Dell PowerStore Reviews

PowerStore is joined to four application servers in a cluster. We're running an application that we use to monitor our activity in the financial markets. We collect all the data from the market—books, trades, orders—that we send to the market. In terms of volume, we are collecting about 100 million rows a day for the books, 10 million a day for the orders, and about 500 rows for public trades.

It is a mission-critical application because of compliance and the regulators. We have to maintain this kind of monitoring because it's a direct link to our activity in the regulated market.

An interesting feature is the guaranteed reduction when it comes to the physical capacity of the disk. We have 30 terabytes of SSD and that is equivalent to 100 terabytes of effective capacity. It allows us to reduce the costs of capacity.

Our previous solution was Dell EMC Compellent. What we have seen immediately is how easy it is to use PowerStore compared to Compellent. PowerStore is much simpler to manage.

The most valuable features include 

• easy of use 
• performance in terms of read-write capacity.

It is also important that you can add compute and capacity independently. We have sized the solution based on our current needs, but in the future we can choose to increase capacity if we grow our activity in the market. And if we have more business in our monetary system, we can increase compute. The ability to choose what we increase is a good feature.

The only area I can highlight for improvement is that the 4:1 data reduction target has not been reached. This may be due to an issue with Dell EMC's initial analysis of data compression. As a result, we have had to add new physical disks to reach our goal of total available disk space. Dell EMC has met us partway on this DRR issue by providing some of the additional disks free of charge, but we have had to purchase the remaining quantity of the disks we need.

We have been using PowerStore in our production environment for a few months, after using it in pre-production for about two months.

The stability has been very good so far.

We have not tested the scalability yet. All our data is well supported in the current solution, but we sized the new solution with more capacity than the previous one had.

The initial setup of PowerStore is a straightforward process. Setting up the Compellent was much more complex.

Overall, the setup took us about three weeks.

We ran it in a pre-production environment initially. We loaded all the data that was in production into the new environment and ran our application in both the pre-production and the production environments, just to test the stability and the availability of the application.

There are four people involved with the solution in our IT operations, and there are about 50 people who use the application that runs on it. Our application is a specific, department-level application, that is used for monitoring the activity in financial markets, so its use is limited to our business area. That is why the number of users is limited.

Dell EMC's support was very efficient during the setup of the entire solution. They handled the complete setup in terms of connections and also helped us with the software configuration and moving data from our old solution into the new solution.

We haven't seen ROI yet, but the return for us will be in the efficiency of monitoring our activities.

The pricing is in line with other vendors' pricing, more or less. There are no costs in addition to the standard fees.

We did not evaluate other solutions because Dell EMC is a partner for us and we're satisfied with them. We have evolved with their solutions and PowerStore is the best. Dell EMC is our vendor and provides us with all our other client-server solutions.

At the moment, I am satisfied by the simplicity and ease of use of the PowerStore.

We have two appliances — a primary and a secondary — and they are synchronized, so all the volumes are replicated. If the primary appliance goes down, we can get functions on the other side. When it's writing on one side, writing is disabled on the other side. In the event of disaster recovery, we can enable writing, and then we can do anything from there.

PowerStore simplified everything because we have a duplicate copy of all the volumes on the primary side. If anything happens, we can get data from the other side. It also takes hourly snapshots. If anything gets corrupted, we can recover using the snapshots. It's easier for our business to create volumes and allocate space on a volume. You don't have to go through the hassle of zoning the volume and doing everything else. It's simple.

PowerStore is easy to use. All the drives use soft encryption. To upgrade it, you download the app, and it runs by itself. It's very easy to deploy, share, and create volumes. It's active, so you can have two nodes on one appliance. If Node A goes down, you still get node B at the bottom running. 

I would rate PowerStore's machine learning and AI eight out of 10 because customer automation is very easy. It's just a click of the button, You can also use what they call Cloud IQ, which is an online storage and monitoring software. If you log on to the internet, you can check on your plans to see how much space is left. Cloud IQ analytics software is free as long as you have an account with Dell.

Dell's built-in intelligence is the best because it can also calculate how much data is needed for storage beforehand and if you need to add more drives or anything. The built-in intelligence can adapt quickly to changing workload requirements. We were able to migrate from IBM storage by uploading an image. With other devices, it's sometimes hard to migrate from different forms of storage, but PowerStore was very quick. We didn't have any downtime because once we were able to create the image, we just had to do a cut-over on the other side. 

Pretty soon it's going to be Meditech certified, so it's going to be able to run Meditech. Right now we are using a different solution to run Meditech, but once it gets certified, we'll be able to move from the other appliance. VMware integration is very easy too. PowerStore gives us leverage, we can tell how much space is allocated to the VM and what's happening on a VM.

We just installed PowerStore this spring.

PowerStore is highly stable. If one node goes down, it's going to alert you at any time. And then since you're using Cloud IQ, you can see all the alerts and everything. You can install Cloud IQ on your cell phone, so you'll get a notification on your phone.

You can scale PowerStore. If you look at the cost of getting a next-generation XtremIO, we can get two PASTs for the cost of one XtremIO, so it's cheaper to get the PAST. It just came out. It's new, so I don't know about the usage out there, but for us, it's a small beast. It does everything.

Dell's support is perfect. I rate Dell's support nine out of 10. You call them when you have an issue, and they'll get back to you within 24 hours. If it's a serious issue, they respond in four hours. The system itself does a lot. It lets you know when it needs to be updated. And if the upgrade fails, you can just revert to the previous version. This happened once, but we tried again and I didn't have to revert to the older version. 

Positive

Before PowerStore, we were using IBM SVC. We switched because we are getting more virtualized. PowerStore is a new solution, but we were not concerned about switching because we went through a third party called SIS, and they've already installed a couple of PowerStore storage devices in different hospitals. If you look at the DS 7000 in the data center, it's a rack. There are maybe four racks for the same storage solution on one parcel. So it also minimizes space. We only have one 2U rack and it's running like 96 terabytes. 

PowerStore is easy to install and deploy. It takes less than a day.

The price is on the higher side. It's alright relative to what PowerStore does. 

I'll rate Dell EMC PowerStore 10 out of 10. I haven't had any issues with it since we've installed it. PowerStore is easy to adapt, and it's straightforward to use. You cannot even make a mistake on anything because it's going to make sure you confirm everything before you go to the next step. I haven't seen anything that needs to be improved yet. If I compare it with what we were using before, this one is genius.

Our clients mainly use it for additional workloads in databases and EDI.

Typically, high-performance and high-availability features, such as application snapshots and remote and local replication, are highly valued.

There is room for improvement in the support. 

I have been using Dell PowerStore for over a year.

For stability, I would rate Dell PowerStore as a seven out of ten. 

The scalability varies depending on the model. The smaller models are not very scalable, while the larger ones offer better scalability. So it really depends on the specific model. For example, the 400 series models are less scalable.

Our customers are a mix of small, medium, or enterprise businesses. 

The customer service and support are bad. The response time from the support team was not very satisfactory. They also struggled with handling cases from different time zones.

Neutral

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy. 

I would rate it as a six out of ten, one being cheap and ten being expensive, because pricing depends on the model and negotiation. Sometimes we manage to get good discounts, sometimes not.

It's an all-inclusive license, so there are no additional charges. It's a one-time license fee for the device.

Overall, Dell PowerStore is a good platform, but it's not the best, in my opinion, due to the support issues and stability concerns. 

Additionally, the shift from a storage controller to Dell servers as the controller is not ideal for a storage operating environment. Ultimately, it's a Dell Server working on the software for PowerStore.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

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 are partners with Dell. 

Data compression is a great feature.

The user interface could be improved.

I've been using this solution for one year. 

The solution is stable. 

We use a third party for our technical support. 

The initial setup is straightforward and doesn't take long.  

Licensing is a little expensive and there's an extra fee for support. 

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

We are using and providing storage. This is all-flash storage. 

The compression is excellent. It helps save space and allows us to allocate more space to the client.

The initial setup is easy.

The support is not very good. 

It could be more scalable. 

I've been using the solution over the last year. 

The solution is stable. They did not have a stable version last time. It's better now.

The product is not too scalable. We only have 800 to 900 terabytes. It has a set level of storage available. 

We have four projects using PowerStore. That's 300 to 500 users. 

We haven't had good support help. They are not available and often not very well educated. It's very hard to get an engineer when we need one. Their level three admins are hard to track down. 

We've also used HP 3PAR.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

It only takes one to two hours to deploy when you are talking about racking. We just need to mount the solution to the rack and do the physical connecting between everything. We'll also handle the allocation of policies, et cetera.

Customers decide on the capacity and then pay for the solution. they do not have to procure licenses. They may have to pay for extra licenses for external applications. 

We're using the latest version of the solution. 

We're an end-user and provider. 

I'd recommend the solution for small to medium-scale products.

I would rate it seven out of ten. There's not good support here in India, which is an issue. 

Most of our PowerStore units are used for VMware VMs and vSphere. We migrated the VMs from our Unity storage.

We have two sites; the data center site (DC) and the disaster recovery (DR) site. We only use the PowerStore on the DC site. The project was put on hold due to COVID but we plan to continue with it this year.

VMware integration with the product is good. We use vSphere, which is one of the main VMware functions. In addition, we use vSAN for storage, and we have to use the SIEM.

This solution has helped us to simplify our storage operations, although we have a lot of storage devices and too few administrators. Because of this, we're looking for a software solution to assist us with administration. This is something that we will be doing next year.

Overall, we're quite happy with the product because we can move the data that is stored on more than 10 of our current storage devices to a single PowerStore. In terms of efficiency, this solution is the best choice for us.

The deduplication and compression features are quite impressive because when we enable this feature on other products, such as HPE 3PAR, we have a lot of latency. With PowerStore, we don't have that issue.

This device is less CPU intensive than the EMC Unity and the HPE 3PAR.

PowerStore supports the iSCSI interface, which we find helpful. We use one for our fiber channel but another one for iSCSI.

There is no Synchronize replication feature on the storage.

PowerStore should include more NAS functionality.

I have been using EMC products since 2003, although I began using Dell EMC PowerStore only last year.

Stability-wise, we have had no issues at all. In the past, all of our EMC products have been stable. We have not had the storage fail or had a faulty port. We have not even had to call support since putting it into production.

We plan to expand our usage in the future. One of our next goals is to purchase a PowerStore for our DR site because we need to have replication for our financial use case. We also plan to replace some of our other storage devices with PowerStore because we need to improve the overall efficiency.

We have not opened a technical support case with Dell for PowerStore but because most of our products are from Dell, we have dealt with them in the past. We have purchased approximately 100 servers from Dell and we have always been quite happy with their support. We don't have any issues with them and I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Every time we have an issue, they work with us to resolve the problem. There has never been a need for a repeat call and we are quite happy with that.

We have many Dell EMC Unity storage devices, including the Unity 450 and Unity 650, but we wanted a new, smaller storage unit.  

The main reason that we moved to PowerStore was the compression and deduplication.

The initial setup is easier than other products, such as Unity.

We were able to set up the storage and put it into production within one day. PowerStore is very quick to set up. By comparison, Unity will take at least two days to install.

We are happy with the pricing that we get from Dell.

This solution enables us to add compute and capacity independently, although we have not had to change our configuration.

PowerStore uses machine learning and automation for optimizing resources but we are just starting with it, so I don't know much about these features.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We utilize Dell PowerStore for VMware and to establish an OpenShift environment for deploying applications on the customer's end.

The solution is easy to use and has good performance.

Horizontal scaling has room for improvement.

The price has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for around five years.

I give the stability a nine out of ten.

I give the scalability a seven out of ten. While the solution can be vertically scaled without issues, horizontal scaling presents challenges.

The technical support is usually good but they are not very robust.

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward. I give the setup a seven out of ten. To ensure successful deployment, a certain level of technical knowledge is necessary. Typically, a team of one to two engineers can complete the deployment within a few hours. However, the duration may vary and take up to two days depending on the specific configuration requirements.

We implement the solution for our customers.

The solution is expensive. I give the cost a two out of ten.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

The solution requires hardware maintenance. Depending on the customer's contract agreement, we can maintain the solution and provide replacement parts by the next business day.

Our clients are enterprise-level.

I recommend Dell PowerStore because it is a highly stable solution.