Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Nasuni comparison

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Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

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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: July 2024).

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Nasuni

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Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Ranking in NAS

1st

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

File and Object Storage (3rd)

Nasuni

Ranking in NAS

3rd

Average Rating

8.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

File System Software (1st), Cloud Migration (4th), Cloud Storage (3rd), Cloud Backup (8th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), Cloud Storage Gateways (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 26.5%, up from 22.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nasuni is 6.6%, up from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NAS

Unique Categories:

File and Object Storage

8.0%

File System Software

26.1%

Cloud Migration

7.4%

Featured Reviews

reviewer2402925

Group manager at a government with 10,001+ employees

May 20, 2024

Offers reliability along with an easy deployment phase

The tool's support team and the way the cases are handled by the product's technical support team are both areas of concern where improvements are required. When replacing hardware parts of the tool, there are about 15 steps to follow before our company gets the parts sent over to us by Dell, making it an area that we feel consists of a lot of unnecessary work for our employees. Dell should streamline the aforementioned process and make it just one or two steps instead of making users go through 15 steps. The support offered after installing the tool to deal with the problems associated with the tool could be a little bit better. After the installation phase, the tool's support services have certain shortcomings because our company is not allowed to use or send the automated error reports back to Dell. The aforementioned process needs to be manually handled by Dell and us, which is why it takes so long, even though we are eligible to get help from a dedicated support engineer. Processing logs and other stuff takes time.

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Greg Robson

Product Owner, Collaboration & Productivity at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Apr 28, 2023

We have less downtime and fewer trouble tickets from users who cannot access their shared files

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. It lacks some content reporting. Then again, it's doing what it is designed to do. Nasuni provides a management console that lets you do specific functions, and it does those well. However, they haven't tried to include functionality that would be useful to people who want to manage the information at a global level. We have to use another tool for that, but it isn't expensive. We run scripts that take a month or more to complete because we have a lot of data. It's taking us a long time to get more detailed information on what is in there. It would be handy if Nasuni offered built-in features for reporting on data ages and file types.

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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

"The tool's most valuable features are high density and scalability."

"The stability of the solution is good."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its performance."

"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) integration with other solutions because of the standard file system protocol."

"Dell has the AI to protect the EMA."

"Our users are able to easily roll back snapshots without going through IT."

"There are also the policies that you set up on replication and purging files, and policies for something called WORM. That's a "write once, read many," where you can't overwrite certain files or certain data. It puts them in a "protected mode" where it becomes very difficult for someone to accidentally delete. We use that for certain files or certain directories, because we're dealing with video and some video has to be protected for chain-of-custody purposes. The WORM feature works great."

"It has allowed us to have more consistent quality controls. It has also allowed us to expand the number of servers in clients processing and accessing data, allowing us to get a lot bigger projects out the door."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pros

"I can see who is logging in on files from all over the globe. For example, if a file is locked, maybe a user in Shanghai has locked files or something, I can see that from the Management Console, then unlock the file."

"Nasuni has the capability of taking a snapshot every five minutes. If a user has accidentally deleted their data, we can recover it from the snapshot and provide the latest data to the user. It's a really great feature, one that is not provided by other vendors."

"Another helpful feature, in addition to restoring a file that was deleted within 24 to 48 hours, is that we have the ability to restore a file or a folder that was deleted, going all the way back to the inception of that file or folder. That means we actually have unlimited backups to the inception point of data with Nasuni."

"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."

"I would recommend Nasuni because it's a proven product that has delivered results for us even in the worst-case scenario. If you're still using a traditional cloud solution like native Azure products, you are still susceptible to human error. Also, you would need to architect your backup and DR solutions, then integrate, maintain, and administer them."

"Nasuni Management Console (NMC) is super valuable, and both physical and virtual filers are also valuable. NMC is the one-stop place for all our filers, both virtual and physical filers. They are definitely doing a great job in housing all our documents and surveillance videos."

"The most valuable feature is the storage in that it only keeps the last-used data locally, while everything else is backed up to the cloud. That way, we never really have to worry about file space in each office or the replication to the other file servers for DR."

"The solution gives us a breakdown and summary of every resource and each volume within every resource. It tells us the code within a given volume, so I can go in there and look at the size of the files that are stored there. Nasuni gives me the big picture and allows me to connect things like Power BI to any endpoint. I can take that tabular information from Nasuni and look at it in a graph."

More Nasuni pros

Cons

"The product needs to improve CLI since commands are complex. The search option is also difficult since you must give the full path."

"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."

"We had some issues with level 1 support. We had to fight with them on repeated issues. There is room for improvement in level 1 support."

"Dell PowerScale's deployment is not easy."

"The cost of Dell PowerScale is currently high and there is room for improvement."

"Data storage performance needs to be improved."

"We lost our technical sales reps about two years ago. We haven't gotten one assigned to us and we'd love to have one."

"The management and monitoring tools comprise a disparate suite of products and the roadmap is very unclear. We've got four different products that look after the Isilon, management-wise, and it's a bit of a mess."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cons

"I would like to see Nasuni create a Dropbox or Box alternative. One of the things that people like about those tools is that they are very easy to implement. They look just like a file server. With Nasuni, you have to be online to get your file storage. With Dropbox, there is a thing running on your PC that downloads the files to it when you need them, i.e., an agent."

"We would like to have a user desktop agent to help improve the end-user experience."

"Some applications may not be suited for the Nasuni environment. You may need something with better performance. Otherwise, if you want to run daily operations or some file system, it's a good bet."

"Nasuni could improve cloud integration and documentation of various ways we can leverage the product. It integrates with Azure, but the native Azure File Sync solution lets you divide data into tiers like hot, cool, and archived. Nasuni doesn't allow you to break the data apart into those tiered categories."

"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 speed at which new files are created is something that could be improved. For example, if you create a new file in another country, I won't see it for between 10 and 15 minutes."

"I would like to see improvement in the training Nasuni provides. Compared to some of the other vendors out there, like Microsoft, where you can find how-to videos, Nasuni only has a lot of PDF documents that you have to go hunting for. It's workable, it certainly isn't a problem, but video walkthroughs would always be helpful."

"The privilege settings need to be more granular, and alerts are an excellent example. If a user doesn't have access to them, they can't see them and access information such as what they may have done wrong, what's there, and when the last sync happened. However, the ability to view alerts also comes with permission to delete them, which is not good, so we need more customization options here."

More Nasuni cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."

"Dell PowerScale is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo."

"The general cost for a system like this is expensive. The total cost depends on your use case. You need to pay for every additional feature that you use."

"The price of the solution is high."

"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."

"The price of the solution can fluctuate. The price can be competitive or other times not. The price of the solution could be better."

"I always want things to be less expensive. However, I would say the pricing is fair. Their costs are in alignment with their competitors. It is a good value for the money."

"Dealing with the product costs and licensing areas is getting easier since Dell is simplifying the licensing process and licensing packages offered to users."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pricing and cost advice

"Its pricing can get a tad expensive. When we first took Nasuni out, we were just paying for the service. We got storage at a reduced rate. It has now changed, and they're now more of an all-in-one type of thing. It can be quite expensive, but it works out. Apart from that, licensing-wise, it's very simple."

"The pricing is fair. It's an enterprise-level solution so it's not inexpensive... The cost is pretty stable year over year."

"With this solution, the license renewal is pretty swift. With the virtual appliance, you just need to take care of the OS versions and patches. In a way, we don't have to struggle much with renewals because the only thing that we need to take care of are the licenses. We renew it every three years. This aspect goes with infrastructural costs because it doesn't cost us too much to maintain the solution."

"It's cheaper than a lot of alternatives but it's not cheap."

"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."

"The cost is based on the capacity, which is approximately $100 USD 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."

"They could lower the cost, but it saves so much money when you go into it (by losing all the backup)."

More Nasuni pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

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)?

Dell PowerScale is expensive on the start-up side but we can recoup those costs quickly by not having to reapply the savings to other equipment.

What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

The price always has room for improvement.

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 ...

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

WekaFS vs Nasuni

Compared 11% of the time

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Nasuni

Compared 8% of the time

Qumulo vs Nasuni

Compared 7% of the time

Egnyte vs Nasuni

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

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Also Known As

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon

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Dell Technologies

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

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Nasuni