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Dell PowerStore vs Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 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 PowerStore users often see ROI through efficiency, cost savings, and performance, though some note high initial costs.
Sentiment score
6.9
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse offers significant ROI by efficiently managing large data volumes and integrating with existing tools.
We have reduced infrastructure but the same performance.
With Dell PowerStore, even if the report runs and taxes out the database server heavily, the tool doesn't suffer from a performance hit.
It identified some areas in which we could get some good reductions and could decrease the data center footprint.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Dell PowerStore's customer support is praised for responsiveness, availability, and efficient issue resolution, despite minor regional challenges.
Sentiment score
6.8
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse support receives mixed reviews, praised for expertise but needing faster responses and improved Azure-related assistance.
If necessary, they will search for a specialist within their Dell network who we can approach with our questions.
I would rate the technical support of Dell PowerStore between nine and ten out of ten.
They also struggled with handling cases from different time zones.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Dell PowerStore is praised for scalable growth and adaptability, despite affordability concerns with additional components.
Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse scales well but requires SQL expertise; performance varies compared to alternatives like Snowflake.
The customer likely exceeds 20,000 users globally.
The smaller models are not very scalable, while the larger ones offer better scalability.
You can create as many tools as needed, providing scalability based on the use case.
I give the scalability an eight out of ten, indicating it scales well for our needs.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Dell PowerStore is praised for stability, handling issues effectively with reliability even in challenging conditions like fire incidents.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is praised for stability and reliability, handling large data volumes with minor concerns about processing speed.
I would rate the stability of Dell PowerStore a ten out of ten.
There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze.
I would rate the stability of Dell PowerStore as ten out of ten.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is stable for us because it is built on SQL Server.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerStore requires enhancements in integration, stability, functionality, support, pricing, scalability, AI, automation, and user experience.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse needs enhancements in speed, scalability, compatibility, cost efficiency, and error messaging for better performance.
If you want to delve into where your I/Os are going, the reporting might need more in-depth information to make informed decisions.
In my organization, we have had to go through two weeks with no replication, which is not very handy for our production environment.
Something needs to be done with the caching to ensure that if some issue occurs, there needs to be an ability to disable caching during maintenance to make it static, safe, and good.
When there are many users or many expensive queries, it can be very slow.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is excellent but very expensive.
The ETL designing process could be optimized for better efficiency.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerStore offers a competitive pricing model with advanced features, aligning with market offerings from IBM and NetApp.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is cost-effective for large enterprises, but costs vary by data size, performance, and support.
Likely the cost is $400,000 whereas IBM may be $250,000.
It's an all-inclusive license, so there are no additional charges.
There's no need to pay for a license; it's all-inclusive.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is very expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerStore provides flexible, high-performing storage with VMware integration, featuring automation, expandability, and advanced data management capabilities.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse offers accelerated performance, seamless integration, and scalability, excelling in data management and business intelligence.
Typically, high-performance and high-availability features, such as application snapshots and remote and local replication, are highly valued.
The solution promotes data reduction, often meeting the compression ratio.
The PowerStore's compression ratio is even higher than the Unity system.
The columnstore index enhances data query performance by using less space and achieving faster performance than general indexing.
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is used in the logistics area for optimizing SQL queries related to the loading and unloading of trucks.
The interface is very user-friendly.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerStore
Ranking in Data Warehouse
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
NAS (2nd), Enterprise SAN (1st), All-Flash Storage (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
Microsoft Parallel Data War...
Ranking in Data Warehouse
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 0.9%. The mindshare of Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is 1.0%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Brian Ricci - PeerSpot reviewer
It's constantly enhanced and has impressive reliability and data compression
The maintenance is a bit expensive. The service and support are there for three years, but after the third year, it is pretty pricey for renewal. I hope Dell addresses that. Everything is pricey these days anyway. It is not like the old days of Compellent. We used to be able to see the metrics for our customers. On Compellent, we could look up that customer and see all the metrics. That is not allowed for us now. We cannot do that anymore. I have to be explicitly allowed by the customer to do that, and some companies' security does not allow that.
StevenLai - PeerSpot reviewer
Strong scalable solution with streamlined metadata warehousing
We use it to build our data warehouse and databases, and everything in the back end It helps streamline our metadata warehousing process. As it is our only type of data warehouse and database, it serves as our source, destination, and staging area. This product has many features which are useful…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
30%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Insurance Company
10%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and next-gen apps. It is only Flash and can support many workloads from today's app...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated management of resources feature provides a more simple administration. I found the flex...
What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell offerings and integrated into the PowerStoreOS. The installation and setup have a ...
What do you like most about Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse provides good firewall processing in terms of response time.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse?
Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse is excellent but very expensive. Working on the pricing could make it a better solution.
 

Also Known As

PowerStore
Microsoft PDW, SQL Server Data Warehouse, Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, MS Parallel Data Warehouse
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Auckland Transport, Erste Bank Group, Urban Software Institute, NJVC, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Tata Steel Europe
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.