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CTERA Intelligent Data Platform vs Dell PowerScale comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2026

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
5.5
CTERA Intelligent Data Platform enhanced efficiency, reduced IT workload and costs, and allowed smaller teams to manage resources effectively.
Sentiment score
6.0
Dell PowerScale offers cost-efficiency and scalability benefits, though some face user adoption challenges and higher initial costs.
It reduced the amount of time IT spent maintaining multiple systems, which let the team focus on higher-value projects.
Member Technical at ADP
Adding SSD storage to Windows file servers is expensive, and we no longer need to back up those devices.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
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.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
Something such as Dell PowerScale puts us ahead of all of our competitors because of the speed at which we can iterate while we are on set.
Chief Executive Officer at Orbital Virtual Studios
Despite being more expensive than Huawei, it is stable and most enterprises accept the price due to its stability.
Senior System Engineer at Atlas Security
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.
Storage & Data Protection Specialist at General Dynamics Land Systems
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
CTERA provides 24/7 responsive support with high user ratings, promptly addressing high-priority issues and continuously improving services.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dell PowerScale support is responsive and knowledgeable, but users report delays with first-level assistance and varying engineer efficiency.
They swiftly address concerns and take ownership of the call, providing a very satisfactory support experience.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
The quality and speed of support for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is some of the best in the industry.
Senior Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
For critical issues, we receive a call within 10 to 15 minutes of creating a request.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
Support online is definitely a ten out of ten.
Associate Business Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
When we face issues, we raise a ticket through the valid portal, and they respond immediately and assign a local engineer to coordinate the support process.
Senior System Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Dell's technical support a ten.
System Support at City of North Las Vegas
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
CTERA Intelligent Data Platform offers effortless scalability, efficient data management, and flexible support for extensive global organizational infrastructure.
Sentiment score
6.8
Dell PowerScale offers seamless scalability, enabling growth and efficient data management with flexible on-premises and cloud integration.
If we need to upgrade CPU and memory, we should be able to do that without a license upgrade.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The licensing supports various data sizes, such as EV16 supporting up to 16 terabytes, and if you exceed that, you move to EV32.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
Scalability depends on the number of sites, capacity, concurrent users, metadata operations, network links, and storage architecture.
Associate Software Engineer at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
We started on PowerScale with around about 300 terabytes and are now two and a half petabytes, still on the same file system.
Storage Architect at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
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.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
As an unstructured data storage solution, writing into it and accessing it from the other nodes is highly scalable with no issues.
Senior Technical Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
CTERA is generally stable with reliable data access; some initial issues resolved, but a few ongoing stability concerns remain.
Sentiment score
8.1
Dell PowerScale excels in stability, reliability, adaptability, near-perfect uptime, and effective data protection, despite occasional support issues.
It has been pretty stable since then.
System Administrator at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
We had things deployed for years, and we were suddenly getting cloud sync issues that were crashing our sites.
Senior Manager of Global Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It is very stable and reliable.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
Since we have good protection levels, the data is secured and replicated across the disks.
Associate Business Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Even if a node goes down, other nodes can respond and provide data back to the user without issues.
Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group
I can confirm that we have experienced six years of zero seconds of downtime.
Technical Engineer at the company in service is
 

Room For Improvement

Users recommend improved monitoring, automation, AI security, UI, documentation, cost-efficiency, scalability, and support to enhance CTERA's platform.
Dell PowerScale requires better pricing, intuitive interface, easier deployment, enhanced performance, security improvements, and advanced cloud and AI integration.
AI and automation features could enhance the platform, such as AI-powered search, predictive storage analytics, and intelligent alerts for proactive monitoring.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a performing arts with 501-1,000 employees
The main problem is that if two people are working on the same file, for example, one in the U.S. and one in Israel, they can overwrite each other’s work without any notification.
CEO at rtt.co
Better visibility into what's happening behind the scenes, cleaner reporting, and simpler policy management would make it feel more effortless at scale.
Member Technical at ADP
Firmware or software updates become effortless with Pure, but with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we must evaluate or conduct trial runs to ensure that these operations will not harm our customer's system; their software is not adequate.
Senior Ai Architect at Logicalis
It should be made more user-friendly in the sense that if I manage it, I should be able to deploy it without having to have a lot of interaction from support.
Manager, Information Technology at a transportation company with 11-50 employees
Regarding Dell PowerScale's AI capabilities, I believe its governance and security are more important for financial or government sectors, so governance and security will require additional upgrades and hardening.
Storage engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find CTERA's pricing competitive with flexible licensing, offering value and reduced costs compared to legacy systems.
Dell PowerScale offers high pricing but justifiable value for enterprise users due to features, scalability, and flexible licensing.
Unlike other solutions that require hardware purchases, CTERA offers software licensing with flexibility across multiple infrastructure providers.
Business Development Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
CTERA’s pricing should be more proportional and accessible so that cost is not the factor preventing customers from purchasing.
CEO at rtt.co
From what I heard from my seniors, a 50 TB capacity license would be around 55 to 60 lakhs in Indian rupees.
Graduate Engineering Trainee at HCLSoftware
It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Cheaper nodes will cost less, while higher performance nodes will be pricier.
Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group
Costs align well with what it delivers, making it a fair price for a powerful tool that meets all our needs.
Tv Systems Technical Supervisor at a media company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

CTERA's platform offers scalability, security, and efficient management with features like ransomware defense, cloud sync, and role-based access control.
Dell PowerScale offers scalable storage, multi-protocol access, efficient data protection, and user-friendly integration for diverse 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.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
A vital advantage of this platform is its instantaneous recovery capability, allowing seamless access to a secondary gateway if the primary one fails.
Business Development Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
When it comes to data protection in CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform, we have encryption methodologies and we also have ransomware protection, which is a wide variety of features offered along with the CTERA appliance and application.
Senior Associate at Iron Mountain Incorporated
Dell PowerScale offers high scalability and stability as well, making it a valuable solution for enterprises.
Senior System Engineer at Atlas Security
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.
Senior Technologist at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
Systems Engineer at Unisity LLC
 

Categories and Ranking

CTERA Intelligent Data Plat...
Ranking in NAS
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (1st), Cloud Migration (4th), Cloud Storage (3rd), Cloud Backup (7th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (5th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (8th), AI Legal & Compliance (3rd)
Dell PowerScale
Ranking in NAS
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of CTERA Intelligent Data Platform is 7.1%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale is 12.9%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerScale12.9%
CTERA Intelligent Data Platform7.1%
Other80.0%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

Tim M. - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Supports global file recovery and rapid data versioning across 80 nodes
When we implemented CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform early on, and we've been on the platform for three years, we have three different cloud portals. We have an EU portal, we have an Americas portal, and we have an APAC portal. It would be nice if we could combine that into one portal just for that global single pane of glass look. We've talked with them about that and they say it's challenging just because of some of the structure, but that would be something nice if we could get that. I integrated with Varonis, and because CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform didn't have initially a working relationship with that vendor, it would have been nice had that pre-existed us saying we need this. But that wasn't totally CTERA's fault. There was a lot of challenge working with the vendor to build out that interface. A single pane of glass for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform would be beneficial. Everything else works fairly well. We've never had a point where we couldn't get to something that caused us to have a serious outage, and that to me is the mark of a good software package. It's never really caused us serious issues. We have our issues, that's true, and every software package does. However, we've always been able to meet the needs of the business, and we drive hard on security, stability, and scalability. From the scalability standpoint, that's one of the most important things to us. We're on their capacity-based licensing, so if I need to ramp up another CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform NAS, if we have an M&A, I can easily and quickly spin up another NAS and start doing that data transition fairly quickly. The biggest maintenance issue with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform is firmware upgrades. We've done a lot of transition from hardware solution to virtualized infrastructure in order to minimize that hardware lifecycle portion of it. We have to upgrade the firmware and sometimes that can be challenging in the nature of business of our size with 80 CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform nodes around the globe. The issue we've had with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform happened recently in a firmware upgrade where there was a major database back-end upgrade and that took some time. For our smaller sites, it would be an hour or two, and I can build that into a fairly easy change window. But in our larger sites where we may have hundreds of terabytes of data, that database update process took maybe a day or a day and a half. That becomes more challenging, especially in a manufacturing environment where people are wanting to access configuration files. We had to pin the data locally because the data would be available on the local edge filer, but the cloud sync, while it was updating the database, the cloud files weren't available. That would be the other thing I'd like to see an improvement on: some way to do those database upgrades either in a more segmented fashion or in some type of offline environment. I understand the logistics behind that sounds easy, but I'm sure it's not.
Santosh Bharadwaj Rangavajjula - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
File sharing has supported collaboration and disaster recovery but security support still needs work
Dell PowerScale can improve specifically for AI workloads, particularly on the MCPs. I would add that we have not seen an official MCP from Dell PowerScale and are relying on open source. It would be valuable to have an MCP server that we can set up directly with them. Regarding Dell PowerScale's AI capabilities, I think its governance and security could be better. We have Superna that we buy along with Dell PowerScale, but we are seeing very big problems with integrating it. Superna is primarily for the security use case, as we want to prevent cybersecurity attacks and ransomware attacks. If Dell is providing this as a supplementary feature, it should provide better support. Regarding Dell PowerScale's AI capabilities, I do not see much accuracy and reliability of output. This is actually a security problem because Dell does not provide official MCP servers while most other vendors are providing it. This forces us to rely on open source, which is not secure. Dell PowerScale plays a role in my organization's AI initiatives as we want to use the Metadata IQ functionality from Dell PowerScale; however, there is not enough support and extensive documentation for us to be able to do this.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
37%
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise32
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise70
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, CTERA Intelligent Data Platform offers subscriptions and costs are associated with cloud storage integration and requests, compute, network connectivit...
What needs improvement with CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
If CTERA Intelligent Data Platform focuses more on centralized monitoring and reporting, it would be very much helpful. Additionally, if they could slightly upgrade the troubleshooting platform for...
What is your primary use case for CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform?
One common use case for CTERA Intelligent Data Platform is replacing separate file servers across offices with a centrally managed global file system. For example, when employees are at different s...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
I think the price is reasonable. We procured this during the time of COVID, around 2022, and the price was very competitive. If you are looking for technology, there will also be a price associated...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
The disadvantage that I felt is not hardware-related. I feel that Dell needs to focus on the service aspects. Once they sell this hardware to customers, customers also expect service from them. Del...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Dell PowerScale is used for keeping our company data. Continental is an automotive company, and we keep recording files on a petabyte basis. We have globally around more than 200 petabytes of Dell ...
 

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 Intelligent Data Platform vs. Dell PowerScale and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,043 professionals have used our research since 2012.