Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Reviews

We were looking at getting a solution in for storage. I have worked with storage before, and I have worked with parallel storage systems more than NAS appliances.

I have worked with Lustre, PowerScale, and NetApp as well. I would describe myself more as a user of NetApp and PowerScale. I work with customers who work with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

We are a consultancy firm, so we also partner with Dell and we deploy and deliver AI solutions, and Dell PowerScale (Isilon) sits underneath those. This makes it very important to our operations.

The top three valuable features for me are the redundancy, reliability, and mixed NFS and Samba share, SMB sharing.

We use a tool called IOR, which measures the IOPS and the throughput for very tailored and specific I/O scenarios. This allows you to test it under different conditions.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is brilliant for scalability and really, really good in that regard. They are adding new features all the time, which I have not used yet, but they are adding RDMA technology. This provides really low-latency connections between the clients and the machine itself, which is really good for AI-type workloads as well.

The product is feature rich.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for approximately ten years.

I have experience with others. No switching involved.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)  is very expensive compared to NetApp and compared to Nutanix as well.

The flash arrays, which are important for high-performance computing and AI initiatives, would be overpriced compared to some of their competitors.

Product support is great. There are definitely some challenges on deployment. Find a good partner to perform the deployment or be prepared to invest some time into the deployment. 

In using or managing Dell PowerScale (Isilon), I have two roles: one is part of the decision-making process for deploying it, and the second is in our go-to-market with Dell, as far as integrating our two products.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has supported growth or operational success for a company such as mine because we are still in the early stages of deployment and from an integration go-to-market perspective. Due to the strategic nature of our two companies and our products, it is going well, and we are seeing growth in that area.

My main use cases for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) are as a data storage environment, where Wasabi fits as a long-term retention target.

The features of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) that I prefer the most include some of the newer technologies that are on it, which would include SmartSync and the ability for the data mover to continue to make incremental changes.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has features that specifically cater to the needs of small and medium organizations. Primarily, our performance is what caters to those needs.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) scales greatly with the growing needs of my company.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) can be improved by enhancing the ability for more native data mover technologies that offer security and resiliency features.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for four years.

My experience with customer service and technical support has been challenging. The reason is that it is difficult to find subject matter experts around the solution.

I'm still having those support issues; it is a challenge to get competent support around the issues we have.

Positive

My experience with the pricing, the setup costs, and licensing of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that pricing is decent, but licensing is a challenge.

From my point of view, I cannot think of anything that is the biggest return on investment when using Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

I understand that we are still in the early stages regarding metrics that we have found out while using Dell PowerScale (Isilon), such as improvements or anything that has been significant.

Currently, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) does not play a role in my company's AI initiatives, but we are looking at it being part of an overall AI workflow, particularly where AI workloads and migrating data into Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and then Dell PowerScale (Isilon) migrating come into play.

The advice I would give to other companies that are considering Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that I would recommend it as a product, as a technology, and as a solution. I rated this review an eight out of ten.

Our organization uses Dell PowerScale (Isilon) specifically for use cases in the nanotechnology field.

What I find most valuable about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that we are currently focusing on AI applications, for which we need fast storage, faster GPU, faster nodes, and so on. 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.

We see room for improvement in Dell PowerScale (Isilon) because we need personnel to effectively utilize all our infrastructure; it's not easy to find skilled people to work on AI and data analysis.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for seven years.

The product has been stable since the implementation of Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

I would rate the technical support by Dell as excellent; I'm very happy with Dell support.

Positive

Before choosing Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we generally evaluate instrumentation that we already have skills to manage. Before Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we used the same product; generally, every five years, we try to change something because it's important for us to have the skill to manage all our infrastructure, which is not easy.

We considered performance and cost when selecting Dell PowerScale (Isilon) over other solutions.

We got help from consultants; typically, we place a bid where we request both infrastructure and consultants together.

The cost of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is important, but we have public projects that allow us to apply for funding to update our infrastructure.

We have very satisfactory experiences with Dell products, and we can also evaluate other products for integration. For example, for backup, we can evaluate options such as the Veeam solution.

I think the pricing of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable, but I don't clearly understand the full details. 

I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as a product a ten out of ten.

Dell PowerScale helps us manage a variety of unstructured data for healthcare and manufacturing clients. This allows the data to be stored and accessed by different types of systems like system-to-system access and user-to-system access. Dell PowerScale helps the data make sense in environments where we are also managing the data engine portion for our customers. We are able to use different Dell technologies for moving and saving data. Dell PowerScale is the best option for cost based on the environment.

We initially deployed PowerScale on-prem and then started to take advantage of the cloud but the cost became a factor. The customers feel more confident with the on-prem deployment.

Our customers have seen improvement in performance, space, and flexibility for growth and management of data protection through snapshots and other systems.

The AI models are something we are looking forward to trying but are not there yet. The algorithms are specific to each company and their industry. One of the most important things is the data localization. Many scenarios require the project data traffic to be close to where it is generated and read. A lot of interaction is between users and systems. So data localization is one of the most important things in terms of using the data algorithm.

We don't need to manage our PowerScale and run its storage from any location yet but it is something that is coming for sure because several customers have centralized data in main data centers. But in different locations across the globe. So this is going to be a topic. I think that through the different functionalities that the Dell platform can grant, it will be a great player.

When it comes to the flexibility for supporting various data workloads while protecting them, the combination of PowerScale and PPDM and all the other components of the data protection solution right now is key. So the automatic integration between the products is one of the killer features of the solution itself.

PowerScale helped us to reduce data silos. This has simplified the management of large data environments in terms of scalability and management instead of having a different solution for the right reports to see how the data evolves and how to better manage them. PowerScale can do that in combination with the other components of the ecosystem.

In terms of risk reduction, We need to mention the data management and the recovery part, So of course, the integration with the data domain is key. The fact that we can rely on these functions, and the fact that we also manage different customers, and possess the recovery plans and tests that can prove the solution is working.

Dell PowerScale includes a wealth of features that are important from a security and recovery perspective. 

Dell PowerScale can improve on its multi-tenant part because as a service provider, we have bigger clusters in data centers where we can serve multiple customers and grant them dedicated management points and automation features that can be managed in a multi-tenant environment.

I have been using Dell PowerScale for a few years.

Dell PowerScale is stable.

The scalability depends on the policy and data retention plan that is in place. The fact that we can easily upgrade the platform by moving to different versions is key.

One of the key points for our partnership with Dell is the great support and human interaction. Not only for the setup but also the visibility into the vulnerabilities, new features, and the ease of access to data and information about how the platform is evolving.

Positive

We use multi-vendor storage but Dell is one of our key partners. The pros are the fact that all the different technologies in the Dell ecosystem are integrated using themselves, and the fact that we can have the server resiliency integrated, the CAB solution that is integrated, and that, of course, is working very well in terms of performance. The other vendors propose similar solutions but in terms of integration and liability, they are not the same as Dell. We have different solutions because there are different needs of different customers, and we consider that they may have previously purchased different hardware.

PowerScale falls behind some of the competition in terms of automation. There are new players like VAST Data who started a company with an API-first approach which facilitates better automation.   

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. Overall, the experience is good, and this is why we are progressing in our partnership. 

I would rate Dell PowerScale nine out of ten.

We manage 40 petabytes of data in different customer environments.

Just like with AI, we are adopting containerized solutions, the fact that we are a managed service provider, of course. This is a different scenario from other customers because there are customers who are not yet into containerized applications. they are slowly transforming their platform and their support. Of course, containers are coming and in those scenarios, PowerFlex is a better option.

I believe in a hybrid approach, mainly because we've seen several customers that have workloads where data flows to user protection centers. So the data needs to be analyzed on proximity infrastructure. This is the reason why I strongly believe that hybrid will progress. For some companies, a full cloud approach may work but not for all of them.

The key factors for driving our decision-making process when it comes to selecting a cloud, on-prem, or hybrid environment for our enterprise applications are, where the data needs to be accessed, and scalability to adapt to different demands we may have. It depends on the different types of industries that we are serving. We will have our own data centers. But we will have to scale using the hyperscaler in order to be flexible in terms of data movement and also flexible in terms of preparation of the infrastructure. The speed we can achieve on hyperscalers is different than the speed we can achieve on-premises.

I use the solution in my company for large files. With Dell PowerScale (Isilon), the amount of files my company deals with is humungous in size.

My company has only four people working on the Dell PowerScale (Isilon) platform, which has around 300 TB. With the number of people necessary to run the tool, I am not sure if it can be considered an effective product.

The most valuable features are high density and scalability. The high density and scalability features are important for my company since we are trying to have low electricity and power consumption, considering that the amount of data that we have to use is limited.

My company uses an on-premises deployment model for Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

No one is required to maintain the product, but since it is a huge platform in our company's environment, some things need to be replaced constantly. The aforementioned issues with the tool are not because the product or hardware is bad but something that happens since it functions in a large environment.

If I consider my assessment of Dell PowerScale's ability to interface with AI models and algorithms, I would say that my company has just started using AI after connecting it to the tool. I use the AI part a lot currently. So far, my company has only been using NFS to connect to our computers.

It can be difficult to assess the ability of Dell PowerScale to help our company manage and run its storage from any location since it is a huge platform. You can put the product anywhere, but I would say that it needs to be in big data centers. You can have one location or ten locations, but all of them need to be big locations. You can't put the product into a small office area. It is easy to manage the product from multiple locations. Generally, one can manage all locations using the product from a single point.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has helped a little to reduce or eliminate data silos, but all the silos we use in our company are huge, making it a hard process. My company needs to deal with silos anyways.

In terms of the flexibility of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for supporting various data workloads, while keeping them protected, I would say everything is good since they can scale up very fast with NVMe technology and disks and also with the archive data in disks along with the performance it offers. For protection, we use snapshots along with mirroring.

The tool's support team and the way the cases are handled by the product's technical support team are both areas of concern where improvements are required.

When replacing hardware parts of the tool, there are about 15 steps to follow before our company gets the parts sent over to us by Dell, making it an area that we feel consists of a lot of unnecessary work for our employees. Dell should streamline the aforementioned process and make it just one or two steps instead of making users go through 15 steps.

The support offered after installing the tool to deal with the problems associated with the tool could be a little bit better. After the installation phase, the tool's support services have certain shortcomings because our company is not allowed to use or send the automated error reports back to Dell. The aforementioned process needs to be manually handled by Dell and us, which is why it takes so long, even though we are eligible to get help from a dedicated support engineer. Processing logs and other stuff takes time.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for seven years. My company is a customer of Dell.

The stability and reliability of the product are good. My company has only faced two big errors stopping the production in our organization over a span of seven years.

During the installation phase, Dell's support services are top-notch. I rate the technical support a six or seven out of ten. The support services during the tool's installation phase can be rated as ten out of ten.

Positive

My experience with the product's deployment phase has been good.

The installation took two days for three racks, and going from zero to one hundred, it took two days. It is a simple step-by-step process that includes the physical installation and configuration. Our company is able to be up and running within two or three days.

Compared to the other vendors in the market, the setup phase of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is fast. Other products are difficult to handle when it comes to the setup process. It is actually the technology like SAN and other related technologies that make it harder for a person to deal with the setup process.

My company opts for a 50-50 approach, meaning we take help from Dell's experts and from our own employees.

Considering my position at the company, I would say that we do not indulge in backtracking of anything associated with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

It is easy for my company to deal with product costs and licensing. Dealing with the product costs and licensing areas is getting easier since Dell is simplifying the licensing process and licensing packages offered to users.

My company uses products from multiple vendors all the time. My company is required to deal with multiple vendors, so sometimes we use Dell and others.

If I compare Dell PowerScale (Isilon) to other vendors in terms of both pros and cons, I would say that its pros are associated with the high scalability, where it is possible for one to build it in a very huge and large manner, but that has been so from ten years ago. Now, other vendors are coming out with good scalability features. I am soon going to have a one-on-one session later this week with Dell's experts.

I don't envision the future of our company's containerized solutions in terms of cloud integration since it is not applicable as we don't use the cloud, but we do use containers.

Based on key factors and the decision-making process, my company only uses the on-premises environment for our containerized applications.

I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten.

We had to move metadata from standard disks to SSDs because we had issues with how the cluster handled metadata operations. With a lot of IO, the data lookup wasn't fast enough, causing performance problems. This setup resolved those issues.

We no longer had the performance issues with Dell PowerScale. 

The platform performs really well. We're a media company with 14 TV stations. This solution is very capable of meeting our demands well. We use the SMB protocol for storage access, and it performs really well. 

The best thing is that it works. We don't have to maintain it too much;  we usually upgrade once a year.

We can get more than gigabit throughput from it. 

The disk failure handling could be better. We had a few issues because one disk failed, which slightly impacted the whole node, but overall, the performance is stable.

We had to expand and increase the storage capacity, but it turned out we needed a totally new cluster because we couldn't expand the current one due to software incompatibilities. We think the backend network should be upgraded from InfiniBand to Ethernet networking, and we had to buy a new cluster. Dell has significantly increased the prices of new nodes, by a lot. As a result, we're considering new vendors because if prices increase by 300%, then the clients will look elsewhere.

The disc server handling is not the best. Maybe the tiering logic could be improved. It's based on our age or some other logic but not on disk usage. If you have a tier one, you don’t want to load it completely; it deserves some free space for new data, and you can’t manage that with the current tiering logic. That’s where this software or this solution could be improved.

I have been using it for six years. 

PowerScale, which used to be known as Isilon, was developed by EMC before EMC became part of Dell.

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability a six out of ten because the new nodes are not compatible with the overall brand. So, we don’t have the option to scale an old cluster. This is a limitation because I could increase the node numbers with the same version, and then it works seamlessly. However, maintaining different versions is not the best solution.

We had some issues with level 1 support. We had to fight with them on repeated issues. 

We asked them if they could escalate the support to a higher level. There is room for improvement in level 1 support. 

Neutral

I used an IBM storage solution with an IBM GPFS file system and Samba.

We switched to Dell because of performance issues we had with this setup, which were caused primarily by the Samba NAS solution. IBM now offers licensing for commercial SMB protocol implementation, and they are capable of providing a good solution for us.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, with ten being easy to set up. 

The deployment process took a couple of days. It’s an on-premise solution.

We had to integrate it with our Active Directory system, and we had to implement some additional schemas, but apart from that, it was a standard process.

It is a really expensive solution. I would rate the pricing a nine out of ten, with one being low price and ten being high price. 

From a technical point of view, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

I would recommend using it. However, it's important to consider the high price point. Evaluate if you can get the same feature set from other vendors at a lower cost.

Dell has the AI to protect the EMA.

We must write a script tailored to our specific use case whenever we upload an item, such as a file or an application, due to the demand for storing data for longer periods in cases of broken or corrupted files. With Dell PowerScale, data storage is reliable and secure. The system ensures that data is safely stored and easily accessible, providing peace of mind with robust security measures.

The solution can be integrated with an automation system. Dell uses another framework developed in-house. They can integrate it with machines. 

Sometimes, Dell PowerScale can have issues with ID, window, or mapping errors. For example, a shareholder or user might not fully understand what they're doing, which can cause problems. Occasionally, we experience connection issues, requiring us to remap the folder.

Dell PowerScale might need to remap or update the credentials in such cases. For instance, if you have many shared folders already mapped, it might take time to remap or redo the credentials.

The solution is pretty scalable.

We used the traditional way, which made it challenging to expand storage and caused more issues.

If you have people working with MMC, Dell PowerScale is a solid option. It's a good choice for a company prioritizing decent pricing and reliable service. Dell PowerScale provides an effective solution for data storage needs, making it a valuable option.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We are using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for CCTV storage purposes.

In our scenarios, we haven't encountered difficulties. It is stable and very user-friendly. It's easy to monitor everything, and the interface is user-friendly. Additionally, it integrates easily with other systems. Dell PowerScale offers high scalability and stability as well, making it a valuable solution for enterprises.

Always, there is room for improvement in terms of cybersecurity, as new challenges are continually emerging in the market. However, in our current usage, we find it satisfactory.

I have around ten years of experience working with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

Dell PowerScale is very stable.

Dell PowerScale has high scalability.

Dell provides support within four hours, and they always fulfill their promises.

Positive

The initial setup is easy.

Most enterprises prefer to go with Dell. Despite being more expensive than Huawei, it is stable and most enterprises accept the price due to its stability.

The pricing of Dell solutions is higher than that of Huawei.

We are using another Dell model for data replication, the SC5020.

Dell PowerScale is stable, user-friendly, and easily integrates with other systems. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate it an eight out of ten. Better solutions are available, however, they tend to be more expensive.