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Buurst SoftNAS vs Dell PowerScale comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Buurst SoftNAS
Ranking in NAS
16th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerScale
Ranking in NAS
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Buurst SoftNAS is 1.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale is 13.8%, down from 17.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerScale13.8%
Buurst SoftNAS1.6%
Other84.6%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

SD
Infrastructure Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Shared file access has improved collaboration but documentation and support still need work
Buurst SoftNAS can be improved regarding enterprise features, as those are not yet matured enough for enterprises. It covers most of the NAS requirements, but some of the advanced features available in premium storage platforms could be more mature. Organizations like ours, which are highly specialized for storage requirements, need additional validation before large-scale deployments. Regarding the needed improvements, I think the documentation and troubleshooting guides are not up to standard and could be improved. The best practices, architectures, and advanced configuration examples should be included in those documentations. Customer support for Buurst SoftNAS can be improved, as I have not seen major support.
RahulSharma8 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group
Unified file sharing has simplified multi-tenant access and has delivered seamless data replication
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) includes its replication features; when we decommissioned our old Isilon cluster, we migrated all of the data to a new cluster, and it was pretty seamless. All you have to do is create the certificates and make those certificates available to the target cluster, then initiate a few jobs. The inter-cluster replication feature, called SyncIQ, allows you to set up all of the jobs and move your data entirely, either timely or all at once. Another suitable feature is the ability to back up your directories; you can take snapshots for all of your directories, and in fact, I believe you can take around a thousand snapshots for a single directory. The inter-replication, geo-replication is one feature. Dell provides a variety class of hardware suitable for your workloads, meaning if your data is just lab and not critical, you don't have to spend much on the hardware; conversely, if your data is mission-critical, you can buy a high-performance node from Dell. Additionally, you can span Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cluster to a large number of nodes, and code upgrades are pretty smooth because all protocols will be upgraded under a single piece of code. Since it provides a single file system that spans across the nodes, you don't have to worry about that directory structure being separately created on individual nodes, making it a fitting solution for a data lake solution because you can access the same data from multiple protocols.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Buurst SoftNAS has impacted my organization positively through cost efficiency compared to other NAS platforms, offering a compelling value proposition."
"The flexibility and the user-friendly interface are the most valuable features."
"What I like the most about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that the storage capacity is very high."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) stability is solid as a rock."
"Features like ransomware protection, file lock retention, and third-party integrations (e.g., Superna for ransomware protection) are significant benefits."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) helps improve the way the organization functions through massive scalability, high performance, a single file system, high availability and reliability, flexible protocols, support for NFS, SMB, HDFS, strong security, cloud integration, efficiency, data protection, snapshot, queue, and sync queue, optimized for unstructured data."
"The maintenance is very good, and the deployment is straightforward as well."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is all the capabilities together."
"The system is robust, has had a big impact on the efficiency of our organization, and serves as storage for our core application, which is a revenue-generating application that plays a key role in our business."
 

Cons

"Buurst SoftNAS can be improved regarding enterprise features, as those are not yet matured enough for enterprises."
"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."
"Because of the magic that it does 'under the hood,' it is very difficult to find out within the system where all your storage is going."
"I would make Dell PowerScale (Isilon) better by improving SmartSync in the graphical user interface. Currently, everything has to be done through the command line, and I prefer having a graphical interface."
"I am uncertain if Dell PowerScale meets the growing needs of my organization."
"One downside of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that it is really complicated to configure."
"PowerScale is not suitable for virtual environments."
"The downside of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that if we are replacing a drive, sometimes in the worst-case scenarios, some of the other drives will also go to the SmartFail state."
"There is room for improvement with the updates. It can take a significant amount of time to do a major OS update."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of the solution can fluctuate. The price can be competitive or other times not. The price of the solution could be better."
"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."
"Dealing with the product costs and licensing areas is getting easier since Dell is simplifying the licensing process and licensing packages offered to users."
"We use the TNA approach which is a great opportunity for us to better manage the licenses based on how much consumption is available for the different customers so we can use that approach and scalability."
"The pricing for this solution is reasonable."
"Dell PowerScale is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo."
"We paid an additional fee to have Dell's ProDeploy Plus team implement it."
"The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise55
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Buurst SoftNAS?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Buurst SoftNAS was that the pricing was initially high. After discussions with the team of Buurst SoftNAS, I was able to negotiate, and as ...
What needs improvement with Buurst SoftNAS?
Buurst SoftNAS can be improved regarding enterprise features, as those are not yet matured enough for enterprises. It covers most of the NAS requirements, but some of the advanced features availabl...
What is your primary use case for Buurst SoftNAS?
I have been using Buurst SoftNAS for two years. File workloads are my main use case for Buurst SoftNAS, and the SMB environments are where we primarily use Buurst SoftNAS. We provide our users with...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Dell PowerScale has been expensive. Setup costs or provisioning experience has been pleasant. Typically you have kickoff meetings and there...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
For improvements, we can focus on enhancing performance, upgrading the nodes, and accessing data through Isilon for more efficiency. Additionally, improvements to interfaces and certain aspects of ...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Dell PowerScale is our main NAS environment storage where we create CIFS and NFS file shares for users.When users request a CIFS file share, they specify the SMB share name and the SmartConnect zon...
 

Also Known As

SoftNAS Cloud Enterprise
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Boeing, Nike, Coca Cola, Hearst, Ndemand, Carbon Media Group, Atypon, The Street, MagHub, CenturyLink, InfoSys
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,
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, CTERA and others in NAS. Updated: August 2026.
909,563 professionals have used our research since 2012.