Dell PowerScale Reviews

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.

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.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is used as a NAS in our Media Asset Management system, which was the first one, and we have another that covers the graphics computing department, serving different departments, but the main idea is as production storage.

We use AI but primarily from cloud providers, as we don't utilize our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) on-premise storage for AI demands; when we have workloads using AI, we use AWS or other providers, while our main purpose for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is to manage video files for editing in our production system.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has powerful security, which makes it a very reliable storage solution for our content, and also the support and observability of our system; the call home feature is fantastic because when it presents an issue, Dell automatically opens a ticket regarding any warnings or alerts, allowing us to have a complete view of our system's health.

We have daily reports delivered by email regarding network performance and client actions, showing if our storage has presented some issues; fortunately, we don't have many performance issues since if something goes wrong, our customers contact us, and thankfully, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has never presented an issue in production, confirming its reliability.

We realized significant improvements by consolidating various silos that previously did not communicate well, drastically enhancing time and cost efficiency, although I cannot quantify a specific number at this moment.

Regarding areas for improvement in Dell PowerScale (Isilon), I currently cannot recall any particular feature needing enhancement since it has undergone many improvements over the past ten years, including advancements in file filters and extensions; if needed, I can check with my colleagues, but they do not seem to remember any points for now.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) since 2017, having had two models; I started with the Isilon X410, and after that, I made a tech refresh with the All-Flash PowerScale H700 model, so it has been nine years I have been using it.

In terms of stability, I would rate it a nine out of ten since I have never experienced significant issues.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a scalable solution for our business, and I would rate its scalability similarly at eight out of ten due to its ease of scaling.

I would rate Dell's technical support an eight out of ten, reflecting my overall satisfaction.

Positive

The deployment was initially challenging due to a lack of familiarity with the product, but after the tech refresh two years ago, the subsequent implementation was much smoother, especially thanks to helpful technical and administrative training I received.

The first implementation took nearly three weeks to one month due to numerous discussions and technical configurations, as our biggest system has 28 nodes from Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

My role with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is as a technical supervisor, where I manage the system along with my team, which is responsible for a lot of access rules and the rights to access, and we do manage it accordingly.

I cannot provide a specific percentage for the return on investment from Dell PowerScale (Isilon); however, we realized significant improvements by consolidating various silos that previously did not communicate well, drastically enhancing time and cost efficiency, although I cannot quantify a specific number at this moment.

I find Dell PowerScale (Isilon) to be cost-efficient, as we use it today with APEX, with some specific volume contracted, and this approach has been beneficial for us, with costs aligning well with what it delivers, making it a fair price for a powerful tool that meets all our needs.

We have tried NetApp in a node storage context and Facilis TerraBlock, but neither was ideal for us; we also worked with legacy systems such as Avid ISIS; overall, we have established that Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is our primary choice due to validation from our Media Asset Management software, which preferred Dell for its features.

My advice for others considering Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is to ensure all requirements are met and to consult with the Dell team to address any potential issues; it is a trustworthy product without concerns, and understanding the configuration options is crucial since it offers various types, so discussing needs with a Dell specialist is beneficial.

I would recommend Dell PowerScale (Isilon) without hesitation.

To achieve a rating of ten, perhaps the pricing could see improvement, suggesting it might be that aspect of the offering that needs some adjustment. My overall review rating for this product is eight out of ten.

We are using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) extensively to host data from our investigations at the Federal Police. We have to host data that forensic IT experts extract from hard drives and cell phones, storing it on Dell PowerScale (Isilon) to analyze it and provide feedback to justice. Regarding the use case specifically for AI, we are beginning now. We are trying to make our team use it, though we don't have a use case currently. We are planning to use AI for all the data that we will host to work with and analyze it, and the data will be on Dell PowerScale (Isilon). That's the future work we have with these other teams.

The most valuable features of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) are its multi-protocol purpose and the performance it provides. It's very useful for many purposes and any other case we want to use, providing us with a really useful tool for our needs. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a platform that is very easy for teams to work with. We have many IT professionals who can use it very easily. It's not complex to meet its requirements, and it's useful in many aspects. We can work with data lakes, use NFS, work with a solution using CIFS, and we can even use S3 since we have bought ECS. This makes it very flexible.

Dell is thinking ahead about improvements. The features they are showing at this event are wonderful. The backup they will provide in the new OneFS will solve a major issue we are addressing now, so we don't have anything to add, but what's coming from Dell is really useful.

The performance of the equipment is so good that we don't need to consider an all-flash solution at this point, although with AI we might need to explore that in the future, but the hybrid solution performance is wonderful and adequate.

The support from Dell for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is really good. One of the points we appreciate about Dell is their approach to partnership; they want to help improve our institution because our work matters for our nation, creating a really good feeling about working with them. I would give Dell support a rating of 10.

We already have a background with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) because we had Isilon, so it was very easy to deploy and implement.

We have good system engineers who work with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and have knowledge, making implementation very easy.

I have seen a return on investment from Dell PowerScale (Isilon). However, the return on investment in government institutions is different. We see a high-performance storage return where we meet all the needs from our business sectors. We don't let them face challenges alone; we provide them solutions with what we have, which is very good.

It's very hard for us to specify and buy from a specific vendor. In our recent acquisition of the H7000, we considered NetApp and HPE as well. HPE also approached us, but the best solution that fits in terms of cost, performance, and all features was Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

Organizations considering purchasing Dell PowerScale (Isilon) need to assess their needs. If you really need something that can provide a multi-protocol solution with good performance, you should opt for high-end solutions such as the exceptional storage that Dell PowerScale (Isilon) provides. It depends on your specific use case. Dell is a very large company that we can work with, and the solutions they provide will help us in many ways. We have issues in Brazil with the procurement of solutions because we have to check the entire market and justify the pricing to our audit institutions, making it difficult to keep with the same vendor. However, we always try to get the best solutions and specify very specifically to fulfill our mission. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a 10.

My main use case for Dell PowerScale is large-scale, unstructured data storage, especially high-performance file workloads such as AI/ML datasets, analytics, HPC, media, and research data.

I use Dell PowerScale as a centralized data lake for AI analytics, storing large datasets such as images, logs, and training data, then serving them directly to GPU analytics servers for model training and analysis.

The best features Dell PowerScale offers include a scale-out architecture, high performance for AI analytics, and broad protocol support including NFS, SMB, HDFS, and S3. Built-in data protections include snapshot capabilities, distributed protection, encryption, auditing, and security controls that help maintain availability and protect data.

Data efficiency and tiering features such as SmartDedupe and compression, SmartPools, and CloudPools can reduce storage consumption and move data to appropriate tiers and cloud targets. OneFS simplifies management by providing centralized administration to manage large, unstructured data environments from a common platform.

Dell PowerScale has positively impacted our organization by helping us centralize large datasets, scale storage as our AI and analytics workloads grow, and improve data access performance. It has also simplified management by providing a single scalable file system, reducing the need to manage multiple storage silos.

Dell PowerScale could be improved by simplifying management and monitoring, making AI analytics integration more seamless, and reducing the complexity and cost of scaling.

I have been using Dell PowerScale for the last two years.

Dell PowerScale is stable.

Dell PowerScale can be scaled according to use and requirement.

The customer support for Dell PowerScale is very good because it is a Dell product, and the support system provides solutions as soon as possible.

I have seen a positive return on investment mainly through operational efficiency rather than headcount reduction. This includes less time spent on storage administration, faster data transfer and AI processing workflows, fewer storage-related interruptions, and better utilization of capacity.

My advice for others looking into using Dell PowerScale is to evaluate it against specific workloads and growth requirements, especially if they have large and unstructured datasets. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.

Before this project happened, I sat with the customer and understood what they needed for Dell PowerScale (Isilon). They have a surveillance system, and since it's unstructured, this was the first thing we recommended to use. 

Since they needed to use this for archiving and had a long retention period, they wanted very good storage and high-capacity storage. That's why we recommended the A3000. 

I worked with them on the sizing part and getting customer requirements. For step one, I came with the team here, who have people who are purely technical that will do the implementation. 

I usually sit with them and the customer, understand, and check the flow of everything from A to Z. This is mainly my responsibility. From hands-on experience, since I spent my time mostly with technical engineers, I can do the same work as them if needed.

Any storage system has something called RAID, while Dell PowerScale (Isilon) uses the Reed-Solomon protocol. It's the same concept as RAID, however, it secures in case something happens on the node or the disks. In the Dell PowerScale (Isilon) system, this is calculated automatically. Instead of us assigning a RAID 5 or RAID 6, Dell automatically assigns, for example, for this project, they assigned something called 2d:1n, which means that in case of a failure of one node or two disks, the system will stay up and running. These are the protection features that I appreciate.

From the deduplication part as well, there are many features. I was recently in a meeting with some people from Dell here in Saudi, and they were talking about the new Dell PowerScale (Isilon) systems that are AI-enabled. I didn't do much research on them, however I can see where Dell's direction is going with these features. 

From the automation part or from making life easier for humans, I appreciate the approach they're taking. Based on the feedback I received from Dell people who worked on the new Dell PowerScale (Isilon) system, they said things are becoming more automated and they are able to help the technical people or the pre-sales people deploy the system even better. They even enable the customer to get more insights about their data.

If something fails or there's a hardware issue, they can order parts online with Dell PowerScale (Isilon). The customer when ordering the system can add ProSupport, depending on the time needed and how critical their use case is for the system. If the customer pays for ProSupport, maintenance is very good, with service within four hours or the next business day, depending on what they order.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a NAS (Network Attached Storage) and supports scale out. You can add as many nodes and scale linearly. For the first purchase to create a cluster, you must buy four nodes. Moving forward, they can buy a pair of nodes at a time. It's very easy to scale out - just initialize the node and join it to the existing cluster.

With every iteration of the OneFS system, new features are being added, and the UI is being updated here and there. So far, the system is adequate as a whole. Perhaps if there was a local chatbot built within the system or on the dashboard where we could directly ask for anything on the OneFS, it could help us. I remember seeing it somewhere. I don't recall if it's on the Dell system or not.

I have been in this industry for around a year and a half. In terms of using Dell PowerScale (Isilon), I can say I've used it approximately one year.

I don't recall any time we did an installation or deployment of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) where a customer contacted us telling us the system wasn't working. Everything has been working properly.

We mainly get hardware issues, such as hard disk failures. We occasionally see PSU defaults, not chassis failures. Since we have good protection levels, the data is secured and replicated across the disks.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) definitely deserves ten out of ten for scalability.

The level of service depends on the type of support with Dell PowerScale (Isilon). If discussing support through partners, I would give it an eight out of ten, however, support online is definitely a ten out of ten. When Dell people are involved directly, it's very good. That said, sometimes when they assign the task to a partner to deliver, it depends on the partner they are delivering the task to and the personnel they're sending.

We started yesterday with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and we're almost done today. It's a small deployment with just one chassis that has four nodes, so it was quite easy. The more hardware you have, the more time you need. Initializing the cluster took us about four hours.

We are a small team with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), around five or six people, depending on the project.

It's considered between mid and high-end regarding. Dell usually knows how to position each model. If the customer wants something inexpensive, there's PowerVault. The system is marketed for mid-range to high-end pricing.

I rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) ten out of ten overall.

We are using many Dell products. Mainly for archiving and logs management, a huge amount of data is generated, so we are using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) in our environment.

The main structures of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) are pretty easy to manage, which I find most valuable. 

In terms of performance metrics to measure success with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we are measuring turnaround time, and the ROI is good. We are all satisfied because we haven't faced many issues with Dell PowerStore or VMAX.

There will always be room for improvement with Dell PowerScale (Isilon). They should add some new services that should be for on-premises, and more analytics should be there for the data, allowing for a deep dive from that analytics, which is currently missing. 

I'm not sure Dell PowerStore has non-disruptive upgrade capabilities; they can leverage these to boost performance without disrupting the environment. 

Also, software updates can be done in a non-disruptive way, improving the performance.

I have been working with Dell for more than 10 to 12 years.

My experience with Dell as a vendor is pretty good; they are probably one of the best in the industry.

Positive

This is my first time using Dell PowerStore, but I had worked with many NetApp products such as the NetApp A-series and AFF, and we are using Hitachi Vantara as well.

I have seen ROI with Dell PowerScale (Isilon). It would be after two or three months, because we need to leverage the dedupe and compression to measure the ROI effectively, considering how much data reduction happens, then we can calculate the CapEx and OpEx value.

I'm working mainly with storage and backup, specifically using the Veritas backup solution and have hands-on experience. We are continuing using Dell in storage. Its features specifically cater to the needs of big organizations. I am a customer of Dell. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution a 9.