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Dell PowerScale vs Red Hat Ceph Storage 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
7.3
Number of Reviews
218
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
Dell PowerScale
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
NAS (1st), File and Object Storage (2nd)
Red Hat Ceph Storage
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), File and Object Storage (1st)
 

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.
BE
Systems Engineer at Unisity LLC
Flexibility and reliability have supported seamless data growth
I cannot think of anything to improve about Dell PowerScale (Isilon). The hardest challenge we have is due to how we've bought things over time. The way that we moved to the PowerEdge platform for the newer systems creates a scale problem as I still buy the older style systems, which are more dense storage. They're different chassis, so the problem we run into in the data center is the depth of the actual equipment. The newer equipment, if we buy an FX910 or a 900, it's a lot shorter in scale than if I buy an 83,000, which is much bigger. This makes it more complicated for deployment.
Rifat Rahman - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the speed, and I like the API and how programmable it is."
"VMware has benefited our IT organization because we're 100% VMware, everything is running on it."
"I appreciate the ease of provisioning storage on Pure Storage FlashArray."
"The stability is perfect, the reliability is 100%, and the latency is always lower than 1 millisecond."
"The top-tier support and reliable storage are the most valuable features of this solution."
"We have integrated the solution with VMware, and the process was seamless."
"Deduplication is an excellent feature. I also like the NAS and support."
"We were actually able to do multiple upgrades, including head upgrades and moving between the platforms, M20 and M50, over the years. We have never once lost a ping and have never had an outage due to an OS upgrade or a complete head upgrade."
"The solution's most valuable features are scalability and flexibility."
"Customer service is absolutely satisfying, rating at least nine out of ten, as they have managed previous issues well."
"The solution provides massive performance, scalability, efficiency, and ease of management."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) definitely deserves ten out of ten for scalability."
"Of all the components in our IT system, it's probably the least troublesome."
"The features of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) that I appreciate the most include the scale of architecture and the way it is designed, which benefit my company by providing less downtime and less overhead."
"The recent introduction of inline deduplication and compression has drastically improved our efficiency ratios to make it an economical product."
"The solution in general has allowed us to move off of multiple Windows boxes where they had huge data stores, and we migrated it to the Isilon, making it easier and more cost-effective with just one point of contact."
"We have some legacy servers that can be associated with this structure. With Ceph, we can rearrange these machines and reuse our investment."
"Red Hat Ceph Storage is working exactly as it should be; it's running in the background, it's working, and it doesn't bother me."
"Ceph was chosen to maintain exact performance and capacity characteristics for customer cloud."
"What I found most valuable from Red Hat Ceph Storage is integration because if you are talking about a solution that consists purely of Red Hat products, this is where integration benefits come in."
"Stratus allows more reliability than all the other types of computers available."
"I really like that Red Hat Ceph Storage can be used as a total solution without any storage area network components."
"Companies that can afford completely flash-based pipe servers should go for Ceph because it's a very performance-intensive, brilliant storage system, and I always recommend it to customers based on its benefits, performance, and scalability."
"The ability to provide block storage and object storage from the same storage cluster is very valuable for us."
 

Cons

"Organizations with security concerns that prevent cloud utilization would benefit from a wider range of instruments available for offline operation."
"In the configuration, which we brought in or tested it in, it has a very limited config as far as the array goes. That said, it still did more than our anticipation."
"We did have one hiccup with the integration of vCenter. When we were installing Pure Storage, we were using vCenter 6.7, which defaults to the HTML5 Web Client. The current plugin for Pure Storage doesn't show up in that client at all. You have to go and use the legacy FlexFlash client to see the Pure Storage plugin in vCenter."
"The only time that we had problems with it was that there was a bug in the VVol implementation but, outside of that, it has been flawless."
"The capability from Pure as far as sharing out files and things of that nature is a little bit lacking."
"I want to improve the overall service level of the solution."
"Pure Storage support could be a little better."
"I would like some performance analytics which go deeper than today. It should be specific to some hosts and applications. This would be good."
"The solution isn't suitable for small environments or small customers."
"Because of the magic that it does 'under the hood,' it is very difficult to find out within the system where all your storage is going."
"Dell's customer service needs improvement."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a little bit pricey, and its pricing could be improved."
"The biggest weakness is small file handling. Small file compression options are not enabled out of the box. It would be good to have this enabled by default."
"The solution can be integrated with an automation system. Dell uses another framework developed in-house. They can integrate it with machines."
"We're struggling with the UID mapping and how to configure mapping-related things."
"It would be nice to see tools like Superna Eyeglass built into PowerScale."
"Some documentation is very hard to find."
"When it comes to the capabilities of Red Hat Ceph Storage such as object, block, and file storage, I am not fully satisfied."
"It takes some time to re-balance the storage in case of server failure."
"Routing around slow hardware."
"It needs a better UI for easier installation and management."
"While the documentation for Ceph Storage is helpful, it could be improved."
"This product uses a lot of CPU and network bandwidth. It needs some deduplication features and to use delta for rebalancing."
"Ceph does not deal very well with, or takes a long time to recover from, certain kinds of network failures and individual storage node failures."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Because of the SSD, it is cheaper because I am not purchasing so many disks."
"It's priced higher than the market."
"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"While it comes with a higher price tag, this investment often translates to significant improvements in performance."
"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
"It is cost-effective because after buying a subscription, they provide a service to upgrade hardware for free. They are providing so many features. When you consider the features provided, it is cost-effective."
"The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."
"The solution's licensing cost varies based on capacity and performance requirements."
"Dell PowerScale is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo."
"This solution is priced slightly higher than others on the market but does offer good quality. With this solution's data reduction and compression, we were able to purchase less. Costs have dropped because of the data rate of compression and deduplication."
"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."
"Our company finds the pricing high, but it decreases over time."
"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."
"Dell PowerScale is expensive on the start-up side but we can recoup those costs quickly by not having to reapply the savings to other equipment."
"There is no cost for software."
"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."
"The price of this product isn't high."
"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription​​ as a bundle.​"
"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."
"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."
"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise152
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise46
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
 

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?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
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)?
As I mentioned before, we did not purchase Dell PowerScale (Isilon) directly. Since our organization is a government ...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
I think Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve some functions such as Apache S3 or containerized storage support, as ...
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 ...
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...
What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat Ceph Storage?
I do not have experience working with solutions such as Red Hat Ceph Storage and StorPool. I have plenty of experienc...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
Ceph
 

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,
Dell, DreamHost
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.