Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Nasuni comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and Nasuni based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two NAS solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Nasuni 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
"It assists with eliminating storage silos because it provides SMB and NFS protocols. PowerScale has also helped free up our employee's time to focus on other business priorities.""For maximizing storage utilization, PowerScale is great. When you write the data to it, it spreads it out to all the nodes, so you get all the performance from the entire pool.""The single pane of glass for both IT and for the end-user is a valuable feature. On the IT side, I can actually control where things are stored, whether something is stored on solid-state drives or spinning drives... The single pane of glass makes it very easy to use and very easy to understand. We started at 100 terabytes and we moved to 250 and it still feels like the exact same system and we're able to move data as needed.""It's easy to manage. The web UI is very intuitive, and there's CLI also that you can use to manage it.""I don't have to rebuild the cluster to add a node.""Its scalability has been huge for us.""The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is all the capabilities together.""This has been a valuable solution for our business overall. It offers business continuity and replication features."

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"Nasuni has helped to eliminate on-premises infrastructure. We were using about eight to 10 different types of vendors or small storage boxes for provisioning and shared access for users. We got rid of all those. That has eliminated operational overhead and footprint at our data center. We don't have to worry about any hardware or monitoring particular devices, and hundreds of devices have been decommissioned. Now, for provisioning, everything is on Nasuni. I assume this has made a big difference in costs.""The snapshot functionality and the unified file system are definitely the most valuable features for us. The UFS allows everybody across the organization to see the exact same data at the same time, instead of having different file servers with different structures on them, and that's mission-critical. We have different branches throughout our organization that have to act on that data.""We have less downtime and fewer trouble tickets from users who cannot access their shared files. Nasuni has reduced the friction and noise associated with file management because the devices are more reliable.""The most valuable feature is the simplicity of the backup and restore functions.""The disaster recovery capabilities are very easy because their virtual appliances are just like OVFs or images. You put in a code and it collects all the configuration from the cloud and then builds up the cache. But that doesn't preclude the device from easily being restored or recovered at short notice.""Its dependability and auditing capabilities are very important to us to be able to maintain a chain of custody of the information.""The feature I have found to be most valuable is the revision control of the files. If somebody deletes or accidentally makes a wrong change to files, we can go back to the revision history and restore the previous versions. That is a very good feature that we rely on.""It has the ability to do end-user recovery, or a user can simply contact an admin who can perform a recovery from the management console. The versioning has simplified everything. Now we don't have to worry about those components."

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Cons
"Dell PowerScale's deployment is not easy.""Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve the load distribution capability. For example, in some cases, the system load is not distributed automatically on all the nodes but is concentrated only on one. You have a peak request on only one node and the others don't do anything.""That said, for the other security features, it would be helpful if Tenable - and I know it's outside the scope of this question itself - had Isilon-specific plugins.""Some improvements to the NFS support would be of interest to us.""The biggest weakness is small file handling. Small file compression options are not enabled out of the box. It would be good to have this enabled by default.""The solution can be a bit complex for those not well versed in the technology.""There is room for improvement with the updates. It can take a significant amount of time to do a major OS update. However, even though it takes multiple reboots, the cluster stays up. If we want to apply a newer version of the OS, we have to roll back some of the patches so that we can upgrade. It requires a few reboots just to do that. The cluster doesn't come down, everything is still running, but it's time-consuming, at times.""Because of the magic that it does 'under the hood,' it is very difficult to find out within the system where all your storage is going. That's a little bit of a ding that we have on it. It does so much magic in order to protect itself from drive failures or multiple drive failures, that it automatically handles the provisioning and storage of your data. But by doing that, finding out why a file of a certain size, or a directory of a certain size, is using more storage than is being reported in InsightIQ, is very difficult to discern."

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"The performance monitoring could be improved.""Nasuni provides enough reporting to see what's happening. You can see the number of shares, total volume, issues, conflicts, etc., but it doesn't provide much visibility from a content perspective. For example, it doesn't tell you the data age. When you're trying to sort and filter information, the data creation date is a critical factor. Nasuni doesn't give you that. You can't get a count of all the file types, like the number of PDFs, Word docs, and PPT files.""Nasuni does not support different retention policies within the same volume, so you have to keep creating volumes for retention policies. When you create a new volume, it means you're starting from zero all over again. You can't move data between two volumes. You have to move them from your physical device to Nasuni or your cloud device to Nasuni.""The Nasuni file storage platform doesn't work well when there are a high number of small files. This is the case when a directory structure contains more than 10,000 or 20,000 small files, e.g., 5 KB, 10 KB, or 15 KB. When the user is accessing these files from another geographical location, they might face a slow response or timeouts when connecting to the shares, and then to the files. This is because the file size is small. There is a scope of improvement with this solution when it comes to accessing a large number of small files.""Migration from existing systems, specifically StorSimple, could be improved, but that solution will be end-of-life by the end of the year. Also, the documentation could be more accessible.""Its interface design or the graphic user interface design can be slightly tweaked in some areas. Some built-in setup wizards would be very beneficial. Rather than having to go in and configure it by hand, there should be more setup wizards for onboarding new data shares and getting it set up the way you want. I don't know if these are on their roadmap, but I sat down and talked to them about some of the work concerns, some of the things that we liked, and some of the things that we didn't like. They are probably working on that.""Some of their cross-platform features are really good, but it could always use more.""There is some room for improvement when it comes to monitoring. We are not using Nasuni monitoring. We are using our own monitoring through Xenos. Nasuni can provide better monitoring capabilities for us to monitor all the filers and NMC so that we don't have to use a third-party tool."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The solution is expensive; it is not the cheapest solution out there. If you look at it from a total cost of ownership perspective, then it is a very compelling solution. However, if you're looking at just dollar per terabyte and not looking at the big picture, then you could be distracted by the price. It is not an amazing price, but it's pretty good. It is also very good when you consider the total cost of ownership and ease of management."
  • "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 platform is not cheap. However, on the software side, you can choose what you want license. So, you can start your licensing with the features that you need, then after buying the platform add some other features."
  • "The only drawback for us is that it's a large upfront investment. This was a huge decision for a startup company to make. It took a bit for us to get over the line on it, but we have not regretted it."
  • "We paid an additional fee to have Dell's ProDeploy Plus team implement it."
  • "Price was also a significant factor in our decision to go with PowerScale. The team at EMC, now Dell EMC, came through with a highly competitive offer that tipped the scales towards their solution. There was only one other solution around the same price point, but it could not match PowerScale on features. That other solution is no longer on the market."
  • "Pricing for this solution is reasonable."
  • "This solution is priced slightly higher than others on the market but does offer good quality. With this solution's data reduction and compression, we were able to purchase less. Costs have dropped because of the data rate of compression and deduplication."
  • More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It is around $850 per terabyte per year. Any additional costs that you would incur are for the local caching devices that you'll need to access Nasuni. You kind of provide your own virtual machines or compute to access the data. You also pay for the object storage. So, there are three parts to it. There is the Nasuni license per terabyte. You would also pay for the actual object storage in the cloud, and then you would pay for virtual machines to access the storage."
  • "The pricing is on par with everybody else, and fair."
  • "The cost is based on the capacity, which is approximately $100 USD per terabyte."
  • "It has a license fee as well as hardware costs, which we would incur if we want to use Nasuni Cloud Storage Gateway for upgrades."
  • "I would not say it is economically priced, but it is affordable. If you can afford to pay for it, it is worth the money, but it is definitely not overpriced. It is priced about where it needs to be in the market. We were satisfied with the way they did their licensing and how they handled it. I believe they actually license by data size. It is based on how much data is being held on the machine and replicated, and that's completely understandable. So, for us, their pricing was as expected and affordable."
  • "Our agreement is set up such that we pay annually per terabyte, and we buy a chunk of it at a time. Then if we run out of space, we go back to them and buy another chunk."
  • "The cost of licensing is negotiated and billed annually per terabyte."
  • "There are annual costs that we pay for maintaining all of the snapshot history in the cloud. That is the primary cost that we pay. We occasionally buy newer Nasuni appliances or deploy them to new offices when the need occurs. That capital equipment expenses is less than the cost of buying new file storage systems. For the most part, you are trading a CapEx cost of storage equipment for an OpEx cost for management of all the snapshot data in the cloud."
  • More Nasuni Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of the solution is its performance.
    Top Answer:Dell PowerScale is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo.
    Top Answer:The solution’s interface and pricing could be improved.
    Top Answer:Based on the experience of my organization, Nasuni is definitely worth the money, since it gives you an all-in-one solution where you'd usually need several programs. About the cost, there isn't a… more »
    Top Answer:As someone who has used this feature of Nasuni I can tell you - yes, it's good for file recovery and you'll definitely benefit from very quick times. I can't tell you if it's the best one because I… more »
    Top Answer:Hi, if you pick Nasuni, you'll be benefiting from many services for a good price. Well, it's a personalized price you get after an agreement with the company but in my organization's case, it is a… more »
    Ranking
    1st
    out of 27 in NAS
    Views
    10,538
    Comparisons
    4,897
    Reviews
    24
    Average Words per Review
    649
    Rating
    8.9
    3rd
    out of 27 in NAS
    Views
    2,328
    Comparisons
    1,100
    Reviews
    18
    Average Words per Review
    1,461
    Rating
    8.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
    Learn More
    Overview

    Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon) storage solutions are designed to help manage data for enterprises of all types. Dell PowerScale systems are simple to install, manage, and scale to virtually any size and include a choice of all-flash, hybrid, or archive nodes. Dell PowerScale solutions stay flexible and reliable no matter how much storage capacity is added, how much performance is required, or how business needs change in the future.

    With Dell PowerScale, your data lake always stays simple to manage, simple to grow, simple to protect, and simple enough to handle the most demanding current and future workloads.

    Ideal for companies of any size, from small enterprises to multi-national ones, Dell PowerScale storage provides secure collaboration, modular scalability, flexible consumption models, and easy cloud integrations, all with management tools spanning multiple platforms.

    Key Benefits of Dell EMC PowerScale Storage

    • Centralized management: Manage your storage infrastructure from a single unified platform.

    • Data protection: Dell PowerScale offers security, data protection and replication tools. Back up and protect your data from cyber-attacks with an integrated ransomware defense system.

    • Artificial intelligence: PowerScale is the foundation for building an integrated and optimized IT infrastructure for AI projects, from concept to production.

    • Cloud support: Store and manage your data on the cloud and move data between your data center and the cloud. Dell PowerScale runs data-intensive cloud workloads with no outbound traffic costs.

    • Long-term storage: Dell PowerScale offers highly efficient and resilient active archive storage or long-term data retention for large-scale data archives. With the proven scalability architecture of PowerScale, you can meet your growing archiving demands. Dell PowerScale has a wide variety of enterprise-grade data protection and security options to keep your archived data safe.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Dell EMC PowerScale storage stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its scalability capabilities and its user-friendly centralized management system.

    Rachel B., a chief operations officer & acting CFO at Like a Photon, writes, "PowerScale allows us to manage storage without managing RAID groups or migrating volumes between controllers. It has really simplified things. We're not having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. That takes care of itself. We just worry about the data. It's really easy for deploying and managing storage at the petabyte scale."

    Keith B., the director of IT at NatureFresh Farms, writes, "The single pane of glass for both IT and for the end-user is a valuable feature. On the IT side, I can actually control where things are stored, whether something is stored on solid-state drives or spinning drives... The single pane of glass makes it very easy to use and very easy to understand. We started at 100 terabytes, and we moved to 250 and it still feels like the exact same system and we're able to move data as needed."

    Nasuni is a file data services enterprise focused on assisting firms with their digital transformation, global expansion, and information awareness. The Nasuni File Data Platform is a suite of cloud-based services designed to enhance user productivity, ensure business continuity, provide data intelligence, offer cloud options, and simplify global infrastructure. This platform and its auxiliary services are projected to replace conventional file infrastructure such as network attached storage (NAS), backup, and Disaster Recovery (DR), with an expandable cloud-scale solution. By storing file data in scalable cloud object storage from multiple providers, Nasuni positions itself as a cloud-native alternative for traditional NAS and file server infrastructure. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Nasuni serves sectors like manufacturing, construction, technology, oil and gas, financial services, and public sector worldwide, offering its services in more than 70 countries.


    Reviews from Real Users

    James J., IT Manager at a marketing services firm, says Nasuni’s management dashboard is helpful because he's able to view all of the different filers at once rather than check each one of them individually. He values the software’s security, reliability, good performance, helpful alerting, and responsive support.

    According to a Server Engineering Services Lead at a mining and metals company, Nasuni offers good OR and DR capabilities, performs well, offers data security, and continuous file versioning helps recover from hardware failures.

    The Managing Director of IT at a construction company appreciates Nasuni because it eliminates a lot of work that was previously done when managing backing up and restoring data files.

    Sample Customers
    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,
    American Standard, CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, E*TRADE, Ithaca Energy, McLaren Construction, Morton Salt, Movado, Urban Outfitters, Western Digital
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Government14%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Media Company10%
    Educational Organization10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization23%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Construction Company26%
    Marketing Services Firm15%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Manufacturing Company12%
    Construction Company8%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise29%
    Large Enterprise53%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business6%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise68%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise63%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Nasuni
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Nasuni and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is ranked 1st in NAS with 36 reviews while Nasuni is ranked 3rd in NAS with 35 reviews. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is rated 9.0, while Nasuni is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) writes "We can easily deploy, manage, and maintain systems without needing a huge amount of expertise to facilitate them". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Nasuni writes "We have less downtime and fewer trouble tickets from users who cannot access their shared files". Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is most compared with Dell ECS, NetApp FAS Series, Pure Storage FlashBlade, Qumulo and Huawei OceanStor 9000, whereas Nasuni is most compared with WekaFS, Panzura, Azure NetApp Files, PeerGFS and AWS Storage Gateway. See our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Nasuni report.

    See our list of best NAS vendors.

    We monitor all NAS 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.