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CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
CTERA Enterprise File Services reduced costs and time, minimized manual storage, and eliminated SSD and alternative storage needs.
Sentiment score
7.3
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) enhances cost efficiency, scalability, and resource allocation, offering notable ROI and reliability despite some higher costs.
Adding SSD storage to Windows file servers is expensive, and we no longer need to back up those devices.
I am positive that CTERA has helped reduce the total cost of ownership by eliminating the need for manual storage management and reducing storage service processes.
Despite being more expensive than Huawei, it is stable and most enterprises accept the price due to its stability.
In terms of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) specifically, we have seen a return on investment due to faster performance than our last few storage arrays, and the general usability is a lot better.
The second cluster of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) gives us flexibility for small things like code upgrades, all the way to scenarios where we have lost this data center or data, allowing us to check if data is still intact on the other side.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.3
CTERA's platform provides responsive support, rated highly for proactive assistance and efficient issue resolution by knowledgeable agents.
Sentiment score
8.3
Dell PowerScale receives mixed reviews on support, praised for escalation handling but criticized for initial delays and communication issues.
They swiftly address concerns and take ownership of the call, providing a very satisfactory support experience.
High-priority issues are handled promptly.
I would rate their support a ten out of ten.
Dell provides support within four hours, and they always fulfill their promises.
They have managed previous issues well.
I would evaluate the customer service and technical support for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as great.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
CTERA's platform is scalable and easy to expand globally, though CPU and memory licensing constraints may pose challenges.
Sentiment score
8.0
Dell PowerScale offers scalable, flexible storage solutions, easily expanding to meet demands, though often needing technical support for setup.
If we need to upgrade CPU and memory, we should be able to do that without a license upgrade.
CTERA is a very scalable product, allowing us to grow.
It offers good scalability options, including vertical and outward scalability.
We started on PowerScale with around about 300 terabytes and are now two and a half petabytes, still on the same file system.
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.
Dell PowerScale is highly scalable, as evidenced by the reduced physical hardware and the efficient use of rack space.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
CTERA's platform faced initial bugs but improved over time, earning high stability ratings with reliable data access.
Sentiment score
8.4
Dell PowerScale is praised for exceptional stability, near-perfect uptime, easy management, and seamless integration into existing systems.
It has been pretty stable since then.
We had things deployed for years, and we were suddenly getting cloud sync issues that were crashing our sites.
It is very stable and reliable.
I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as perfect.
I find the product to be resilient and stable. There's no downtime and no crashes.
I find Dell PowerScale (Isilon) to be very stable and reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

The CTERA platform needs improvements in monitoring, updates, UI, logging, and performance, while users value current features and support.
Dell PowerScale faces challenges in cost, cloud integration, complexity, and user demands for better pricing, support, and efficiency improvements.
AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring.
It would help to have a global single-pane-of-glass view of all my CTERA devices.
One suggested improvement for the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is the ability to distribute data across multiple active backend storage nodes rather than the current limitation of a single active node.
Hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline.
I would want to see more AI features with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).
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.
 

Setup Cost

CTERA offers cost-effective enterprise file services with flexible licensing, providing significant savings over EMC and Nasuni, especially in Israel.
Dell PowerScale is costly but seen as worthwhile due to features, flexible licensing, and ease of management.
Unlike other solutions that require hardware purchases, CTERA offers software licensing with flexibility across multiple infrastructure providers.
CTERA's pricing seems to be on par with some of the other players, such as Nasuni and Azure.
I find the pricing reasonable.
It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have.
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) shows it's a premium platform, so it's a big amount of money.
The pricing is excellent.
 

Valuable Features

CTERA excels in scalability, flexibility, data management, and protection, making it ideal for hybrid cloud and remote work environments.
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) offers scalable, efficient storage with advanced management, data protection, and security features for versatile workloads.
As soon as something is written to the device, CTERA copies it to the cloud, where it's versioned with snapshots so we can recover it.
A vital advantage of this platform is its instantaneous recovery capability, allowing seamless access to a secondary gateway if the primary one fails.
It is a three-in-one solution for us. It is a file-sharing platform, an archiving solution, and also a backup solution.
Dell PowerScale offers high scalability and stability as well, making it a valuable solution for enterprises.
In our AI initiatives, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) plays a significant role in data analysis, data fusion; principally, it is involved in data analysis, data extraction, and statistical analysis.
Single files are limited to four terabytes in our configuration, however, the system can support up to 16 terabytes, so we can scale based on that too.
 

Categories and Ranking

CTERA Enterprise File Servi...
Ranking in NAS
9th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (2nd), Cloud Migration (8th), Cloud Storage (11th), Cloud Backup (11th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (3rd), Content Collaboration Platforms (10th)
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)
Ranking in NAS
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the NAS category, the mindshare of CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 17.7%, up from 17.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

Igal Muginstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers flexibility, fast performance, and ransomware protection
The platform is releasing new features at a fast pace, which sometimes leads to version updates every three to six months. Although updates are generally not complex, it is challenging to stop the production environment during these updates, even if the downtime is just a few minutes. This is a common challenge across all NAS providers. From my perspective, the most important area for improvement is developing a method to perform updates without affecting customer production environments. Additionally, there are some cache size limitations that might become problematic for future use cases, though they don’t impact current applications. Collaboration for NFS and SMB protocols could also be enhanced. Although this issue isn't specific to CTERA, it is something we are working on together to improve. The quality of the versions has improved, but occasional issues still arise. All solutions face this challenge, but we hope to see a continued reduction in the number of bugs. That said, we haven't had any major production problems in the last four years, and we appreciate how responsive CTERA is to our issues. We engage in brainstorming sessions together, and we value this relationship.
Yamandù Correa - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps reduce data silos, improves performance, and flexibility
Our customers have seen improvement in performance, space, and flexibility for growth and management of data protection through snapshots and other systems. The AI models are something we are looking forward to trying but are not there yet. The algorithms are specific to each company and their industry. One of the most important things is the data localization. Many scenarios require the project data traffic to be close to where it is generated and read. A lot of interaction is between users and systems. So data localization is one of the most important things in terms of using the data algorithm. We don't need to manage our PowerScale and run its storage from any location yet but it is something that is coming for sure because several customers have centralized data in main data centers. But in different locations across the globe. So this is going to be a topic. I think that through the different functionalities that the Dell platform can grant, it will be a great player. When it comes to the flexibility for supporting various data workloads while protecting them, the combination of PowerScale and PPDM and all the other components of the data protection solution right now is key. So the automatic integration between the products is one of the killer features of the solution itself. PowerScale helped us to reduce data silos. This has simplified the management of large data environments in terms of scalability and management instead of having a different solution for the right reports to see how the data evolves and how to better manage them. PowerScale can do that in combination with the other components of the ecosystem. In terms of risk reduction, We need to mention the data management and the recovery part, So of course, the integration with the data domain is key. The fact that we can rely on these functions, and the fact that we also manage different customers, and possess the recovery plans and tests that can prove the solution is working.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
70%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Educational Organization
4%
University
3%
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
I am not directly involved in the pricing aspects, but I understand that CTERA's pricing is competitive and within industry standards.
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
One area for improvement is the migration tool, which at times does not work as designed, necessitating the use of alternative solutions like Robocopy. AI and automation features could enhance the ...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
We use it as a hosted cloud solution. We had initially tried Azure File Sync, but that did not work. Due to certain security concerns, I was tasked with researching alternatives. I evaluated severa...
What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
The solution provides massive performance, scalability, efficiency, and ease of management.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
We have to go through a certified reseller for Dell PowerScale (Isilon). From a value standpoint, it performs very well.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
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 i...
 

Also Known As

No data available
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

McDonald's, WPP, US Navy, Gore, Festo, Stryker, Bezeq, PERI
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 CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.