Dell PowerStore Reviews

We use the PowerStore for our development environment. The frame is a repository for all our VMware infrastructure data stores and the applications that live on those data stores are mainly real-time voice applications in call centers.

We use it with Cisco switches and it's pure block only.

Thanks to the duplication and data savings, we have a lot of capacity available to us in the PowerStore. That lets us use and consume logical capacity, which can be done very quickly compared to having to install physical resources inside the PowerStore. The data reduction process is very efficient resulting in very high data reduction if you compare the PowerStore to legacy frames from Dell EMC. This is a very good benefit for us. We were able to very quickly connect new servers and instantly have capacity on the frame because of the data reduction. Moving forward, we can add more disks inside. We plan to have seven drives added in the coming weeks. So we are able to independently add servers, even if we don't have the actual physical capacity on the frame itself.

We have also seen a lot of savings because of the data reduction efficiency, which is currently 4:1 or 5:1.

We will also decommission old frames, and the maintenance contracts on those frames are very expensive. We will save some money as a result and we will also realize some power savings. We also have some environmental-related "green" engagements in Orange, and PowerStore is helping us go in that direction.

There are also space savings because the old frames are using a full rack while the PowerStore is only a 2U unit with almost the same amount of data being stored on it. That is very good. 

So it will save us floor space, energy, and money on maintenance contracts.

Our development team is very happy with us, from an admin perspective. When they query us for more capacity, we are very quick to respond and provide them with resources. If they want to deploy new machines, for example, we can quickly assign new data stores that those VMs will rely on. We have saved a lot of time thanks to the PowerStore.

And because the performance of the PowerStore is very high, we can connect many servers on the same frame, instead of having to multiply frames, side-by-side, to get enough power to serve our IOPS. We are working on real-time applications, so we can't afford a response time of more than 10 milliseconds or 15 milliseconds as a maximum. We can't support a greater lag in a call center. The PowerStore now is less than a millisecond, and that is with more load on it. On one VNX we have two or three VMware clusters with four or five ESXis per cluster. On the PowerStore I have, say, 10 clusters and each has about eight ESXis.

The most valuable feature is that it is easy to use this frame. I am a SAN administrator, but I was able to train my colleague, who had only been a VMware administrator, on the PowerStore in about half a day. Now he's autonomous in assigning volumes and creating data stores, et cetera. I don't have to help him anymore. That is the beauty of this unit and it's due to the effort Dell EMC put into the GUI.

The VMware integration is very good. It integrates all the vSphere interactions when you create your data store, directly from the PowerStore GUI, into your VMware cluster. My colleague who was the VMware administrator is now able, in one shot, to provision his storage and automatically create a data store relying on this storage. That has freed up some of his time.

Another important feature is the power of this frame. It's very powerful. We have almost less than a millisecond of response time, all the time, even during backup windows. That's very good compared with the VNX, of which we have two. We also have a Unity connected on this same SAN for the same kind of application. We did a comparison among the three models of frames, the VNX, which is rather old, the Unity full flash, which is not so old, and the PowerStore. PowerStore is really on top of all of them.

Of course, it enables us to add compute and capacity independently. We add a lot of VMware clusters in our SAN thanks to the PowerStore. We are going to decommission the old VNXs because it's better adding capacity on the PowerStore than keeping the old models.

The NAS capabilities have room for improvement. Currently, when you buy the PowerStore T model, you have a choice of using only block—it's block-optimized—or you can buy it as a unified frame. With the latter, you can access the frame using either block—Fibre Channel or iSCSI, and on the other side you can access it using IP protocols, like NFS or CIFS. This is the NAS part and, currently, the NAS part is very poor. It's very basic. Even Dell EMC has said that to us. We are waiting for version 3 of PowerStore for that. This must be improved and it is in the roadmap.

We have other NAS solutions, but if someone wanted to have a unified frame, this is not the right solution, currently. That's why it's not a 10 out of 10. When we will have version 3 of PowerStore's operating system, in less six than months, my rating will probably go up.

The PowerStore was introduced in June of last year and I adopted the first one in Europe, in August last year, so we have had it for about seven months.

It is very stable.

The issue we had with PowerStore was due to being a very early adopter. We got a better version of the PowerStore operating system, but the upgrade that came after that, relying on the better version, was not easy to run. We decided to reinstall the PowerStore with a fresh, new, official operating system.

So the stability of the initial PowerStore was good enough for production, but not as good as we would have expected for this kind of frame. The four PowerStores we have that were installed with an official release are very stable. 

We faced issues, but that was normal because the PowerStore was totally new at that time. No one had experience with it. When Dell EMC came onsite to install our first one, it was the very first in Europe.

There are two ways to scale. You can scale up and out. You can easily add shelves to add more physical capacity to your appliance. If that's not enough, you can add an appliance to your federation. It's very easy.

We are on the T model, not the X model. It's pure block and we are external ESXi-connected. We need a lot of servers because we have more than 100 developers working on this frame. They all need their own clusters because there are different applications under development. An X model would not have been enough.

In the future, if the PowerStore 5k is not powerful enough, we could upgrade it to a 7K or a 9k or the new 7200 models that are coming out in a few months. But the magic is that we could do that with the data in place, inside the frame, keeping the drive. That is one of the highlights when it comes to simplifying things.

As a very big company and as a partner, we have a particular kind of access to support. We have a dedicated global account manager. All we have to do is snap our fingers and we have the guy on the phone. The quality of support is okay. I can also access the product manager of the product. I am Dell EMC-certified, so it's very easy for me to access support documentation.

Sometimes, their support doesn't really understand the customer's position. For example, some weeks ago we had an issue on a frame. Dell EMC engineering focused on what was really happening instead of trying to bypass the problem. They didn't succeed in recreating the issue we had in their lab, so they were using our infrastructure as their lab. It was a development environment so it was not harmful for production. But in the end, it was a time-consuming issue for us.

Positive

You don't have to worry about the deployment. It's already done for you when the frame is powered up. That is another aspect of how it simplifies your implementation. Dell EMC comes onsite to do the initial power-up of the frame itself. After that, we do everything by ourselves.

Aside from that—and this is important—because we were early adopters, there were some features that were mandatory at the time, and they complicated the initial deployment a little. The top-of-rack switches that are mandatory when you use a federation are no longer needed if you use a single appliance. That was our case. At the time we deployed our first PowerStore, we had a single appliance, but we needed the top-of-rack switches to be set up for a potential future connection with other appliances, if we wanted to go to a federation.

Now, with version 2 of PowerStore, you don't need to deploy top-of-rack switches if you have a single appliance. That can be done later on, if you go to the federated setup. This is a very good improvement because many customers have a single appliance. It's so powerful that you probably don't initially need a federation. Now, you don't need top-of-rack switches set up but used for nothing.

Because ours was one of the first PowerStores, Dell EMC took a day to deploy it. Afterward, for the other PowerStores we have deployed in the data center, it took less than half a day. With the last one we will deploy, which should happen next week, we will not have top-of-rack switches. There will be no connectivity to set up and no Fibre to run, so it should take two hours.

We had to migrate data out of the legacy frame we previously had to go to the PowerStore, but it was very easy because all was done on our side on our servers, so it was very quick.

We have definitely seen ROI due to our data savings as a result of the data reduction. Instead of buying one-to-one drives, we buy half a drive.

Licensing is very simple. Everything is included in the basic license. There are no concerns about having to pay to add a feature. Everything is there. 

Because we are a big partner, we get good prices from Dell EMC. They know we will resell their technology, so I'm not in a good position to discuss the pricing that applies to non-partners.

We have almost the entire portfolio of Dell EMC products, from VNXs to PowerMax. We also have some other vendors, of course, but they are not as powerful as this one.

My advice would be don't hesitate. It's a good frame. It's doing what it is designed for. It serves IOPS very well. The data savings are very important and the response time is very short. There are always tricky situations that come up, but honestly, since our PowerStore went live, I don't have to worry about the storage for this environment. The VMware guys are independent. They don't need me anymore.

We accepted the risk, due to the fact that it was a relatively new platform, when we went with PowerStore. We were totally aware of that fact. That is why we put the first one into our development area, and not production. Even if we have more than 100 developers working on it, any problems would affect developers, not production. We understood there could be costs because having 100 developers not doing anything during a day costs money. But PowerStore didn't disappoint us. We are very happy with it. We now have four in production.

We are a Dell partner, so we also resell PowerStore to our end-users. When we initially built this frame, we wanted, say, 100 terabytes, but they persuaded us to only buy 40 terabytes of SSD or NVMe drives because of the savings that they said we would see from the data reduction efficiency. The program they gave us was that if we didn't achieve that kind of data efficiency, they would provide us some disks for free.

We have customers in the United States Army across the continental U.S. and overseas. All the data centers in the army are heavily powered by Dell.

We deploy PowerStore based on our customer's requirements. Some are on-prem, others in the Cloud, and some use a hybrid model.

PowerStore has helped our customers manage their missions and support all of their employees with data.

Dell PowerStore's energy consumption is on par with the competition.

We have integrated PowerStore with VMware and Nutanix. The integration has helped consolidate resources and downsize data centers.

PowerStore is easy to use, powerful, reliable, and highly customizable to customers' needs.

Dell PowerStore needs to continue evolving and incorporating new cutting-edge technology.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for two years.

The scalability of Dell PowerStores depends on the environment. Some are more complex than others, especially if we are using VDI infrastructure. Having all the services consolidated makes it hard to scale.

The technical support is outstanding.

Positive

On-prem deployments are easy but hybrid ones can be more complex.

We also evaluated HPE but decided on Dell PowerStore because our customers are more knowledgeable about Dell which is more predominant in the market.

I would rate Dell PowerStore ten out of ten.

PowerStore's ability to help reduce our customer's environmental footprints is a mixed bag because of the power consumption that has increased due to servers becoming more powerful. So even though the consolidation reduces the power consumption in some areas, it increases in others.

We mainly use the solution for virtual server infrastructure and block storage (not file storage use).

The main challenge we addressed was having some kind of mid-range all-flash array. It's one of the best use cases. 

The budget is good. It's really good, price-wise. It's cost-effective.

We have some VMware use cases for VMware infrastructure and it is good for that. We can use it for its data reduction capabilities. We have moved from 1.48 to 1.27. 

It offers good snapshots.

We use Cloud IQ for analysis. It's simple to quickly check and you don't have to be near the array to do so. 

The cyber-resilient data approach is good. It has all the features we need as a security company. The read-only snapshots are great.

There could be better reporting. We should be able to do some better metrics and they should be stored for longer so we can do better investigations. 

I've been using the solution for about four years. 

The stability is good. However, the sizer is not quite right. From my experience, the same number with the same read/write ratio and the same log size is off compared to my own notes. It's stable, yet the CPU utilization is higher. Sometimes, we need to move stuff off of it since we can see it's being over-utilized. 

The scalability is good for our use case. Sometimes I wish the cluster capabilities were more like XtremIO.

In the last year, we've noticed that there has been a drop-off in Dell support. In the past, I've had a better experience. The merge didn't benefit the support.

Neutral

We used to use XtremIO. We didn't fully switch. We decide which to use depending on the use case and budget. Other companies offer discounts from time to time. We'll compare and have an auction to see who wins. Price is just one factor. We also evaluate the support experience, for example. 

The deployment is very easy.

We install the solution ourselves. We did not use an integrator or consultant. 

We've witnessed an ROI after switching from some other infrastructure. It identified some areas in which we could get some good reductions and could decrease the data center footprint. 

We're constantly evaluating other solutions and comparing the options for price, support, and other metrics.

We aren't really using any integrations. We also don't use it for AI-driven workloads. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's a great product. It's improving over time. When it was first released, I'd rate it four or five out of ten. However, it keeps getting better. The only problem I see is the support. 

I use the product for computers to connect servers with storage, integrating computations and actions performed on the servers with vCenter and a single console or storage console.

In my experience, its effective capacity and effective storage capacity are notable features that differentiate it from others. I configured the storage for a customer, and they had all the scattered data placed on different servers. I consolidated all the data into a single dashboard accessible via Dell PowerStore Manager, which improves performance and IT infrastructure.

I don't think there is room for improvement in my opinion. It's already in a good state. I don't recall any issues, at least at this time.

I have used the solution for almost two years.

I haven't observed any glitchy behavior. It's a pretty stable product.

In my experience, you can scale it to any limit. You can expand through the expansion enclosures and add capacity and performance as well. It's easy.

Customer service is good, and support is also good from Dell.

Positive

Before using Dell PowerStore, I used Unity. It wasn't a struggle. It was a customer call, and it was for expansion rather than any issues they were facing. They acquired Dell PowerStore for their expansion purposes.

I found that the initial setup is not complex. You can go to the default password credentials or use your PowerStore management dashboard. From there, you can set your designated IP addresses and credentials, and then easily configure the storage with your setup.

In my experience, it's worth ROI in terms of performance and improvement in their IT infrastructure through many other aspects. Eighty percent.

The setup is very simple, but it's costly.

I would rate the overall product a nine out of ten. I think it might be almost nineteen or ninety-five percent they are claiming fine.

We sell Dell PowerStore to multiple organizations in our country including lawyer firms and integration companies.

Some of our deployments are on-premises and others are hybrid. We offer our private cloud to customers and some use AWS.

Dell PowerStore has provided more power to their data centers.

CloudIQ allows our customers to see the performance and any issues their PowerStore may have.

Dell PowerStore's cyber-resilient approach to data security is good. Most of our customers use it to create immutable files. The security it provides is a big selling point for us.

The most valuable features are the three-to-one data reduction and the ability to scale out and up. The maximum data reduction the competition can offer is two to one. The higher the data reduction rate the better the price is.

The cost always has room for improvement.

I have been selling Dell PowerStore since its launch five years ago.

Dell PowerStore has been stable so far.

Since selling Dell PowerStore to our customers they have not required any scaling.

The customers like and appreciate Dell's technical support.

Positive

We previously used Dell Compellent which reached its end of life, and Dell PowerVault storage. PowerStore is more powerful and has more features. Dell Unity is a midrange storage solution and we wanted our customers to have the best so we offered them PowerStore. 

The deployment is straightforward.

We evaluated HPE and IBM but some of our customers already had Dell so for better integration and cost savings we went with PowerStore.

I would rate Dell PowerStore nine out of ten. There is always room for improvement.

We have mainly used it to migrate all the infrastructure we had from a data center to a PowerStore cabin. The truth is that with the good duplication rate that it has, we have been able to migrate everything to a single cabin.

We had a large number of servers, some in particular with a SAP solution that needed a lot of data. What we ultimately wanted was to unify all these solutions into a single storage.

For me, its great value is mainly the good duplication power that it has and its ease of use. We are able to expand storage, add new storage, and duplicate it. It is very easy to use, and no great knowledge is required.

We use CloudIQ to manage and analyze our Dell storage. We use it for all the cabins. It always updates me about possible errors. It often anticipates problems that I may have with log storage and automatically solves them. I have peace of mind knowing that I have all the storage monitored.

We have certainly seen a significant data consolidation. We went from three storage cabins to one.

When it comes to the values around environment, social, and governance (ESG values), I assess Dell Technologies in a very positive way. I like that large companies in the sector are pioneers in these areas.

It is very easy to use. Access is very friendly. It shows you a lot of important information at the first glance. It has been very easy to use.

I have not seen anything specific. The only thing I can think of that needs improvement is the price.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for six months.

Its stability is very good. It is very reliable.

Its scalability is very good.

Their support is very good. It has always been the best.

Positive

We were using Dell's Unity solution. We switched because our partner offered us this solution. We had very good references from him, and we trusted our partner a lot.

We have not yet seen an ROI because we have not had much time using it, but I am sure that we will see an ROI.

The prices in the market for these storage solutions are very similar, but with the power of duplication, it seems like you are paying less.

We evaluated EMC Unity, but in the end, they are also Dell’s.

In terms of the importance of sustainability when evaluating a storage solution, being from the IT area, I do not value it, but I know that other departments in my company do.

I would rate Dell PowerStore a nine out of ten because I have not had much time working with it, but as of now, I am very happy.

Foreign Language:(Spanish)

Buena tasa de crecimiento, fácil de usar y el mejor soporte

¿Cuánto tiempo llevas usando esta solución?

He estado usando Dell PowerStore durante seis meses.

¿Cuál es su principal caso de uso de esta solución? (Incluya detalles sobre su entorno).

Principalmente lo hemos utilizado para migrar toda la infraestructura que teníamos de un centro de datos a una cabina PowerStore. La verdad es que con el buen índice de duplicación que tiene hemos podido migrar todo a una sola cabina.

Teníamos una gran cantidad de servidores, algunos en particular con una solución SAP que necesitaba muchos datos. Lo que finalmente queríamos era unificar todas estas soluciones en un único almacenamiento.

Comparta cómo Dell PowerStore ha mejorado su organización. Si no fue así, explique por qué.

Para mí su gran valor es principalmente la potencia de duplicación que tiene y su facilidad de uso. Podemos ampliar el almacenamiento, agregar nuevo almacenamiento y duplicarlo. Es muy fácil de usar y no se requieren grandes conocimientos.

Usamos CloudIQ para administrar y analizar nuestro almacenamiento Dell. Lo usamos para todas las cabinas. Siempre me actualiza sobre posibles errores. A menudo anticipa los problemas que puedo tener con el almacenamiento de registros y los resuelve automáticamente. Tengo la tranquilidad de saber que tengo todo el almacenamiento monitoreado.

Ciertamente hemos visto una importante consolidación de datos. Pasamos de tres cabinas de almacenamiento a una.

Cuando se trata de valores ambientales, sociales y de gobernanza (valores ESG), evalúo a Dell Technologies de manera muy positiva. Me gusta que las grandes empresas del sector sean pioneras en estos temas.

¿Qué características le han parecido más valiosas y por qué?

Es muy fácil de usar. El acceso es muy amigable. Te muestra mucha información importante a primera vista.

¿En qué áreas se podría mejorar Dell PowerEdge PowerStore?

No he visto nada concreto. Lo único que se me ocurre es el precio.

¿Utilizó anteriormente una solución diferente? De ser así, ¿por qué la cambió?

Estábamos usando la solución Dell Unity. Cambiamos porque nuestro socio nos ofreció esta solución. Teníamos muy buenas referencias de él y confiábamos mucho en nuestro socio.

Antes de elegir, ¿evaluaste otras opciones? ¿De ser asi, cuales?

Evaluamos EMC Unity, pero al final también son de Dell.

En cuanto a la importancia de la sostenibilidad a la hora de evaluar una solución de almacenamiento, siendo del área de TI no la valoro, pero sé que otros departamentos de mi empresa sí lo hacen.

¿Qué aconseja a otros sobre el costo de instalación, el precio y/o la licencia?

Los precios en el mercado de estas soluciones de almacenamiento son muy similares, pero con su habilidad de duplicación, pareciera que estuvieras pagando menos.

¿Cuáles son sus impresiones sobre la escalabilidad de esta solución?

Su escalabilidad es muy buena.

¿Cuáles son sus impresiones sobre la estabilidad de esta solución?

Su estabilidad es muy buena. Es muy confiable.

¿Has visto el ROI (Retorno de la Inversión)? En caso afirmativo, ¿de qué manera (es decir, métricas/puntos de datos)?

Aún no hemos visto un retorno de la inversion porque no hemos tenido mucho tiempo usándolo, pero estoy seguro de que lo veremos.

Cuéntanos tu experiencia con el servicio y soporte al cliente.

Su apoyo es muy bueno. Siempre ha sido el mejor.

¿Cómo calificaría esta solución en una escala del 1 al 10 en cuanto a servicio y soporte?

10

En una escala del 1 al 10 (1=peor, 10=mejor), ¿cómo calificaría Dell PowerStore? Por favor explique por qué.

Calificaría a Dell PowerStore con un nueve de diez porque no he tenido mucho tiempo trabajando con él, pero hasta ahora estoy muy contento.

I use Dell PowerStore in my organization mainly for our server environment, so all of our virtual servers run on it. I also use Dell PowerStore in my organization to clone our environment to a test environment and some storage devices. The aforementioned details explain the main reason why our organization prefers Dell PowerStore.

With new features in the product, my organization hopes to get some more output. When our organization moved Dell EMC XtremIO to Dell PowerStore, we knew that the functionalities revolving around cloning and copies would become a little slower, but we made the decision to do so because it was cheaper for our environment, making it a cost-based decision.

The deduplication functionality provided by the solution is fairly good. The speed offered by the product is enough for our organization. Our organization also has Dell EMC XtremIO, which is a bit faster, though Dell PowerStore alone is more than enough for us.

After the smooth launch of the product in our company, only the areas around upgrades are a bit problematic. In our organization, we face difficulties when updating the product. Since Dell PowerStore's system health check runs correctly, there is a need to bypass the health check during the upgrading process. Sometimes, the replication part of the product doesn't work, and because of this, our organization has to contact Dell's support to fix it. In my organization, we have had to go through two weeks with no replication, which is not very handy for our production environment.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for two or three years.

My company faces issues when we attempt to update Dell PowerStore, but under normal circumstances, we don't face any issues with the product.

When you have someone on the line from Dell's support team, then everything becomes perfect, especially if they are early to address some of our issues since, in our organization, we have multiple appliances and storage areas, and to maintain it at a level, it's very difficult. My organization needs to create an incident and schedule a call with Dell's support team, which sometimes can be a bit of a rough process.

I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

The implementation phase of the product was not difficult. An engineer from Dell came to our company to install Dell PowerStore, and afterward, we configured the zones and WWNs, and the product started to work perfectly. There were no problems at all with the implementation phase of the product.

I don't know how much time the deployment process takes since one of my colleagues handles it, as I am only a supervisor.

A third-party help was required to install the product.

My company chose Dell PowerStore over other products mainly because we have very good contact with Dell in the Netherlands. My company uses the server and storage devices from Dell. Our company's main support is from Dell. My company did take a look at Pure Storage. With the discounts and everything from Dell, my company runs about 30 servers, which cannot be the storage provided by Pure Storage.

In my organization, there were no problems or challenges that we wanted to address through the implementation of Dell PowerStore.

I don't know how much money my organization saved after moving from Dell EMC XtremIO to Dell PowerStore, but I know that we have received some discounts from Dell. I don't know what the prices were when my company chose Dell EMC XtremIO or Dell PowerStore.

My organization doesn't use CloudIQ to manage and analyze Dell PowerStore.

I don't know how my organization assesses Dell PowerStore for its overall energy consumption. I don't know what kind of power it uses for anything.

I know that Dell PowerStore is a bit, if not much, better when it comes to areas like significant data consolidation and footprint reduction when compared to Dell EMC XtremIO. Dell EMC XtremIO was also a very good product for areas like significant data consolidation and footprint reduction.

It is a good product, considering my assessment of Dell Technologies' environmental, social, and governance values. My organization maintains good contacts with Dell, and Dell also supports us by providing good governance.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for storage and data reduction. 

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The architecture is very good.

It's a reliable product. 

The data reduction feature is quite useful. It has a good reduction ratio during migrations.

The solution is stable. 

The solution only supports NPE. It doesn't support SSD or Flash. We'd like the option to be more flexible. If a customer finds out SSD is not supported, they will look for another option.

I implemented the solution around two years ago. I haven't used it for very long. 

It is a reliable, stable product. We haven't had any issues with it. Of course, it is not that old. That said, there are no failures and we have not had controller issues. there are no bugs or glitches. 

It is a scalable product. However, I have not needed to go and upgrade it or add more enclosures, et cetera. It can scale up. However, it can not scale out.

I have three customers that have already implemented the tool. More are coming online soon. Most of them are enterprises. We do expect expansion in the coming years. 

Technical support is more than perfect. We are quite pleased with the level of support on offer. 

I'm also aware of HP, which is a very similar solution. Sometimes the pricing of HP can be better.

The solution is very simple to set up. It is not a complex process. I monitor the process from a design and implementation point of view. 

The deployment takes about 15 minutes if everything is correct and on-hand. Then you move on to the management and you can have the flow up and running. We do the configurations and create the volume and handle the storage of the whole system.

I've implemented the solution three times at different sites. We implement the tool and do the migration. I work with a separate partner and we deploy to the users. 

The pricing is fixed. We have received a good price overall. Users must pay for the licenses. Most of the tools are included in an out-of-the-box delivery. There are no extra fees.

We're partners.

The solution is acceptable for both small and large companies. 

I'd advise new users to be mindful during the implementation process and make sure it is done right. They need to choose the correct solution and implement either block or unified. It's a good idea to look at the documentation before setting everything up.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.