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Dell PowerScale vs FreeNAS 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerScale
Ranking in NAS
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (1st)
FreeNAS
Ranking in NAS
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerScale is 14.6%, down from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FreeNAS is 3.7%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerScale14.6%
FreeNAS3.7%
Other81.7%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

SK
Solutions Architect at a university with 10,001+ employees
Operates seamlessly and minimizes downtime while meeting enterprise file share demands
The features of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) that I appreciate the most include the scale of architecture and the way it is designed. These features benefit my company by providing less downtime and less overhead. While I have not calculated an exact number regarding the reduction in downtime, we have always been using the product, so we have no baseline to compare it to. However, it is a very good product. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) scales very well with the growing needs of my company.
Vincenzo D'Aniello - PeerSpot reviewer
Software developer at TREXON S.R.L.
Open-source with great disk management and task synchronization
The system itself allows you to add any feature. The only bad thing is that this maybe depends on FreeBSD, and sometimes finding documentation is difficult. For example, we knew that previous versions automatically enabled the Linux kernel, yet with the recent version, this was no longer the case. Now, there was the possibility of being able to create Debian-based jails, and finding the documentation was not easy or fast. That said, in the end, we succeeded. If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dell PowerScale overall is easy to use."
"It is stable and very user-friendly."
"It has saved me from having to hire one person over the last six months, and our IT team has gotten about 40 percent of its time back."
"The solution has simplified management by consolidating our workloads, and rather than managing all the different workloads on different storage arrays and Windows Servers, we just have one place per data centre where we manage all their unstructured data, saving us time."
"The initial setup was easy because we received support from their partners, which enabled us to install it without difficulty."
"Customer service has been really good."
"Based on the flexibility of the system itself, it was easy for us to manage the growth by buying individual nodes as needed."
"Its scalability has been huge for us."
"Its stability is the most valuable. It is reliable, and we don't have to worry too much about it."
"After using FreeNAS I will never spend money for commercial products like Dell or 3Par."
"It integrates well into either Windows or Linux environments."
"The solution has been very stable so far."
"The program is fast, fun to work on and easy."
"The ease of use of the 'jail', the management of backups, and copies to easily create test and pre-production scenarios have speeded up the development and distribution of business apps."
"The stability is quite good; our system is in production and we have not had any problems with it, and when a drive fails, we don't really have any disruption because we can easily rebuild the disk, even if it is very large."
"What I like about it is that I can work on it from any computer or any device. The initial setup is very simple. The setup wizard is really helpful."
 

Cons

"Dell PowerScale needs to reduce its price."
"The biggest weakness is small file handling."
"We had some issues with level 1 support. We had to fight with them on repeated issues. There is room for improvement in level 1 support."
"Dell's customer service needs improvement. Specifically, hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline."
"I think Dell PowerScale (Isilon) can be improved, as the cost models are quite expensive for administration."
"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[...]the Unified Permission Model that would allow a user to authenticate before being able to access a private file, does not apply."
"Technical support could be improved. Whenever we have a hiccup, we'd like to get it fixed maybe quicker."
"I'd like to see more Iceland products in the cloud so that we can port our data into different environments if needed. I would also like to see a virtual appliance or software-defined Iceland product."
"FreeNAS should be better prepared for clustering."
"The support for S3 needs to be improved."
"They can improve the integration with PSA systems. This functionality could be better."
"Make it easier to find out how to fix things when something goes wrong."
"One of my hard drives has failed and the documentation that I've been able to find has not helped."
"They should include clustering for the solution."
"The latest version of the dashboard doesn't work as good as the previous version. Sometimes we change our dashboard back to the previous version because the latest version just doesn't work as good."
"Its support for Hyper-V clusters."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is excellent."
"We paid an additional fee to have Dell's ProDeploy Plus team implement it."
"It is an expensive product with a high storage capacity suitable for large data requirements."
"Pricing for this solution is reasonable."
"The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."
"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."
"It is an expensive solution."
"Dell PowerScale is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo."
"Its price is okay. It suits our needs."
"Its licensing cost is based on the hardware capacity."
"For our configuration, we pay a little bit less than €10,000 ($12,000 USD) per year."
"We use the free version of the program."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Performing Arts
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise53
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Dell PowerScale has been expensive. Setup costs or provisioning experience has been pleasant. Typically you have kickoff meetings and there...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
For improvements, we can focus on enhancing performance, upgrading the nodes, and accessing data through Isilon for more efficiency. Additionally, improvements to interfaces and certain aspects of ...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Dell PowerScale is our main NAS environment storage where we create CIFS and NFS file shares for users.When users request a CIFS file share, they specify the SMB share name and the SmartConnect zon...
Ask a question
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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,
Morroni Technologies Inc., Creative Integrations
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale vs. FreeNAS and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.