Dell VMAX All Flash is the latest iteration in the former Symmetrix series of enterprise flash array storage, available in the Dell VMAX 250F edition, or the Dell EMC VMAX 950F edition.
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Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 10.0 out of 10
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Pure Storage in Mountain View, California offers all-flash array data storage promising affordability, high availability, and consistent performance.
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Pricing
Dell VMAX
Pure Storage FlashArray
Editions & Modules
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Dell VMAX
Pure Storage FlashArray
Free Trial
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No
Free/Freemium Version
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No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Community Pulse
Dell VMAX
Pure Storage FlashArray
Features
Dell VMAX
Pure Storage FlashArray
Enterprise Flash Array Storage
Comparison of Enterprise Flash Array Storage features of Product A and Product B
Dell EMC VMAX All-Flash Storage is a very powerful storage that easily manages huge data transactions with high IO processing speed. This Storage is well suited for critical production environments because response times are much better. This storage enables direct data backup. It's always up and running during updates because it creates a redundant connection from the controller.
When you need speed, it's FAST, especially for MS SQL databases. If you are having bottlenecks, you can spend your time finding it in the code because it's not Pure Storage. Love the data reduction and duplication. We can store so much more on this unit than the base physical size. Love the data snapshots. When you need to complete copy your entire environment for testing etc. Nothing is easier, a few clicks and you are done. Extremely helpful for testing and training.
Support - I've never had a call passed off to a different party that I then have to wait to get back to me. The person responding to my support ticket has been able to help me every time.
Non-disruptive upgrades. We were able to transition from a SAS based //m series array to a NVMe based //x series array with zero down time. This gave us greater performance and capacity with minimal disruption.
Simplicity - Pure Storage aims to automate the complicated steps of storage management with superior software. You know they are still happening under the surface, but the administrator does not have to deal with keeping the process just right with a given vendor's command set.
Licensing - All-in base licensing instead of expensive add-on licenses for additional features. There are very few exceptions to this rule.
It has so far been a very fast and stable product. We have had wonderful support when we have needed it and the account manager and engineer attached to our organization have been very responsive with any questions and concerns we have had.
From the day our first array was put in (2017) we have had very little issues using it the way we wanted to and none of the setup or processes we incorporate this into have ever been complex. All of the interfaces in the GUI are very intuitive and do not require any CLI experience to do what we need it to do.
We have never had an outage with Purestorage. Yes we have had 2 drives go out but replacements were installed so fast there wasn't any issues. We have had a NVRAM module replaced but were noticed from Pure they were sending a replacement because they were predicting a failure so pure was proactive preventing any issues. Knowing Pure is monitoring our device 24x7 gives us peace of mind.
The corporation has a very diverse data load and when we migrate from a hybrid storage to pure all-flash, significant gains have already been observed. Latency always remains below 1 ms regardless of the load and volumetry used. Application performance also depends heavily on whether or not the code is more permormatic and network access infrastructure. The product has been meeting expectations
The best part about this array is that once you have it configured it is pretty much done. There is little to no other configurations to be done other than normal volume adjustments. Support is great as they understand this array very well. The updates are very hands-off and are done solely by support. You contact them and then there are no other changes done on the end-user's side.
Pure Support is timely and communicative. They are always ready to assist and very skilled at what they do, no matter the time of day. Even at 12:10 a.m. on New Years Day when your array has a hiccup that causes some errors in your environment, they will be on the phone with you in an instant. If they are unable to determine the cause right away, because things appear to be normal, they will take your environment's configuration, lab it up in their support environment and then research until they figure out what caused the problem. Even if it takes 3 months. True story.
Excellent training and really you don't need that much. We received training at the Pure offices and also on site when the product was installed. Simple things like how to login to the GUI interface, how to setup users, how to create volume and mount it. How to make a snapshot, how to copy it and mount it. Really is pretty self explanatory on how to do things with the GUI interface. We were expecting complicated base on other vendor products, we got super simple.
Great videos and documentation. There is a common theme with PureStorage, "Keep it elegantly simple". They have great support network and great support user groups. Documentation has been very helpful with providing auditors with methods and procedures on security and other ways the product works. Great documentation on setting PureStorage to be the most effective with VM's, SQL Server, and other products.
The EMC array is a lot more robust, but the PURE array does almost the same with about a tenth of ease from the configuration. It really depends on the type of backend servers that you need to support as to whether you need a EMC array or a PURE array.
Pure Storage FlashArray came up as being the most cost-effective of the lot plus the extras added like call-home support were very welcome. The competitors' options were a lot more expensive and the call-home support added a lot more to the already high costs.
We run what seems to me to be a crazy number of hosts (800), backed by 2 pure arrays. Around 400 hosts per array, including database servers, render farm, application servers, etc.
