Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Panzura CloudFS comparison

Dell Technologies and Panzura are both solutions in the NAS category. Dell Technologies is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6, while Panzura is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.2. Dell Technologies holds a 17.8% mindshare in N, compared to Panzura’s 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Panzura users who would recommend it.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Read 55 Dell PowerScale (Isilon) reviews

6,282 Views
3,466 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Panzura CloudFS

Read 8 Panzura CloudFS reviews

847 Views
572 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Panzura CloudFS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

Panzura CloudFS and Dell PowerScale compete in the enterprise data storage market. Panzura CloudFS appears to have the upper hand in deployment ease and cost-effectiveness, making it an appealing choice for cloud transitions, while Dell PowerScale's extensive features cater to large-scale data environments.

Features: Panzura CloudFS supports efficient collaboration with its single namespace, data synchronization, and metadata management, allowing seamless data sharing across locations. Dell PowerScale offers outstanding scalability, high-performance data analytics, and robust protection mechanisms, beneficial for enterprises with heavy data loads and complex storage needs.

Room for Improvement:Panzura CloudFS could benefit from enhancing its data analytics capabilities and addressing any remaining stability issues. Their hybrid cloud integration could be more comprehensive. Dell PowerScale, despite its robust features, might improve user-friendliness and streamline integration with existing IT infrastructures to enhance adoption.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerScale involves intricate setup but offers strong customer support and extensive integration capabilities. Panzura CloudFS provides a straightforward, agile deployment process, complemented by efficient support services, ensuring a smooth transition for organizations moving to cloud models.

Pricing and ROI:Panzura CloudFS offers lower initial costs, making it attractive for those moving to cloud solutions with favorable ROI. Dell PowerScale requires a higher initial investment but provides significant ROI through enhanced performance and advanced features, emphasizing long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Panzura CloudFS Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Panzura CloudFS

April 2025

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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 PowerScale (Isilon)

Ranking in NAS

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

File and Object Storage (4th)

Panzura CloudFS

Ranking in NAS

10th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

File System Software (3rd), Cloud Storage (11th), Cloud Storage Gateways (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 17.8%, up from 17.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Panzura CloudFS is 3.0%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NAS

Featured Reviews

Eric Burgueño

High-Performance Computing Services Manager at The New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Limited

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.

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Roger Clark

I.T. Infrastructure Manager at Thompson Engineering

Handles file locks effectively enabling seamless remote collaboration in global teams

It has not reduced the data storage cost. We have been trying to come up with a plan internally to archive project data at a certain time frame. However, our data continues to grow, so at the point of 25 terabytes, we had to buy another 25 terabytes license to exceed that threshold. It would have been nice if they had offered them in increments, of 5, 10, 15, or 20 terabytes than having to get a whole chunk of 25 terabytes again for licensing purposes, which is a little costly. It would be nice if Panzura offered data in increments instead of 25 terabytes per license. They have done a pretty good job of development from the point of offering new products. Pricing seems to be high for certain things, such as the audit feature of Panzura Data Services. It would be nice to see who deleted that 100 gig of data out there. They should make the pricing plan more attractive for a company of our size. We have almost 700 employees over the southeast from Texas to Florida and up to Tennessee, so we are a pretty big region.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"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."

"I don't have to rebuild the cluster to add a node."

"Since it can scale so easily, as long as I have money to buy more nodes, I can grow it as big as I need to. That is important in our business. As sequencing technologies continue to evolve, and as those technologies evolve, the amount of data generation never gets smaller. It just always seems to get bigger. This is one of the absolute key aspects: We can grow on demand without having to forklift stuff."

"The flexibility and the user-friendly interface are the most valuable features."

"The stability of the solution is good."

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

"The fact that we were able to set it up, use it, and, for the most part, didn't have to worry about it after we had it set up has been valuable."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pros

"The best features of the Panzura CloudFS solution include collaboration, which is my top priority and top feature. No one else provides this as effectively."

"Panzura has not increased its data storage costs."

"Its most valuable features are the collaboration, the file snapshots, and the data protection the solution provides."

"It is a very solid product. We keep all of our older files on their system. It is easy to restore if a file gets deleted. We have good disaster recovery. It is very reliable and very quick, and we do not have files that get overwritten because it locks the file."

"For instance, if I'm in India but need to access data in China or Spain, it simplifies the process and enhances collaboration."

"The main thing in Panzura is that there are three key components: PanFS, NAS, and collaboration. These are strong features, and a big benefit is that you can access everything from anywhere."

"What I appreciate most about Panzura CloudFS is that it really solves the problem we had when we moved all our server workloads to Azure, reducing our on-prem data center footprint sizably."

"Panzura CloudFS has helped to increase the network resilience by 100%."

More Panzura CloudFS pros

Cons

"Improvements could be made to reduce the costs and the high level of knowledge needed to maintain and use them. We had old hard drives with moving parts in Dell PowerScale, and due to this, we must switch to a more efficient environment with all-flash."

"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."

"The product’s expansion capacity, pricing clarity, and ease of use need improvement."

"The price of the solution could be reduced."

"Dell PowerScale's deployment is not easy."

"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."

"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."

"Dell PowerScale can improve on its multi-tenant part because as a service provider, we have bigger clusters in data centers where we can serve multiple customers and grant them dedicated management points and automation features that can be managed in a multi-tenant environment."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cons

"There are a few file types that do not work well with Panzura CloudFS."

"It should be easy for people not on the network to connect and access their files."

"There could be a slightly better dashboard or a better pane of glass. When something goes wrong somewhere, there should be a little bit better alerting with issues before they become a big problem."

"There are a few file types that do not work well with Panzura CloudFS. Specifically, the GIS data formats, such as a geo database, have been found better kept outside of Panzura CloudFS."

"It has not reduced the data storage cost."

"It is a little costly. The NFS service needs development. While Windows and SMB are effective, the NFS service shows some lag, making it a pain point for our many clients who use Linux devices."

"It would be nice if Panzura offered data in increments instead of 25 terabytes per license."

"One area for improvement regarding Panzura CloudFS is moving away from on-prem or local Active Directory. We're exploring a transition to Azure AD or Entra ID, aiming to keep the product functional without heavy reliance on the local Active Directory."

More Panzura CloudFS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

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

"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 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."

"It is an expensive solution."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pricing and cost advice

"The pricing seems high on certain products and features, such as the audit feature of Panzura Data Services. They should consider more attractive pricing for companies of our size. The renewals are yearly, but the pricing is a little high for us."

"It's competitive. I don't know what competitors are charging, but they have been very transparent, which is nice, and we've negotiated to avoid percentage increases."

"It is not bad. It is like everything else. Pricing has gone up quite over the last couple of years, but everybody's pricing has gone up. For what they deliver, it is right in line with what everybody else has."

"The solution's pricing is on the expensive side."

"Overall, it is quite costly compared to NetApp and similar solutions."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

18%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

16%

Construction Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

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.

See all answers

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 years of maintenance covered by Dell. It's a high-cost offering amounting to thre...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

Dell's customer service needs improvement. Specifically, hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline. I face difficulty in tracing and finding the right suppor...

See all answers

What are the products that Panzura provides?

Panzura offers four main products: CloudFS, data services, smart apps, and global services. They call this "all-in-one solution" and it's for end-to-end cloud data management. Why is it called that...

See all answers

What kind of industries does Panzura serve?

Hello, I think businesses from all industries that have their data on a cloud can benefit from Panzura. Especially if you have offices in various locations or your employees are working from home a...

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Why was Panzura acquired? Is the acquisition going to cause a change?

I think Panzura may change in a positive direction now that it's been bought by Profile Capital. That's a very big investment company for technology businesses and I think it's an opportunity for ...

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Comparisons

NetApp FAS Series vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 14% of the time

Dell ECS vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 12% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 11% of the time

Qumulo vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 9% of the time

HPE StoreEasy vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Competitors

Nasuni vs Panzura CloudFS

Compared 78% of the time

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform vs Panzura CloudFS

Compared 11% of the time

More Panzura CloudFS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

May 2025

Download Dell PowerScale (Isilon) product report

Buyer's Guide

Panzura CloudFS

May 2025

Download Panzura CloudFS product report

Also Known As

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon

Panzura Freedom

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."

Dell Technologies

Panzura CloudFS connects data across a distributed network, offering an efficient solution for file storage and management in a cloud environment.

Designed for businesses needing robust data management, Panzura CloudFS enables seamless access and high availability by providing advanced capabilities for distributed file systems. This technology ensures collaboration and data consistency across multiple locations, optimizing enterprise storage strategies and enhancing data governance and compliance. Effective in reducing latency and operational complexity, it addresses the demands of global enterprises seeking scalable and reliable cloud file services.

What are the key features of Panzura CloudFS?

Global File System: Offers a unified view of file storage across multiple sites.
Data Consolidation: Merges various data silos into a single, cohesive storage network.
Security and Compliance: Ensures data protection with built-in encryption and compliance features.
High Availability: Provides continuous access to data with fault-tolerant architecture.
Quick Deployment: Enables rapid integration into existing infrastructure with minimal downtime.

What benefits and ROI should users consider?

Cost Reduction: Minimizes data storage costs through efficient use of cloud storage.
Improved Collaboration: Facilitates real-time file access and sharing across geographies.
Scalability: Supports growing data needs without significant infrastructure investment.
Enhanced Productivity: Reduces operational inefficiencies with streamlined data management.
Security Enhancements: Protects critical data assets with advanced security measures.

Panzura CloudFS finds applications in sectors such as finance, healthcare, and media, where data integrity and accessibility are critical. Financial institutions benefit from secure and synchronized data access, while healthcare providers utilize it for managing patient data across locations. The media industry leverages its capabilities for collaboration and efficient media file handling worldwide.

Panzura

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,

Petrofac, Komatsu, HCA Healthcare, Vanguard, Disney, Pokemon, US Department of Justice, Gensler, Fluor, AFRY, Milwaukee Tool, Navy Federal Credit Union, TechTarget

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Panzura CloudFS

April 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Panzura CloudFS

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