Dell PowerScale Reviews

Our company's use case for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is unstructured data as it's our general file share for everything.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) benefits my organization by making it easier to connect and work on files. It's also been a great solution for storing our larger modalities and all the pictures and images from that, along with the videos, since we are a healthcare organization. It's been a good use.

The accessibility and the configurability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is really nice and it expands well. 

The reliability and stability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is good, with no downtime. 

If I could improve one thing on Dell PowerScale (Isilon), it would be better object storage as it recently breached into S3, and that capability could be broadened. They won't do it as they have ObjectScale, however, the capabilities on Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could be improved.

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

I haven't had any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) recently, however, we have experienced them in the past; however, it has been a long time. I don't know that any downtimes were a hardware issue with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

We utilize 70,000 terabytes on Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

Generally, when we put in a ticket on something regarding Dell PowerScale (Isilon), it takes a while to get to the right person as we wade through first-level support. 

Once we reach the second level person or the right level, the support is great and awesome.

I would rate the support for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as probably an eight.

We switched from NetApp before I joined my team, and while we were using Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we merged with other organizations that were using different solutions and sunset those uses into Dell PowerScale (Isilon). They were using Pure Storage in some other places.

I would describe my experience deploying Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as easy. 

It's a very quick, seamless product, and once we get it in, it's just a matter of setting up some policies to copy data over, whether for an LCR or standing up a completely fresh new one. 

With Dell support always there to help, it remains pretty straightforward since the software is intuitive.

Maintenance and upgrades for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) are also pretty straightforward; sometimes they're a little slow due to the size of our cluster, however, overall, the support is good and maintenance is easy. 

Certainly, we have seen return on investment and peace of mind, especially with our two clusters that are linked together, where one is a disaster recovery solution for the other. We get a lot of peace of mind from that, and it's worth every penny.

The second cluster of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) gives us flexibility for small things like code upgrades, all the way to scenarios where we have lost this data center or data, allowing us to check if data is still intact on the other side; we can flip easily.

I don't get involved in the pricing, TCO costs, and licensing of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) since I'm more involved in engineering what we need, so the prices are hammered out elsewhere.

We haven't considered any other solutions besides Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

My role using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) involves overseeing the hardware and the software, and managing some of the permissions and access to the data on the array. 

Overall, I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a nine out of ten.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) provides high throughput and low latency whenever required, making it ideal for file-based data sites in research and data analytics. It offers cybersecurity and enterprise file services, including ransomware protection, and supports multi-protocol access. High-frequency trading applications benefit from the low latency storage that Dell PowerScale (Isilon) provides.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads are well-suited for Dell PowerScale (Isilon), particularly GPU-intensive workloads where it accelerates model training and prevents GPU idling. The AI Data Lake provides a unified repository for data across edge and core with non-disruptive upgrades. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cybersecurity suites protect AI workflows from data poisoning and model inversion attacks.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a scale-out NAS system that works effectively for small environments. I utilize All-Flash, hybrid, or archive nodes on Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and can scale to petabytes in a single namespace. The architecture allows me to easily add nodes to increase capacity and performance, with the ability to add up to 252 nodes per cluster. Each cluster is made up of three to four nodes.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) operates on the OneFS operating system, which allows me to manage the entire cluster with a single Unisphere interface. I appreciate this because the entire cluster is managed by a single unified file system. I can use NVMe drives for high-speed data access, and the solution is cost-effective while maintaining high speed. It handles unstructured data effectively as a scale-out NAS system.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) includes data protection and security features such as ransomware protection and data protection at the storage layer. I can also use cloud flexibility with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), which is available both on-premise and in public clouds such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure for a consistent environment.

The major advantages include data protection, ransomware protection, and cloud capabilities. The primary advantage is the ability to use the entire cluster in one unified file system, which is a feature I have not observed in other products. From a performance perspective, the solution is very good. I use a performance matrix, and with NVMe drives providing high-speed network access and high-speed data delivery, performance-wise Dell PowerScale (Isilon) performs well.

From the disadvantages perspective, if I need to replace a drive, I must shut down that node. Each node consists of four to five drives, which means four drives will not work during this process. This is a concept I do not prefer.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) since 2019.

Not every product is completely stable. I would rate the stability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) at approximately 90 to 95 percent stable.

I have not used it directly, but I have learned about NetApp, which is similar to Dell PowerScale (Isilon). However, I do not have extensive hands-on experience with NetApp.

The setup for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is straightforward and easy.

I have saved a considerable amount of money, approximately 25 percent.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is cost-effective.

My review rating for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 9 out of 10.

I work on many projects in many companies in Egypt, such as EGBC and Cairo Airport, and many other companies. My job starts with building clusters and maintenance, which are tasks I know well.

In my use cases, I can build clusters A2000, model A2000, A3, A2000, A200, A3000, and A300, and configure the clusters and switches, racking and stacking as well as troubleshooting any issues that arise.

My role in using or managing Dell PowerScale (Isilon) includes administration, operation, and implementation. I handle implementation and configuration as well as operation with customers. My work focuses on configuration and implementation. Configuration starts with rack and stack and initial configuration, followed by SAN switch configuration implementation.

The best features of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) include UI enhancement and more flexibility in the licensing model. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) provides customers with large capacity and a simplified GUI.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) helps improve the way the organization functions through massive scalability, high performance, a single file system, high availability and reliability, flexible protocols, support for NFS, SMB, HDFS, strong security, cloud integration, efficiency, data protection, snapshot, queue, and sync queue, optimized for unstructured data.

I would like to see Dell PowerScale (Isilon) improved by enhancing the user interface, OneFS, to make advanced conversation and troubleshooting more specific, upgrade and batch management, providing deeper built-in analytics for performance and capacity planning.

I would like to see additional integration with cloud service and optimization of license flexibility as specific features.

I have experience of approximately five years working with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

Regarding scalability, it is easy to scale up by increasing power of a single system through adding more CPU, RAM, and disks. For example, upgrading one storage server from 64 gigabytes RAM to 256 gigabytes RAM is a good example of scaling up, which is sometimes called vertical scaling. Scaling out means increasing capacity and performance by adding more systems, nodes, and servers to the cluster, such as A2000 or A200, A3000, H500, nodes from series F. For example, adding three new nodes to a Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cluster is also easy. It allows for high availability, ensuring usually no downtime and no single point of failure.

I evaluate customer service and technical support based on three or four points. I find it balanced and professional with recommendations in the Dell steps. I download the procedures and study them thoroughly for troubleshooting. I survey customers about issues or their jobs. Technical support provides strong technical experts and effective troubleshooting, with reasonable response times. For complex issues, I escalate them to the Dell support team.

On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the best, I would rate Dell support an eight or nine.

Positive

If I ask for improvement, what could be improved regarding Dell PowerScale (Isilon)? My overall review rating for this product is ten.

My main use cases for Dell PowerScale are HPC loads, as we do brain research, and the throughput is our main requirement for it.

The features of Dell PowerScale that I appreciate the most are the deduplication and the storage tiering.

Dell PowerScale aligns with my organization's strategy goals for improving our operations through throughput and speed. When we initiate an HPC load, sometimes that can take three to six months, and moving that to a lower tier system means we will be there for years.

Improving Dell PowerScale is difficult because we really do not have issues with it. It simply operates reliably without problems.

I have been using Dell PowerScale for three years, but we purchased our first one in 2021 or 2022.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerScale, I used Ceph that was set up really poorly, and a disk going down would result in a week of downtime.

Dell PowerScale performs exceptionally with growing needs in my organization. The Dell team simply takes care of everything.

I evaluate customer support and customer service for Dell PowerScale as incredible, and I am probably spoiled because I have a really good team. Even if something is not necessarily in their responsibilities, they will take care of it most of the time.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the customer service as nine because there is always a hiccup, and I do not think it is fair to give anyone a perfect score. I believe it is fair to leave room for improvement.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerScale, I used Ceph that was set up really poorly, and a disk going down would result in a week of downtime.

Dell handles all setup, so I do not have to deal with any of it.

I have absolutely seen ROI with Dell PowerScale. Going back to that example of a six-month job taking three years, the savings in staffing time and production are substantial.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Dell PowerScale is that pricing is very competitive. We are actually about to move to the APEX Flex option. Dell handles all setup, so I do not have to deal with any of it.

I cannot answer what other solutions I considered before Dell PowerScale because I was not involved in that decision. I adopted it when I took on my current role.

The emerging challenge I foresee in managing enterprise data is data growth, as it is our biggest challenge. I have people come to me and say they have a 500 terabyte data set that they need to download, and we have to discuss the implications. I would rate my overall experience with Dell PowerScale as a ten.

In my role as an IT administrator, I use Dell PowerScale to manage our storage needs. My main use cases for Dell PowerScale are data storage and high availability.

I appreciate the high-availability data storage feature of Dell PowerScale the most. The features of Dell PowerScale have benefited my organization by improving storage and collapsing technologies, making it easier for the users. Dell PowerScale aligns with my organization's goals of supporting digital transformation initiatives by collapsing a large environment to a small footprint. Dell PowerScale scales well with the growing needs of my organization; it will continue to grow since we produce content every year, so our data needs grow every year.

I foresee the biggest challenge in managing enterprise data being file size, but I believe improvements would be the compression that Dell offers on data storage. Dell PowerScale does not play any role in my organization's AI initiatives. I cannot think of any additional features that should be included to improve Dell PowerScale.

I have been using Dell PowerScale for approximately 12 months.

In the 12 months since using Dell PowerScale, I have not experienced any issues, which reflects its stability and reliability.

Dell PowerScale scales well with the growing needs of my organization; it will continue to grow since we produce content every year, so our data needs grow every year.

I evaluate customer service and technical support on the Dell side as straightforward; it has been easy to deal with. I would rate customer service a 10.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerScale, I was using a home-baked storage solution.

I have seen ROI with Dell PowerScale. The biggest example I can provide for ROI is the reduced footprint; I believe that is the most significant one.

My experience with pricing, setup, cost, or licensing has been straightforward; through our partner, it is easy.

I considered other solutions but ultimately chose to stick with Dell.

The biggest example I can provide for ROI is the reduced footprint; I believe that is the most significant one. For performance metrics or benchmarks, it would have to be the data metrics within the platform itself. I would rate Dell PowerScale a 10 overall. I rate this product at a 10 out of 10.

I use Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for NAS. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) plays a role in my AI initiatives.

My favorite feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that it uses a file system compared to other SAN products that we have in Dell, which is a best feature because it is a file storage or file system.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has improved my organization as it broadens the core skills. You get to know the difference between the networks because you are not just working with storage. You will also need to know the difference between the network used, the storage used, the compute used, or the relationship between a client, server, and its architecture. It actually broadens your perspective and broadens your skill sets. You can improve more, and in three years, there have been a lot of changes even in Dell PowerScale (Isilon), so you also upgrade along with it.

When it comes to Dell PowerScale (Isilon), I think that because it differs when you have a normal customer and a developer, usually we know what is needed and how we use it, everything. If you ask this question to someone who really needs the product, I think they will be more open and can say what they need. But usually when you are an employee, you will get all kinds of documentation, maybe from different sources, so that would not be a problem. Regarding the UI, it is a really good UI if you work on it, and the AI and APIs are excellent. I cannot say what improvement is needed, provided we also have good documentation online, which is good to understand.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for approximately three and a half years.

Regarding the stability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon), I can give it a rating of nine or eight. I have never seen a downtime, and I do not think there are any glitches.

I would rate the scalability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a solid ten.

I would rate the technical support for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) at least eight to nine. If I had to decide whether it is eight or nine, I would say eight.

Positive

The deployment of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is not really complex but depends on the hardware deployment. Sometimes there might be complications when you switch it on or when you place the right network cables. It depends on who is maintaining it. Once everything is up, then it is a pretty easy process, but the difficult part is manually installing it and placing it in the right tile with the right cables and networks.

With Dell PowerScale (Isilon), I can give you an example of the return on investment. It uses not just a terabyte but petabytes of data. Storing a large amount of data takes within minutes, and you can bring it down to seconds as well. It does not take much time to upload or copy the data here and there, and upgrades also do not take much time. I think you can finish most of your work within four hours; even if you are doing a big upgrade, you can finish it in a smaller time span and do other work.

My advice for those looking to implement Dell PowerScale (Isilon) would be to first see what your requirement is. If you are in need of unstructured data or if you are in need of a NAS, and in NAS as well, if you need scale-out on a large enterprise level, you can go for Dell PowerScale (Isilon), and it would not be a loss. I give this review an overall rating of eight.

My use cases for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) include large data lakes, video surveillance, and anywhere there is unstructured data. I would describe them as data mining, along with applications like Hadoop, where data mining was key before AI.

What I appreciate most about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is its scalability. I came from NetApp prior to that, where we marketed scale-out capabilities, but it really was not that. What it was, was a series of two-node clusters strung together without a common file system across compute nodes. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) actually combined a shared file system that scales seamlessly and works effectively, making the blocking and tackling exactly what was advertised.

Backward compatibility is something Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could work on. There are always technical challenges and firmware issues, especially once you get into the details of introducing current nodes into newer ones running different code.

I have been working with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for 11 years.

The stability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is generally good. In the early days when I started with Isilon, there were customer satisfaction issues that were not product-based but rooted in misarchitected solutions due to incorrect pricing that misled the deployments.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has excellent scalability. I had customers in media and entertainment using it who would scale out to over 30 nodes, which is not common as many keep it down to four to six nodes due to risk mitigation.

I have contacted Dell PowerScale (Isilon) customer support in situations that were more misarchitected than product flaws. Once escalated, the company stood behind the product, swapping out nodes at no cost to the customer due to the impact on their business.

On a scale from one to ten for support, I would give Dell PowerScale (Isilon) at least a nine, considering the different ways to gain support through the portal.

Positive

I have used alternatives to Dell PowerScale (Isilon) such as NetApp, Nasuni, and IBM GPFS. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) outperforms them all.

From my point of view, the initial deployment of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) was very easy because they did a good job of following common practices and provided great support and professional services. I think they could improve their handholding of customers after deployment by giving better guidance on what nodes do for the different workloads.

If a capable engineer was deploying Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for the first time, I would estimate it would take them approximately four hours, not including the rack mounting and physical labor, especially when professional services were on site while I guided the customer through the interface.

Whether one person is enough or a team is needed for the deployment of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) depends on the aspect being addressed. If the planning phase is done upfront, I would say it is a one-person job, assuming meetings were held with the business units accessing the data.

Regarding the current pricing for Dell PowerScale (Isilon), I think it is competitive as they have moved into the SMB market very effectively. It is not just enterprise-based pricing, but something above retail and still competitively priced for the market they are targeting.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) definitely requires maintenance on my end, as the maintenance comes built-in with the product. Some try to extend the life using third-party maintenance, but I have seen that without a contract, especially after the five to seven-year mark, problems can arise.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) performs very well, and I still think they are a market leader. I recall they were a startup within a giant company, filling a necessary space in the portfolio.

In terms of my job, I have worked at various resellers or partners, including Insight and WWT, to sell and architect Dell PowerScale (Isilon), and had access to partner portals.

Overall, I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a solid nine out of ten.

I have been a technical support engineer in Dell PowerScale (Isilon). If you raise a ticket to Dell support for Dell PowerScale (Isilon), it will come directly to us and we will work on that to help you resolve the issue. If you need any documentation or guidance to perform a configuration, we will help you with that. If you need any technical assistance, I will be helping you with that.

What I like the most about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that the storage capacity is very high. Compared to other cloud services for archiving purposes, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has been highly cost-efficient.

The downside of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that if we are replacing a drive, sometimes in the worst-case scenarios, some of the other drives will also go to the SmartFail state. That is the very worst thing for me in Dell PowerScale (Isilon). Additionally, even a battery replacement will make the particular node into a read-only state. It is not good for a use case. If we are using a three-node or four-node cluster, moving a particular node to read-only state just for a battery replacement is not good. That is my suggestion on Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

The initial deployment of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a bit difficult. Deploying in the initial stages requires more effort. We need to engage some subject matter experts to deploy it. It is a bit of a lengthy process to deploy.

I have been using it in my career for three years.

We do not face any instability in Dell PowerScale (Isilon). The load balancers work well with this unstructured data storage, so up to 90 percent of the time, we will not face any downtime or instability in storage while accessing or writing in Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is highly scalable. There are no issues with that. As an unstructured data storage solution, writing into it and accessing it from the other nodes is highly scalable with no issues.

I am the technical support engineer in Dell PowerScale (Isilon), so I am not going to contact any external support. I am the technical support engineer in Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and I work for Dell as a vendor. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) does require some maintenance on my end. In the initial configuration, it will not require much maintenance.

Positive

The initial deployment of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a bit difficult. Deploying in the initial stages requires more effort. We need to engage some subject matter experts to deploy it. It is a bit of a lengthy process to deploy.

We need an on-site engineer, a networking engineer from the client team, a subject matter expert, and a technical support engineer. Around five to six members are required for an initial deployment.

I am not aware of the pricing in Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

I would rate this product a 7 out of 10.

My main use case for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is storage. I use it for NAS storage. I can outline that there's no specific use case for the organization, as it's regular storage for all users.

I buy Dell PowerScale (Isilon) because of the price, service, and technology. The technology that is particularly good for my company is that I have two Dell PowerScale (Isilon) systems in two sites, and I use replication between them with Superna software, which is a third-party Dell technology.

Sometimes, it takes too long to set up everything. That's something I would want them to improve. The main challenge I face with it now is that my team is accustomed to using other vendors, and when I try to use Dell technology, it's difficult for them to use something new.

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

I would evaluate the customer service from Dell as pretty good. The Indian support is not cooperative, and we ask to move to European support.

Positive

The experience of pricing, licensing, and setup costs is good. I have an account manager, a good account manager that helped me with all the maintenance, other requirements, and troubleshooting problems.

I have seen return on investment already, and it's a good ROI.

The cost is competitive with other vendors such as HP. I always compare prices between two vendors, and they are good in this situation.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) does not play a role in my organization's AI initiative. I have not supported features or aspects such as AI-driven data insight, automation, or advanced workloads; it's just storage. The size of my company is 10,000 users and approximately 1,000 servers. 

I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) eight out of ten.

My primary use case for Dell PowerScale is to meet data storage requirements in the cloud. We use Dell PowerScale to store data when running GPU training.

Dell PowerScale's best feature is the solid support system. When we contact them about something we don't understand, they usually respond very quickly, which is extremely helpful. When we express our desire to perform some specific task, they provide answers through support, making that another area we find very helpful.

After implementing Dell PowerScale, the positive impact on my company is that before, we only had one type of storage we could offer to customers. Now we're able to provide them with options. The biggest benefit of being able to offer customers options is cost. The other vendor's product has very high performance, but because of that, the price is also high. Some customers don't need that level of performance, so we can offer Dell PowerScale, which has better cost performance.

I would appreciate seeing improvements in Dell PowerScale, particularly because it has been weak with small file writes. Recently, Lightning was released, so I'm expecting improvements in that area. At this point, I'm mainly interested in the specs of Lightning.

I have been using Dell PowerScale for three years.

Regarding the stability of Dell PowerScale, we've had few failures so far, so I think it's particularly good.

As for the scalability of Dell PowerScale, we've already expanded it once or twice, so I think the scalability is more than sufficient.

Dell PowerScale's support system is very strong, so I do recommend it. For that reason, I think people should consult with Dell.

We haven't switched to any other solutions at this time; we're currently using DDN in parallel.

Before selecting Dell PowerScale, we did consider DDN.

In terms of random read performance, I find that Lightning, which has recently come out and is newer, piques my curiosity. However, as for my current use cases with Dell PowerScale, there's nothing in particular.

I feel that the reliability and availability of Dell PowerScale have positively affected my company's data operations as it's running stably, and we haven't had service outages or anything of that nature, so it's been very helpful. Regarding the operational efficiency and ease of use of Dell PowerScale, I actually did the racking and cable connections, and it was easy to use.

In terms of expected developments for enterprise data management going forward, Lightning is the biggest factor. Many of our customers have workloads with frequent small data writes, so we're hoping that area will improve. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.