We performed a comparison between Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and Veeam Backup & Replication based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Nasuni and others in NAS."PowerScale has made it extremely easy to scale file data across our organization. We have two implementations of Isilon. One is a replica of the other. When scaling, we add nodes to each location and expand the cluster. The process is straightforward."
"For maximizing storage utilization, PowerScale is great. When you write the data to it, it spreads it out to all the nodes, so you get all the performance from the entire pool."
"There are also the policies that you set up on replication and purging files, and policies for something called WORM. That's a "write once, read many," where you can't overwrite certain files or certain data. It puts them in a "protected mode" where it becomes very difficult for someone to accidentally delete. We use that for certain files or certain directories, because we're dealing with video and some video has to be protected for chain-of-custody purposes. The WORM feature works great."
"I don't have to rebuild the cluster to add a node."
"Our users are able to easily roll back snapshots without going through IT."
"The recent introduction of inline deduplication and compression has drastically improved our efficiency ratios to make it an economical product. This solution has also had a positive impact on our employees' productivity because it reduces the amount of admin that our staff needs to handle."
"Its scalability has been huge for us."
"The flexibility and the user-friendly interface are the most valuable features."
"Its ease of use for restore is really good. For Exchange, the Exchange Active Directory is great."
"Its backup capabilities in general are great."
"The backup and replication features are most valuable."
"Pricing is fairly reasonable and not overly expensive."
"The good thing about Veeam is that its initial setup and usage are straightforward."
"I consider the solution's technical support to be excellent, perfect."
"The documentation is very good. It's also easy to install Veeam Backup and Replication."
"The solution is easy to install and very stable."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve the load distribution capability. For example, in some cases, the system load is not distributed automatically on all the nodes but is concentrated only on one. You have a peak request on only one node and the others don't do anything."
"The solution can be a bit complex for those not well versed in the technology."
"Dell PowerScale's deployment is not easy."
"It is a bit higher priced than some of the other systems."
"Its configuration needs to be more straightforward."
"The replication could lend itself to some improvement around encryption in transit and managing the racing of large volumes of data. The process of file over and file back can be tedious. Hopefully, you never end up going into a DR. If you do go into a DR, you know the data is there on the remote site. However, in terms of the process of setting up the replicates and filing them back, that is just very tedious and could definitely do with some improvement."
"The cost of Dell PowerScale is currently high and there is room for improvement."
"It would be nice to see tools like Superna Eyeglass built into PowerScale."
"Lacks online training."
"I would like for them to develop the ability to fix the way it does backups. We can't pick a backup for one database. We have to do a backup on the whole Exchange VM. I'd like for them to change it to where we can do individual backups."
"The Veeam backup application interface is application-based and not web-based."
"The pricing could be improved."
"I only ever found one error. It was when we were doing a file copy job. After using it for ten minutes, it would slow down and cause a bottleneck error."
"Veeam Backup Replication has agents for Linux, but they are not supporting Cluster Shared Volumes. It would be great to have agents for Linux be cluster-aware, just like the Windows agents. That's the main pain point. In addition, we should be able to handle the automation of Oracle backups from the backup server. We should be able to schedule, control, and deploy them from the backup server rather than relying on scripts and/or the system you are backing up to perform the backup. Currently, we install the plug-in inside Oracle VMs and then use crontabs to handle the task schedule on each machine for scheduling the backups. Veeam Backup Replication should also support the automation of Nutanix backups from the backup server, not from the proxy. The other not so major thing is that they don't support legacy systems because Veeam is a new company. It is not as old as other companies. They don't support physical workloads that are really old, which a major challenge, but they do have a point. Legacy systems should be virtualized, and if they're virtualized, then the backup is not an issue with Veeam, but some customers like the physical setup, and they don't want to have it virtual."
"The initial setup could be simplified."
"There's a lot of room for improvement surrounding the backup process."
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is ranked 1st in NAS with 39 reviews while Veeam Backup & Replication is ranked 1st in Backup and Recovery with 329 reviews. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is rated 9.0, while Veeam Backup & Replication is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) writes "We can easily deploy, manage, and maintain systems without needing a huge amount of expertise to facilitate them". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Veeam Backup & Replication writes "Beneficial pricing model, user friendly interface, and many free features". Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is most compared with NetApp FAS Series, Dell ECS, Pure Storage FlashBlade, Qumulo and HPE StoreEasy, whereas Veeam Backup & Replication is most compared with Acronis Cyber Protect, Azure Backup, Rubrik, Zerto and Veritas NetBackup.
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Assuming you want to keep the data within the datacenter, there are a few options:
For Small deployments (~20-100TB's), you could mount share(s) on any backup (media) server and backup the data up over the network using a file-system agent - Veeam could easily support this.
For Medium deployments (~100TB - 1PB), you could use any backup system that supports NDMP. Not sure if Veeam supports NDMP for Isilon, but there are a lot of other vendors that do.
For Large deployments (~1PB+), you may want to consider snap-replicate-snap - Kind of like the NetApp approach to data protection. Take Snapshots of the local Isilon, replicate to a remote (DR) Isilon, and take a snapshot of the DR Isilon. Some may argue that this is not a true backup methodology, but it scales well and you can set up many SyncIQ jobs with different RPO settings to support complex scenarios.
There are a number of alternative cloud solutions available e.g. Druva.
However, if the price is a key factor then you may benefit from by using an Managed Service Provider (MSP). MSP's white label large, credible & established platforms. They provide the same level of speed, uptime, resilience and security as a key brand name but can be as much as half the price. The management of the backup will be optionally yours or fully outsourced to the MSP.
Another benefit of the MSP model is that they will have other skills to complement your own internal resources potentially adding further layers of security and backend IT people to support your operation.
I have no experience with Dell EMC PowerScale though I do know that it is supported by Veeam.
A Veeam Scale Out Backup Repository can distribute the load across the PowerScale cluster via multiple Backup Repository Extents each defined to use a different cluster node DNS A record and path. When backups exceed the maximum file size limitation even with Veeam deduplication and compression, other considerations should be made.
Note: Disable the write coalescer on the share directory and all sub-directories used by Veeam. PowerScale is a complex system and therefore I would advise you to contact Veeam experts on how to deploy Veeam in accordance with PowerScale. But a Scale Out Back Repository is an option, also XFS with reflink supports any Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon) configuration. MSP's are fine too if you are comfortable with having data outside your datacenter.
dsmISI VEEAM (general-storage.com)
It is possible to do it with most types of backup solutions, such as IBM Spectrum Protect.
But it requires a full scan to detect changed files.
The changed files will be the only part that will be sent to the IBM Spectrum Protect storage, using its progressive incremental forever (Always incremental backups).
It is also possible to use NDMP to protect Isilon storage, but that requires periodical full copies, and as Isilon can scale to multiple PB in size. It might not be efficient.
Regards,
Tomas
I did not have the opportunity to backup Isilon servers but, according to Veeam documentation, it is possible to backup NDMP servers data to tape. There are some limitations though: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/d...