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Dell EqualLogic PS series vs IBM System Storage DS5000 Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

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

Dell EqualLogic PS series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM System Storage DS5000 S...
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of Dell EqualLogic PS series is 5.2%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM System Storage DS5000 Series is 2.8%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell EqualLogic PS series5.2%
IBM System Storage DS5000 Series2.8%
Other92.0%
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

Khuram Ayyaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Executive at Virtual University
Has enabled uninterrupted access to educational platforms and simplified storage management
Dell EqualLogic PS series is easily scalable, and we can add extra boxes and storage. It was easy to deploy during COVID. Deploying Dell EqualLogic PS series is straightforward, with no complexity involved. Dell EqualLogic PS series is a good product. We did not experience any failures in the last six to seven years, and it is still running as our storage for offline data. There are snapshot capabilities in data protection available, but we did not use that feature because it consumes much space. We have only 150 terabytes of space and simply use it to create volumes without utilizing it for snapshots. We use thin provisioning in Dell EqualLogic PS series, but I did not explore that feature further.
Gustavo Rosello - PeerSpot reviewer
Technological Infrastructure Manager at Mercado Argentino de Valores S.A.
Provides solid hardware and ROI to users
Companies or groups of business units are growing fast. We have perhaps between four and five more people than what it was two years ago, so the systems are increasing, and now we are working with RPA in some of our processes for automation, especially wherever it is mandatory in the financial branch, like a common investment fund and the investment in action or where there are other products. Our market is directly related to small business. We are working with companies where data translation is needed or where invoices, specifically credit invoices, the negotiation of cheques, or a doc that shows receipt of money, which you can sell at a future date. We have a sub-warehouse that has a back office in the cloud to use all operations related to creditors so that the company can increase its share in the markets. I think that we may need something on-premises in the future. The trends indicate that users are returning to on-premises systems because of the high cost of public clouds. We are looking for a better data center. In Argentina, hardware costs are high, but now, it is a great investment. We are slowly planning to expand the tool. In the USA, when it comes to object-first devices, there is a cost of 48,000 USD for 128 TB, but in Argentina, the cost is 64,000 USD for 84 TB. In Argentina, we have a lot of taxes, and the government is in the process of reducing these taxes, but now we have a situation associated with our economy. Out of 100 companies, only two are seeking employees. We are waiting for the recovery of the economy, but everything here is expensive apart from the salaries.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If you have one datacenter fail, the VMs will start to run inside the other data center."
"You can always trust it. It is stable."
"The technical support for EqualLogic has been universally outstanding."
"I have been using Equallogic arrays for myself and my customers for over seven years now, and they continue to be my gold standard for SMB storage."
"The technical support is very good."
"Before deploying it, we used public clouds for our services, facing latency and other issues with other vendors; after deploying this cluster, we were very satisfied and relieved."
"The solution can scale."
"The solution has been working well overall."
"The solution offers an excellent price-performance ratio, including SSDs and compression capabilities. This results in faster performance and potential space savings due to compression."
"You can easily virtualize and share the storage."
"The DS 5000 series never has any problems; it's extremely reliable."
"The IBM System Storage DS5000 Series can be integrated into various platforms such as IBM, Intel, Linux, and others. It provides flexibility in integration wherever storage is required."
"We use it for applications, databases, media, files, etc."
"The system would work well for the customer."
"The stability and performance of the drive are the most valuable."
"The tool is very stable...The solution's scalability is very good."
 

Cons

"The searchable online documentation is missing.​"
"We are having some issues right now where some of the database operations are recovering and we find there are so many IOPS that EqualLogic fans cannot handle it."
"When they deployed our cluster, they did not provide any documentation or low-level or high-level diagrams. They simply came, mounted the servers, and started installation without documentation, which is a negative point on the vendor side."
"There is no option for mixing RAID types in one device."
"There is no inline deduplication capability."
"The solution is out of date and the new version has a lot of advanced features."
"It is at the end of support and no longer supported."
"The price of any good iSCSI array is prohibitive for small businesses."
"The solution's integration with other tools could be improved."
"There are some functions that can only be used in prompt mode."
"The price of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The solution is not flexible enough."
"IBM is not always as agile as other competitors when it is about cloud integration and user interfaces. They're not renewing themselves very often. They have been slow to evolve from the old GUI. The user interface should be improved, especially regarding performance analysis, which has always been a little bit weak as compared to other solutions. As a global solution, it lacks the feature for containing integration object storage. Even though they have now started to offer this feature, it is quite young and not as developed as some other vendors. There are also no mass possibilities at all. They have a lot of competition in the mid-range segment. They need to have a NAS gateway or something like that. It doesn't specifically need to be integrated into the controllers that are keys to the gateway."
"Regarding improvements, there's a common perception, primarily during pre-sales, that IBM storage solutions are expensive, though studies often prove otherwise. As for additional functionality, supporting two to three sites for applications might be a potential enhancement."
"If you decide to expand the IBM System Storage DS5000 Series by adding an extension frame to the controller, you won't have the ability to incorporate flash storage models directly. Instead, you'll need to work with SSD which may be slightly slower."
"The product should improve its support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​It is a fair price."
"Price-wise, the solution is cheap. I rate it a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"Dell EqualLogic PS series can improve its scale-out feature. Sometimes the customer has a limited budget for storage expansion. When they want to expand their capacity, they need to buy a complete controller plus storage capacity, which sometimes is out of their budget. If Dell EqualLogic PS series support could scale up the environment in which only hard drive extension controllers should be supported, then customers can expand within a lower budget."
"Licensing is pretty straightforward."
"It seemed expensive at first, but the durability lowered the cost of ownership dramatically over time."
"All features are out of the box. The license will be in the virtual, OS, or application layer."
"Initial packages include all upgrades and services."
"I don't think I would say that the product is less expensive...The product's price is not an issue for our company, considering the relationship we have with Dell and the customer support we receive."
"We mounted all the virtualization with less than 1,50,000 USD. We are negotiating to get the tool for 800,000,000 Argentine Pesos. The tool is expensive, but it is worth the money."
"Compared to other vendors, I think it's expensive."
"It's an expensive solution."
"It is a competitively priced solution. The cost can vary depending on whether it is purchased from the hardware or the software departments."
"Its price is fair. IBM is quite fair in price when you compare it with others. We also use Hitachi internally, and Hitachi is always a little bit more expensive. NetApp is also a bit more expensive. So, IBM has good positioning in terms of price."
"This product is priced well. The ratio between cost and productivity is very high and we're happy with it."
"The basic functionalities of the product are provided within the normal license, but users can opt for some optional features from IBM's licensing model."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Performing Arts
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Dell EqualLogic PS series?
I do not have anything in mind regarding new capabilities for Dell products at this time.
What is your primary use case for Dell EqualLogic PS series?
We are essentially a university, and we have deployed Dell EqualLogic PS series in our data centers to run our production sites, student portals, websites, our on-premises portal, and campus manage...
What advice do you have for others considering Dell EqualLogic PS series?
I work with Dell EqualLogic PS series. I am an end user and a customer for Dell. I have experience only with Dell PowerEdge, and I do not work with other products like PowerScale or PowerStore. Reg...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM System Storage DS5000 Series?
The price fits well with the proposal of this equipment. Although IBM is not cheap, the cost fits well with the propose.
What needs improvement with IBM System Storage DS5000 Series?
There are some functions that can only be used in prompt mode. If these functions could be shown in the graphical interface, it could be better.
What is your primary use case for IBM System Storage DS5000 Series?
We use the DS5000 for mainframe purposes. We have IBM z System and have installed SAP HANA SaaS for IBM equipment. This equipment storage holds very large data of SAP HANA.
 

Also Known As

EqualLogic PS series
System Storage DS5000 series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FAW Foundry, AW Engineering, Unimat, eLongNet Information Technology, BDO Brasil, Odyssey Space Research
Engine Informštica
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell EqualLogic PS series vs. IBM System Storage DS5000 Series and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.