Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Qumulo comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and Qumulo 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. Qumulo Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It assists with eliminating storage silos because it provides SMB and NFS protocols. PowerScale has also helped free up our employee's time to focus on other business priorities.""The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is all the capabilities together.""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.""Its scalability has been huge for us.""The flexibility and the user-friendly interface are the most valuable features.""It's easy to manage. The web UI is very intuitive, and there's CLI also that you can use to manage it.""I don't have to rebuild the cluster to add a node.""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."

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"The most valuable features of Qumulo are the ease of management and special permissions that are quick to enable. The overall performance of the solution is good.""The feature that I like most is the analytics part of the file system.""The most valuable features of Qumulo are its rolling updates and all-day availability.""The most valuable feature of Qumulo is the ability to share files and reliability.""It is a very stable product. I never faced any issues.""The data protection algorithm to protect the data between the nodes has been the most valuable feature. The integration with backup platforms such as Veeam and Veritas has also been valuable.""The most valuable feature is real-time analytics.""The ratio of total operational cost to complexity versus feature set is very good."

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Cons
"Additional metadata reporting would be great. We have to use a separate tool to report on that. We would like to view the age of data and how long it has been since someone has accessed a file.""The thing that they are working on now, and we are following closely is more native cloud integrations. The way that we envision workloads in the future is around moving compute to data instead of the other way around. So, we would like to have a single pane glass to manage storage across a variety of different platforms, including native cloud. That would be awesome.""The product needs to improve CLI since commands are complex. The search option is also difficult since you must give the full path.""We used to have a chat feature available on the support site. It's not available to us anymore.""The solution's rate structure or rate redundancy needs to be improved.""The cost of Dell PowerScale is currently high and there is room for improvement.""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.""Dell PowerScale's deployment is not easy."

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"One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential.""The support for iMac and protocols should be improved, not all features are available.""In the next release, I would like to see the ability to have more control at a terminal level of the file system.""The price of the software is a bit expensive, so a reduction in cost would make it more competitive.""The solution could improve availability and improve data protection or data services such as compression of deduplication. In a future release, we'd like to have more cloud API integrations.""Qumulo should continue to expand automation and orchestration capabilities.""Some anti-theft permissions do not transfer well to Qumulo.""In the future, I would like to see non-disruptive updates."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "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."
  • "The only drawback for us is that it's a large upfront investment. This was a huge decision for a startup company to make. It took a bit for us to get over the line on it, but we have not regretted it."
  • "We paid an additional fee to have Dell's ProDeploy Plus team implement it."
  • "Price was also a significant factor in our decision to go with PowerScale. The team at EMC, now Dell EMC, came through with a highly competitive offer that tipped the scales towards their solution. There was only one other solution around the same price point, but it could not match PowerScale on features. That other solution is no longer on the market."
  • "Pricing for this solution is reasonable."
  • "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."
  • More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The price of the solution is in the middle range compared to others. We look at the price per terabyte."
  • "The price of Qumulo is reasonable."
  • More Qumulo Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of the solution is its performance.
    Top Answer:Dell PowerScale is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo.
    Top Answer:The solution’s interface and pricing could be improved.
    Top Answer:The most valuable features of Qumulo are its rolling updates and all-day availability.
    Top Answer:Initially, the failover was supposed to be implemented in Qumulo itself. This failed to happen mid-case, so we had to devise a middleman solution. It was not the cleanest of solutions, but we did get… more »
    Top Answer:We use Qumulo for end-user storage and some application storage as well.
    Ranking
    1st
    out of 27 in NAS
    Views
    10,538
    Comparisons
    4,897
    Reviews
    24
    Average Words per Review
    649
    Rating
    8.9
    7th
    out of 27 in NAS
    Views
    2,187
    Comparisons
    1,673
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    396
    Rating
    8.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
    Learn More
    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."

    Qumulo is a data storage and management platform that promotes object-based storage for users, backup archives, and surveillance. Its primary use case is to provide a cost-effective and feature-rich solution for managing large data. 

    Qumulo's data protection algorithm ensures the safety of node data, while its integration with backup platforms like Veeam and Veritas makes it easy to manage backups. The platform offers a good balance between operational cost and complexity versus feature set, making it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes.

    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,
    County of Riverside Sheriff Department, Hyundai Mobis Automotive North America, University of Arizona, UCSD - San Diego Supercomputer Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, Sinclair Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Kaiser Permanente, Deluxe Creative, Vexcel Imaging, University of Florida, The Madison Square Garden Company, Arizona State University, Cinesite, San Diego Padres Baseball, Johns Hopkins University - School of Medicine, IHME, EllieMae, Washington State University.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Government14%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Educational Organization10%
    Media Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization23%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government8%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise29%
    Large Enterprise53%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business50%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise62%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Qumulo
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Qumulo and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is ranked 1st in NAS with 36 reviews while Qumulo is ranked 7th in NAS with 8 reviews. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is rated 9.0, while Qumulo is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) writes "We can easily deploy, manage, and maintain systems without needing a huge amount of expertise to facilitate them". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Qumulo writes "Useful data sharing, simple cluster scaling, and excellent support". Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is most compared with Dell ECS, NetApp FAS Series, Pure Storage FlashBlade, HPE StoreEasy and Red Hat Ceph Storage, whereas Qumulo is most compared with VAST Data, Scality RING, Nasuni, NetApp FAS Series and Pure Storage FlashBlade. See our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Qumulo report.

    See our list of best NAS vendors and best File and Object Storage vendors.

    We monitor all NAS reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.