2019-11-13T05:28:00Z

What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
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PeerSpot user
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21 Answers

Steven Siu - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 10
2023-12-29T18:17:50Z
Dec 29, 2023

The solution’s interface and pricing could be improved.

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SK
Real User
Top 20
2023-12-07T12:19:30Z
Dec 7, 2023

There is room for improvement in its handling of object storage. While it excels in managing file systems, enhancing features for more efficient handling of objects could make it even better, ensuring faster and smoother operations.

Henry Chou - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 10
2023-10-13T13:08:37Z
Oct 13, 2023

The product’s expansion capacity, pricing clarity, and ease of use need improvement. There could be power sizing tools available similar to OneFS or H-Series.

Hakan Pehlivan - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 10
2023-08-08T12:29:07Z
Aug 8, 2023

The solution's rate structure or rate redundancy needs to be improved. If you have a lot of nodes, for example, 15 nodes, and when you say you lost one node on the paper, the performance is not affected. However, if you have so much file count and fifteen nodes, losing one node really affects the performance. One of our customers had this issue. Also, when you lose a couple of drives, it's a different structure, then you can lose data. It is clearer on the NetApp side, and you can create a rate group and a pool. So you will have more redundancy on the drives. For example, in a rate set for around 100 drives, you can lose around 20 drives, which depends on the configuration. In NetApp, we will not lose data, but if you lose 20 drives in EMC, you will also lose data. Small systems like Dell PowerScale (Isilon) work perfectly with five, six, or ten nodes. Based on my experience, if you have 15 nodes in Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and lose one node, it creates some problems.

MW
Real User
Top 5
2023-06-27T06:40:18Z
Jun 27, 2023

The solution's configuration needs to be more straightforward. Also, its performance could be better than Panasas. In addition, its price needs improvement as well.

Gehad-Said - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 10
2023-04-19T09:16:13Z
Apr 19, 2023

The cost of Dell PowerScale is currently high and there is room for improvement.

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Naresh Ochani - PeerSpot reviewer
Reseller
Top 10
2023-02-16T09:57:53Z
Feb 16, 2023

The price of the solution could be reduced.

Yaswanth Yathaluru - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
2022-10-18T07:12:24Z
Oct 18, 2022

We're struggling to find the NIXI protocol. It's for people needing to access using Windows and Linux. We're struggling with the UID mapping and how to configure mapping-related things. I'm looking at how to map those GIDs and UIDs.

Paolo Corecco - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 20
2022-10-10T15:28:15Z
Oct 10, 2022

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve the load distribution capability. For example, in some cases, the system load is not distributed automatically on all the nodes but is concentrated only on one. You have a peak request on only one node and the others don't do anything. In an upcoming release, the solution should have security features embedded, not external software.

JP
Real User
Top 20
2022-05-03T18:10:05Z
May 3, 2022

I'd like to see more Iceland products in the cloud so that we can port our data into different environments if needed. I would also like to see a virtual appliance or software defined Iceland product. Version upgrades and patches take a long time to complete. This could be improved.

Eric Burgueño - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2022-01-26T18:27:00Z
Jan 26, 2022

The only thing that I think PowerScale could do better is improving the HTTP data access protocol. At the present, you cannot protect access to data via HTTP or HTTPS the same way that you can secure data access through other protocols like NFS or SMB. You can either access a file because it can be access by anyone in the organization, or you cannot at all. There is no in-between. HTTP is not considered a first-class data access protocol, so the Unified Permission Model that would allow a user to authenticate before being able to access a private file, does not apply. However, with the recent introduction of S3 starting from OneFS 9, I believe the necessary plumbing is already there for HTTPS to also be elevated to a first-class protocol in the future because both protocols sit behind a web server under the hood. It does not sound like it would be too complicated to implement, but it would be a valuable feature and it is currently missing.

AH
Real User
2021-12-16T05:24:00Z
Dec 16, 2021

The management and monitoring tools comprise a disparate suite of products and the roadmap is very unclear. We've got four different products that look after the Isilon, management-wise, and it's a bit of a mess.

JL
Real User
2021-11-30T00:58:00Z
Nov 30, 2021

Something that still could be improved upon is adding additional node types of different sizes to facilitate a better way to run in distributed offices. For example, we have a lab up in Flagstaff, but they don't have a lot of IT infrastructure. Therefore, it is not really appropriate to run this system at their location. So, we run it down here in Phoenix. It would be nice if there was a smaller solution that we could deploy up there that was still as cost-effective as the bigger solutions. The thing that they are working on now, and we are following closely is more native cloud integrations. The way that we envision workloads in the future is around moving compute to data instead of the other way around. So, we would like to have a single pane glass to manage storage across a variety of different platforms, including native cloud. That would be awesome.

GU
Real User
2020-12-30T06:29:00Z
Dec 30, 2020

The only problem with the WORM (write once, read many) feature is it does take up more space than if you just wrote a file, because it writes stuff twice. But it works for us for chain-of-custody scenarios, and it's built into the file system itself. Also, on the PowerScale system, because of the magic that it does "under the hood," it is very difficult to find out within the system where all your storage is going. That's a little bit of a ding that we have on it. It does so much magic in order to protect itself from drive failures or multiple drive failures, that it automatically handles the provisioning and storage of your data. But by doing that, finding out why a file of a certain size, or a directory of a certain size, is using more storage than is being reported in InsightIQ, is very difficult to discern. It's the secret sauce of protecting your data and that makes it a little disconcerting for someone who is used to seeing if a directory is using 5 MB of space. So if you have a directory using a terabyte of space, it might be using a little bit more because of the way that the system handles data protection. That is something you have to get used to. Also, a lot of people are not used to the tagging or the description in the InsightIQ application. We're used to using the normal nomenclature of terabyte, petabyte, etc. They utilize TB byte and PB byte. So you have to understand the difference when InsightIQ is telling you how much storage you have. It's different than what we're used to. It uses base-2 and the world is used to base-10. Discerning how much storage you actually have, from the information in InsightIQ, takes a little bit of math, but it's not very difficult. I wish they had an interface in there where you could click and it would report in the way the industry is used to, which is in terabytes and petabytes. It's nothing major, just something you have to get used to when you're looking at it.

MD
Real User
2020-11-18T06:45:00Z
Nov 18, 2020

Some improvements to the NFS support would be of interest to us. I think that will be available next year.

BS
Real User
2020-11-01T09:42:00Z
Nov 1, 2020

There is room for improvement with the updates. It can take a significant amount of time to do a major OS update. However, even though it takes multiple reboots, the cluster stays up. If we want to apply a newer version of the OS, we have to roll back some of the patches so that we can upgrade. It requires a few reboots just to do that. The cluster doesn't come down, everything is still running, but it's time-consuming, at times.

JG
Real User
2020-10-29T10:12:00Z
Oct 29, 2020

Simplify where you can. If you have a need for tiering, then that can be okay, but it can behave in ways that you may not expect. If it's at all possible to simplify and stick with one node type, your consistency will definitely stand up a little better. If you do have a workload where tiering makes sense, PowerScale does do a good job of that. That's the only real, "Gotcha," that we've run into.

RP
Real User
2020-10-22T05:36:00Z
Oct 22, 2020

The replication could lend itself to some improvement around encryption in transit and managing the racing of large volumes of data. The process of file over and file back can be tedious. Hopefully, you never end up going into a DR. If you do go into a DR, you know the data is there on the remote site. However, in terms of the process of setting up the replicates and filing them back, that is just very tedious and could definitely do with some improvement. There is a lack of object support, which they have only just rectified.

KB
Real User
2020-10-20T04:19:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

There aren't many templates still coming out for it. They need to provide templates so we can copy and paste what we've done in the past to future, new things. The refresh of the interface with version 9 did help a lot of the things. They are at least improving it.

SL
Reseller
2020-08-19T07:57:35Z
Aug 19, 2020

The solution lacks a cloud version. It would be useful if the solution could direct to AWS or Google Cloud effectively or have an AWS version. With the global lockdown conditions, you can't get to the site. It would be easier if it was connected to the cloud. The solution can be a bit complex for those not well versed in the technology.

Paolo Corecco - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 20
2019-11-13T05:28:00Z
Nov 13, 2019

The solution isn't suitable for small environments or small customers. The price point would be too high for companies that don't need a very large amount of storage space. The redundancy is a little bit expensive.

Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon) storage solutions are designed to help manage data for enterprises of all types. Dell PowerScale systems are simple to install, manage, and scale to virtually any size and include a choice of all-flash, hybrid, or archive nodes. Dell PowerScale solutions stay flexible and reliable no matter how much storage capacity is added, how much performance is required, or how business needs change in the future. With Dell PowerScale, your data lake always stays simple to...
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