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 #15 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 1.0% 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.

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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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon FSx vs. Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

September 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 October 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 1.0%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 8.6%, up from 8.1% 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	1.0%
Other	84.7%

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström

IT Manager at Regin Dalarna

Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades

In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has absolutely simplified our storage because the dashboards on the consoles show a clear understanding of where you are, and it is also very easy to provision. This been a big help for our teams."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

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

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"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."

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"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."

"The shared storage capability is highly valuable."

"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 stability of the solution is good."

"The tool comes with cheap disks and works fast for video content."

"It has allowed us to have more consistent quality controls. It has also allowed us to expand the number of servers in clients processing and accessing data, allowing us to get a lot bigger projects out the door."

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

"The most valuable feature is its single space of storage."

"Dell PowerScale is a scalable solution. It allows non-disruptive upgrades and maintenance of the system."

"The flexibility and the user-friendly interface are the most valuable features."

"PowerScale allows us to manage storage without managing RAID groups or migrating volumes between controllers. It has really simplified things. We're not having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. That takes care of itself. We just worry about the data. It's really easy for deploying and managing storage at the petabyte scale."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pros

Cons

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

"In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray and FlashBlade, allowing for synchronized data between both platforms."

"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."

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

"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."

"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."

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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."

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

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

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

"The portal is really complicated to figure out features and functions, and it could be easier to navigate."

"Dell PowerScale can improve on its multi-tenant part because as a service provider, we have bigger clusters in data centers where we can serve multiple customers and grant them dedicated management points and automation features that can be managed in a multi-tenant environment."

"The product’s expansion capacity, pricing clarity, and ease of use need improvement."

"The tool's support team and the way the cases are handled by the product's technical support team are both areas of concern where improvements are required."

"PowerScale is not suitable for virtual environments."

"I'd like to see more Iceland products in the cloud so that we can port our data into different environments if needed. I would also like to see a virtual appliance or software-defined Iceland product."

"Since our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is our own on-prem in-house built system, we don't have many up-to-date resources, and we're still a few years behind."

"There is room for improvement in its handling of object storage."

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."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"The price could be cheaper."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

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."

"Dealing with the product costs and licensing areas is getting easier since Dell is simplifying the licensing process and licensing packages offered to users."

"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 pricing is expensive, but I think it's a fair value because it does manage itself. It definitely is much simpler than any of the other scale-out storage platforms that we've looked at in the past."

"It is an expensive solution."

"The only drawback for us is that it's a large upfront investment. This was a huge decision for a startup company to make. It took a bit for us to get over the line on it, but we have not regretted it."

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

"The solution is expensive; it is not the cheapest solution out there. If you look at it from a total cost of ownership perspective, then it is a very compelling solution. However, if you're looking at just dollar per terabyte and not looking at the big picture, then you could be distracted by the price. It is not an amazing price, but it's pretty good. It is also very good when you consider the total cost of ownership and ease of management."

"It is a really expensive solution."

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

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

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...

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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.

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

The cost is competitive with other vendors such as HP. I always compare prices between two vendors, and they are good...

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What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

Sometimes, it takes too long to set up everything. That's something I would want them to improve. The main challenge ...

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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 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 5% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon FSx

Compared 21% of the time

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs Amazon FSx

Compared 11% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs Amazon FSx

Compared 11% 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 16% of the time

Qumulo vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 8% of the time

Dell ObjectScale 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 5% of the time

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

October 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Storage

October 2025

Download Amazon FSx product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

October 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)

September 2025

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

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