Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Red Hat Ceph Storage comparison

Dell Technologies and Red Hat are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.8, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.9. Dell Technologies holds a 8.8% mindshare in FaOS, compared to Red Hat’s 18.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 82% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Red Hat Ceph Storage and Dell PowerScale Isilon are key players in the enterprise storage solutions market. Dell PowerScale Isilon appears to have an edge due to its robust features, although it comes at a higher price point.

Features: Red Hat Ceph Storage offers significant scalability, seamless integration with cloud services, and high availability, ideal for flexible deployments across varied environments. Dell PowerScale Isilon is recognized for handling massive data workloads, providing straightforward data access and management, and offering comprehensive scalability and performance-enhancing features.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat Ceph Storage could benefit from easier initial deployment processes, enhanced user interfaces, and better support for non-standard network configurations. Dell PowerScale Isilon could improve in reducing dependency on hardware-specific features, optimizing costs for small to medium businesses, and integrating more fully with diverse cloud environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat Ceph Storage requires a greater depth of technical knowledge for setup but presents versatile deployment options. Dell PowerScale Isilon is acclaimed for its straightforward deployment process and extensive customer support, facilitating quicker onboarding and immediate operational efficiency.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat Ceph Storage's lower setup costs offer a cost-effective solution suitable for smaller to medium-sized organizations with favorable ROI due to its economic scalability. Dell PowerScale Isilon, despite a higher initial investment, ensures strong ROI by efficiently managing large data volumes, making it valuable for large-scale enterprises demanding robust, scalable storage solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage

June 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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of June 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 Red Hat Ceph Storage is 18.5%, down from 22.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

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.

Read full review

Yamandù Correa

Head of Infrastructure and Network Services at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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Rifat Rahman

Infrastructure Architect & CEO at Tirzok Private Limited

Offers reliable performance and availability for large deployments

I would like to see improvements in Red Hat Ceph Storage not because I necessarily think it needs improvement, but because I generally prefer to do things manually rather than following the containerization part. Current deployments are based on containers, but I deploy manually with my scripts and controls. If there are no Kubernetes-like requirements, I often prefer to deploy a whole manual process. I don't ask for improvements in the deployment model because Red Hat has its own philosophy about making things, but it's my personal choice that I prefer things manually. Some features are available only in the containerization part, so if those are also available in manual deployment, that will help.

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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

"It's very easy-to-use."

"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."

"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"The main feature I have found to be product replication."

"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"Eyeglass is used to monitor for malware, which is very useful for us."

"I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as perfect, as we haven't had any hiccups with it so far."

"Its most valuable feature is the DR capabilities replication."

"The reliability and stability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is good, with no downtime."

"Certainly, we have seen return on investment and peace of mind, especially with our two clusters that are linked together, where one is a disaster recovery solution for the other."

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

"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."

"The most valuable feature for me is SyncIQ."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pros

"I really like that Red Hat Ceph Storage can be used as a total solution without any storage area network components."

"We are using Ceph internal inexpensive disk and data redundancy without spending extra money on external storage."

"The ability to provide block storage and object storage from the same storage cluster is very valuable for us."

"Data redundancy is a key feature, since it can survive failures (disks/servers). We didn’t lose our data or have a service interruption during server/disk failures."

"The community support is very good."

"Ceph was chosen to maintain exact performance and capacity characteristics for customer cloud."

"I would definitely recommend Red Hat Ceph Storage. It is a complete solution for cloud-native storage needs."

"I can compare Red Hat Ceph Storage with products from other vendors; I explored quite a few, but I still find that Red Hat Ceph Storage is making the most disruption."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pros

Cons

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"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."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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 improvement should be in AI. Everything is going towards AI."

"The solution can be a bit complex for those not well versed in the technology."

"PowerScale is not suitable for virtual environments."

"The price always has room for improvement."

"Its configuration needs to be more straightforward."

"Improvements could be made on the object storage side."

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

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cons

"Routing around slow hardware."

"I've heard the integration with OpenShift is great, however, the licensing cost is excessively high."

"While the documentation for Ceph Storage is helpful, it could be improved."

"The storage capacity of the solution can be improved."

"It takes some time to re-balance the storage in case of server failure."

"Please create a failback solution for OpenStack replication and maybe QoS to allow guaranteed IOPS."

"It needs a better UI for easier installation and management."

"In the deployment step, we need to create some config files to add Ceph functions in OpenStack modules (Nova, Cinder, Glance). It would be useful to have a tool that validates the format of the data in those files, before generating a deploy with failures."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is very expensive."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"The price could be cheaper."

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"It's a high-cost offering amounting to three or four million Swedish kronor, or about $400,000 or euros, for approximately 480 terabytes of storage."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The price of the solution is high."

"We use the TNA approach which is a great opportunity for us to better manage the licenses based on how much consumption is available for the different customers so we can use that approach and scalability."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pricing and cost advice

"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."

"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."

"We never used the paid support."

"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."

"The price of this product isn't high."

"There is no cost for software."

"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."

"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription as a bundle."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

13%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

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)?

We have to go through a certified reseller for Dell PowerScale (Isilon). From a value standpoint, it performs very well.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

I would make Dell PowerScale (Isilon) better by improving SmartSync in the graphical user interface. Currently, every...

See all answers

How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?

Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...

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What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?

The high availability of the solution is important to us.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?

Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about th...

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Comparisons

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Dell ECS vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

Qumulo vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 4% of the time

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NetApp FAS Series vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 14% of the time

Dell ECS vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 12% of the time

Qumulo vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 9% of the time

HPE StoreEasy vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 6% of the time

MinIO vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 4% of the time

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Competitors

MinIO vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 38% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 6% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 6% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 4% of the time

Dell ECS vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 3% of the time

More Red Hat Ceph Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

May 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

June 2025

Download Dell PowerScale (Isilon) product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

May 2025

Download Red Hat Ceph Storage product report

Also Known As

No data available

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon

Ceph

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

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

Red Hat Ceph Storage is an enterprise open source platform that provides unified software-defined storage on standard, economical servers and disks. With block, object, and file storage combined into one platform, Red Hat Ceph Storage efficiently and automatically manages all your data.

Red Hat

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,

Dell, DreamHost

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage

June 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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