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Dell PowerStore vs Panzura CloudFS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 12, 2025

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 PowerStore
Ranking in NAS
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), Enterprise SAN (1st), All-Flash Storage (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
Panzura CloudFS
Ranking in NAS
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (4th), Cloud Storage (13th), Cloud Storage Gateways (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 12.2%, up from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Panzura CloudFS is 3.0%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS
 

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.
Andy Knauf - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable file management and disaster recovery with minimal overwrites
For me, it is the stability aspect. It is a lot more stable now than it ever has been, but just keeping that stability is important. Previously, a new update would come out, and there might be something wrong with it, or it may not sync up as well as it should, or it may cause something to lose access to the server. We have had some problems in the past, but in the last couple of years, we have not had any issues like we had early on. There could be a slightly better dashboard or a better pane of glass. When something goes wrong somewhere, there should be a little bit better alerting with issues before they become a big problem.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable aspects of Dell PowerStore are the promising roadmap, and the interesting features to come."
"The most valuable feature is the functionality of the integration between the storage and the domain."
"Dell PowerStore's compression and deduplication technologies are a big help for our organization."
"The most valuable feature is that it is easy to use this frame. I am a SAN administrator, but I was able to train my colleague, who had only been a VMware administrator, on the PowerStore in about half a day. Now he's autonomous in assigning volumes and creating data stores..."
"Dell PowerStore is very simple to implement, and its user interface is very simple."
"Moving and optimizing workloads within the cluster is quite easy based on my experience with Dell PowerStore."
"There is no complicated configuration for queries and calls. You just create a model and go."
"The compression is excellent."
"What I appreciate most about Panzura CloudFS is that it really solves the problem we had when we moved all our server workloads to Azure, reducing our on-prem data center footprint sizably. We don't have to maintain a huge on-prem storage array, which is nice. It just works, and we haven't had any issues this whole time."
"Panzura has not increased its data storage costs."
"Panzura is a hundred percent better than what we had before."
"It is a very solid product. We keep all of our older files on their system. It is easy to restore if a file gets deleted. We have good disaster recovery. It is very reliable and very quick, and we do not have files that get overwritten because it locks the file."
"The assistance of support has been excellent."
"Its most valuable features are the collaboration, the file snapshots, and the data protection the solution provides."
"The core function of Panzura CloudFS, with its synchronizing of files across multiple servers, provides us with a much more efficient workflow for our production staff."
"What I appreciate most about Panzura CloudFS is that it really solves the problem we had when we moved all our server workloads to Azure, reducing our on-prem data center footprint sizably."
 

Cons

"Users can be enrolled in lifecycle extension with pro support. The pricing for that is too high for PowerStore."
"More demonstration and training options are needed."
"I do not like having to use VPLEX for synchronous replication, as opposed to having the store software built-in."
"I would like to see a Snapshot feature. Currently, it is unable to occupy the capacity."
"The pricing could be lower. It is very expensive."
"The NAS part is very poor. It's very basic. Even Dell EMC has said that to us. We are waiting for version 3 of PowerStore for that. This must be improved and it is in the roadmap."
"We are looking for the Dell PowerStore to become more mature to maximize our use cases."
"The support team should have more people with experience in the solution's installation process, as it is one of the areas where I see certain shortcomings."
"It has not reduced the data storage cost."
"One area for improvement regarding Panzura CloudFS is moving away from on-prem or local Active Directory. We're exploring a transition to Azure AD or Entra ID, aiming to keep the product functional without heavy reliance on the local Active Directory."
"There are a few file types that do not work well with Panzura CloudFS."
"Master Snapshot feature is the only exceptional feature, but the rest of the features are similar to other storage solutions."
"There could be a slightly better dashboard or a better pane of glass. When something goes wrong somewhere, there should be a little bit better alerting with issues before they become a big problem."
"One area for improvement regarding Panzura CloudFS is moving away from on-prem or local Active Directory. We're exploring a transition to Azure AD or Entra ID, aiming to keep the product functional without heavy reliance on the local Active Directory."
"Previously, a new update would come out, and there might be something wrong with it, or it may not sync up as well as it should, or it may cause something to lose access to the server."
"It would be nice if Panzura offered data in increments instead of 25 terabytes per license."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing structure and licensing model of Dell PowerStore are pretty decent. It's pretty competitive."
"There's still a cap on the upgrade path, where you can consume all the engines within the frame before you have to go to another frame... Normally, we exceed the IOPS on the frames before we can ever exhaust the storage, so anything they can do to help us avoid stranded storage capacity, capacity that we couldn't get to, would be beneficial."
"I rate the price of Dell PowerStore a seven out of ten."
"The solution’s pricing is always too high."
"Dell PowerStore is more expensive than Dell EMC Unity All Flash. Dell PowerStore's performance metrics were way higher than what Dell EMC Unity All Flash offered."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Dell PowerStore is not a cheap solution."
"There are no separate licenses required as all the basic licenses are included in the bundle."
"The pricing seems high on certain products and features, such as the audit feature of Panzura Data Services. They should consider more attractive pricing for companies of our size. The renewals are yearly, but the pricing is a little high for us."
"It's competitive. I don't know what competitors are charging, but they have been very transparent, which is nice, and we've negotiated to avoid percentage increases."
"The solution's pricing is on the expensive side."
"It is not bad. It is like everything else. Pricing has gone up quite over the last couple of years, but everybody's pricing has gone up. For what they deliver, it is right in line with what everybody else has."
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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
16%
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 are the products that Panzura provides?
Panzura offers four main products: CloudFS, data services, smart apps, and global services. They call this "all-in-one solution" and it's for end-to-end cloud data management. Why is it called that...
What kind of industries does Panzura serve?
Hello, I think businesses from all industries that have their data on a cloud can benefit from Panzura. Especially if you have offices in various locations or your employees are working from home a...
Why was Panzura acquired? Is the acquisition going to cause a change?
I think Panzura may change in a positive direction now that it's been bought by Profile Capital. That's a very big investment company for technology businesses and I think it's an opportunity for ...
 

Also Known As

PowerStore
Panzura Freedom
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Petrofac, Komatsu, HCA Healthcare, Vanguard, Disney, Pokemon, US Department of Justice, Gensler, Fluor, AFRY, Milwaukee Tool, Navy Federal Credit Union, TechTarget
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. Panzura CloudFS and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.