Dell ECS vs SwiftStack [EOL] comparison

Dell Technologies and NVIDIA are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NVIDIA users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell ECS and SwiftStack [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Nutanix, Dell Technologies and others in File and Object Storage.

To learn more, read our detailed File and Object Storage Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

File and Object Storage

May 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

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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SamuelThomas

Consultant at Key Information Technology L.L.C.

Managing efficiently with user-friendly interfaces for monitoring and managing resources

We normally recommend Dell ECS to enterprise customers and government customers Dell ECS is very easy to handle, primarily because the web UI dashboard and everything is very easy to manage for every customer. They can monitor the DPS, access failures, bandwidth, failed requests, and latency.…

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reviewer1759539

System administrator at a library with 11-50 employees

A nicely-done product that provides a lot of graphs and reports to see what's happening in the background and makes configuration easier

It's very well done for what it's supposed to do, and I don't have anything to add, but I would like them to keep it available to the public. SwiftStack is going out of the market. NVIDIA purchased SwiftStack a couple of years ago, and they won't be making it available to the public anymore. Our license is up to March 31st.

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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

"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."

"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

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

"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."

"It's very easy-to-use."

"What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The performance is good."

"This solution is very easy to use, and is very reliable."

"The performance is good."

"The support is good."

"What I like best about Dell ECS is its stability. I also like that you can use it for large-scale data purposes. The solution works fine for me, and I haven't encountered any issues with it."

"It is 100% stable. It is also scalable."

"It's definitely good for unstructured data. In earlier days, we had Centera, so for the DR it's really good. It has load balancing facility, and we're using it with the Kemp Load Balancer."

"Competitive object storage platform that's stable and scalable."

More Dell ECS pros

"It has helped us with the ability to distribute data to different data centers. As part of our DR strategy, we have nodes automatically replicating data from one data center to the other. This makes it easier for us to not have to shift tapes around."

"The biggest feature, the biggest reason we went with SwiftStack, rather than deploying our own model with OpenStack Swift, was their deployment model. That was really the primary point in our purchase decision, back when we initially deployed. It took my installation time from days to hours, for deployment in our environment, versus deploying OpenStack Swift ourselves, manually."

"The general consensus on what we've done is that the restores coming back from it have been faster than they were from our prior vendor. Ingest speeds are fine. The restore speeds have improved."

"The graphs are most valuable. They have a lot of graphs and reports that you can run to see what's happening in the background to configure OpenStack Swift."

"The SwiftStack Controller, which is the web UI, provides out of band management. This has been one of the best features of it. It allows us to be able to do upgrades and look at performance metrics. It is a top feature and reason to choose the product."

"The performance is good. It is a secondary storage platform designed for archive and backup, so performance for the right use cases is very good. We have been pretty happy in that regard."

"In terms of the hardware flexibility, with SwiftStack not being a hardware company, I literally buy any hardware that's the least expensive, from any vendor... from a flexibility standpoint, I think it's fantastic. I can go to anybody, anywhere - any vendor - and get my hardware."

"The scalability is phenomenal. It seems infinite, as long as you put enough storage in place, add enough nodes."

More SwiftStack [EOL] pros

Cons

"The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top."

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

"I have not seen ROI."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Dell ECS could improve the price of the solution. It is expensive."

"We have had issues when the ECS is expiring or the NetBackup is expiring images."

"The deployment is not easy, and some expertise is required to configure the virtual data center and replication groups."

"They do not have complete documentation, which is very weak and could be improved."

"The initial setup is not so easy."

"You should be able to calculate so that when it's full it's 100% full, not just 90%."

"The solution needs to provide better integration between this solution and all other kinds of systems."

"Dell EMC ECS could improve by having Relational Database Services(RDS) to review progress. Additionally, if the training was provided it would be a benefit, it would be good for our engineers."

More Dell ECS cons

"It's very well done for what it's supposed to do, and I don't have anything to add, but I would like them to keep it available to the public. SwiftStack is going out of the market. NVIDIA purchased SwiftStack a couple of years ago, and they won't be making it available to the public anymore. Our license is up to March 31st."

"[One] thing that I've been looking for, for years as an end user and customer, for any object store, including SwiftStack, is some type of automated method for data archiving. Something where you would have a metadata tagging policy engine and a data mover all built into a single system that would automatically be able to take your data off your primary and put it into an object store in a non-proprietary way - which is key."

"At the moment we are using Erasure coding in an 8+4 setting. What would be nice is if, for some standard configurations like 15+4 and 8+4, there were more versatility so we could, for example, select 8+6, or the like."

"The file access needs improvement. The NFS was rolled out as a single service. It needs to be fully integrated into the proxy in a highly available fashion, like the regular proxy access is. I know it's on the roadmap."

"They should provide a more concise hardware calculator when you're putting your capacity together."

"The biggest room for improvement is the maturity of the proxyFS solution. That piece of code is relatively new, so most of our issues have been around the proxyFS."

"On the controller features, there needs to be a bit more clean up of the user interface. There are a lot of options available on the GUI which might be better organized or compartmentalized. There are times when you are going through the user interface and you have to look around for where the setting may be. A little bit more attention to the organization of the user interface would be helpful."

"I would like to see better client integrations, support for a broader client library. SwiftStack could be a little bit more involved in the client side: Python, Java, C, etc."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

"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."

"The product is very expensive."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"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."

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"The price is a little high."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"We initially purchased all of the licenses at the same time."

"It is an expensive solution. There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product."

"The solution could be cheaper."

"The charges for this solution are made in blocks of models, which are purchased depending on what features an organization requires."

"It is an inexpensive product."

"The product is quite expensive."

"Dell ECS is a cost-effective solution."

"It's a lease-based model, so it's capacity-based. We already negotiated the price a lot, but we're still doing that with Dell because somehow the product was not installed successfully, so there was a lot of struggle in the distributor territory between Dell and the environment itself. I would give the solution a 6 out of 10 for the pricing. There's a little room for improvement."

More Dell ECS pricing and cost advice

"COST_SAVING; We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."

"One of their advantages of being a commercial open source platform is, for the scale that they offer, the pricing is pretty competitive."

"We find the pricing rather steep. Of course, you get quality for your money, that's absolutely true... [But] when you look at the prices of the licensing and the prices of your hardware, it's quite substantial."

"We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."

"The annual support and maintenance costs compared to our old solution for backups had about a two-thirds savings, so about a 60% annual savings on our support and maintenance contract. That savings funded additional expansion for what it was costing us for the support and maintenance contracts on old solution."

"We are able to dynamically grow storage at a lower cost. We can repurpose hardware and buy commodity hardware. There is a huge cost savings, on average $100,000 a year compared to traditional storage for what we have at our size."

"The pricing model is great and makes sense. We have talked about how to get into more of a frequent billing cycle than once a year. That would be an interesting concept to add into the product, having the ability to have monthly billing instead of having to do a one-year licensing renewal. However, the way the license works by charging for storage consumed is definitely what makes them the most competitive."

"Dollar per gigabyte, it costs us more because we are storing more. However, if you look at it from a cost per gigabyte perspective, we have dropped our costs significantly."

More SwiftStack [EOL] pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

21%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell EMC ECS?

The tool is easy to use.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC ECS?

The pricing is moderate and at par with the market. As a service provider, we receive good margins, indicating a favo...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell EMC ECS?

Dell ECS is not fully compatible with S3 ( /products/amazon-s3-reviews ), as it supports around ninety percent of S3 ...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Qumulo vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 4% of the time

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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Dell ECS

Compared 18% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Dell ECS

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Dell ECS

Compared 13% of the time

MinIO vs Dell ECS

Compared 10% of the time

Hitachi Content Platform vs Dell ECS

Compared 3% of the time

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MinIO vs SwiftStack [EOL]

Compared 49% of the time

Peaxy vs SwiftStack [EOL]

Compared 13% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs SwiftStack [EOL]

Compared 12% of the time

More SwiftStack [EOL] Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

May 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell ECS

June 2025

Download Dell ECS product report

Buyer's Guide

SwiftStack [EOL]

May 2025

Download SwiftStack [EOL] product report

Also Known As

No data available

EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, EMC Elastic Cloud Storage

No data available

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

Enterprise-ready. Future-proof. Data-first.

Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) is a file and object storage solution from Dell EMC. ECS has been created to support both traditional and next-generation ecosystems equally. ECS boasts unrivaled economics, manageability, resilience, and scalability to satisfy the demands of today's next-gen, robust business enterprise ecosystems. ECS can easily be deployed in a software-defined model or as a turn-key appliance. ECS is software-defined and multi-layered for unlimited scalability. Every layer is abstracted and scalable with no single point of failure.

Data service layer: Provides S3 access along with access to SWIFT, CAZ, NFS, HDFS.
Storage service layer: Stores, retrieves and protects data.
Fabric layer: Provides clustering, configuration management, health monitoring.

Everything is done within the software, which is containerized, using docker.

ECS is currently deployed using basic commodity hardware, which can easily be federated across as many as eight different locations and managed as a single resource. Additionally, ECS can also protect data at the site level, locally, disk, node, and rack levels. The federation enables a single global namespace with everywhere access to content. Applications can quickly rewrite in an active/active or everywhere active manner.

ECS is also able to be used as secondary storage or archival storage. This will free up valuable primary storage of data that is stale, redundant, or used infrequently, and the data will remain easily accessible. ECS uses policy-based tiering such as Data Domain, Cloud tiering, Isilon using cloud polls, and Geodrive, which give Windows systems direct access to ECS. Windows users can still use server message block (SMB) while leveraging the more expansive ECS storage.

ECS is enterprise-grade and offers valuable features such as retention, multi-tenancy, metering, monitoring, quotas, and more. ECS builds in robust security from the ground up and encrypts data. ECS is compliant with STIG guidelines and adheres to SEC rule 17A-4F.

ECS is an enterprise-ready solution that allows organizations to easily simplify object storage management and visualize information in intuitive new ways, and empowers your business to do even more with data. With ECS, enterprise organizations can deliver cloud-scale economics in-house that will lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and scale, creating greater levels of productivity and profitability.

Reviews from Real Users

One user, who is a deputy director at a tech service company, says ECS offers “good performance, reliability, and technical support”.

Dell EMC ECS is “a stable solution which is easy to scale, install and manage”, relates another user, who is a senior buyer at a tech service company.

"What I like best about this product is that it is a complete solution, both hardware, and software, by the same vendor," summarizes a system engineer at a tech services company.

Dell Technologies

SwiftStack focuses on handling large-scale unstructured data, providing software-defined storage, and boosting data scalability and durability.

SwiftStack is known for its proficiency in object storage, seamless workflow integration, and robust support for multi-cloud environments. Its architecture ensures high-performance data access, making it ideal for big data analytics, media asset management, and backup tasks. Users value its flexibility, ease of integration, and strong performance. The solution's high availability and efficient storage capabilities contribute to its strengths. However, areas needing improvement include customer support response time, initial setup guidance, and enhanced scalability during high-demand periods.

What are SwiftStack's Most Important Features?

Robust Scalability: Easily manages growing data volumes
Multi-cloud Support: Seamless integration across cloud environments
Seamless Data Management: Efficiently handles large datasets
High Availability: Ensures data is accessible whenever needed
Open-Source: Customizable and flexible with extensive API support

What Benefits Should Users Look For?

Enhanced Performance: Handles demanding workloads efficiently
Easy Integration: Adapts well with existing systems and workflows
High Durability: Ensures long-term data storage and protection
Cost-Effectiveness: Reduces overall storage costs
Scalability: Grows with organizational needs

In industries like media management and big data analytics, SwiftStack’s capabilities in high-performance data access and multi-cloud support facilitate efficient data handling. Backup and archival solutions also benefit from its robust storage and high availability features.

NVIDIA

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Atos

Pac-12 Networks, Georgia Institute of Technology, Budd Van Lines

Buyer's Guide

File and Object Storage

May 2025

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