Amazon FSx vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon) comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.3, while Dell Technologies is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.8. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 0.9% mindshare in FaOS, compared to Dell Technologies’s 8.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Dell PowerScale and Amazon FSx compete in the enterprise storage solutions category. Dell PowerScale has the upper hand in customer service, while Amazon FSx is preferred for its advanced feature set.

Features: Dell PowerScale delivers robust data scalability and easy management, supports vast data growth, and excels in network-attached storage capabilities. Amazon FSx offers flexibility through storage types like Lustre for high-performance computing and Windows File Server, aligning features with cloud-centered needs, and enhancing integration with AWS services.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon FSx simplifies deployment and scaling with seamless AWS ecosystem integration but suffers mixed perceptions regarding support. Dell PowerScale, despite a complex setup, benefits from reliable customer service, appealing to enterprises requiring thorough assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerScale involves a notable upfront investment but offers strong ROI through scalability and efficient data management. Amazon FSx employs a pay-as-you-go model, reducing initial costs and providing flexibility in expenses, enhancing ROI for cloud-centric needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon FSx vs. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon FSx vs. Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

July 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.7%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon FSx is 0.9%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 8.6%, up from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File and Object Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)	8.6%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	5.7%
Amazon FSx	0.9%
Other	84.8%

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

Read full review

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Shared storage capabilities provide enterprise value with good reliability

Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS. The auto-scaling feature should be improved, as it currently includes downtime. I need to manually increase the storage, which is not ideal. Integrating FSx with Windows Server is challenging; it's a long process involving Active Directory (AD) setup and synchronization.

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Scott Taylor

Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Manages large data sets efficiently with hybrid cloud integration

My organization is quite large, with about 30,000 employees. The growth has been substantial in areas such as radiology and genomics. One of the best features we've utilized recently is offload to cloud pools due to capacity constraints on-premise. We didn't want to expand Dell PowerScale (Isilon) straight away, so we utilized cloud pools to offload some data to Azure. That's really saved us in certain areas as we didn't have funding to expand Dell PowerScale (Isilon) until next year, which is why we utilized the cloud pools functionality to offload.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."

"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"We used it for disaster recovery perspective behind a number of resources, like batch services and RDS."

"FSx operates as an independent service, not tied to any server, which eliminates dependencies between applications for storage."

"The shared storage capability is highly valuable."

"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Amazon FSx a ten."

"I rate the stability of Amazon FSx ten out of ten."

"Since it can scale so easily, as long as I have money to buy more nodes, I can grow it as big as I need to. That is important in our business. As sequencing technologies continue to evolve, and as those technologies evolve, the amount of data generation never gets smaller. It just always seems to get bigger. This is one of the absolute key aspects: We can grow on demand without having to forklift stuff."

"Its scalability has been huge for us."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its performance."

"The solution is stable."

"Our main goal is to do disaster recovery with whatever solution we use and Isilon makes it pretty simple to replicate those workloads over to our secondary data center."

"The reliability and stability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is good, with no downtime."

"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) definitely deserves ten out of ten for scalability."

"Dell PowerScale has the SmartConnect and SmartConnect Pro features. That's why I like the product."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pros

Cons

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for higher IOPS."

"Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS."

"A direct FTP feature would be beneficial instead of relying on transmission services."

"I've been facing a challenge when doing a failover from FSx side. AWS console does not refresh within a half hour."

"The price always has room for improvement."

"We see room for improvement in Dell PowerScale (Isilon) because we need personnel to effectively utilize all our infrastructure; it's not easy to find skilled people to work on AI and data analysis."

"The UID mapping and how to configure mapping-related things is a struggle."

"Some improvements to the NFS support would be of interest to us."

"That said, for the other security features, it would be helpful if Tenable - and I know it's outside the scope of this question itself - had Isilon-specific plugins."

"The solution is expensive. It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have."

"Improvements could be made to reduce the costs and the high level of knowledge needed to maintain and use them."

"If I could improve one thing on Dell PowerScale (Isilon), it would be better object storage as it recently breached into S3, and that capability could be broadened."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"The price is a little high."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"The lowest price I have paid is $370 or $380 per month, while the highest can exceed $3,000 per month."

"Price was also a significant factor in our decision to go with PowerScale. The team at EMC, now Dell EMC, came through with a highly competitive offer that tipped the scales towards their solution. There was only one other solution around the same price point, but it could not match PowerScale on features. That other solution is no longer on the market."

"It's a high-cost offering amounting to three or four million Swedish kronor, or about $400,000 or euros, for approximately 480 terabytes of storage."

"We paid an additional fee to have Dell's ProDeploy Plus team implement it."

"This solution is priced slightly higher than others on the market but does offer good quality. With this solution's data reduction and compression, we were able to purchase less. Costs have dropped because of the data rate of compression and deduplication."

"I always want things to be less expensive. However, I would say the pricing is fair. Their costs are in alignment with their competitors. It is a good value for the money."

"The price of the solution is high."

"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is an expensive solution."

"It is an expensive product with a high storage capacity suitable for large data requirements."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	17
Large Enterprise	36

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon FSx?

From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for highe...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon FSx?

Our customers mainly use Amazon FSx for high-performance computing. Our customers are mainly in the Life Science and ...

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What advice do you have for others considering Amazon FSx?

There is an ongoing project where my customers are exploring the FSx solution, but not yet for AI-driven projects; th...

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What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

The solution provides massive performance, scalability, efficiency, and ease of management.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

It's considered between mid and high-end regarding. Dell usually knows how to position each model. If the customer wa...

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What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

With every iteration of the OneFS system, new features are being added, and the UI is being updated here and there. S...

See all answers

Comparisons

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon FSx

Compared 24% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs Amazon FSx

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs Amazon FSx

Compared 12% of the time

Qumulo vs Amazon FSx

Compared 7% of the time

VAST Data vs Amazon FSx

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon FSx Competitors

NetApp FAS Series vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 15% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 9% of the time

Qumulo vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 8% of the time

HPE StoreEasy vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 6% of the time

VAST Data vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Storage

August 2025

Download Amazon FSx product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

September 2025

Download Dell PowerScale (Isilon) product report

Also Known As

No data available

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Amazon FSx makes it easy and cost effective to launch and run popular file systems. With Amazon FSx, you can leverage the rich feature sets and fast performance of widely-used open source and commercially-licensed file systems, while avoiding time-consuming administrative tasks like hardware provisioning, software configuration, patching, and backups. It provides cost-efficient capacity and high levels of reliability, and it integrates with other AWS services so that you can manage and use the file systems in cloud-native ways.

Amazon FSx provides you with two file systems to choose from: Amazon FSx for Windows File Server for enterprise workloads and Amazon FSx for Lustre for high-performance workloads.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Dell PowerScale leads in unstructured data management with unified file and object storage, massive scalability, security, and cloud adaptability, enhancing AI, analytics, and enterprise applications with exceptional performance and resilience.

Dell PowerScale Isilon provides a comprehensive platform for unstructured data, excelling in scalability, management, and performance. With features like single-pane management, SyncIQ, and SmartQuotas, it handles large datasets with flexibility and robust security. Its multi-protocol support and seamless expansion improve operational efficiency. While it offers strong data protection, enhancements in cloud integration, cybersecurity, and performance are sought. Users note potential for cost reductions and streamlined configurations and mention desired improvements in object storage handling and NFS support.

What are the key features of Dell PowerScale Isilon?

Single-pane management: Simplifies data control and monitoring through a unified interface.
SyncIQ: Ensures efficient data replication for business continuity.
SmartQuotas: Provides intelligent quota management for optimized storage allocation.
Multi-protocol support: Facilitates cross-platform data access and integration.
Seamless storage expansion: Allows effortless scaling to accommodate growing data needs.

What benefits should users consider when reviewing Dell PowerScale Isilon?

Operational efficiency: Reduces workload with easy management and automation.
Enhanced security: Offers comprehensive data protection and recovery options.
Scalability: Supports large-scale data storage with flexible growth capabilities.
Performance: Delivers high-speed data processing for demanding applications.
Integration flexibility: Adapts to on-prem and hybrid cloud environments for diverse deployment needs.

Organizations across industries utilize Dell PowerScale Isilon for large-scale unstructured storage, supporting applications like video archiving, genomic data storage, and high-resolution imaging. Educational institutions, research centers, and media enterprises rely on its scaled-out storage capabilities, providing centralized, secure storage for diverse applications in hybrid, cloud, and on-prem environments.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Neiman Marcus, T Mobile, Docxellent, Matrix, Lyell

OMRF, University of Utah, Translational Genetics Research Institute, Arcis, Geofizyka Torumn, Cyprus E&P Corporation, Colburn School, Columbia Sportswear, Harvard Medical School, University of Michigan, National Library of France,

Buyer's Guide

Amazon FSx vs. Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

July 2025

Free Report: Amazon FSx vs. Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

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