Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Reviews

We are migrating all of the state agencies' data into one environment, onto Dell PowerScale, and doing the cluster environment to have redundancy with backups to restore and move data faster. Some of the agencies were using old equipment and since the change, they have seen a huge uplift in performance related to retrieving data, security, and locking data down. 

Dell PowerScale has helped reduce our costs. Most state agencies were using old equipment that cost a lot of money. With Dell PowerScale they can migrate their data and pay per gig pennies on the dollar compared to their old systems. Dell PowerScale has saved the state money.

PowerScale allows us to get granular with users' access and protection of their data. I have not gone through all the features but everything is protected as far as the permission we give through the PowerScale app that enhances the internal audit features that we need for compliance with the state.

PowerScale has helped reduce our overall risk. I review the audit reports annually and since we have been using PowerScale, the reports come back almost clean because PowerScale passes all the vulnerability and security tests.  

Scaling up with Dell PowerScale is easy. We can add more nodes when needed. Dell PowerScale overall is easy to use. 

The price always has room for improvement.

I have been using Dell PowerScale for two years.

We replaced the Dell PowerScale H500 with the F900 almost seamlessly. We brought a new rack and migrated the data to the new cluster. I was amazed at how fast it was completed. We migrated 12 agencies over from the old cluster in under 15 hours. With the older platforms, it would take us days to migrate that volume of data.

The technical support is good. I had a few minor difficulties understanding some of the advice being offered because of the support person's accent but my concerns were addressed immediately. They are responsive. When we submit an SR, we get a callback or email immediately. 

Positive

Some of our agencies used old equipment and saw a great upside to migrating to PowerScale. It saved them money. 

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.

I would rate Dell PowerScale nine out of ten for its ease of use.

We only have one cluster in one location but our users are all over the state.

We use Dell PowerScale to share data between our Windows, Linux, and Azure systems.

Before Dell PowerScale, we had safe clusters for Linux systems and Windows file servers with separate item storage. Now, we have centralized storage together.

If we have an AI extension, data can be reordered from unstructured to structured. Scientists travel with a lot of data and ask to put the data in storage and forget about it. So there is a lot of unused data left in the storage.

PowerScale is flexible in supporting various data workloads while keeping them protected. It includes a lot of security snapshots so if a user accidentally deletes data, we can provide the snapshot for them to restore their lost data.

PowerScale helps reduce our organizational risk. We have additional security running on PowerScale for added protection. Before PowerScale, we had no security.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale is its scalability. If we need more storage, we can add more nodes without the need to install anything else. Also, the data compression and deduplication are valuable. The SFA recovery site sync is good.

We believed that we could share all the data between Windows RTS and Linux RTS but that is not true because we can break the RTS as a system so we must separate the data. This means we have one system but we still have two data paths.

PowerScale is not suitable for virtual environments. So we use a different solution for our hybrid environments like our VMware clusters. 

I have been using Dell PowerScale for one year.

Dell PowerScale is stable.

Dell PowerScale is easily scalable.

We are supposed to have technical support from Europe, but until now we have only received support from India.

We previously used Pure Storage. We wanted PowerStore but our other partner offered us PowerScale faster.

We ran into an issue deploying PowerScale F900 because of some bugs but with the support, it worked out. 

We used a reseller for the implementation. T-Systems from Telecom. Their engineer installed the wrong cable that was not hard enough and we had to break down the switch to replace it. 

PowerScale hardware is expensive but it consumes less energy making it more efficient. In five years we will see a return on investment compared to other solutions.

I would rate Dell PowerScale eight out of ten. We have scalability and one file system for most use cases but the GUI is terrible. If we are searching for a file we must know the full path. Also, the alerts are not clear enough. 

Our customers consist of banking sectors, financial sectors, infrastructure services, and service divisions, such as oil and gas-based customers. We recommend Dell PowerScale to our customers based on their business demands and data management needs. Primarily, it is used for handling large-scale data, including real-time data generation from remote locations, particularly in industries like automobile manufacturing, where vast amounts of unstructured data are gathered and processed.

Dell PowerScale helps our customers by providing a highly scalable and efficient data management solution that supports their operations effectively. It allows for the seamless addition of nodes to the cluster as needed, ensuring the organization's data storage can grow proportionately with their demands. PowerScale supports various use cases, from real-time data processing to maintaining data integrity and availability, which is crucial for sectors generating large volumes of data daily.

One of the most valuable features is erasure coding, which prevents data loss even if a single node fails. The OneFS OS provides a single namespace, improving data storage efficiency and management. 

Features like ransomware protection, file lock retention, and third-party integrations (e.g., Superna for ransomware protection) are significant benefits. 

Additionally, the scalability and capability to handle large amounts of unstructured data, real-time data processing, and integration with AI workloads make it a robust solution for enterprises.

Improvements could be made on the object storage side. PowerScale offers object storage capabilities, but not in a fully integrated way. If customers have workloads requiring both file and object storage, PowerScale can provide up to 20% object storage, which might not be sufficient for all needs. A unified solution combining NAS and object storage, similar to other solutions that combine block and NAS, would be beneficial.

I have worked with Dell PowerScale for almost a year. Previously, I worked with the Isilon model before transitioning to PowerScale.

Dell PowerScale is very stable, with a stability rating of nine out of ten. In terms of availability and stability, I would give it a ten.

Dell PowerScale is extremely scalable. You can start with a minimum of three nodes and expand based on capacity demands. This feature allows for significant flexibility in managing storage needs. The scalability is further enhanced by its ability to integrate new nodes automatically without manual effort.

Support for Dell PowerScale is never a challenge. There is twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five support available, including four-hour on-site support for high-priority issues. The on-site engineer will reach the location, review the issue, and work on it within four hours. Hence, I would rate technical support a ten.

Positive

The initial setup for PowerScale is straightforward and easy. It just requires initial configuration, followed by automated processes to complete the setup. Therefore, I would give it a rating of ten for ease of setup.

The price of Dell PowerScale depends on the customer's specific requirements and capacity needs. It is generally considered a costly solution, but its features and capabilities justify the price. It's essential to align the pricing with the business needs and future scalability requirements.

If your business demands a highly scalable data solution, including handling multiple edge locations and large amounts of data effectively, Dell PowerScale is a suitable option. It is particularly advantageous for enterprises with specific AI workloads. However, due to its cost, it may not be the best option for mid-range customers or those looking for general-purpose file services.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We primarily use Dell PowerScale for storage in our data management operations.

Dell PowerScale has provided us with a single space of storage, which is beneficial for our needs.

The most valuable feature is its single space of storage.

The analytics could be improved.

I have about fifteen years of experience with this solution under different names.

The stability of Dell PowerScale is very good.

The scalability of this solution is good. I would rate it ten on a scale from one to ten.

The technical support is excellent. I would rate it ten on a scale from one to ten.

Positive

We used Quantum before switching to Dell. Quantum was not as reliable as we wanted, and it was more difficult to use.

The initial setup was easy. I would rate it ten on a scale from one to ten.

Our deployment was done in-house.

There has been no massive ROI in the storage. That said, it met our expectations.

The pricing of Dell PowerScale is reasonable. However, it is on the pricier side. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees.

Check out what's on the market and make sure it's right for you. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I use the solution in my company for unstructured data storage.

The most valuable features of the solution are Isilon InsightIQ for reporting issues and the extra ransomware protection features.

In my company, we have lots of huge amounts of data, around several petabytes, so we needed a way to have some responsive clusters with failover. In our company, we also have to give some reports to get some upgrades for the clusters recently as it is easier for us if we can give a look out to the management about how much research is done by us and how much space is required to do research. Our company has several tech people in our research facilities in Germany at the moment, and we have lost a lot of data to ransomware. One of the key features my company expects from the product is that it reduces ransomware attacks.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) offers a sense of resilience, cyber resiliency, and security to my organization, especially with the third-party add-ons.

In terms of the benefits we experienced from the use of the product, I would say that our organization has different researchers. In our company, we have every operating system in use for different workloads. I can imagine that when our company deals with file-sharing features, the tool is way easier to use, and we can perform the procedure smoothly. The tool is also easy to deploy.

In terms of my experience with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and its licensing part, cost of implementation, and costs of ownership, I don't have much information because our company has only been using the tool for over a year. The documentation is easy, and the management is easy and fast, so my company has had a really good experience with the tool.

The cost of ownership of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is good because our company is able to save a lot of energy, especially in terms of manpower and electricity. My company has managed to get down from four racks to half a rack.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has helped reduce and eliminate data silos, and it has helped our company shut down several single data storages. In our company, we had an old Dell PowerVault MD Storage, and through the PowerScale OneFS cluster, we could shut down a lot of network-attached storage devices. My company wants to consolidate everything into a central data storage and be able to manage our small team.

Based on the assessment of the tool's flexibility for supporting various data workloads while keeping them protected, I would say that we are in the process of migration. My company is in the process of migrating some video data and so on, but as of now, we use the product's services in the backend for containerization.

The product has helped reduce overall risk in my company since we just have one cluster to manage. Primarily, it is easier to have an overview and keep the clusters up to date.

When envisioning the future of our containerized solutions in terms of cloud integration, I see that in Germany considering a fully cloud-based approach can be hard. Mostly, Germans don't like to put any data on the cloud. I believe that users may opt for a private cloud or a hybrid strategy.

Based on a few key factors and the decision-making process, I would say that my company would choose an environment that offers the most amount of security features for our containerized applications since we have research data while sometimes, we also have data that is used for thesis, so there are areas where we can't afford anyone to get access to our data.

There are some missing features in the product, especially when our company needs to do some tape backup, and we see that the tool doesn't have integration capabilities. Our company has to buy another third-party software deal with tape backup. 

It is a little hard to implement Dell PowerScale CloudPools. In our company, we would like to have another storage tier for data access, but it is getting too expensive when it comes to the licensing part of the product.

Sometimes, it can be bothersome to get through from the first level of support to the second one and from the second level to the third level of support. To deal with a set of similar errors, it would be great if Dell could allow users to skip some support stages. The reason a user may be forced to go through different levels of support can be because there is no automated support available to be offered.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for over a year. My company is a customer of the tool.

My company has never had any issues with the stability of the product.

The product's scalability feature is super easy to use.

My company has used the technical support of the tool. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

My company deals with big companies that offer storage solutions. My company does not have similar products from different vendors, so we deal with different vendors and provide different solutions for different scenarios.

The product's initial setup phase was really easy because our company had technicians coming over. I feel the technicians could do better, and so now my company has a new support partner who installs the hardware. At the time our company purchased Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we had a third-party company install the product in our company. Our organization called in a third-party company to introduce us to how to install Dell PowerScale (Isilon). There were some issues after the tool's setup phase that had to be fixed, and so it got quite a little messy because of the aforementioned problems.

We received several good recommendations from partners of our organization in Germany, after which we dived into Dell PowerScale (Isilon), considering that my company is in the commercial research area, where we have to deal with contracts. My company believes that if we have contracts with Dell, then it would be easier for us to process data. The last time our company upgraded our compute, we entered into another contract with another vendor, which was not good. My company is looking into entering into more contracts with Dell.

Considering the product still needs to add a few features, I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

We use the solution to store camera video surveillance and hospital X-rays.

The most valuable features of the solution are flexibility and ease of implementation.

It would be good to have synchronized mirroring between two clusters without using a third-party program.

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

The solution's stability is really good, and I haven't had a crash for two years. The solution works just fine even if a node goes down.

The solution's scalability is very good, and you can easily scale it.

Sometimes, the support team throws me around before I talk to the right person. However, the situation has been much better for the past year.

Positive

Our customers previously used NetApp. They switched to Dell PowerScale because it was easy to use. In my opinion, Dell PowerScale is better than NetApp because it's faster and more hybrid.

The solution's initial setup is easy for me because it's been the same implementation from the beginning. However, it's not so easy when the customers do it themselves.

The solution reduces our customers' power consumption by around 30% and saves them rack space.

The solution's ability to interface with AI models and algorithms is very good.

The solution has been really good for helping our organization manage and run our storage from any location.

The solution has helped to reduce or eliminate data silos, which has enabled our customers to add new nodes by themselves.

The solution's flexibility for supporting various data workloads while keeping them protected has been really good.

I've deployed Dell PowerScale for 300 terabytes to about 800 terabytes sized environments.

Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.

I've worked on multiple cases, like cache, performance, and application cases.

Dell PowerScale has the SmartConnect and SmartConnect Pro features. That's why I like the product.

Dell is an expansive product. Everyone has a Dell product.

The improvement should be in AI. Everything is going towards AI. If they improved the AI features, it would be easier for customers to handle.

If some customers have expired products and cannot renew them, Dell should provide knowledge-based articles to help them handle issues like replication, node issues, or hardware issues. They have storage admin engineers who can handle it.

AI could also help with things like searching.  For example, if I want Anil's profile, I should be able to see everything on the screen. AI could also help with common issues like performance issues. If you type "performance issues" into their portal, it should tell you what needs to be checked, what shouldn't be checked, and where to check it, whether the issue is from the storage end, the host end, or the switch end.

Dell can improve in terms of support. Dell hires freshers who don't have much experience. They should resolve issues faster. At Accenture, we reach out to customers within 15 minutes if they have any issues.

I worked with it for five years. In 2019, Isilon was changed to PowerScale.

Scalability is very good in terms of Dell products.

The tech support is good.

Neutral

It requires more manpower for the installation. More than two people are needed for the process. 

It takes around four hours for a full deployment. It is easy to integrate with other systems.

It will require some maintenance. It depends on the hardware.

Users can save time and money with PowerScale. There is around 15% to 20% time savings.

Dell products are expensive. They are more expensive than other competitors.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. If you have a small environment, I can recommend Isilon PowerScale.

I would recommend it to others because Dell is a very good company, and we can blindly trust Dell products. It's number five, I think, or six in a global ranking.

TGen is a nonprofit biomedical research institute. Our focus is primarily on genomics, translating discoveries in the field of genomics into treatments for patients.

It is central to our data storage of scientific data. We sequence the human genomes of folks with different diseases, primarily cancer but also other disorders, e.g., rare childhood disorders and people with mitochondrial diseases as well as neurological diseases. When you do this, it generates a considerable amount of data. Each time that a whole genome sequence is run, you generate anywhere from four to eight terabytes of data. For example, if you are looking at 1,000 patients, that can be anywhere from four to eight petabytes of data. TGen has about seven petabytes of storage being used for storing these genomes, which is a fair amount.

Isilon is an on-prem, scale-out storage. The nodes are linked together through a back-end high-speed interconnect. 

We are running current versions of software on the node. It has versions now. The nomenclature is sometimes not the easiest to follow, because they still like to rebrand things. 

It has given us the capability to focus on our prime objective, which is science, without having to necessarily be concerned about the back-end infrastructure that powers it. This is something we are always looking to achieve: Being able to focus on our prime mission without having technology get in the way. Scientists don't want to learn all about your storage system. They just want to do their science.

It is a critical piece for storing scientific data for our Institute. It is where we put our most valuable and precious data. We also leverage it for work on administrative data, spreadsheets, Word documents, etc. So, it is flexible. We access it via NFS and SMB. Those are the two primary methods of access that we use along with some others, such as S3 for some particular use cases.

Deploying and managing storage at a petabyte scale using Isilon is extremely simple. The user interface for management tasks is intuitive. The documentation is thorough and good, and if you get stuck, then the support is very capable. Overall, I have confidence that we can easily deploy, manage, and maintain systems without needing a huge amount of expertise to facilitate them.

PowerScale has helped us by consolidating the data without having it dispersed. Prior to this solution, we would have many different physically separate storage solutions. To do the science, sometimes data needs to go from one place to another. Moving your data at a petabyte scale, or even at hundreds of terabytes, is very time-consuming and expensive. By having the consolidation within these clusters, it has enabled us to very easily access and compute data without having to push it around to a bunch of different places.

We have a "thinly provisioned" workforce. One of the crucial aspects is that we can continue to scale a solution without having to add more humans to take care of it.

There is a reason that we chose this platform to store this priceless data. We know it is resilient. It also provides data protection that helps me sleep at night. 

One of the most important factors about it is you can manage a lot of storage without a lot of people. Therefore, ease of management is really important for us because we are a nonprofit. We don't have a huge IT staff to support a pretty substantial IT infrastructure. So, ease of management is always a really crucial consideration.

Another aspect of the management that is super important is having the CloudIQ feature to monitor performance and other data remotely. We have four clusters that we manage. Having all those clusters, being able to have a single dashboard to take a look at the health of everything every morning, helps out a lot.

One of the nice things is that they have several different node types spread all the way from super high performance, flash-based storage nodes through more of what we consider an archive tier. So, we are able to use technologies, what Dell EMC has labeled SmartPools that will tier data automatically between different types of storage. So, we can ensure that hot data resides on the high-performance storage. Whereas, once data has gotten colder, then it can be pushed off to the low-performance storage to help control costs.

We have used the solution’s support for the S3 protocol, but in a limited use case. We are looking to expand that because we are doing more work towards cloud-based solutions. So, having the flexibility of S3 is important as we design new workloads that will be more cloud-centric. They will be able to use that protocol to access data on nodes without necessarily having to go back and refactor everything.

It is good and efficient when maximizing storage utilization. The operating system behind it, called OneFS, provides granularity, data protection, and control. So, you can actually adjust the amount of overhead being consumed for your data protection, depending upon what your needs are. It is pretty efficient at keeping data protected. At the end of the day, that is one of the most important things: Knowing that your data is safe.

Dell EMC keeps adding more features to the solution’s OneFS operating system. We have been iterating with them for quite some time. The solution is continually improving and becoming more robust and reliable. One of the latest things that really helped us out was the ability to perform upgrades without having cluster-wide outages, which is huge because we don't want to shut down operations unless we absolutely have to. Having that was a really big win for us. This saved us time. More importantly, it has kept our labs functioning during upgrades, as opposed to having shut down sequencers for a day while we go through and upgrade everything, which is important.

Something that still could be improved upon is adding additional node types of different sizes to facilitate a better way to run in distributed offices. For example, we have a lab up in Flagstaff, but they don't have a lot of IT infrastructure. Therefore, it is not really appropriate to run this system at their location. So, we run it down here in Phoenix. It would be nice if there was a smaller solution that we could deploy up there that was still as cost-effective as the bigger solutions.

The thing that they are working on now, and we are following closely is more native cloud integrations. The way that we envision workloads in the future is around moving compute to data instead of the other way around. So, we would like to have a single pane glass to manage storage across a variety of different platforms, including native cloud. That would be awesome.

We were using PowerScale before Dell EMC even bought Isilon. So, we have been using it for some time now. 

We have run this product for so many years now. I can count on one hand the number of times where we have had any kind of issue that impacted availability. Usually, it turned out not to be the cluster but something else. It is extremely robust and continues to function.

We are not super aggressive in patching or anything. We believe that stability is number one. Availability is just of the most critical importance so that is really where we focus.

Once you have set up your initial cluster, adding more capacity to it is extremely easy. It is so easy that one of our salespeople added a node to the cluster. Having a salesperson do something technical is always a little bit interesting, but they didn't have any problems at all. "Boom," and it works. 

This is one of the nice things that goes back to that whole ease of management. Being able to add additional capacity is pretty simple. You just buy the nodes and plug them in, as long as you have enough of the right kind of node types. However, if you meet all that criteria, it is that easy to do.

Since it can scale so easily, as long as I have money to buy more nodes, I can grow it as big as I need to. That is important in our business. As sequencing technologies continue to evolve, and as those technologies evolve, the amount of data generation never gets smaller. It just always seems to get bigger. This is one of the absolute key aspects: We can grow on demand without having to forklift stuff. 

I have done forklifting, and it is a drag. I don't want to do that again. We want to just keep being able to grow as we need to ensure our customers have the resources that they need to do their work.

I have worked pretty closely with their engineers over a number of years. They have implemented several different items that we have suggested.

The technical support is excellent. They have good support teams within Dell EMC, but also the VARs that we use have been extremely good at helping us as well. We kind of have multiple different angles of support, and that is one of the reasons that we continue to invest in Dell EMC. They have a model that we can rely on for getting the right answers.

I would rate the technical support as a nine out of 10, because nobody is perfect.

Positive

We got our first cluster in 2008. Before that, we were using JBODs connected to Linux hosts. This was a homegrown solution. Frankly, there wasn't really anything available at that time that could meet our needs which didn't cost millions of dollars. So, we went from something that was good enough to something that was much better.

We switched because we needed something that scaled much larger than what we could build and comfortably support. That was the number one reason. Number two was, at that time, I was still doing all the technical work, and I was the one building it. I had too many other things to do. So, I needed to find something that could be supported by other people, not just me. This was really getting something that we could run in a more enterprise-type fashion, as opposed to something that we built because we had to and there weren't any other options.

Today, we have two individuals responsible for storage. Not just this storage, but any other storage systems that exist. Previously, while the storage was a lot smaller, it still took about four of us working on it. By having a single platform, where we can run a variety of workloads on it, this enabled us to not have to continually grow our storage administration staff, even though our data footprint increased many fold over the years.

It was straightforward. There wasn't anything super complex about it. 

We just deployed a new cluster last year. It took around three to four months before it was really cranking in full production. Once they are running in full production, they are adding value.

Even to this day, if we still run into something that we are not sure about, we can call support or get local support, who generally get things addressed quickly and to our satisfaction.

Since I have to manage all the budgets, 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.

Like anything else, it could always be less expensive. That would be great. At the same time, I would like to make sure that they keep innovating.

We went pretty much straight to the Isilon product. At the time, there were no other products available that did what that product did. They were kind of unique.

We keep going back to them even though there are other products now that report to have similar characteristics. We keep going back to them because it has been such a good experience. We have a high degree of confidence in Dell EMC being able to deliver a product that meets our needs. It is cost-effective and helps me sleep at night because a lot of the data is precious. Sometimes, you get samples that you would never be able to get again, where they are kind of a one-off thing. If you lose them, then they are gone forever. We have to bear that in mind. That is really why we continue to invest in this solution.

I would rate it as nine and a half out of 10. One of the main reasons that we have been successful as an institute is because we have back-end infrastructure, e.g., scale-out storage. This lets scientists focus on doing science, which is really important.