Dell PowerScale Reviews

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.

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.

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.

We use Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for SMB and NFS storage. Our specific use cases involve SMB file storage right now, as we've got a lot of migrating from old Solaris to a lot of Red Hat 8 environments, moving from our old Unities and all that to now utilizing Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for all of our SMB stuff.

What I appreciate best about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is the UI and the use of scripting that we can implement with it to automate a lot of our workloads. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has benefited our organization overall by helping a lot of our end users more than the actual IT group, and it has been awesome.

Since our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is our own on-prem in-house built system, we don't have many up-to-date resources, and we're still a few years behind. We don't use much of the PowerScale yet with AI, though we have plans to work towards that in the next month or two. I would want to see more AI features with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

We have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) since we installed it in January of this year, and we've had it up and running, using it mostly for production stuff, for about two or three months now.

I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as perfect, as we haven't had any hiccups with it so far.

There are no specific scalability issues at this time.

I would evaluate the customer service and technical support for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as great. We've sent out emails at 6:00 in the morning and received replies at 7:15. We've been working with the same team for at least as long as I've been there, which is about two years, and this consistency has been awesome. If I had to rate them from one to ten, with ten being the best, I would definitely give them a ten.

Positive

Before adopting Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we were using a few old Unispheres, Unities, and PowerStore. Most of those were all end of life, which is why we made the change.

My experience when deploying Dell PowerScale (Isilon) was very straightforward, as we had Dell come on site to do all the actual setup, which was a big help.

The deployment took about a week and a half with a person on site getting everything ready.

In terms of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) specifically, we have seen a return on investment due to faster performance than our last few storage arrays, and the general usability is a lot better.

I don't have too much experience with the pricing, setup cost, or licensing. As a partner of Dell for a long time, Dell did help us a lot with the pricing.

We did consider other solutions before going with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), looking at PowerFlex within Dell itself, and I'm sure we'll move that in the next year or two, but we were pretty focused on Dell PowerScale (Isilon). We chose Dell PowerScale (Isilon) over PowerFlex because we didn't think we needed all of the usability that PowerFlex provides; we were more centered on just SMB and NFS storage for now.

If someone from another organization asked for my opinion on employing Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for themselves, I would say if they're working towards file storage, then definitely look into it. 

On a scale of one to ten, with one being best and ten being worse, I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a nine.

Dell PowerScale's primary use case for our organization is server virtualization.

I would describe the overall operational efficiency and ease of use of Dell PowerScale as satisfactory given our current testing phase. We purchased the entry-level model, so the speed is not optimal, but we do not require high speed, which is acceptable for our needs. Regarding efficiency, we have not yet started the service. We will begin our main service one month later, so I am unable to evaluate the other functions at this time. We have not yet conducted measurements on these capabilities.

I believe the support engineers need to improve their skills. In our case, the engineer provides adequate hardware support, but they lack expertise in supporting Dell PowerScale's API and Kubernetes-related APIs such as CSI API. Although Dell PowerScale can support Kubernetes API, our engineer does not possess the necessary knowledge in this area.

I have been working with Dell PowerScale for only one or two months since we purchased it two or three months ago. We acquired Dell PowerStore one month prior to that. The timeframe has been too short to fully evaluate the solution.

Dell PowerScale has demonstrated scalability, with our company having more than 30,000 people testing it.

I would rate Dell technical support as normal and not problematic. As I work in Korea, the server and related support is excellent, but the storage support is somewhat inconsistent.

On a scale from one to ten, I evaluate Dell technical support as six or seven.

I believe the product itself is adequate, but the Korean support engineer needs to improve their skills.

Before Dell PowerScale, we had already used Dell servers, but this is the first time our company has implemented storage from Dell.

The initial setup was easy because we received support from their partners, which enabled us to install it without difficulty.

We require approximately 50 administrators for this implementation.

To measure the effectiveness of Dell PowerScale, before we purchased the product, our requirement was efficiency of at least three times. We did not have many additional requirements beyond this efficiency goal and the project schedule and delivery timeline.

Regarding the price of Dell PowerScale, I consider it a budget storage solution.

We purchased Dell PowerScale from their partner. I provide this review with a rating of six out of ten.

Our healthcare storage needs require us to store off several radiology images and use the data since November 2018.

The product has helped my organization by managing large data sets.

The most valuable feature for me is SyncIQ. The reason I find it valuable is its data resilience. 

There's nothing really I'd improve about the product. We're currently expanding it, so we're going to our next generation of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) since we've had it since 2018. We're consolidating as drive sizes have gone bigger, and we're consolidating the footprint down. That's what we're currently doing.

We have had the solution since 2018.

I find the product to be resilient and stable. There's no downtime and no crashes; over the years, we have experienced some issues, yet nothing major. The key components are the helper cloud pools and S3 IAQ.

My organization is quite large, with about 30,000 employees.

The growth has been substantial in areas such as radiology and genomics. One of the best features we've utilized recently is offload to cloud pools due to capacity constraints on-premise. We didn't want to expand Dell PowerScale (Isilon) straight away, so we utilized cloud pools to offload some data to Azure. That's really saved us in certain areas as we didn't have funding to expand Dell PowerScale (Isilon) until next year, which is why we utilized the cloud pools functionality to offload.

Customer service has been really good. 

Positive

Before Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we were using standard Windows SMB back in 2018. The data had grown so much within six, seven years. It was just standard Windows SMB.

I have not compared it to other products in terms of deployment. I have been part of the deployment of the product. It's very straightforward. there were no issues in implementing it.

The solution is expensive. It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate the product overall about eight.

Dell PowerScale has been in use for approximately four months. Our main use case for Dell PowerScale is for AI, as we have several projects, and we really appreciate the availability, the data availability, and the power management.

Our AI project is about helping university staff work better, and Dell PowerScale offers very good data availability for the needs of our students and teachers.

Dell PowerScale plays a role in our organization's AI initiatives as it helped with automation and great data availability.

The best features Dell PowerScale offers in my experience are the availability and the storage management.

I appreciate the storage management because I can always manage the storage, and I can manage it better than other products.

Dell PowerScale has positively impacted my organization as the students and the teachers are much happier using our services. They used to complain about some availability of our servers, but now it is not a problem anymore.

We have measured fewer complaints and faster access to data.

I am very satisfied with the product at this time and do not see areas needing improvement.

I have been working in my current field for four years.

Dell PowerScale is stable.

Dell PowerScale's scalability is good.

The customer support is great.

We did not previously use a different solution.

Dell PowerScale integrates very well with our existing IT infrastructure for operational efficiency, and it had no problem integrating.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was fine, as the pricing was acceptable.

I have seen a return on investment in terms of time saved and fewer complaints, but we cannot really measure the money saved being a university.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing Dell PowerScale.

I would rate Dell PowerScale a 10 out of 10. I chose this rating because it is the best product I have ever used.

The performance metrics I use to measure success with Dell PowerScale include fewer complaints from teachers and students.

I would describe the overall operational efficiency and ease of use of Dell PowerScale as very easy to use, and I had no problems.

My advice for others looking into using Dell PowerScale is not to be held back by anything, as it is a very good product. Overall, I would give this product a rating of 10.

Our use cases involve sheer storage, as it's about 4 petabytes of storage that we use for our genetics team for storing big data.

The capacity and scalability are what I appreciate the most about it; that was huge for us. We saw its benefits immediately after we started using it.

We're still fairly new with it. It's been a pretty positive experience thus far. However, they could improve implementation, as we had to rack and stack it ourselves.

We have been using the product for less than three months, as we just got it.

The stability has been excellent thus far, with no issues.

The scalability is excellent.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has features that cater to the needs of medium-sized organizations. It's a pretty configurable product. We're running with about 4 petabytes, which is a massive amount of data, but I know you can run it with much less. 

I see Dell products growing with our future needs. Our company has about 400 people working. 

The technical support has been excellent. I would give them a ten out of ten for support.

Positive

We were using NetApp previously. We haven't used Dell PowerScale (Isilon) long enough to give a full comparison at this point, but they both seem to be pretty comparable products.

The initial deployment was fairly easy. It took two of our guys, but it would have been nice to have a white glove service so they would rack it, and we could have just configured it. Overall, it took less than a day.

It requires very little maintenance on our end.

Two people were required for this type of job overall.

The pricing is excellent.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) does not play a role in our organization's AI initiatives at this time. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The product is feature rich.

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

I have experience with others. No switching involved.

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

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

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