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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs StarWind Storage Appliance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 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
7.0
Dell PowerScale enhances data management with cost-efficiency, improved performance, storage capacity, resource optimization, and workload automation benefits.
Sentiment score
6.0
StarWind Storage Appliance users saw reduced costs, improved performance, and increased efficiency, with easy scalability and high reliability.
Despite being more expensive than Huawei, it is stable and most enterprises accept the price due to its stability.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.2
Dell PowerScale support is generally responsive, with some escalation needed; users appreciate assistance with complex technical issues.
Sentiment score
9.0
StarWind Storage Appliance customer service is praised for 24x7 troubleshooting, professionalism, high technical support ratings, and helpful videos.
They have managed previous issues well.
Dell provides support within four hours, and they always fulfill their promises.
The service, particularly about hardware issues and support ticket handling, is an area that needs significant improvement.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) offers strong scalability, easy integration, and minimal overhead, supporting large data and numerous connections efficiently.
Sentiment score
7.5
StarWind Storage Appliance is scalable, adaptable, hardware-independent, supports unlimited storage, and is effective in standalone and hyperconverged environments.
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.
 

Stability Issues

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
8.9
StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for stability, robust performance, and high user ratings, especially on well-maintained Windows OS.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerScale is expensive, lacks cloud version, complicates operations, and needs improvements in encryption, interface, and object storage performance.
StarWind Storage Appliance requires improved integration, easier setup, better insights, and feature parity between demo and paid versions.
Hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerScale is costly initially but offers value through comprehensive features, ease of management, and flexibility long-term.
StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for its affordability, straightforward licensing, and excellent value compared to competitors for SMEs.
The pricing of Dell solutions is higher than that of Huawei.
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerScale offers scalable management, reliable performance, data security, and efficient storage with minimal administrative effort and cost management.
StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for its user-friendly interface, high performance, reliability, excellent support, affordability, and robust data protection.
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.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)
Ranking in NAS
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (3rd)
StarWind Storage Appliance
Ranking in NAS
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (30th)
 

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 StarWind Storage Appliance is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Kishore CA - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers stable performance even with a single node failure and manages everything with just two nodes.
The only drawback is that it takes a bit of time during initial synchronization, especially after restarting the environment. This is a potential area of improvement. There's a synchronization time, but it takes time. Initially, when we start the first environment deployment, it starts synchronizing between the storage. So, it is taking time. One thing is that even when you restart. Let's assume that the synchronization is completed and the storage is synchronized. Both storages are fully synchronized, and it is in sync mode. Now, if we want to restart both nodes, there is a case for maintenance purposes. You took both nodes for maintenance, and we rebooted it. Then, it should not synchronize again. It should be a checksum. And if there is a checksum match, there should be no synchronization again. So, one thing that should be taken care of. Another thing is that I used freeware- the community version, free license, which we deployed using PowerShare. In that case, it was very difficult to bring back another node when one node was faulty. Let's assume that both the nodes are working fine. And we found one node faulty. And we destroyed all the volumes in that and tried to bring it back. So that was a difficult factor. The final solution is that we were not able to bring back the failed node. So, we reconstructed a new data source for that. That is another drawback. In future releases, I would like to see the integration with VMware or some other things as a plugin model for VMware.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
No data available
 

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)?
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...
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...
What do you like most about StarWind Storage Appliance?
I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product...I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.
What needs improvement with StarWind Storage Appliance?
StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one.
 

Also Known As

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
No data available
 

Overview

 

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,
Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. StarWind Storage Appliance and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.