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Celerra [EOL] 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

Celerra [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerScale
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
NAS (1st), File and Object Storage (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

it_user5157 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr System Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Highly scalable and reliable SAN with fiber channel connectivity but bulky in size and consumes a lot of power
Hot spare disk system to take over the full workload in the event of a failure, at the same performance and service levels. The data is clustered over multiple disks so data read/write access time is very low. Fiber channel connectivity option for high speed data transfer. Single point of management/control. Customized version of Linux OS hence much higher security.
SK
Solutions Architect at a university with 10,001+ employees
Operates seamlessly and minimizes downtime while meeting enterprise file share demands
The features of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) that I appreciate the most include the scale of architecture and the way it is designed. These features benefit my company by providing less downtime and less overhead. While I have not calculated an exact number regarding the reduction in downtime, we have always been using the product, so we have no baseline to compare it to. However, it is a very good product. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) scales very well with the growing needs of my company.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"At last we bought this Celerra NS 40, with 17 TB of space which is giving superb performance."
"We use the solution internally to support our own managed servers and run our own support center."
"We would highly recommend PowerScale; we've been very happy with our overall experience."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the unlimited scalability. The tool has high availability and high storage capacity."
"Customer service is absolutely satisfying, rating at least nine out of ten, as they have managed previous issues well."
"The guaranteed performance, combined with the scalability through its scale-out capability, makes it an excellent choice."
"The most valuable features of the solution are flexibility and ease of implementation."
"The features of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) that I appreciate the most include the scale of architecture and the way it is designed, which benefit my company by providing less downtime and less overhead."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its performance."
 

Cons

"Very bulky and heavy in weight."
"I would want to see more AI features with Dell PowerScale (Isilon)."
"Improvements could be made to reduce the costs and the high level of knowledge needed to maintain and use them. We had old hard drives with moving parts in Dell PowerScale, and due to this, we must switch to a more efficient environment with all-flash."
"It would be nice to see tools like Superna Eyeglass built into PowerScale."
"The solution’s interface and pricing could be improved."
"The hardest challenge we have is due to how we've bought things over time. The way that we moved to the PowerEdge platform for the newer systems creates a scale problem as I still buy the older style systems, which are more dense storage."
"My experience with customer service and technical support has been challenging. The reason is that it is difficult to find subject matter experts around the solution."
"Additional metadata reporting would be great. We have to use a separate tool to report on that. We would like to view the age of data and how long it has been since someone has accessed a file."
"The analytics could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Dealing with the product costs and licensing areas is getting easier since Dell is simplifying the licensing process and licensing packages offered to users."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The price of the solution can fluctuate. The price can be competitive or other times not. The price of the solution could be better."
"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."
"The pricing is excellent."
"Dell PowerScale is expensive on the start-up side but we can recoup those costs quickly by not having to reapply the savings to other equipment."
"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."
"Dell PowerScale is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise51
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
I think Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve some functions such as Apache S3 or containerized storage support, as these aspects are not well-developed. Their support system is weak; many issues ...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Our primary use cases include virtualization storage and external storage via NFS.
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

Celerra
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Wentworth-Douglas Hospital, Kindred Healthcare, Cosentry, Sumitomo Life Insurance Company, Shriners, BZWBK
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: May 2026.
896,510 professionals have used our research since 2012.