Dell ECS vs Zadara comparison

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6,715 views|5,730 comparisons
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968 views|453 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell ECS and Zadara based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two File and Object Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Dell ECS vs. Zadara Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"I have been satisfied with the stability.""I like that the solution is easy to scale and that's its stable.""Dell ECS is a cost-effective solution that provides ease of use and availability.""What I like best about this product is that it is a complete solution, both hardware, and software, by the same vendor.""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.""I have found Dell ECS to be scalable.""The most valuable feature for me is off-site storage.""This product is very competitive."

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"A nice feature is the immutable object storage, which can be used in conjunction with Veeam.""The processing is much faster with this product.""Zadara Storage Cloud having 24/7 management saves me support and engineering costs because the storage and computing are managed by a third-party. We are able to focus more attention on the customer, which is truly our core business. Even at 1:00 AM or 2:00 AM at night, someone will answer, which is important.""The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use.""One of the most useful features is that they provide iSCSI as a service.""One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage compute instances in there. Being able to integrate with compute, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections.""The most valuable feature of Zadara is its ease of use and safety. Overall the solution is a complete package, it has all the features needed.""It's very easy to expand and compared to other storage systems that we've used, it's a lot more expandable and a lot more flexible in how it's deployed."

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Cons
"The solution’s stability could be improved.""From an improvement perspective, Dell ECS should aim to offer a better pricing plan to its users.""The setup is very complex.""The initial setup is not so easy.""If Dell ECS would be available as standalone software, so you can use any hardware with it, would make the solution better. It would also be good if Dell ECS had more integrations with other products.""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.""They could provide centralized reports.""The solution could be more cost-effective and secure."

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"Having iSCSI over the internet using a VPN, the IPSec tunnel is really the only thing that I find missing from this product.""In the next release, there can be some improvements to the web console by adding more features because the console is simple. Additionally, the calculator could improve.""Some of the features are a little bit slow to come to market.""The range of support of VMware could be better. It can support Windows, however, it cannot support other operating systems like IBM AIX. This needs to improve.""There are still some storage features that they lack. For example, other vendors implemented the auto-tiering feature a long time ago, while Zadara Storage Cloud is just coming out with this feature today. So, they are a little bit late compared to the market.""I would like to see them be a little bit more proactive in terms of the patches and updates that are available. I would like to see more disclosure and information around what fixes or what enhancements are available within a patch, and help in coordinating and scheduling that. Right now, it's driven more by the customer in reaching out via a support ticket.""Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves.""The management interface is more geared towards end-users rather than a service partner like ourselves, and there are improvements that can be made around that."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Dell EMC ECS is too expensive."
  • "We are not paying for the license at this stage."
  • "The solution could be cheaper."
  • "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."
  • "We initially purchased all of the licenses at the same time."
  • "The price of Dell ECS should be reduced."
  • "The price of Dell ECS should be reduced."
  • "The charges for this solution are made in blocks of models, which are purchased depending on what features an organization requires."
  • More Dell ECS Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "For our use, it's appropriately priced and overall, it's proved to be very cost-effective against other tier-one vendors."
  • "The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using."
  • "It is a nice licensing model and it makes it quite simple because we just pay for what we use, and the bill that comes shows us exactly what customers are using what resources."
  • "The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."
  • "The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."
  • "One of the factors that ruled out several providers was cost. They were way too expensive for the volume of data that we needed and the speed at which we needed to be able to manage it. There aren't a lot of providers that can do that."
  • "If you just take the street price of Zadara Storage Cloud and look up the price or cost per hour, then you could think that Zadara Storage Cloud is extremely expensive or a solution only for enterprise use. That is not true. You need to compare the entire system. This means that you don't stop looking at just the street price, but you need to consider all the features, requirements, and costs of support as well as the extra cost that other vendors have. Other players just play with hidden, additional costs. Everything is included in Zadara Storage Cloud's licensing cost; what you get is what you pay for."
  • More Zadara Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:More features for remote management and administration could be included in the product. They could provide centralized reports.
    Top Answer:The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use.
    Top Answer:In the next release, there can be some improvements to the web console by adding more features because the console is simple. Additionally, the calculator could improve.
    Top Answer:We use services on Zadara for our customers in Brazil.
    Ranking
    5th
    Views
    6,715
    Comparisons
    5,730
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    368
    Rating
    8.1
    11th
    Views
    968
    Comparisons
    453
    Reviews
    3
    Average Words per Review
    1,918
    Rating
    9.3
    Comparisons
    Dell PowerScale (Isilon) logo
    Compared 20% of the time.
    Amazon AWS logo
    Compared 17% of the time.
    NetApp StorageGRID logo
    Compared 10% of the time.
    MinIO logo
    Compared 9% of the time.
    Red Hat Ceph Storage logo
    Compared 7% of the time.
    MinIO logo
    Compared 23% of the time.
    Amazon S3 logo
    Compared 21% of the time.
    Wasabi logo
    Compared 10% of the time.
    Red Hat Ceph Storage logo
    Compared 8% of the time.
    Also Known As
    EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, EMC Elastic Cloud Storage
    Learn More
    Overview

    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. 














    Zadara is a powerful enterprise-level storage solution whose design enables it to handle every aspect of a user’s data storage needs. It can be deployed in any location, using any protocol, and storing any data type that an organization requires. With Zadara, organizations can do everything that they were able to do with more traditional systems in a cheaper and more efficient way. 

    Zadara Benefits

    Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Zadara include:

    • Security. Zadara is built with data security in mind. All of a user’s data is heavily encrypted by Zadara’s software so that it is safe both while it is in storage and while it is being transferred somewhere else. It comes with role-based access controls that prevent a user’s data from being seen by those who lack the proper level of authorization. It also comes with dual-factor authentication and other similar methods of identity management. 
    • Reduced costs. While Zadara offers enterprise-level storage capabilities, the costs associated with utilizing it are far less than those of similar solutions. Some of the resources that it offers are totally free of cost. The model that it utilizes is a pay-as-you-go model. Organizations only pay for the resources that they use and nothing more. Users are not required to sign up for any particular period of time. They are in complete and total control of what they spend on the solution. 
    • Storage efficiency. Zadara ensures that users are able to store their data in the most efficient way possible. It takes a number of approaches that prevent insufficient data storage. These approaches are:

      1. 
      Thin-provision volumes. This method only allows actually written data to be counted toward the storage capacity that is consumed. 

      2. 
      Pattern removal. Zadara searches a user’s stored data for repetitive binary sequences. Once it identifies the repetitive binary sequences, it deletes them.

      3. 
      Inline deduplication (all-flash only). This method ensures that Zadara only stores unique data blocks in its system.

      4. Inline compression.
      Zadara takes data that is stored in its system and compresses it. This keeps larger blocks of data from taking up too much room. 

    Zadara Features

    • Centralized management.  Zadara comes with a centralized dashboard that enables organizations to monitor and control their storage operations from a single location. 
    • File analytics. Organizations can leverage a powerful analytics package that can provide them with critical insights. These tools can help users sort through their data and make more informed data management decisions.

    • Remote mirroring. This feature enables users to replicate data in two remote locations at the same time. This makes it easy for data to be recovered in the event of an unexpected loss. It also aids remote teams in their collaboration efforts by giving them access to the same data at the same time. 

    Reviews from Real Users

    Zadara is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its extensive suite of cloud solution integrations and its object storage capability. 

    Steve H., the chief technology officer at Pratum, writes, “One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage computer instances there. Being able to integrate with computing, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections.”

    Mauro R., the CEO of Momit SRL, says, “The object storage feature is wonderful. With traditional storage, you have a cost per gigabyte that is extremely high or related to the number of disks. With Zadara Storage Cloud, you have a cost per gigabyte that you can cut and tailor to your needs independent of the number or size of the disks.”

    Sample Customers
    Atos
    Time, Inc. A&E Network, The Washington Post, News UK, McGraw Hill, Gilt, Toshiba, Deloitte, VMware
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company30%
    Financial Services Firm30%
    Mining And Metals Company10%
    Government10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company12%
    Government8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Manufacturing Company12%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise40%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business70%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise20%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business34%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise51%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell ECS vs. Zadara
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell ECS vs. Zadara and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell ECS is ranked 5th in File and Object Storage with 24 reviews while Zadara is ranked 11th in File and Object Storage with 9 reviews. Dell ECS is rated 8.0, while Zadara is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Dell ECS writes "Scalable and stable object storage platform, with good storage group functionality". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zadara writes "We're able to scale up or down almost instantly, and changes are handled efficiently by their managed services team ". Dell ECS is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), Amazon AWS, NetApp StorageGRID, MinIO and Red Hat Ceph Storage, whereas Zadara is most compared with MinIO, Amazon S3, Wasabi, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Red Hat Ceph Storage. See our Dell ECS vs. Zadara report.

    See our list of best File and Object Storage vendors.

    We monitor all File and Object Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.