Dell PowerStore Reviews

I have implemented Dell PowerStore primarily for use cases involving straight-up service in virtualization, which includes fewer VDIs and more generic services.

The solution's most valuable feature is that the full NVMe offers great latency, which is the most effective way to give our customers the benefits of all-flash storage, especially since they won't really notice the bandwidth more than the latency.

The challenges my company was trying to address with the implementation of Dell PowerStore revolve around floor space saving. In Germany, one mostly has to deal with a conservative customer base. If there is a storage that is seven years old and now if one wants to change it, then there are these big machines, with which one can get a lot of terabytes out of it, and that is definitely a big point. When it comes to the area of data reduction, Germany is very conservative, and it may not be possible to reach 4:1 data reduction, but it is still good as the tool's usability is very simple compared to other systems.

Dell PowerStore's ability in the area of overall energy consumption is very good compared to the other systems, which have spinning disks. All-flash storage solutions are a lot more effective, but it is a big concern as energy prices are high. In terms of whether my company could reduce the power consumption with Dell PowerStore, I would say that my company had a use case with a customer around three weeks ago where their old Dell EMC VNX Storage System used to draw about 2500 watts compared to Dell PowerStore which drew about 800 watts, which is a really a big saving looking at the twenty-four hours and seven days of usage of the system.

My organization uses Dell CloudIQ to manage and analyze Dell storage around 50 percent of the time. It makes a lot more sense when one has a lot more Dell hardware because it provides one with a single pane of glass management and an overview of the systems.

After assessing Dell PowerStore's Cyber-resilient data approach to security, I would say that its secure and immutable snapshots are a big feature in Europe. The tool was lacking for quite a time in the area of cyber-resilient data approach to security, but now it has become very good. I think Dell PowerStore is a state-of-the-art system.

I have been able to reduce our organizational footprint and data consolidation using Dell PowerStore, considering that the tool has helped with data reduction by around a 2.5:1 ratio. If I compare the footprint of Dell PowerStore with our company's previously used solution, I would say that the products used in the past did not help with any kind of reduction of data. As a company that has partnerships with different vendors, we have Pure Storage in our portfolio. Pure Storage is better than Dell PowerStore, specifically in the case of data reduction. The algorithm behind Pure Storage performs a bit better, but looking at the price difference, Dell PowerStore is available at a better deal.

The tool is deployed mostly on an on-premises model. The deployment is split into an 80 percent and 20 percent model. Around three to seventeen customers use the tool with VMware, while a few customers use OpenStack.

After upgrades, there were a few bugs in the product, and it can be considered as an area of concern where improvements are required.

I have been using Dell PowerStore since 2021. I was still a customer back in 2021 who bought a Dell PowerStore and then switched to the partner side at the beginning of 2022. Since 2022, I have dealt with 30 to 35 product implementations.

There were a few bugs in the product after the upgrades. My company had to face a few bugs in the latest upgrades of the tool owing to which we had to reboot the solution, and it is a big no-no for us considering that the product is a part of the virtualization stack, but if you are not really counting that and stay at the target code, which the tool recommends actually, then it is good.

In my company, we have a few appliances which we scaled out. The problem is mostly that single drive additions are really expensive. For most customers, it is actually more efficient to buy a whole Dell PowerStore, which is kind of hard to explain to most customers.

My company mostly contacts Dell's support team for mission critical services. Dell's support team's response has always been completely positive. The quick response from the tool's dedicated German support team for storage ensures that our company gets new leads and connects you to the right set of people from Dell. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Considering the other solutions my company has used, I would say that Dell PowerStore, with all its features from previous releases, offers good functionalities. The big pro associated with Dell PowerStore stems from its price point since one gets a lot more compared to other products in the market.

The product's initial deployment phase has been straightforward. You can't get anything wrong with the deployment process associated with the product. I had two or three systems on which the validation was successful, but the actual deployment failed. It is not a big problem since you can just re-initialize it and start over.

Though I don't get real hard data about the savings part attached to the product, customer feedback has been extremely positive. There are no issues with the product's performance since Dell PowerStore is an NVMe product.

I rate the tool an eight and a half out of ten.

Dell PowerStore is designed for core business processes such as ERP, redundancy, and related operations. Dell PowerStore is a powerful platform that provides storage capabilities with NVMe drives and delivers excellent throughput along with deduplication. Deduplication is highly effective with Dell PowerStore, and there is no performance lag associated with this feature. This represents a very important advantage.

Most of my clients use Dell PowerStore on Windows operating systems.

The unique feature of Dell PowerStore is the data deduplication capability. Compression is an excellent feature that Dell PowerStore offers. Dell PowerStore integrates well with VMware containers and other ecosystems.

The management capabilities of Dell PowerStore are very easy to use. The deployment process for Dell PowerStore is straightforward. The interface and methodologies are simple and user-friendly, which provides a significant advantage.

Dell removed support for RecoverPoint for VM on Dell PowerStore, which has been problematic. RecoverPoint is no longer supported on Dell PowerStore, and Dell has also discontinued the RecoverPoint appliance. This creates challenges for customers who still require on-premises deployment and who lack redundancy features.

There is a need for third-party solutions because data resiliency only occurs at the storage level, but nothing is available at the application level. If someone steals data from storage by taking out a hard drive, encryption and other features would be advantageous. However, in scenarios involving ransomware attacks, there is no control available.

I have been working with Dell PowerStore for approximately three years.

I would rate the stability of Dell PowerStore as a ten.

I would rate the scalability of Dell PowerStore as a ten.

EMC Square support was significantly stronger and better than current support. The knowledge depth and expertise of the engineers was very high. However, after the merger with Dell, the support quality has degraded. There is a noticeable difference between what was experienced during the EMC days and what is provided currently.

The deployment process for Dell PowerStore is straightforward. The interface and methodologies are simple and user-friendly. Dell's management interface has been very simple and accessible, which represents a good advantage.

Pure represents very good competition in this space and does compete with Dell PowerStore.

I am using Dell PowerStore 500T, and I have two appliances for my customer.

I am not clustering multiple Dell PowerStore appliances.

Compression is an excellent feature that Dell PowerStore offers.

Currently, the pricing for Dell PowerStore is very high, so customers in the SMB segment cannot afford it.

Dell PowerStore does help reduce organizational capital expenditures, but the price of storage and servers has increased significantly. Many organizations are considering cloud solutions because of these cost considerations.

I use APEX AIOps, also known as CloudIQ, with Dell PowerStore.

I have used approximately fifteen to twenty thousand IOPS in my scenario with APEX AIOps, and it has much higher capability, which provided very good throughput.

I find it important to have the ability to add capacity in single drive increments through drive packs with Dell PowerStore, which is useful.

Dell has discontinued selling Avamar and has stopped selling some products such as Networker. Dell is focusing more on PowerProtect, which does not complete the solution.

I rated this review with an overall rating of nine.

The main use case for Dell PowerStore is that it hosts our production base and the virtualization infrastructure.

The best features of Dell PowerStore are the cluster and the synchronization, which is far better than the technology we were using. It was VPLEX, and it was quite complex with a bunch of more equipment, SAN switches, and the link between the sites, the bandwidth, and the time to converge both systems to the same state whenever we had a network problem. It used to take 6 to 10 hours to synchronize the storage. Now it's much more reliable and faster.

Dell PowerStore has positively impacted our organization by improving the user experience. We were having issues with the hybrid storage we had in the past, so we decided to go to an all-flash solution, and it made it possible to give a better experience because we were having heavy delays on the applications. We had to make some tuning on SQL Server as well, but we got into a limit that it was necessary to move to another technology or to a faster technology.

I have two years of experience with Dell PowerStore.

We are clustering multiple Dell PowerStore appliances with two active-active clusters.

I would rate Dell's technical support or customer service a 10.

Moving and optimizing workloads within the cluster became easier with Dell PowerStore. It became easier because we had a VNX, and it was quite tricky to set up. It's much easier now.

The initial setup of Dell PowerStore is complex, but it's not as complex as the previous version.

I think the pricing or setup cost or licensing of Dell is fair.

We have two storages; we have an object storage that stores all the objects such as PDFs and other kinds of documents, which is a Dell storage, a DCS. All other storage is supported by Dell PowerStore, approximately 70-80%.

Dell PowerStore definitely meets our company's needs. We are a public company, a state company, so we are very regulated in privacy and other requirements. It helps significantly.

I have been able to consolidate our data using Dell PowerStore. As far as non-technical improvements, there's a niche market in Brazil for Dell PowerStore, so more players would be nice. They are good because of the response time, the knowledge, the attention, and the supply chain.

I don't have any issues with storage, so if it doesn't give me any problems to resolve and doesn't bring me issues to solve, it's excellent. I assess the management capabilities of Dell PowerStore as pretty easy. The initial setup with SAN storage is always complex, requiring setting up ISL and all the back-end equipment, but once you've done that, the setup to provide storage and manage everyday activities is pretty easy.

Regarding the insights offered by APEX AIOps, CloudIQ, I've been receiving some reports. Every week I have a report in my email, so it's good.

Overall, I would rate Dell PowerStore a 10.

We use Dell PowerStore for VM storage.

The solution is resilient and reliable. The support is very good. It performs fast with excellent IOPS. Their deduplication and compression ratio features are excellent.

The pricing is really good.

The enterprise support is brilliant and cannot get any better. As technology and data rates increase, they are also going to increase. More IOPS will increase.

Artificial intelligence will likely be incorporated in later, newer versions.

The current Dell PowerStore has been in use for three years. Prior to that, Dell EqualLogic was used.

The support is very good. The enterprise support is brilliant and cannot get any better.

We used Huawei before implementing Dell PowerStore.

The installation was performed with three technicians and was very straightforward.

The implementation was done by three technicians.

There has been a definite return on investment with Dell PowerStore, approximately 60 to 70% ROI.

The pricing is really good. There is an additional fee to extend the warranty, but it is not excessive.

We evaluated Huawei before choosing Dell PowerStore.

A reliable storage solution was needed for datastores. The reviewer prefers to remain anonymous along with their company name.

Overall rating: 10 out of 10.

We have implemented Dell PowerStore for small sites needing mirrored storage. To ensure high availability, the storage is set up in two different locations, possibly in the same building but far apart.

For example, when you have a large warehouse that could have almost 800 meters between the server rooms, we put one in one server room and one in the other. If something happens to the one on one side of the building, you still have the other one.

There have been no significant benefits to the organization because Dell PowerStore is expensive, and we have found that it offers the same functionality as other storage solutions.

Powerstore's cyber-resilient approach protects our data well. We haven't had any problems. 

Dell PowerStore is too expensive, and it could be less complicated. It isn't as user-friendly as other options, especially regarding the user interface.

We have been using Dell PowerStore for about one year.

It is hard to know how stable PowerStore servers are since we've only used it for a year, but they have worked so far. 

We contacted them once about to test a VxRail solution. That was quick, and it was working, so it's hard to gauge their support. 

Neutral

We also use Nimble Storage for other sites. They likely decided to use Dell based on server pricing and simplifying purchases by choosing the same vendor for storage. However, we are considering returning to Nimble Storage.

Dell PowerStore is too expensive for what it does.

Currently, we are exploring Huawei solutions because they offer the same thing for a third of the price. 

I rate Dell PowerStore Rack Servers seven out of 10. 

I use the solution in my company as block storage.

The tool's most valuable features are compression and speed.

The particular models of Dell PowerStore we use in our company are our main storage tools for the commercial insertion business we do. In our company, we Dell PowerStore so that we can store a lot of data in it and the compression is really needed so that we can just have the space.

Regarding the size of my company's environment and how much space we use in the tool, I would say that we use close to 500 terabytes of data.

The product is great in terms of workload consolidation, power efficiency, and performance. The performance increase from the use of Dell Compellent and Dell Isilon is one of the reasons my company picked Dell PowerStore, which is so that we can get the compression and speed that it provides. The tool automatically reduces our workload time. In our company, we used to have job times running into hours, like 12 or 14 hours, and it has now been reduced to two hours because of the tool's speed. Instead of 4:1 data reduction, my company only gets 3:1 data reduction. My company is waiting for the patches and product to proceed with its next release so that we can get the 5:1 data reduction feature.

I use Dell PowerStore's integration capabilities. My company uses VMware on Dell PowerStore.

Dell PowerStore's integration with VMware has been beneficial in areas like speed and compression.

My company has been able to reduce footprint and data consolidation. In my company, we were able to consolidate all of our Barebone Servers onto VMs, and then onto Dell PowerStore. My company has been able to consolidate around sixty different servers along with an equal amount of virtual machines using Dell PowerStore.

Monitoring is an area of concern in the product where improvements are required. My company monitors a lot of stuff. My company does monitoring through SNMP traps since Dell PowerStore doesn't allow us to do any monitoring. It is pretty hard for our company to have a central monitoring system on Dell PowerStore since it doesn't have any monitoring capabilities.

I have experience with Dell PowerStore for years. My company has been using Dell PowerStore 3000T for four years, and we plan to move to Dell PowerStore 3200T soon. I am a user of the tool.

The product has been stable, and my company has not faced any issues. My company may have dealt with a handful of failed drivers. There was an issue where the memory got bad, and our company had to replace the memory part.

The scalability of the product is not something that is currently applicable to my company. I don't have any experience with the availability features of the product.

Based on whatever little service my company has used from the support team, I feel they are good. Though the technical team takes time to provide an answer to a query, I have noticed that they always provide the correct solution. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

My company does use other products apart from Dell PowerStore, but my group does not use any other tools.

My company did not have any issues with the setup process. The only issue my organization had with the product was associated with the monitoring part.

I am not aware of any savings that may be made from the use of the product.

Dealing with the licensing part of the product is very simple, especially considering the fact that we don't have many licenses associated with the tool.

My company did evaluate other products in the market, especially since there were different vendors offering different platforms in the market.

I cannot evaluate Dell PowerStore's pros and cons against other solutions since my company has been a Dell shop for years.

My company has not faced any issues with the product, and we also enjoy the speed and flexibility the tool provides when managing our workload.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

I use the solution in my company for the storage of the data in our centralized IT infrastructure.

The benefits my company and I have experienced from the use of the solution revolve around the continuity in operations that the product offers.

The solution's most valuable features are deduplication and availability. The product also offers reliability and generally doesn't crash.

My company uses a local cloud and not Dell CloudIQ to manage and analyze storage.

The challenges my company was trying to address with the implementation of Dell PowerStore, were that we wanted to achieve upgrades in an app mode. A majority of the upgrades should be done in an app mode because the boxes are always in production, or else when you need to stop it for operational reasons, it becomes very difficult for our company since our business functions twenty-four hours every day. I want Dell to offer updates via app mode. 

When it comes to workload consolidation, Dell has been helpful depending on the business because now we need to put the workloads on an on-premises model and also on the cloud as our system is very complex. My company has a lot of applications on the cloud and some others in the data center and on-premises version, so we need to have the ability to put applications in both areas. 

My company already uses the 4:1 data reduction feature attached to the product, but now we want to have something more complex like a 10:1 reduction functionality, as it reduces the cost associated with an all-flash storage solution.

In terms of Dell PowerStore's Cyber-resilient data approach to security, I would say that my company believes Dell Technologies to be better than the other brands. My company has dealt with several brands, and we believe that Dell is the best in terms of the functionalities it offers.

My company uses Dell PowerStore's integration capabilities since, in the centralized infrastructure, we work with solutions like VMware, Veeam, and Dell PowerProtect. Everything is integrated together in our company's environment. My company is going to use the tool's integration capabilities to enhance our resilience. 

It is very important for my company that Dell PowerStore offers good integration capabilities, especially since it helps with backup, which is an important aspect. If there is a cyber incident, you must restart all the data from the box, and at such a time, if you don't have good integration capabilities, it can be difficult for you to store the last saved data on the storage.

I use Dell PowerStore for AI-driven workload, as it is something that is very important for our company since the AI part helps us get all the benefits attached to the product and helps store the data.

The product can improve by offering AI-based functionalities to users. AI-based functionalities can enhance the tool's performance in moments when the demand is high from the users. The AI-based features can also help users maintain data in a more reachable manner during high demand. Dell PowerStore's throughput limit of the boxes can be improved.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for seven years. I am a customer of Dell.

The product is reliable and stable.

When the partners designed the solution for our company, they knew our requirements, so in the past seven years, my company has not had the need to extend its capacity. After considering the need for the original capacity of our company, the partners added 20 or 30 percent more capacity for the future.

My company gets support from the partner who installed the product in our organization. My company uses the data center model as a service. When the partner designed the architecture for us, though our company participated in seeing it, they did the operation and maintenance.

In the past, my company has used products like Veritas, HP, and HPE. Currently, my company works with Dell to implement cyber resiliency when it comes to storage products.

My company has not deployed the product, and it was done by one of the partners of our organization's in our data center. My company did not have the detailed procedure required to deploy the tool. The product's deployment phase was very fast.

The solution is deployed using Azure Cloud. Around 85 percent of the product is deployed on Azure, and the rest 15 percent is deployed on AWS.

I have experienced a return on investment from using the product, especially in areas like maintenance and lack of outages.

Based on my assessment of Veritas, HP, Dell, and HPE, I see that Dell offers more cyber resiliency than other tools. There is a combination of factors to consider when assessing different products, including areas like benefits, features, and costs. The price of Dell PowerStore is similar to the product offered by Veritas, HP, and HPE. There are only differences when it comes to the area of features.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use Dell PowerStore as part of our VMware infrastructure and other Dell servers.

The biggest improvement we found when moving into Dell PowerStore was the deduplication and compression. I did not believe we could get that much storage into one. However, the solution brought it down and compressed everything, which was amazing.

We went from Compellent, which was over 100 terabytes, down to Dell PowerStore, which was 30 terabytes. It significantly saved on rack space, power, and cooling.

Our organization uses CloudIQ to manage and analyze our Dell storage. It's a little confusing because we have multiple IT shops, and I can see what other groups are using. I can only see what I can see, and they can only see what they see. So, it becomes more of a viewing thing than actually doing.

We were looking to replace our old Compellent hardware by implementing Dell PowerStore. The data reduction with Dell PowerStore was much better than we had with Compellent. It was truly amazing.

We are utilizing Dell PowerStore’s integration with VMware, which makes it a lot easier to manage.

We have been able to reduce our organizational footprint using Dell PowerStore. We went from 18U of rack space down to 2U.

We have two different PowerStores in two different geographical locations, but they're separate workloads altogether. They're not replicated or anything like that.

When you purchase the solution, it comes with professional services, and our experience with them has been great.

Dell PowerStore is far superior to other Dell products we've used over the years, such as EqualLogic and Compellent. I would recommend the solution to other users because it is worthwhile.

Sometimes, you have to go back and forth with the technical support team, where they want you to do something you've already done.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for a couple of years.

We haven't had to scale out the tool because we sized it right. Based on all our research, scaling out the solution should be pretty straightforward if we ever need to.

The solution’s technical support is pretty good. Sometimes, you have to go back and forth with the technical support team, where they want you to do something you've already done.

Positive

We previously used Compellent. We switched to Dell PowerStore because Compellent was approaching end-of-life.

Before choosing the solution, we evaluated Pure Storage. We chose Dell PowerStore because Dell is a trusted partner.

Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.

We are a Dell partner and have been installing PowerStores since the beginning of their release. Austria is a small market so we usually deploy PowerStore 1200 and for smaller installations, we deploy PowerStore 500. We have a few customers that use PowerStore 3200.

The primary use case for PowerStore is typical block storage for VMware environments and for SQL and Microsoft bare metal systems.

We use CloudIQ to manage our customers. It is useful for us to predict the capacity and monitor performance.

PowerStore helps reduce energy consumption for our clients.

PowerStore helps reduce our client's footprint by up to four times.

We see a data reduction of three point five to one typically for our customers.

The most valuable feature is the unwavering performance. It is a fast system that is reliable. The entire Dell ecosystem offers good integration with powerful tech.

It would be helpful for us to have support for the S3 protocol because our main competitor has the S3 protocol in their system. We lost a few teams because of the requirements of S3, so maybe that could be added to their roadmap.

Dell's data reduction guarantee, initially straightforward for claiming additional storage, has become more complex. Their current analysis digs deeper into data composition, and some customers with encrypted data have been denied additional storage under the guarantee.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for three years.

Dell PowerStore is stable.

Dell PowerStore scalability is a big advantage because we can scale out if we install two or three appliances in the cluster using scale-up architecture and also scale up to four enclosures.

The Dell support is good. We have good experience starting with the Dell support portal.

Positive

We are a Dell partner but we also sell NetApp systems. NetApp was an early developer of QLC drives which Dell has only recently started to use with their first shipment going out in July of 2024. The pros of PowerStore are the performance, reliability, and flexibility. We can increase our storage pool by one SSD. Other vendors require a minimum of five SSDs or a bank to grow.

Dell PowerStore is affordable and the license is just a face license which is great.

I would rate Dell PowerStore eight out of ten.  

Dell PowerStore four point zero now can automatically replicate file services. This is an important feature of our customers but we have yet to upgrade to the latest version.

In Austria, we have installed one-half with about 15 to 20 times eight terabyte SSDs. So that means an effective capacity between 100 terabytes and 500 terabytes.

I have been working with the on-premises deployment model.

Dell PowerStore is not really difficult to deploy. There were basically no issues as long as the implementation plan was done properly.

The best features in Dell PowerStore are that it is not too difficult to configure, at least for those implementations that I was part of, and it basically just works. Every new generation of storage, including Dell PowerStore, brings more speed and convenience for end users, but it is not directly visible to them. For me, it was usually just easier to implement.

The data resiliency, availability, and cybersecurity features of Dell PowerStore are adequate, but as always, cybersecurity can be improved. However, there is always a tradeoff because as you increase the security, the usability tends to drop down a little. It is difficult to find a balance, and I think this is quite a balanced product from that point of view.

There are no specific features that I think are missing from Dell PowerStore. The new version that we should be implementing in about a week should be even better.

I am not in favor of AI functionality in the basic infrastructure with Dell PowerStore. The AI should be kept on top of everything, but the underlying infrastructure should be separate with not too many features. It should work on its own without connecting to everything.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for about six years.

A few years back, Dell technical support had an issue that was impossible to solve through online support, so a colleague had to call directly Dell support. Calling someone directly in the US from Bosnia is not exactly an ideal solution. It worked, but it is not ideal. This was connected to a switch that was procured, and it was unfortunately malfunctioning and had to be replaced. Diagnostics had to be run, and the quickest way to solve the problem was to contact Dell support directly by telephone and escalate the problem until we got someone qualified on the line. It works, but convenience is an issue.

I would rate support from Dell around an eight out of ten because it was somewhat difficult to get through the first layer of support, but when I got to the second layer, the personnel that got on the phone were really great. There are procedures on the first level that have to be run, and there is really no way to tell them to escalate just like that, and I understand that. It is acceptable, but the rating reflects the difficulty of calling from abroad and the length of the call.

I participated in installation and the implementation phase for different companies, but not extensively. Usually, the implementation was done with other people together, not on my own.

It is best to have at least two people for the deployment of Dell PowerStore. There is usually some consultancy during the implementation phase for Dell PowerStore, either through a contractor. There was never direct implementation consultancy with Dell, but usually through a contractor.

I think of some alternatives aside from Dell, but they were reviewed briefly, and due to previous very good experience, I stuck with Dell and the availability of qualified personnel from contractors.

I usually spend a few days on the deployment of Dell PowerStore, depending on the size of the project and how good the planning was, up to approximately five days.

In the places I worked at, we usually did not have any budgeting problems as long as the need has been explained properly. Dell PowerStore is not too expensive, but it is expensive. As long as the quality remains the same or better with Dell PowerStore, one room for improvement is the pricing part. However, I do not really understand what makes the price big or low for Dell, so it would be very difficult for me to judge if it can be made cheaper.

I had one previous implementation with Dell PowerStore, and the implementation that is coming will be another one. Usually, the implementation was standalone due to internal redundancies, and it was sufficient. I have been able to consolidate data using Dell PowerStore, most definitely. When you implement a new storage solution, you are always consolidating something.

The compression and deduplication technologies of Dell PowerStore are good to have, but sometimes we go without because it simplifies the potential for some things to go wrong, at least theoretically, because practically we did not have anything go wrong. It was more that I preferred not to use duplication and technology in the background, so we had to implement that in a part of the systems. That was not ideal, but acceptable.

My overall review rating for Dell PowerStore is nine out of ten.