Dell PowerEdge vs. IBM Storage FlashSystem

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Dell PowerEdge
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Dell's PowerEdge R is a line of rack servers, offering a range of options from cost-efficient one-socket servers to four-socket servers designed to support intensive and critical data center workloads.N/A
IBM Storage FlashSystem
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
IBM Storage FlashSystem, an all-flash storage array, delivers ~2 PB of effective capacity per single rack unit. Engineered with unique FlashCore Modules, it offloads data services including compression, encryption, deduplication, and ransomware threat detection ensuring optimum performance and resiliency.
$14,200
Pricing
Dell PowerEdgeIBM Storage FlashSystem
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Dell PowerEdgeIBM Storage FlashSystem
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsEntry-Level IBM Storage FlashSystem: For any organization looking for an all-flash array with features that are both enterprise conducive and budget friendly, the small to entry level offering prices from IBM begin at $18,400. Mid-Range IBM Storage FlashSystem: For businesses wanting to take advantage of an enterprise-quality flash array for critical workloads (such as SQL databases, SAP, ERP, CRM, etc.), list prices start at $104,600. High-Performance IBM Storage FlashSystem: Organizations seeking a storage array with the ability to run multiple instances of critical applications that are both performance intensive and capacity sensitive, can find IBM prices starting at $368,500. Contact IBM for configuration and pricing details.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Dell PowerEdgeIBM Storage FlashSystem
Considered Both Products
Dell PowerEdge

No answer on this topic

IBM Storage FlashSystem
Chose IBM Storage FlashSystem
IBM Storage FlashSystem outperformed all the other storage systems we tested.
It also needs less rack space, and uses much less power.
Features
Dell PowerEdgeIBM Storage FlashSystem
Enterprise Flash Array Storage
Comparison of Enterprise Flash Array Storage features of Product A and Product B
Dell PowerEdge
-
Ratings
IBM Storage FlashSystem
8.8
152 Ratings
1% below category average
Flash Array Performance00 Ratings9.4148 Ratings
Flash Array Integration00 Ratings8.4144 Ratings
Data Compression00 Ratings8.5147 Ratings
Non-Intrusive Upgrades00 Ratings9.6140 Ratings
Simplicity00 Ratings8.3149 Ratings
Power Savings00 Ratings8.6142 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Dell PowerEdgeIBM Storage FlashSystem
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
HPE ProLiant DL
HPE ProLiant DL
Score 8.6 out of 10
Everpure FlashArray
Everpure FlashArray
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Z
IBM Z
Score 9.4 out of 10
Everpure FlashArray
Everpure FlashArray
Score 8.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Dell PowerEdgeIBM Storage FlashSystem
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(23 ratings)
9.5
(150 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
7.6
(6 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(16 ratings)
8.9
(22 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(21 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(16 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.1
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Dell PowerEdgeIBM Storage FlashSystem
Likelihood to Recommend
Dell Technologies
An excellent warranty and excellent technical assistance can be expected from the PowerEdge C Series, which comes from a well-known brand with a long track record in the market. Scalability, physical space optimization and performance and dependability for handling sensitive and vital data like databases and ERP systems that are fairly sophisticated are just some of the benefits we get from Dell gear, which saves us resources and energy by up to 40%.
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IBM
Top choice for IBMi integration. In general, it's a very good solution for quite a lot of customers. If you need a 3 site replication solution (HA + DR) maybe it's not the best solution, unless you use SVC. FlashCore Modules have very powerful compression rate, while mantaining good performance: high IOPS rate and really low latency
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Pros
Dell Technologies
  • Good price - Compared to other vendors’ server platforms. In our scenario (virtualization) we found out PowerEdge offers the best price/vCPU and RAM ratio.
  • Customizable - We were able to select optimal memory/disk capacity for our use case. Other platform's minimum requirements were above our needs, hence needlessly expensive.
  • Good warranty and service - Our project did not involve creating a big cluster with a lot of spare capacity, so the next business day warranty came handy.
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IBM
  • Extremely fast storage
  • Scales up as needed. Add flash core modules easily and increase volumes very quickly.
  • Applying firmware updates to IBM Storage FlashSystem is very easy to do and can be done without any downtime.
  • Replication policies are very versatile and also easy to setup.
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Cons
Dell Technologies
  • The value of 24x7 support is expensive, the value of 8x5NBD is more attractive.
  • The other superior models of the C series are more expensive.
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IBM
  • Definitely we need to be able to extend a volume that is part of a mirror pair or Policy-Based Replication(PBO) on the fly.
  • Expansion of mirrored volumes/volume groups should resynchronise only the changed data (Almost like making use of change-volumes) and not trigger a full resync.
  • Please allow us to select downloading drive microcode also from Fix Central directly onto the flashsystem like with updates.
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Likelihood to Renew
Dell Technologies
It is the best server in the market.
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IBM
As flash technology evolves rapidly, vendors should [adapt] to the changes and onboard them in their products. IBM is a bit slow in adopting advanced technology in [its] portfolio. Even though the current product is good, my decision is purely based on how the transformation of the product [is] being produced and supplied to [the] end-user.
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Usability
Dell Technologies
The Dell PowerEdge R range is just intuitive when you have skills engineers managing them in-house, although even with new members of staff on the team, the learning curve is very low providing they have previous general service hardware management experience. From the specification through to the management of this range, the usability is excellent.
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IBM
The integration into our SVC and the midrange systems are very well working. We do use cross site replication and global mirror which in turn is easy setup and the consistency groups are well maintained. The storage does global mirroring but also internal cross room replication as well. The integration of cloud object storage also helps in tiering the overall system.
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Reliability and Availability
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
IBM
IBM Flashsystems is always available for me, it is fiberchannel storage without the fuzz of what iscsi brings. It is a very reliable storage system, I have almost never issues with this system. The only things which go wrong are the updates because the old updates which have been staged on the disks are not properly cleaned in my opinion.
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Performance
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
IBM
Latency and throughput have been excellent. The compression is done natively on the NVME modules so we do not see an impact there. the distributed parity does not seem to impact write speeds at all. We have found database performace has increased quite a bit over our old hybrid storage solution.
Having a single tier of performance makes it easy to set up SLAs for workloads.
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Support Rating
Dell Technologies
We consider Dell's support to be best-in-class compared to other solutions and is also reasonably priced. Their SLA targets have almost always been met, except for minor occasions that have had extenuating circumstances. The service staff is also professional and thorough. Overall, we are very satisfied with the level of support we receive.
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IBM
Sometimes the knowledge of the support agent is quite limited and the support always has to route through the level 1 agent to screen all the informtion provided. Then its esclated to the next level support with the all collected data . The logs are always uploaded along wiht the case but still its reviewed at the lower level and then escalated / handed over to the next level if its complex issue to solve.
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Online Training
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
IBM
THe training is often selfpaced and easy to follow if you have worked previously with other storage products. The content is clear and contains all the information needed for an admin to learn. However the troubleshooting part is not always included and this is dependent on forums or other sources where the information is not accessible very easily.
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Implementation Rating
Dell Technologies
Installation was easy.
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IBM
I was amazed by the way IBM Flash storage provides a huge amount of storage within the limited footprint, it helped us to replace big fat storage arrays, which aided in the process of moving towards lower hardware, carbon, and energy consumption footprint. We can comfortably say that Flash helped us to host applications fast with a blazing speed and user transactions are quite quick.
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Alternatives Considered
Dell Technologies
Against hp servers, Dell has outperformed them in terms of incidents regarding hardware memory parts. With the Dell PowerEdge R series servers we have not had any incidents regarding memory modules. On the other hand, with HP servers, we encountered a lot of failures regarding memory modules during the first year of implementation.
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IBM
For the past six months, we have been utilizing this technology in our projects to manage a massive workload and produce swift business outcomes on a crucial production database. The IBM FlashSystem 7200, which offers high performance and compression, has so far been a great experience for us. The results and functionality of this product have delighted our consumers.
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Scalability
Dell Technologies
No answers on this topic
IBM
We have been able to scale this storage system whenever there has been requirement for additional capacity and performance. with the help of deduplication we have been able to build quite a robust environment.
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Return on Investment
Dell Technologies
  • From the perspective of physical server consolidations, when servers spread across multiple branch and remote offices are gathered into a central data center, this simplification process provides ROI in several ways. One, the configuration control, restriction of server access.
  • Reduce complexity and enable greater standardization of hardware purchases, which lowers costs.
  • Increased security of the move are important.
  • The costs of moves, add-ins, and changes are reduced, as well as the costs of travel time and maintenance.
  • Migrating legacy operating systems to a newer version via rehosting brings similar ROI benefits when it comes to server consolidation.
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IBM
  • the compression in line means the IBM flashcore allow us to store much more information with less capacity, we can store much more with fewer disks
  • virtualization allows us to extend the useful life of old equipment that we already had separated, as I said, I use them as a repository for backups
  • With the implementation of the new functionality of immutable copies with SafeGuarded Copies, the information is much more secure for possible attacks
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ScreenShots

IBM Storage FlashSystem Screenshots

Screenshot of Flash Core Module 5th GenScreenshot of IBM FlashSystem 5600Screenshot of IBM FlashSystem 5600 (rear)Screenshot of IBM FlashSystem 7600 and 9600Screenshot of IBM FlashSystem 7600 and 9600 (rear)