into one platform. It's faster than the older EMC equipment we replaced. We had a few different storage arrays, and a couple of them were approaching the end of maintenance, and one was a year away from the end of its maintenance. So it was time to either spend a ton of money on renewing maintenance or replace them. At the same time, PowerMax has made storage provisioning more difficult because it's not as intuitive as other arrays, but it's still a good solution for our mission-critical workloads.

We're using SRDF, but it hasn't affected our storage network bandwidth requirements. We haven't had any issues, so we haven't had to increase the size of any of our connections. Inside the data, there certainly wouldn't be any issues. The only problem would be replicating to the other site, and we haven't had any issues. We have a reasonably large pipe between the sites.

They're basically tanks. You could take a baseball bat to it, and it's still going to keep running and doing what it's supposed to do. We've had a couple of part failures, and you can pretty much replace any part on that thing at any time during the day in the middle of production without worrying about anything happening. Nobody notices. We even had to replace a memory card, so we had to take out a controller. There were two, so no one even realized what was going on. 

The availability is excellent. You can do anything to it, and it still runs. The uptime is a great feature, and the replication has been pretty solid. That's another important feature for us.

The dedupe and compression features have been the biggest disappointment. It's not as efficient as we were expecting or had hoped. It's not terrible, but not as good as we were led to believe it was going to be. They need to improve their reduplication algorithm or the compression algorithms. It comes with a guarantee that you'll get 3-to-1 dedupe and compression, meaning that if you have 3 terabytes of data, it should only take 1 terabyte of space because we reduce its size. We're only getting 2-to-1. It's not a big deal because we have more storage than we'll need, but it's disappointing.

There's also a qualifier in that I'm told that if we filled the array up more, some deeper algorithms would kick in and help that reduction number go up a little. Also, if you have deeper algorithms that you're going to use, only if I put more data on it, is that going to slow things down? Why not just use them now? That also left a lot to be desired. I attempted to use that and was having some performance issues, and the fix was, "Don't use that." So it was a little lacking.

I think management is where PowerMax is weakest. We're still managing it like we managed EMC arrays in the early 2000s. There's a slicker, fancier GUI that does more, but at the end of the day, you still have to dig into the command line and issue a lot of the same commands that we still were using almost 20 years ago. So the ease of use factor is low. One of the reasons I wanted Pure Storage was because I felt like I could teach a coworker how to fill in for me if I ever went on vacation for a couple of weeks. If anything bad happens and I'm out of the office, they're going to have to bother me. This is not intuitive. There are a lot of CLI commands that you still have to use. It's just not as user-friendly as it should be.

We got PowerMax just short of three years ago.

The performance has been good. I wouldn't say great, but it's good. It's more than what we need.

PowerMax's scalability is good. We have the lower model, so it doesn't scale as much as the larger model. You know that going in, so you buy the model you need. We realized we would probably never have to expand it when we bought it.

I'd rate Dell EMC support eight out of 10. It's pretty good. They actively monitor the array, and it dials home to let them know if there's anything they should look at. Sometimes, when I come in the next morning and check the logs, I'll notice that somebody from support had connected in and looked at something. Then, I can look on the support website and try to figure out what they were doing, which could be an easier process, but it's good that they keep an eye on the arrays. If a part fails, the arrays generally dial home to notify them that it needs to be replaced, and they contact me to arrange it. 

Positive

Setting up PowerMax is definitely complex. The initial configuration of the array itself is pretty simple, but once you start trying to connect hosts and set up replication, then it becomes a lot more work than it probably should be. It took a couple of days for the initial setup, but after that, there has been some ongoing work as we put more and more on there. 

We looked at three other vendors, including NetApp, but we were looking for block storage. I've always felt NetApp is great for file storage, but I look elsewhere if I want block storage. And while their presentations were impressive, there wasn't a compelling reason to choose them. They weren't any cheaper. There wasn't anything that stood out about them that made us want to take a closer look.

We also looked at Kaminario, but we had questions about whether they'd still be around in five years to provide support. There were many positives I liked about it, and the price was low. It was like an off-brand version of a Pure array in a lot of ways. Just by playing with it, you could tell it was a year or two behind what Pure Storage was selling.

We also looked at Pure Storage, and I thought Pure Storage had the best mix of cost and ease of use for an organization our size. I felt like it was probably the best choice, but the corporate leadership overruled my recommendation based on the "No one ever gets fired for buying IBM" theory. My CIO was feeling like, "He's a software developer, so he's not very hardware or vendor savvy." He didn't know much about Pure Storage and felt more comfortable sticking with EMC.

I'd give PowerMax seven out of 10. There are also a few things PowerMax does that nobody else offers. For example, some of our other vendors don't have its replication or mainframe connectivity features. If you need that, you have to have a PowerMax or some kind of Dell solution. If you're planning on implementing it, you definitely need someone who knows PowerMax or a VMAX to take care of it for you. You can't just buy one and think that you're going to give it to someone who's never done it before. You need somebody with some experience on staff.