Dell PowerScale Reviews

We primarily use Dell PowerScale for archive purposes. It functions as a large NAS.

One of the features we use in both PowerScale and Pure Storage is the snapshot feature. It's really important for us. 

Additionally, Eyeglass is used to monitor for malware, which is very useful for us.

Improvements could be made to reduce the costs and the high level of knowledge needed to maintain and use them. We had old hard drives with moving parts in Dell PowerScale, and due to this, we must switch to a more efficient environment with all-flash.

I have been working with PowerScale for six years.

It's probably very good. However, due to both cost and the knowledge required to maintain and use them, there are considerations about scalability.

Customer service is absolutely satisfying, rating at least nine out of ten, as they have managed previous issues well.

We do work with Dell and PowerScale, however, we are going to remove them, and as for now, it's going to be in 2026 since Pure Storage has a more cost-efficient model of storage use.

The initial setup requires extensive knowledge. I have to take very expensive courses just to set it up. It's not easy, taking maybe one or two weeks of learning before I should start to use it, which makes it costly.

I do believe that it delivered ROI, however, we see a better return of investment with other products we have considered.

Every time we purchase a PowerScale solution, we buy four nodes for one data center and four for another, with five years of maintenance covered by Dell. It's a high-cost offering amounting to three or four million Swedish kronor, or about $400,000 or euros, for approximately 480 terabytes of storage.

We evaluated other options. Other solutions did not match our requirements, so we chose FlashArrayX instead of a new PowerMax since it was half the price.

If you know how to handle it, Dell PowerScale is a good product. However, Pure Storage offers similar or even better performance at a lower cost, so I rather recommend Pure Storage if you are looking for efficiency and cost benefits. 

Overall, I rate PowerScale an eight out of ten.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

I believe we use Dell PowerScale for server.

I like the features of Dell PowerScale, but I am uncertain about certain aspects. Dell PowerScale's alignment with my organization's goals of supporting digital transformation initiatives is a tough consideration.

I am somewhat hands-on with Dell PowerScale, performing power cycling when something goes wrong, but otherwise I remain very hands-off from it and our infrastructure.

I am uncertain if Dell PowerScale meets the growing needs of my organization.

Dell has been great with everything. I would evaluate Dell's technical support highly.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Dell's technical support a ten.

I believe we were using VMware for virtualization prior to adopting Dell PowerScale.

Cyber threats would be one of the biggest emerging challenges and opportunities I foresee in managing enterprise data.

Currently, Dell PowerScale does not play a role in my organization's AI initiatives as we are not considering rolling out any kind of AI, at least within the next two years.

I am an administrator for Isilon in India. It provides storage to end users who develop their tasks and use it for simulation purposes, keeping their data isolated.

I use Dell PowerScale (Isilon) to store and share data across different locations according to project-wise needs, which helps in cost savings related to power and in-house rack space.

The solution allows me to use SSMDS to store data for end users and share it within different locations. The feature of data shuffling between locations is notably useful. Dell PowerScale helps in saving costs related to power and rack space, reducing physical hardware from over one hundred to twenty-nine chassis.

Dell's customer service needs improvement. Specifically, hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline. I face difficulty in tracing and finding the right support team due to time zone differences, which is problematic.

I have been working with Dell PowerScale Isilon for eight years now.

Dell PowerScale is highly scalable, as evidenced by the reduced physical hardware and the efficient use of rack space.

I rate customer service as five. The service, particularly about hardware issues and support ticket handling, is an area that needs significant improvement.

Neutral

The setup is easy because of previous configurations and knowledge in this area. I would rate it nine on a scale of one to ten, with ten being very easy.

Dell PowerScale is user-friendly and beneficial for businesses, provided they understand the enabled features and subscriptions. I would give it an overall rating of nine out of ten.

I work with Dell PowerScale as a customer and technical architect. I have been working with Dell PowerScale since around 2020 to 2021.

Dell PowerScale offers several advantages, particularly regarding AI-driven data insights, automation, and advanced workloads. The AI features support these aspects effectively. The primary benefit from AI is enhanced data intelligence and operational efficiency.

Dell PowerScale has covered many advantages as a product. However, there are disadvantages that could be improved.

I have used the solution for around 2020 to 2021.

From my personal experience, Dell PowerScale is a highly stable product with no significant glitches or latency issues.

Dell PowerScale is a highly scalable product without notable limitations on scalability.

I would rate the support at nine points on a scale from zero to ten points, with ten being the best.

I have not worked with similar tools from other vendors for comparison to Dell PowerScale.

Dell PowerScale provides return on investment in terms of value for money.

Dell PowerScale is quite affordable in terms of pricing.

Dell PowerScale is designed for enterprise customers and includes features for small and medium businesses.

The use case for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is for most applications, including policy management, end user needs, file management, forensics extraction, analysis, smartphones, and media applications.

The benefit to our organization from using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that we can execute our jobs and activities effectively because we have the necessary capacity. With this latest technology, we can execute our activities in a better form.

The most helpful feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is the integration with ECS, now called ObjectScale, because we can implement Tier functionality. This allows us to move data between hot areas and cold storage areas, which is a very good resource for us.

I would make Dell PowerScale (Isilon) better by improving SmartSync in the graphical user interface. Currently, everything has to be done through the command line, and I prefer having a graphical interface.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for six months.

I find Dell PowerScale (Isilon) to be very stable and reliable. We have not had any problems in six months.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) does grow with our business needs. We currently have Isilon, and with the purchase of Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we can expand our environment significantly. It is very scalable.

I have not used customer service and support for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) yet, but I don't anticipate that we will have any problems.

On a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a ten. It is perfect.

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

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

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

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

Dell PowerScale is very stable.

Dell PowerScale has high scalability.

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

Positive

The initial setup is easy.

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

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

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

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

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

What I find most valuable about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that we are currently focusing on AI applications, for which we need fast storage, faster GPU, faster nodes, and so on. In our AI initiatives, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) plays a significant role in data analysis, data fusion; principally, it is involved in data analysis, data extraction, and statistical analysis.

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

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.