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Dell PowerScale vs Quantum ActiveScale comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
Dell PowerScale
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
NAS (1st), File and Object Storage (1st)
Quantum ActiveScale
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (27th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
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.
FL
Architecture Department at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Good performance and reliable but the setup is complex
We would like to see a self-sufficient installation. Nowadays it's open-source, but the installation is still tied to the vendor, which means it is unlikely that it is going to scale. I want them to tap into the broader community. It is really emerging, they have a year over year, 50% annual growth. With a 10-year-old company, it will certainly bring a lot of interest, and will certainly make it more successful, if they tap into that growing customer base. They have to make themselves relevant to the industry. The industry is totally geared to the Cloud, DevOps, and geared for agility. The software with the appliance in my set is already outdated, and it is not that it cannot sell, but it has to be tapping into the emerging and growing sectors to continue with the customers and businesses. This is what the requirement is, to improve their technology. Which means that they have to make themselves relevant to the industry.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This improves our organization because we can just set it up and we forget about it, everything works, and we do not need to worry about storage or bandwidth issues."
"It is easy to deploy and it's all-flash, so it's very fast."
"Technical support is excellent. I've had very good responses from technical support. We had a couple of cases where we needed support. Some of the communications were purely over email and some has been an actual call to the service desk."
"Lone segmentation is simpler and more agile. It's improved the velocity in overall provisioning from project to operation."
"We find the ease of usability and setup valuable."
"They are quite responsive and our local team was pretty good."
"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both, therefore we are NCA compliant."
"We chose Pure Storage because it had the best performance of all the products that we tested."
"The best thing is that it works. We don't have to maintain it too much; we usually upgrade once a year."
"PowerScale has made it extremely easy to scale file data across our organization. We have two implementations of Isilon. One is a replica of the other. When scaling, we add nodes to each location and expand the cluster. The process is straightforward."
"PowerScale helped free up our employees' time to focus on other business priorities. There are now automated jobs such as backing up and replicating data, that reduce the footprint we have. Those types of tasks were previously done manually."
"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."
"This has been a valuable solution for our business overall. It offers business continuity and replication features."
"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."
"Prior to Isilon, we had to access data from multiple different platforms, and this solution offers unified storage and the ability to consolidate and migrate data, which was a big step forward and allowed us to cut costs by eliminating multiple platforms and putting it all on one array."
"I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale as top-notch, as the only issues we have ever had are just failed drives, which is to be expected."
"The technology is stable which is good."
"Workflow is easy to manage and maintain."
"The operations and the functionality are very simple."
"Quantum ActiveScale is a reliable solution."
 

Cons

"The price of the solution can improve."
"The one major gripe I have is that there is no snapshotting enabled by default on the SAN."
"I would like FlashArray to add reports that help us forecast our predicted resource needs based on current usage."
"The price of this solution is high and should be lowered."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"More cloud connectivity would enhance the solution."
"Most of our upgrades have not been as smooth as they should have been."
"Beyond a certain amount of petabytes, you have to have a separate system. Basically, it's not infinitely scalable."
"It would be good to have synchronized mirroring between two clusters without using a third-party program."
"The solution is expensive. It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have."
"Dell's customer service needs improvement."
"If they integrated some functions, as they have on Data Domain with a cyber recovery vault, it would be ideal."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a bit expensive compared to other products."
"There is room for improvement in its handling of object storage."
"Some improvements to the NFS support would be of interest to us."
"An improvement of that technology when it comes to DR implementations is something that I would look to see in the future. It is there, but it is not 100% in a way that is easy to implement."
"Lacks some ability to integrate with different systems."
"I'd like to see more integrations with different systems and for the product to be more scalable."
"The setup is very complex, it took 18 hours for the first setup."
"We would like to see a self-sufficient installation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
"Dell and Pure Storage offer competitive pricing, but Pure Storage might have a slight advantage."
"Once you purchase Pure Storage FlashArray it is all-inclusive, you receive all the licenses needed."
"It's a good price point and it's a solid product for the price."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."
"They have a standardized fee; it's been the same price for 10 years straight. I am happy with the price — I think it's good."
"We have seen a reduction in the TCO, because Pure Storage is partnering with Belfrics. This partnership reduces our latency and space."
"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 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."
"The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."
"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."
"Dell PowerScale is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo."
"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 price of the solution is high."
"Our company finds the pricing high, but it decreases over time."
"Quantum ActiveScale is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise53
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
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 provisio...
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 m...
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 req...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
ActiveScale, Quantum ActiveScale Object Storage, ActiveScale Object Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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,
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