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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Nasuni comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 2024

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
7.3
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) enhances cost efficiency, scalability, and resource allocation, offering notable ROI and reliability despite some higher costs.
Sentiment score
7.5
Nasuni users enjoy cost savings, increased productivity, and efficiency from reduced labor, cloud scalability, and improved data management.
Despite being more expensive than Huawei, it is stable and most enterprises accept the price due to its stability.
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.
The second cluster of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) gives us flexibility for small things like code upgrades, all the way to scenarios where we have lost this data center or data, allowing us to check if data is still intact on the other side.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.3
Dell PowerScale receives mixed reviews on support, praised for escalation handling but criticized for initial delays and communication issues.
Sentiment score
8.2
Nasuni's customer service is praised for responsiveness and professionalism, efficiently solving issues with reliable and knowledgeable support.
Dell provides support within four hours, and they always fulfill their promises.
They have managed previous issues well.
I would evaluate the customer service and technical support for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as great.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Dell PowerScale offers scalable, flexible storage solutions, easily expanding to meet demands, though often needing technical support for setup.
Sentiment score
7.3
Nasuni offers scalable, user-friendly data storage, efficiently meeting diverse organizational needs and supporting physical or virtual deployments.
We started on PowerScale with around about 300 terabytes and are now two and a half petabytes, still on the same file system.
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.
Dell PowerScale is highly scalable, as evidenced by the reduced physical hardware and the efficient use of rack space.
I rated the scalability as seven because even though the solution can scale, load balancing must be done manually, as it's not automated.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Dell PowerScale is praised for exceptional stability, near-perfect uptime, easy management, and seamless integration into existing systems.
Sentiment score
8.2
Nasuni is praised for its stability, offering reliable performance, minimal maintenance, and flexibility with virtually no downtime issues.
I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as perfect.
I find the product to be resilient and stable. There's no downtime and no crashes.
I find Dell PowerScale (Isilon) to be very stable and reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerScale faces challenges in cost, cloud integration, complexity, and user demands for better pricing, support, and efficiency improvements.
Nasuni struggles with cloud integration, performance, and user experience, needing improvements in data retention, security, and analytics.
Hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline.
I would want to see more AI features with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).
If I could improve one thing on Dell PowerScale (Isilon), it would be better object storage as it recently breached into S3, and that capability could be broadened.
I suggest Nasuni improve their syslog forwarders to support TCP protocol, as it's more secure than UDP, which is plain text and not protected at all.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerScale is costly but seen as worthwhile due to features, flexible licensing, and ease of management.
Nasuni offers competitive pricing with flexible cloud compatibility, licensing per terabyte, and cost-effective enterprise solutions.
It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have.
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) shows it's a premium platform, so it's a big amount of money.
The pricing is excellent.
I prefer solutions with lower pricing.
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) offers scalable, efficient storage with advanced management, data protection, and security features for versatile workloads.
Nasuni provides scalable cloud-based file management with global file locking, data security, and efficient disaster recovery features.
Dell PowerScale offers high scalability and stability as well, making it a valuable solution for enterprises.
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.
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.
The features I find most valuable in Nasuni are the unlimited snapshots, antivirus capabilities, auditing, and ransomware protection.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)
Ranking in NAS
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (3rd)
Nasuni
Ranking in NAS
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (1st), Cloud Migration (3rd), Cloud Storage (5th), Cloud Backup (15th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (10th), Cloud Storage Gateways (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 17.7%, up from 17.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nasuni is 5.3%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

Yamandù Correa - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps reduce data silos, improves performance, and flexibility
Our customers have seen improvement in performance, space, and flexibility for growth and management of data protection through snapshots and other systems. The AI models are something we are looking forward to trying but are not there yet. The algorithms are specific to each company and their industry. One of the most important things is the data localization. Many scenarios require the project data traffic to be close to where it is generated and read. A lot of interaction is between users and systems. So data localization is one of the most important things in terms of using the data algorithm. We don't need to manage our PowerScale and run its storage from any location yet but it is something that is coming for sure because several customers have centralized data in main data centers. But in different locations across the globe. So this is going to be a topic. I think that through the different functionalities that the Dell platform can grant, it will be a great player. When it comes to the flexibility for supporting various data workloads while protecting them, the combination of PowerScale and PPDM and all the other components of the data protection solution right now is key. So the automatic integration between the products is one of the killer features of the solution itself. PowerScale helped us to reduce data silos. This has simplified the management of large data environments in terms of scalability and management instead of having a different solution for the right reports to see how the data evolves and how to better manage them. PowerScale can do that in combination with the other components of the ecosystem. In terms of risk reduction, We need to mention the data management and the recovery part, So of course, the integration with the data domain is key. The fact that we can rely on these functions, and the fact that we also manage different customers, and possess the recovery plans and tests that can prove the solution is working.
Barry Sunanan - PeerSpot reviewer
It helped us save 40 to 45 percent on some types of data
It can provide a 360-degree view of your data, depending on how you implement it and whether you're storing your data in Nasuni. However, if you're working with multiple cloud providers, I don't think it's mature enough to provide a 360-degree view of what's in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. I think it can do it, but it's still a lot of scope and range fitting. Given that Nasuni storage is actually cheaper in some areas, it made sense for us to move a lot of our data away from Microsoft. Nasuni gave us more of a 360 view of that particular data type. Other data types are a little different because the company went in a direction where they wanted to store some stuff in an AWS S3 bucket rather than a file storage system. An S3 bucket has its advantages, but if you were to store more of your data in Nasuni, you would get a wider 360-degree view of it rather than on several cloud providers. I have data in AWS, Google, and Azure, and I would like to see a wider view of all the data stored across these three top providers. Currently, I use it for AWS and Azure, but I couldn't use both of them at the same time. I think Nasuni could have better visibility across these different areas. I had to take my data out and then do some analysis to get the costs. It would be helpful to have more built-in analytics tools to compare the storage costs between the various cloud providers. I would also like some graphing capabilities. We had a tool called Grafana that we used for graphing. I think some more visual analytics like that would be nice.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
The solution provides massive performance, scalability, efficiency, and ease of management.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
We have to go through a certified reseller for Dell PowerScale (Isilon). From a value standpoint, it performs very well.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
I would make Dell PowerScale (Isilon) better by improving SmartSync in the graphical user interface. Currently, everything has to be done through the command line, and I prefer having a graphical i...
Does Nasuni have a good pricing model?
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 ...
Is it easy to restore files with Nasuni?
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...
What features and services does Nasuni offer?
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 ...
 

Also Known As

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Nasuni and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.