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Dell PowerScale vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ 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
6.3
Dell PowerScale boosts efficiency and cost savings with performance, management ease, data deduplication, and integration benefits.
Sentiment score
7.2
HPE 3PAR StoreServ offers varying ROI, with benefits in performance and efficiency, though not all users see measurable returns.
Something such as Dell PowerScale puts us ahead of all of our competitors because of the speed at which we can iterate while we are on set.
Chief Executive Officer at Orbital Virtual Studios
Despite being more expensive than Huawei, it is stable and most enterprises accept the price due to its stability.
Senior System Engineer at Atlas Security
In terms of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) specifically, we have seen a return on investment due to faster performance than our last few storage arrays, and the general usability is a lot better.
Storage & Data Protection Specialist at General Dynamics Land Systems
The return on investment is very good.
System Engineer at Hybrid Tech
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Dell PowerScale support is typically praised for responsiveness and effectiveness, though experiences can vary based on agents.
Sentiment score
7.3
HPE 3PAR StoreServ support is praised for expertise and responsiveness, despite occasional language barriers and regional satisfaction variations.
Support online is definitely a ten out of ten.
Associate Business Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
When we face issues, we raise a ticket through the valid portal, and they respond immediately and assign a local engineer to coordinate the support process.
Senior System Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Dell's technical support a ten.
System Support at City of North Las Vegas
If we activate the 3PAR call home function, then the remote technician always has access to our StoreServ and provides strong suggestions to improve our 3PAR performance.
System Engineer at Hybrid Tech
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
Dell PowerScale seamlessly scales for diverse industries, integrating new nodes effortlessly to accommodate vast datasets in changing environments.
Sentiment score
7.5
HPE 3PAR StoreServ is praised for scalability, ease of expansion, and adaptability, despite some complexity in older versions.
We started on PowerScale with around about 300 terabytes and are now two and a half petabytes, still on the same file system.
Storage Architect at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
That's really saved us in certain areas as we didn't have funding to expand Dell PowerScale (Isilon) until next year, which is why we utilized the cloud pools functionality to offload.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
As an unstructured data storage solution, writing into it and accessing it from the other nodes is highly scalable with no issues.
Senior Technical Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Dell PowerScale is highly stable, offering minimal downtime, effective data protection, and reliable performance for critical tasks.
Sentiment score
8.1
HPE 3PAR StoreServ offers reliable performance with minimal downtime, quick issue resolution, and effective support for seamless operations.
Since we have good protection levels, the data is secured and replicated across the disks.
Associate Business Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Even if a node goes down, other nodes can respond and provide data back to the user without issues.
Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group
I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as perfect.
Storage & Data Protection Specialist at General Dynamics Land Systems
HPE 3PAR is a very stable solution from HPE, and people have been using this for more than five years.
System Engineer at Hybrid Tech
My experience with the stability and performance of HPE 3PAR StoreServ involved one crash, which was caused by failing hardware.
Information Systems & Security Administrator at a government with 501-1,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerScale faces challenges in deployment complexity, pricing, support services, storage management, security features, and hardware replacement protocols.
HPE 3PAR StoreServ users seek improved UI, simplified updates, enhanced virtualization, better reporting, scalability, cloud integration, and support.
Firmware or software updates become effortless with Pure, but with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we must evaluate or conduct trial runs to ensure that these operations will not harm our customer's system; their software is not adequate.
Senior Ai Architect at Logicalis
It should be made more user-friendly in the sense that if I manage it, I should be able to deploy it without having to have a lot of interaction from support.
Manager, Information Technology at a transportation company with 11-50 employees
Hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline.
Senior Engineer at Continental Tire
In Pakistan, some parts are not readily available, and we need to import them from Singapore or other countries.
System Engineer at Hybrid Tech
HPE 3PAR StoreServ might be missing certain features available in newer products.
Information Systems & Security Administrator at a government with 501-1,000 employees
We just need to verify whether our current virtual server setup is acceptable to the RBI, as they had raised questions about the VSO, ISO configurations we had implemented.
Asst. Manager at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users consider Dell PowerScale expensive but appreciate its performance, features, and scalability, viewing it as fair value.
HPE 3PAR StoreServ pricing varies widely, with negotiation potential; performance and reliability often justify initial and ongoing costs.
It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Cheaper nodes will cost less, while higher performance nodes will be pricier.
Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group
Costs align well with what it delivers, making it a fair price for a powerful tool that meets all our needs.
Tv Systems Technical Supervisor at a media company with 501-1,000 employees
It is expensive, however, when we compare it to the features provided by HPE, the price-to-performance ratio is very good.
System Engineer at Hybrid Tech
Any customer will always ask for the cheaper price.
Asst. Manager at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerScale offers scalable, stable, and flexible storage solutions with high capacity, seamless integration, and strong data protection features.
HPE 3PAR StoreServ is ideal for enterprises, offering easy management, high performance, scalability, reliability, and seamless system integration.
Dell PowerScale offers high scalability and stability as well, making it a valuable solution for enterprises.
Senior System Engineer at Atlas Security
In our AI initiatives, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) plays a significant role in data analysis, data fusion; principally, it is involved in data analysis, data extraction, and statistical analysis.
Senior Technologist at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Single files are limited to four terabytes in our configuration, however, the system can support up to 16 terabytes, so we can scale based on that too.
Systems Engineer at Unisity LLC
There is no downtime when we upgrade our 3PAR systems.
System Engineer at Hybrid Tech
We are expecting on-site support, which is the main benefit we are getting with HP.
Asst. Manager at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
I find the HPE 3PAR StoreServ valuable for its ease of use and resilience, which is beneficial.
Information Systems & Security Administrator at a government with 501-1,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerScale
Ranking in NAS
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (1st)
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
Ranking in NAS
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
304
Ranking in other categories
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (2nd), All-Flash Storage (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerScale is 13.8%, down from 17.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is 4.6%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerScale13.8%
HPE 3PAR StoreServ4.6%
Other81.6%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

RahulSharma8 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group
Unified file sharing has simplified multi-tenant access and has delivered seamless data replication
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) includes its replication features; when we decommissioned our old Isilon cluster, we migrated all of the data to a new cluster, and it was pretty seamless. All you have to do is create the certificates and make those certificates available to the target cluster, then initiate a few jobs. The inter-cluster replication feature, called SyncIQ, allows you to set up all of the jobs and move your data entirely, either timely or all at once. Another suitable feature is the ability to back up your directories; you can take snapshots for all of your directories, and in fact, I believe you can take around a thousand snapshots for a single directory. The inter-replication, geo-replication is one feature. Dell provides a variety class of hardware suitable for your workloads, meaning if your data is just lab and not critical, you don't have to spend much on the hardware; conversely, if your data is mission-critical, you can buy a high-performance node from Dell. Additionally, you can span Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cluster to a large number of nodes, and code upgrades are pretty smooth because all protocols will be upgraded under a single piece of code. Since it provides a single file system that spans across the nodes, you don't have to worry about that directory structure being separately created on individual nodes, making it a fitting solution for a data lake solution because you can access the same data from multiple protocols.
Muhammad Saqib - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Hybrid Tech
Uninterrupted upgrades accelerate performance with good support
I would rate the solution eight out of ten. It should be noted that in Pakistan, some parts are not readily available, and we need to import them from Singapore or other countries. We encountered an issue with a customer where the midplane failed and was not available. We had to wait for several days for a replacement, even in a 24/7 support case. Additionally, we faced motherboard failures in the customer's environment, encountering two motherboard failures simultaneously. We obtained one motherboard immediately, yet had to wait ten days for another. These issues should have been resolved promptly given the 24/7 support level.
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Comparison Review

it_user182013 - PeerSpot reviewer
Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
May 1, 2015
Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR
Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise55
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise74
Large Enterprise170
 

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...
What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?
HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspective, it is reliable, easy to set up, stable, and offers quality block storage. All...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE 3PAR StoreServ?
As a customer, I always prefer to have a lower price. Any customer will always ask for the cheaper price.
What needs improvement with HPE 3PAR StoreServ?
I have no specific ideas for improvement at present. We just need to verify whether our current virtual server setup is acceptable to the RBI, as they had raised questions about the VSO, ISO config...
 

Also Known As

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage
 

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,
Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale vs. HPE 3PAR StoreServ and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.