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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 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
8.4
Pure Storage FlashBlade delivers cost savings, efficiency gains, and increased VM density, with returns seen within four years.
Sentiment score
7.0
Dell PowerScale enhances data management with cost-efficiency, improved performance, storage capacity, resource optimization, and workload automation benefits.
Sentiment score
7.6
Nutanix Unified Storage enhances productivity, reduces costs, and boosts performance, offering quick scalability and over 50% ROI.
Despite being more expensive than Huawei, it is stable and most enterprises accept the price due to its stability.
For me, the biggest return on investment when using this solution is that we do not have to have much support staff to run it.
The scalability challenge with previous systems is lessened with Nutanix since we can expand by adding new hardware without needing migrations.
We are saving approximately 20% to 25% compared with the competition.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.2
Pure Storage FlashBlade's customer service is praised for expertise but sometimes experiences slower responses due to growth challenges.
Sentiment score
8.2
Dell PowerScale support is generally responsive, with some escalation needed; users appreciate assistance with complex technical issues.
Sentiment score
8.0
Nutanix Unified Storage is highly praised for responsive, expert support, though complex issues sometimes face delays or time zone challenges.
I would rate them an eight out of ten.
Dell provides support within four hours, and they always fulfill their promises.
They have managed previous issues well.
The service, particularly about hardware issues and support ticket handling, is an area that needs significant improvement.
They come on the call, start troubleshooting immediately, and resolve issues effectively.
They are very knowledgeable, and if they can't solve the problem, they find the answer within a day or so.
I would give the customer service and technical support a ten out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.9
Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for its scalability and ease of expansion, satisfying various industries like banking and media.
Sentiment score
8.0
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) offers strong scalability, easy integration, and minimal overhead, supporting large data and numerous connections efficiently.
Sentiment score
8.1
Nutanix Unified Storage is favored for its flexible, scalable system, although improper initial sizing can complicate scaling.
Dell PowerScale is highly scalable, as evidenced by the reduced physical hardware and the efficient use of rack space.
Due to both cost and the knowledge required to maintain and use them, there are considerations about scalability.
This means you don't have to buy everything upfront; you can buy what you need and add more as you grow, which is advantageous.
I can rack mount the server or node and add it to the cluster anytime with just one click.
Scalability is fine with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS); it allows compatibility and building on top of existing infrastructure.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.8
Pure Storage FlashBlade is highly rated for stability, reliability, and performance, with minimal downtime and swift recovery.
Sentiment score
8.4
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) offers exceptional stability, minimal downtime, easy management, and resilience, maintaining outstanding performance even in challenging environments.
Sentiment score
8.5
Nutanix Unified Storage is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime and effective support, favored by government and banking sectors.
In case there is any issue with any blade, the data is moved to another.
We have not experienced these issues with Nutanix, which I attribute to the all-flash technology, the quality of their platform, and the responsiveness of the hyper-converged infrastructure.
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very stable.
It automatically triggers tasks, causing performance issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Users want better cloud integration, support, pricing, efficiency, and improvements in analytics, configuration, and backup for FlashBlade.
Dell PowerScale is expensive, lacks cloud version, complicates operations, and needs improvements in encryption, interface, and object storage performance.
Nutanix Unified Storage needs improved interface, integration, security, support, expanded features, flexible pricing, and AI integration.
Its configuration should be easier.
Hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline.
Nutanix could improve the ability to track user actions, such as identifying who deleted a folder.
Including a more granular snapshot restoration process would greatly improve usability, allowing us to restore deleted files rather than the entire share.
A migration tool to transition to better syncing for DR would be valuable, as otherwise, we lose 30 days because of the storage requirement.
 

Setup Cost

Pure Storage FlashBlade is costlier but valued for performance, ease, and reliability, justifying its comprehensive licensing with included software.
Dell PowerScale is costly initially but offers value through comprehensive features, ease of management, and flexibility long-term.
Nutanix Unified Storage offers strong ROI with flexible pricing, advanced features, and competitive costs, especially for existing users.
The pricing of Dell solutions is higher than that of Huawei.
Compared to buying three or four vendor solutions, it is much cheaper.
The cost has doubled for the same amount of data, which was a challenge when presenting use case justifications for the increased cost.
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has definitely helped reduce our total cost of ownership.
 

Valuable Features

Pure Storage FlashBlade offers high performance, scalability, and ease of use with excellent data protection and seamless integration for large storage needs.
Dell PowerScale offers scalable management, reliable performance, data security, and efficient storage with minimal administrative effort and cost management.
Nutanix Unified Storage offers user-friendly, efficient, scalable storage with strong data protection, ease of integration, and streamlined management features.
We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.
Dell PowerScale offers high scalability and stability as well, making it a valuable solution for enterprises.
Dell PowerScale helps in saving costs related to power and rack space, reducing physical hardware from over one hundred to twenty-nine chassis.
Eyeglass is used to monitor for malware, which is very useful for us.
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is appreciated for its fault tolerance and redundancy at the cluster level, which ensures reliable storage of files, folders, and other information accessible on the client side.
My experience with using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for data-intensive workloads is that we have many SQL Servers and they perform much better than they did when we used hybrid converged previously.
The migration from VMware to Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is less complex and less troublesome, and the replication and clustering are very good.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Ranking in File and Object Storage
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (16th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (7th)
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)
Ranking in File and Object Storage
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
NAS (1st)
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Ranking in File and Object Storage
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (6th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), Public Cloud Storage Services (6th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.8%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 8.8%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 3.1%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File and Object Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us
The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.
Eric Burgueño - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplified data management, tremendously reducing our users’ cognitive overhead
The only thing that I think PowerScale could do better is improving the HTTP data access protocol. At the present, you cannot protect access to data via HTTP or HTTPS the same way that you can secure data access through other protocols like NFS or SMB. You can either access a file because it can be access by anyone in the organization, or you cannot at all. There is no in-between. HTTP is not considered a first-class data access protocol, so the Unified Permission Model that would allow a user to authenticate before being able to access a private file, does not apply. However, with the recent introduction of S3 starting from OneFS 9, I believe the necessary plumbing is already there for HTTPS to also be elevated to a first-class protocol in the future because both protocols sit behind a web server under the hood. It does not sound like it would be too complicated to implement, but it would be a valuable feature and it is currently missing.
Juan-Contreras - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensures streamlined management, simplified infrastructure, and efficient data handling
It has effectively managed our unstructured data, including audio and video files. We've experienced smooth operations without any complaints regarding uploading or downloading videos. While video usage isn't as frequent, we primarily utilize it for downloading videos related to specific incidents for administrators or our police department. We've encountered no issues uploading files of any kind. Transitioning from VMware to Nutanix has highlighted the overall flexibility of Nutanix's platform. Unlike VMware's three-tier system, Nutanix simplifies the learning curve by streamlining operations. The update process, in particular, has been favorable, with no critical issues encountered. The resiliency of Nutanix hasn't been thoroughly tested in our environment so far. However, I routinely check fault tolerance settings to ensure they meet our requirements. During the update process, I've observed critical errors occur as hosts restart, but Nutanix's self-healing mechanism handles these issues seamlessly. The benefit of using Nutanix is evident in several ways. Firstly, we've effectively compressed our storage while significantly expanding our overall storage pool. Previously, our service had a capacity of twenty-five terabytes, but with Nutanix, we've scaled up to a hundred and twenty terabytes physically and approximately fifty terabytes logically. This expansion has been accompanied by noticeable improvements in performance, particularly with reduced latency and IOPS well within the boundaries of our equipment. All our resources are centralized in a single location for managing and running storage: our data center. We operate three Nutanix nodes within this center, effectively managing everything from one central location. We don't have any other locations outside of our data center running a Nutanix cluster. Nutanix's capability to eliminate silos within our organization's storage infrastructure was discussed during our recent call with the engineer. Although we haven't explored this feature extensively yet, there's a forthcoming project where we anticipate leveraging it.One thing I'd appreciate is having a desktop application similar to what VMware offered. With VMware, I could download a separate client program onto my computer, allowing me to log in directly rather than accessing the host through a browser.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
18%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
32%
Educational Organization
19%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.
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)?
Every time we purchase a PowerScale solution, we buy four nodes for one data center and four for another, with five y...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Dell's customer service needs improvement. Specifically, hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within ...
What do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?
Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.
 

Also Known As

No data available
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
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,
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.