Dell PowerStore Reviews

Dell PowerStore is our Tier 2 storage used for general-purpose servers and applications.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore, compared to previous products, is probably the ease of installation and upgrades. 

The benefits our organization has received from installing Dell PowerStore include a smooth transition from previous storage, Unity and previous Dell storage, making for an easy migration.

One of the big differences when we were looking at Pure is that they had more of an in-place upgrade option going forward, kind of future-proofing things. We hear Dell is working towards that, but they weren't quite there, especially three years ago.

We acquired our first Dell PowerStore three years ago.

In terms of reliability and stability, everything has been stable with Dell PowerStore, so I cannot complain.

Dell PowerStore has had no problem scaling to our needs. We have expanded a couple of times in the last few years and had no issues.

If I were giving advice to another company looking at Dell PowerStore, I would say that you cannot go wrong with Dell, as the sales and support teams are always top notch.

As a long-time Dell EMC customer, we did look at Pure Storage as well, but we ended up sticking with Dell.

We had a Professional Services engagement that helped with the installing and configuration of Dell PowerStore. My experience with Professional Services for Dell PowerStore was good, smooth, and without problems.

The return on investment from Dell PowerStore has been as expected.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate Dell PowerStore an eight overall.

Our company's use case for these products includes SAN storage, virtual machines, and VM storage, particularly with Dell PowerStore, which we have been using for approximately four years now. 

The best feature of Dell PowerStore is its flexibility for expanding data storage. Dell PowerStore has helped our organization as it is a proven SAN solution that is expandable if we need it to be, and it is web-driven for manageability.

If I could improve anything about Dell PowerStore, there are a couple of in-the-weeds features that I would want to see, such as the size of snapshots to know when we can expire some of them.

We have been using Dell PowerStore for approximately four years. 

From what I have seen, it is absolutely scalable.

Our organization has about 700 to 750 employees.

I would evaluate the customer service and technical support as good. We normally go through our reseller, and then they contact Dell, and we collaborate together.

Positive

The change to Dell PowerStore occurred when Compellent, our previous solution, reached end of life. We transitioned from Compellent to Dell PowerStore.

I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerStore as it does what we wanted it to do. It gives me peace of mind.

I have experience with the pricing and licensing. I was involved in the purchasing process, though I was not the final decision-maker.

If someone asked me about Dell PowerStore, I would say that it is priced appropriately.

We did not evaluate anyone else when we made the transition. Our reseller, with whom we have had a relationship for 20 years, looked out for our best interest.

We use PowerScale for our AI requirements, particularly with end-user cameras and similar applications. 

I rate Dell PowerStore eight out of ten.

The main use cases for Dell PowerStore involve using it for applications that are compute and storage-sensitive. It is mainly the monitoring system that has a heavy load. Other than that, there are some critical internal applications that cannot have any time drift. 

One of the specific challenges we are trying to address is migrating from our existing infrastructure. The power consumption isn't entirely dependent on Dell PowerStore, but when it comes to heavy applications, the power consumption goes high. We have a Dell PowerStore at three or four sites right now. We are trying to see if we can roll it out to another three to five sites. 

We have about five Dell PowerStore appliances, and we are using the 500T model.

Dell PowerStore's compression and deduplication technologies are a big help for our organization. It's saving us a lot of storage compared to what we were previously using. We are transitioning from a typical infrastructure to a cloud-native infrastructure. It is helping us move applications to a containerized environment and getting the performance we need.

Its pricing is good when compared with what we were paying for the previous storage appliance and other things. We now have everything together. The management is pretty easy for us. A new person can easily understand it. It works very well for our mission-critical applications that can't have any delays.

Dell PowerStore’s data resiliency and cybersecurity features meet our organization's needs. 

The specific features of Dell PowerStore that I find the most impactful for our organization include using it for our NAS and SAN storage, which is a relief for us. It's natively supported with our VMware infrastructure. We are still trying to figure out how we can utilize it more. Due to the low latency on IOPS, it helps us with our critical apps that cannot afford delays. It decreases the number of incidents. The IOPS part works out well for us. 

The management UI is pretty decent and gets the job done, but the upgrade process is challenging. 

I've been working with Dell PowerStore for a year and a half.

I haven't had any performance issues with Dell PowerStore so far. 

Scalability is something we are looking at. Hopefully, we can get it in a cluster formation. At the moment, we are seeing if we can get it to a point where we do not have to interact with it every day.

We have more than 2,000 users and 11 people working with Dell PowerStore.

Dell's technical support is good. Dell has always been helpful for technical support. I didn't personally have a chance to open a case with them for Dell PowerStore, but my colleague did, and he had a good experience with them. We struggled a bit due to our time zone differences because the site we purchased it for is not in India; it's in the EU. That was the only thing that we struggled with a bit. Otherwise, the support has been good.

Positive

We used Pure Storage. We transitioned to Dell PowerStore because, with the VMs that we were running, Pure Storage used to crash. It was a pretty old solution. It hadn't been changed for a while, so the decision was made to go with Dell PowerStore.

The initial setup of Dell PowerStore was straightforward. It was pretty easy for us to set up. It took two to three days, maximum, to deploy Dell PowerStore in one location.

The migration part was a bit daunting for us. We had to move our existing data from one appliance to another.

In terms of maintenance, we haven't had any failed hard drives. It has been running fine. We just have to do maintenance every six months and make sure that the BIOS and firmware are up to date.

It required three people for deployment: one for the physical work and two engineers for migrating and managing our data.

In the long term, Dell PowerStore will help reduce our organization's CAPEX, but right now, it is a pretty hefty investment for our team.

The pricing structure and licensing model of Dell PowerStore are pretty decent. It's pretty competitive. The pricing has never been an issue, and it's fairly good. We are getting NVMe drives, so it's better than the market.

We considered distributed storage options such as Cohesity for storage solutions. We probably also checked HyperFlex with Nutanix.

Dell PowerStore's UI is good. The upgrade process is a bit complex, but there are no performance issues. Dell's hardware has always been pretty solid.

We have the VMware ecosystem and KVM. We have multiple OS running. We are looking into using it as a backup solution. We are thinking of replacing our existing storage infrastructure and have our backup solution running on Dell PowerStore.

It's a pretty reliable solution if someone's looking for a total replacement of their existing infrastructure. It's pretty easy to implement. That's one of the pros we've seen personally. It's a straightforward product, and there's not much hassle. 

I would rate Dell PowerStore an eight out of ten.

On-premises

I am primarily using the solution in mostly virtualized environments. This includes databases and a diverse mix of virtualization.

The use of NVMe is notable, and the speed and performance it provides are commendable. Fast storage is critical to many applications. The faster the back-end storage, the quicker the entire application performs. NVMe, in particular, makes a significant difference.

I am not a fan of the user interface. My background includes working with EMC Clarion and then Dell Compellent. The Compellent user interface is better than any of their other products. PowerStore originated from EMC, while Compellent was a separate company acquisition. Unfortunately, the tools were not merged. The bottom line is the user interface is functional, but not aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes, I find it difficult to get the required information. The performance is good, but the management experience and user interface are lacking. Years ago, I would have rated it extremely high. Now, I would say it deserves a seven. I occasionally encounter individuals who cannot assist me well or quickly and provide some pushback on issues. Generally, it's acceptable, so a seven is fair. I think they could improve integration into virtualization. They have an integration feature with VMware, but it's basic and clunky. They could improve that. Also, I don't think they support other hypervisors. The product is expensive. Initially, you might get a deal, but if you need to add anything later, that's where costs increase. It's possible to buy a PowerStore array at a certain price and then pay as much for additional disks just to expand it.

I have used the solution for about three or four years.

The scalability seems straightforward. We have only added disks but have not added appliances. We have single appliance clusters. We could add appliances, but clusters with multiple appliances tend to have more upgrade issues. That's not my direct experience, just what I've heard.

Years ago, I would have rated customer service extremely high. Now, I have to say, maybe a seven. I occasionally run across a person who cannot help me well or quickly and provide some pushback on issues.

Neutral

We moved from Dell Unity. We still have Dell Unity, but we needed the next better thing without going into PowerMax.

The product is expensive. Initially, you might get a deal, but if you need to add anything later, that's where costs increase. It's possible to buy a PowerStore array at a certain price and then pay as much for additional disks just to expand it.

Overall, I would give it an eight out of ten. The user interface and the pricing model should be improved. Subsequent disk purchases should be more reasonable, in my opinion. I haven't met a Dell array yet that has achieved the promised data reduction. We don't use containers. We don't use the vCenter integration because it doesn't do much for us. It's very basic.

On-premises

I use the solution for storage, databases, and visualization. It serves as a storage option for our server.

It's easy, and the GUI is user-friendly. The recommendation was proper, so we adopted the solution. 

The performance is very good, which is important for storage. Performance is important for storage, with features like compression and deduplication. Performance is crucial, and the price compared to the risk isn't the worst. High availability is achieved, and the load is divided between two nodes.

Compression of data is good. It offers good resilience against ransomware. Our data is safe from attacks. I achieve a higher ability with this solution. There are features for resilience against ransomware and cyber attacks, including security. 

It's easy to manage. I use a lot of Dell solutions and find the GUI very user-friendly. 

The APEX IOPS are good. It gives a lot of good information.

We can consolidate data using PowerStore. We have a guaranteed compression of four to one. We also received extra space from the vendor.

We've been able to consolidate data by about 100% to 240%.

We've been able to increase operational efficiency. 

The data encryption is good and available in a standard license. There are snapshot and backup capabilities. 

PowerStore has helped us reduce our Capex by 20% to 40%. 

I don't see anything I need to change. I am happy with the years of use I've gotten. Nothing more is needed to meet our requirements. We have received the necessary functions, like consistent snapshots for the application. Currently, no function is missing for our needs. As long as they keep up with the quality, I would be happy.

I have used the solution for over five years.

I performed scalability adjustments this year. It was easy and simple.

Users can add capacity in single drive increments.

I'd rate scalability ten out of ten.

I am happy with customer service. I have not faced any problems.

Positive

I am still using familiar Dell products, such as PowerStore and Unity, as they are part of the same family. I'm also using PowerVault. 

We did not use a different solution previously. We've always used Dell.

The setup is easy. I implemented an instance. It is not hard. 

I need one person with some experience in storage to help with the setup. I may then possibly need more.

We currently have three devices. We are not clustering them.

There is some maintenance needed for fixes, et cetera.

We implemented the first time via a vendor. After that, it was easy to do by ourselves. 

Cost savings are evident, and we receive storage and resilience against cyber attacks. We see it as a good investment.

The cost is average.

Users can be enrolled in lifecycle extension with pro support. The pricing for that is too high for PowerStore.

The overall product rating is ten out of ten.

For customers who are looking for a unified solution where they want a mixture of block and file systems, Dell PowerStore would be the right fit. Customers can have an array based on flash and also on spinning disk, depending on what kind of workloads they want to run. For example, if they want to do video surveillance systems, we can propose the Dell PowerStore that has only spinning disk, which they can capitalize on capacity because of the video images and related content.

One of our customers is a bank that has Dell PowerStore. Initially, before implementing Dell PowerStore, their transactions were slow, and they received many complaints from their customers regarding data access speed and backup initiation times. 

After implementing Dell PowerStore storage, the performance became exceptional, and customers started to notice improvements in system access. The internal team was very satisfied with the storage performance, and customers are providing positive feedback about Dell PowerStore storage.

The storage for Dell PowerStore has been performing well overall. The only improvement that might be required, though not significantly, relates to the features that allow for support, specifically the call home features.

I have been working with Dell PowerStore for over five years, while also dealing with IBM, Lenovo, Dell, and NetApp systems.

The technical support from Dell PowerStore has been very good. I would rate them eight out of ten.

Positive

We are a partner for Dell, IBM, Lenovo, and Huawei. Dell PowerStore is a good storage solution that I can place in the top five. It has excellent features, and given the opportunity, I would position Dell PowerStore first in a customer environment.

Unless customers specify otherwise, I prefer to position Dell PowerStore over other storage solutions because of its simplicity in deployment, management, and support. It has been very easy to expand in terms of scaling up and scaling out. The process is seamless as you don't need to take the whole storage down to add additional storage space. It's simply a matter of bringing in expansion, connecting it, and then adding space into the existing storage.

Dell PowerStore is highly recommendable due to its anti-ransomware features, which many customers appreciate. When creating snapshots of data that can be immutable, it prevents unauthorized access to the content. These security features make Dell PowerStore a preferred choice for many customers.

On a scale of 1-10, this solution rates 8.5.

Dell PowerStore's main use cases include capacity management for storage and various other purposes. The product fits the business across all verticals, whether in finance, retail, or aviation, as Dell Technologies is present in every industry.

I have been able to consolidate data using Dell PowerStore for our clients, and there are many examples of this happening.

Regarding examples of how much data was consolidated or the data reduction rate, I cannot comment easily on that because those figures are not very generic and depend on the case type and the nature of the data involved.

What I appreciate about Dell PowerStore is its batch perspective, especially for downloading the SME, although I focus on the business side of it. That question would be better for my SMEs.

All of my customers use Dell to consolidate workloads, improve performance, enhance power efficiency, and achieve data reduction, which is what Dell is known for. I am personally focused on storage, computing, and backups, and in my previous experience, I have been working actively in that area.

Dell brings many solutions, particularly in hybrid solutions that go multi-cloud, and it is a good product to work on.

From a VFSI perspective, I do have experience with how Dell PowerStore has impacted the organization in terms of performance and operational efficiency, and it has been a good experience due to being very much scalable and highly available.

I would describe my experience with Dell PowerStore's data resiliency, availability, and cybersecurity features as good.

These features definitely meet my customers' business needs today, especially with the upcoming threats.

The only area of Dell PowerStore that I would see improved is the awareness in the market, as I feel that the Dell team can do better regarding the features and the way use cases and case studies are presented.

I think my customers find several features of Dell PowerStore impactful for their organization, but I do not know what plans you have for the agentic part of it, as I have not heard much about that. Most of the products emerging already have AI for better delivery and insights, but I am not very sure if Dell PowerStore is fully ready for that.

At this moment, I have not utilized Dell AIOps, also known as CloudIQ or Apex AIOps, in Dell PowerStore, and I have seen very limited penetration of that in customer places.

I have been working with Dell PowerStore since the launch date because we are not new to Dell Technologies. I have been seeing the product generation right from the EMC Clarion days.

I have not experienced any performance issues, crashes, or downtimes with Dell PowerStore, and everything has been fine so far. I appreciate Dell Technologies for their continuous support, which strengthens our partnership due to the better support structure in place.

I have not had any limitations or scalability issues with Dell as it is scalable by design, which is completely good.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the tech support and customer service teams as a nine due to their high customer care experience, despite some occasional transaction issues.

I work with other storages and competitors, including HP and IBM, as I have been an SI partner for all of them, and it is not exclusively with Dell.

In comparing Dell to competitors like HP, some features show Dell outperforming, while others go in HP's favor. However, newer competitors like Pure have become very competitive.

I appreciate Dell's commitment, but sometimes I feel Dell products can be costlier concerning the overall lifecycle management of the product.

I find it cost-effective, although it does depend on a case-by-case basis and may not hold true for every situation. In most of the cases, the answer is that it is cost-effective.

Given my experience with Dell products, my recommendation for others looking to implement is that the awareness aspect seems to be lacking lately, as I have not seen the same level of engagement compared to earlier times. I would rate this review an eight overall.

On-premises

Other

Dell PowerStore was attached to an SQL Database that needed to have high performance, and since the application was not very well written, the only solution was to put it on flash storage. In my company, we felt that Dell PowerStore stood out for us as a high-performance storage device in the market.

In terms of how the product has helped my organization or my company's customers' organizations, I would say that the product provides its users with the hardware they need to be able to scale and grow their applications. The product is helpful not just from the standpoint of being able to deal with expanding an array's needs but also having the power necessary for the workload.

The most valuable feature revolves around expandability, especially since our company had to grow one of the appliances once. My company found the tool to be really easy to use, expand, and manage.

My organization uses Dell CloudIQ to manage and analyze Dell storage. My company has not faced any issues with CloudIQ since we mostly use it for monitoring and reporting, and it never came back to us with anything, so everything is always green there. CloudIQ has not given our company anything yet since we may not have done anything wrong to date. As per one of the recent announcements, CloudIQ has been renamed Dell APEX AIOps. Going forward, we need to remember that CloudIQ has been branded as Dell APEX AIOps.

I don't look or assess Dell PowerStore's overall energy consumption closely since it is not in a data center where one can have features to monitor power. I would assume that the product would be efficient when it comes to the overall energy consumption area, and I understand that there will be some additional power savings with the newer versions of the product and the latest hardware. There hasn't been anything associated with the product that has been an issue for our company.

In terms of the ESG values of the product, I think Dell PowerStore has been doing a good job. Dell's team has been doing its best when it comes to the area of ESG values since they talk a lot about being green and recycling while also emphasizing how they are able to take in old products and dispose of them properly, making me believe that Dell works towards a good initiative.

The challenges my company is trying to address with the use of the solution, especially in areas like workload or data consolidation, I would say that the workloads that my company is running are all VMs, so we get into a ton of consolidation in that regard. The challenge my company is trying to address with the use of the solution revolves around the area of performance. The tool has not only met and addressed our company's challenges concerning the performance area but also exceeded them.

My company integrates Dell PowerStore with VMware.

The integration process of Dell PowerStore with VMware is not as easy as how it is when it comes to Dell Unity XT, especially in terms of getting the integrations turned on. Once the integration capabilities are turned on in Dell PowerStore, the tool works very well.

Though Dell PowerStore is generally easy to manage, it is not as easy as how one can manage Dell Unity XT. There are some management issues in Dell PowerStore. I have managed several pieces of Dell PowerStore's hardware area, and I could feel that it was almost like a step back in certain areas when it came to the management interface. I haven't looked at Dell PowerStoreOS 4.0, so I can't speak about it currently.

From a feature-oriented point of view, I don't want to see anything additional in the product since it is kind of a purpose-built appliance from what I understand. The product does everything I need it to do for me.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for a year.

The product's stability has been fantastic and rock solid.

The product's scalability features have been great. My company is happy with the product.

The solution's technical support has been fantastic, especially with the CloudIQ integration. Our company has had a couple of instances where Dell's support has actually reached out to us and told us about how there is an update in the queue and how we can download it and use the update as per our convenience.

I have not used any other solutions in the past.

The product's initial setup phase was easy. The product has an easy setup phase, especially if you have experience with Dell EMC storage products. Dell PowerStore's setup process may not seem as easy as the setup phase of the tools covered under Dell EMC storage products.

Only one of the two Dell PowerStore isn't production, but the issue that my company used to face with the previous product we used was associated with the fact that its application would die every day at two o'clock in the afternoon, after which there is a need to reboot the server in order to get the product to come back up. I believe the aforementioned problem was caused by a report running at the wrong time and taxing out the database server heavily. With Dell PowerStore, even if the report runs and Taxes out the database server heavily, the tool doesn't suffer from a performance hit. With the earlier products, users had to deal with 15 to 30 minutes of downtime in the afternoons, but now that has been eliminated with the use of Dell PowerStore. I have experienced an ROI using the product, but the number to which it equates is something that I can't specify.

When it came to the pricing part, my company looked at Dell EMC Unity All Flash and Dell PowerStore. Dell PowerStore is more expensive than Dell EMC Unity All Flash. Dell PowerStore's performance metrics were way higher than what Dell EMC Unity All Flash offered. My company considered Dell PowerStore to be the best solution despite its high cost.

I have not evaluated any other products against Dell PowerStore.

The product has not really helped reduce organizational footprint and data consolidation. The data is all there, and it just keeps growing, so I don't know if there has been any data consolidation possible with Dell PowerStore.

Though there are a few areas that Dell cannot control, when you look at an all-flash storage device, one can figure out that there is some cost involved in it. Other than the costs associated with Dell PowerStore, I feel it is a fantastic product.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use Dell PowerStore for our local operations and as a backup service that we provide. We use it for some VMware, but it's primarily for backups. 

Dell PowerStore has provided us with a lot of disk space that is easy to handle. The solution has also helped reduce our organizational footprint by about 50 percent. We have six units. That's less than what used to be on the rack. 

The platform's reliability and built-in replication between disk systems have made our customers happy. It has worked consistently well over the years.

The previous version of Dell PowerStore we used was easier to use compared to the current one. They have made it more cumbersome to handle, although it still works. It has become more complicated to manage.

We have been using Dell PowerStore for the last five years.

Dell PowerStore is stable. We haven't had any issues with it.

Scalability with Dell PowerStore is probably good, but we haven't had the opportunity to increase disk space as we have not needed it beyond our initial purchase.

I rate Dell support nine out of 10. We have not needed much support from Dell since the solution has been working well. 

Positive

We transitioned from a system called EcoLogic, which was another Dell solution. We started with EcoLogic about 20 years ago and switched to Dell PowerStore about six years ago because EcoLogic was no longer available. We needed new disks because our old ones were wearing out. PowerEdge was priced well.

The pricing structure and licensing model of Dell PowerStore are very good and I like it. We chose it because it was reasonably priced and met our requirements.

We considered other disk systems, but they were too expensive.

I rate Dell PowerEdge Servers nine out of 10. They do their job and cause us no problems. 

I am dealing with Dell PowerStore, PowerScale, and PowerEdge.

Dell PowerStore is popular in my region and is already a known product and solution. When it comes to recommending it for smaller or bigger companies, it depends on the workload. Generally, it can be used for both smaller and larger organizations.

In terms of improvement for Dell PowerStore, I think it would be good to integrate it with IBM workloads.

Regarding Dell AIOps or CloudIQ, there is no problem with that, but it still needs to be more granular.

When asked how I would rate their technical support from one to ten, I say nine. Nine out of ten means there is still some room for improvement when it comes to response time and overall competence. There is always room for improvement, but for our cases with our customers, we are very satisfied with the technical support of Dell.

Regarding their pricing, I find it reasonable and competitive.

If I were to rate Dell PowerStore from one to ten overall as a product, I would give it a seven. As for additional features that I think they need in the future to make it better, I do not have any suggestions.