What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerStore?

Cost is one aspect that needs improvement, as selling the drives after purchasing the solution makes them incredibly expensive. The reason we buy it as a whole complete system is because we get such a discount on the drives upfront. When we go to buy or populate more drives in the storage array, they're so expensive. If they could lower the cost for components, we would definitely expand them more and be more inclined to buy more storage units, but it's currently a price crunch for us. Price is a deterrent to scalability.

The design needs to be something similar to Pure Storage. It would be beneficial if there are different color or lighting options for different product casings. Different colors are helpful when working in the data center server room. Pure Storage is simplified. We can do a lot of things online. They have a lot of information and training. We can go through their YouTube channel. Dell should be doing more like that. The main reason why people move to Pure Storage is because it's simplified.

I would improve the product to make it better. I had specific troubles with vulnerabilities in Dell PowerStore. There are many vulnerabilities that we cannot mitigate related to the administration interface. It is hard to install certificates from another source.

The initial setup was a bit cumbersome.

I have realized nothing exemplary from using Dell PowerStore, except hat the user interface is clunky, and we've had issues with that. The interface of Dell PowerStore reminds me of the Cisco mentality where it's just boxes moving around as you're clicking; it's not easy to understand what you're trying to do, and you have to have solid documentation to navigate the system and make changes to ensure you're not jeopardizing your system as you present and remove storage and expand LUNs. Some other vendors in that space are innovating in that area, making lives easier for engineers, however, it seems the Dell PowerStore solution doesn't cater to that need, and I'm seeing more and more that my colleagues in other organizations are experiencing the same problem and turning to other more user-friendly solutions.

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.

In terms of improvement for Dell PowerStore, I think data mobility is crucial. A compelling feature would be seamless mobility of data without disruption, from local storage to the cloud. It would be much easier if Dell PowerStore implemented this form of data mobility. Currently, migrating from one model to another is not very straightforward, although it's on the roadmap. Upgrading an old model to a new one can be complex, particularly when using VMware. I do not give it a ten because other storage solutions may offer better features. For instance, Dell acquired a company called Compellent, which had a feature called live migration, allowing multiple storage-to-storage transfers, including three hops. With Dell PowerStore, you can only replicate data between two storages systems, needing a separate appliance for more complex replication, which competitors like NetApp or Pure Storage provide as built-in features. I suggest this capability be considered for future development, alongside enhancements to data security and analysis.

I would improve Dell PowerStore by enhancing the replication feature because currently, users are limited to one applier, from one cluster, a Dell PowerStore cluster, to another Dell PowerStore cluster, but are not able to configure a three-site scenario. The second improvement would be to enable quantification of the snapshot footprint. The replication feature mentioned is what I find missing in Dell PowerStore.

Dell PowerStore has provided us with great success; the overall management ease, throughput, and dedupe have been excellent, and since we've only had it for two years, I don't really have much negative feedback or things to improve upon. It's a newer technology for us, so we're still evaluating it thoroughly. If I could add any feature to Dell PowerStore, I would say we're looking to test, but I'm not ready to answer that question because we are looking to move away from VMware and are testing out OpenStack and Zen, so we don't know how that integration would work. The only room for improvement I would mention is that, comparing it against a legacy product we had, we were a Pure shop, and some of the data metrics we get out of Pure from a support perspective online are a little bit more robust than the Dell PowerStore metrics, but it's not a negative against Dell. I see them getting there. As they continue to upgrade Dell PowerStore, I would assume that having more analytics would be the most important piece on any platform, but Dell's done a great job with it, so that's why it wasn't a heavy concern for us.

From our region perspective, it would be beneficial to have support with local languages for Dell PowerStore. However, English is acceptable for us as it serves our needs.

I would suggest that Dell PowerStore could come with various other features, such as a hybrid model apart from only all-flash, which would really help the customers.

If I could improve Dell PowerStore, I would suggest that integrations into backup platforms be a little more streamlined. We are a VMShop, so just a little more intuitive connections between those systems for advanced functionality such as storage level snapshots versus just the basic VML or VMware level snapshots when doing those backups would be beneficial.

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.

The big problem that we had with Dell PowerStore comes to pricing. There seems to be a lack of a price range in the small company, small medium company segment. There is a bit of a blind spot. Regarding additional features, it is so new that I cannot really give a comprehensive answer. I think feature-wise, it is very feature-rich. Maybe some of those features could be paired down in order to give lower price range options for companies such as us that are not IT companies, but manufacturing companies, where IT is not at the forefront of things.

Sometimes they have equipment in stock. Sometimes they don't, so they have to arrange it from somewhere. That's been a challenge, and it's a negative point from a support perspective. Dell is struggling in terms of support SLAs as long as the Pakistan market is concerned since Dell has not been able to give a fixed time commitment from a support perspective, which is a challenge for customers. We have heard that there are some challenges in terms of availability; if multiple controllers go down, this solution has certain limitations about how many controllers can be down before your environment is affected. This is a feature where Dell PowerStore is not the best product. From a stability perspective, Dell PowerStore rates six out of ten since, while it has good stability, it's not the best. That's why customers often choose to go for bigger and enterprise-level products, leading to a need for those enterprise-class solutions. Cybersecurity, specifically ransomware protection, is a hot topic, and every vendor is working on this. I'm not fully aware of the extent of security Dell PowerStore provides; for instance, it can offer snapshot protections and immutable snapshots. However, there are certain features that customers are expecting more from cyber resilience. This is a question I'm still seeking from Dell's side. For example, does it scan for viruses from within the storage, specifically ransomware viruses in NAS and SAN? Mostly, ransomware attacks occur on file services, so does it scan those services? What I have heard is that some storage support SAN-level scanning as block-level scanning. Dell needs improvement in this area.

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

The maintenance is a bit expensive. The service and support are there for three years, but after the third year, it is pretty pricey for renewal. I hope Dell addresses that. Everything is pricey these days anyway. It is not like the old days of Compellent. We used to be able to see the metrics for our customers. On Compellent, we could look up that customer and see all the metrics. That is not allowed for us now. We cannot do that anymore. I have to be explicitly allowed by the customer to do that, and some companies' security does not allow that.

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 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.

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.

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.

Dell PowerStore doesn't really have a lot of advantages over other products. It has no special features technically. Other products have better management and analytics features. HP emphasizes much better analytical features.

Dell PowerStore can improve the integration with VMware.

From an air gap perspective and data protection, I'd like to see more immutable backups. We'd like to see some improvements on the security side.

The solution didn't have all of the features we needed. There's a strategic decision to move away from it. It lacks in SVM functionality.

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

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.

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

Dell PowerStore is an unfinished product compared to the HPE systems because it is relatively new. The synchronous replication was only added recently.

Dell PowerStore has just caught up to some of the competition by introducing METRO nodes a few months ago while the competition has had the feature for years.

AI will be a challenge and we must manage different kinds of data with more performance and security. It's a key driver.

I would like a feature parity on the software side. I've been with PowerStore since version one dot zero. I've been through the growing pains of the software. The hardware has always been reliable. The software has been evolving. The biggest area in PowerStore that needs improvement is the overall visibility within the ESX environment. I haven't seen PowerStore Prime yet. I'm hoping that it'll be like it was with Unity. I am assuming it will be but I haven't seen it. That's one area if it's not done. The other area is SNMP deployment so that I can use my own observability platforms to see its performance. One area of suggestion for the platform engineering team is that when they do introduce new features not turn them on by default, let the customer decide if they want to use those new features. It's been more than once that I have done a software upgrade and started something that's caused a negative impact on my environment.

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.

We have not seen an ROI and it would be good to have an ROI calculator made available by Dell.

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.

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

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.

From an improvement perspective, the tool should focus on making it possible for users to configure the tool in a uniform mode with its good features. The support team should have more people with experience in the solution's installation process, as it is one of the areas where I see certain shortcomings.

Dell PowerStore currently only allows us to copy data from our main production system to the disaster recovery site. Dell PowerStore needs to add two-way replication to include data from the DR to the production site.

We had an issue where we lost both nodes, completely lost all our caching, and had to rebuild that whole appliance from scratch. We need to find a way to ensure the cache data is safe and secure. When we're maintaining it, it takes five to ten extra minutes to confirm it so we don't run the risk of something happening. There needs to be some sort of better feedback between the two nodes. The one was running online as a master, but somehow, the caching was lost because both the nodes were offline. No one had any references to that cached data, which completely destroyed our data. Something needs to be done with the caching to ensure that if some issue occurs, there needs to be an ability to disable caching during maintenance to make it static, safe, and good.

The solution's pricing needs to be moderated a bit. As a partner, I'd like to be added to each customer's CloudIQ to take a look.

Dell PowerStore should offer more cybersecurity and warehouse data security.

There is an issue with Dell PowerStore related to future expansions which are software-related. This caused some issues with my largest customer in Romania. Hopefully, the new model will increase performance making it more efficient.

Easy understanding. That is important for the user. When the client has a manual, when the user will take the PowerStore and take the PowerStore, easy installation means. If you click the volume, it will show the order valid. It's the network side also and the storage side as upgrading of the versions, like firmware versions. Everything is pretty good. Just improve the network side. When adding the address for the host on the Dell side, it is not easy. When you evaluate deployment after purchasing the Dell storage, you have to add the ESXI host to the Dell server. That time, the IP address is not taken easily. Please improve that side. When we are on the VM website, the storage side is also not easy when adding storage to the host on the PowerStore side. The support team doesn't always provide adequate assistance. So, there is room for improvement in the support.

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

We are happy with the service in general. The only thing would be the price of the platform.

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.

Dell PowerStore helps to keep the software we rely on in our organization up and running. In our organization, we do firmware updates due to security breaches or vulnerabilities, and as a system administrator, it is important for me to know that the base hardware is in good condition and safe to deal with against hacker attempts while also looking out for any problems within the software itself. To avoid any concerns when it comes to Dell PowerStore, Dell needs to keep working on Dell products. While using Dell PowerStore's interface in our organization, we sometimes miss out on some information. In our organization, we had to deal with bad firmware last year that generated fast degradation of the disks, and Dell informed us when they would replace the disks, but we couldn't see any notifications about the disks being degraded. I feel that the product's new interface with HTML5 interface is still in the development phase because it lacks the crucial information that system administrators need, like, for example, the degradation of the disk. With the product's current interface, as a system administrator, I just see that the disks are either good or bad, and that's it. As a system administrator, it would be great to use and see through CLI since getting informed at such a level within the interface will be a great improvement since more detailed information is always good.

I had a session with Dell concerning PowerStoreOS 3.5. The product can provide backup directly to Dell Data Domain, which we use in our environment, which is something nice for the future, but at this point in time, I can't see anything wrong with it. When you create a case on Dell's support website, you don't always get someone who is experienced in the kind of systems you need help with when you deal with the first line of support offered by Dell PowerStore. Sometimes, you have to explain the issue multiple times to the first line of support, making it an area where Dell's support team needs to make improvements. I understand why the solution's support team is the way it is.

In the past, with Unity, we could run both block storage and configure part of the system as a NAS system. This wasn't ideal, but it provided flexibility. With PowerStore, we have to choose between block storage and NAS functionality. It would be interesting to retain the option to configure PowerStore as a block storage array and try out the NAS features to see how it performs. It was an interesting way to see if we need a certain type of storage. We were able to do that from the same system, and now we have queues when we set up the system, which one it's convenient.

Data reduction needs improvement. While the reporting is generally good for general purposes, it may lack sufficient detail for more technical analysis. If you want to delve into where your I/Os are going, the reporting might need more in-depth information to make informed decisions.

Dell PowerStore is not a powerful tool. From an improvement perspective, Dell PowerStore needs to be a more powerful product. There are certain shortcomings with the technical support team of Dell PowerStore, where improvements are required.

There is room for improvement in the support.

The solution's pricing could be better.

There is a bit less functionality than, for example, NetApp. You cannot monitor as well with this product. You cannot delegate permissions. For example, in NetApp, you can give two virtual storages and give them each to a different company. In Dell, you can only have one or two admins, and you cannot give permissions independently. It should be more flexible.

A downside of Powerstore is that it can only do thin provisioning. I had trouble finding articles on the internet about it. When I was looking for information on switching features on and off there was not a lot available.

The support is not very good. It could be more scalable.

When it comes to Dell PowerStore, I would like to see more integration and more security features included. It's unfortunate that the solution does not feature Flash trace.

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

There are a lot of features in IBM that we'd like to see in PowerStore as well. It has more deduplication and compression processes, all the storage, so that they do not depend on the tool embedded in the cluster. The pricing could be lower. It is very expensive.

I would like to see more automation and more analytics in this product.

Dell PowerStore is a good solution overall, but some models could support hypervisors better by allowing for more customization and flexibility for customer needs.

The UI should be a little more user-friendly to manage. We want to see additional public to private cloud adoption features included if they are at all possible.

We are looking for the Dell PowerStore to become more mature to maximize our use cases.

The product could be improved by including a synchronizing feature for the file systems.

On downtime, it is okay. I would rate it as seven or eight out of 10. There are a few things that Dell has to change, fix, or upgrade. The storage could be improved. I would like a feature for how to best secure an appliance and the storage since we are connecting the container to the public cloud. I would like them to develop another level of security, making it more secure than from what they have now.

The networking was difficult. It was complicated. It took as long to configure it correctly for the networking, as to roll it out. If there was a way to simplify the network complexity, that would be good. It's also only supported with a limited amount of switches. If I hadn't bought the Dell switches, I would've had some issues with my legacy switches. That's been our number one issue with customers - when they say, "oh no, I'm going to use this other switch."

The support for vVols and the storage replication of those, which are new features, we've just heard are coming out kind in the second half of this year. We're very excited about those. We've been waiting for them for a while. It was very new when we first deployed it a year ago. Even just the upgrade processes and knowing what to expect, as well as documentation, could be more robust. We had folks that helped us through, however, we did have some bumps and bruises along the way.

The NAS capabilities have room for improvement. Currently, when you buy the PowerStore T model, you have a choice of using only block—it's block-optimized—or you can buy it as a unified frame. With the latter, you can access the frame using either block—Fibre Channel or iSCSI, and on the other side you can access it using IP protocols, like NFS or CIFS. This is the NAS part and, currently, the NAS part is very poor. It's very basic. Even Dell EMC has said that to us. We are waiting for version 3 of PowerStore for that. This must be improved and it is in the roadmap. We have other NAS solutions, but if someone wanted to have a unified frame, this is not the right solution, currently. That's why it's not a 10 out of 10. When we will have version 3 of PowerStore's operating system, in less six than months, my rating will probably go up.

There is no Synchronize replication feature on the storage. PowerStore should include more NAS functionality.

In the first weeks, we had some problems with the dedupe. According to the warranty, we should have had a dedupe rate of at least two and we had not reached this value. We got an additional hard disk to match the planned capacity of the system and this helped a lot. We got to a dedupe rate of 1.9, and this was very good. What we are missing is the monitoring. We cannot implement the health check of the system in our monitoring system. We have to open the PowerStore GUI every day. Also, we have tried to install a separate virtual machine to integrate PowerStore to vCenter. VMware then provides a virtual machine with Photon OS. We have done this integration two times and it has run for some weeks. Then it stops working and I don't know why. We have not used it again. It has nice features and has saved a lot of time and creates a good integration, but it needs to be more stable. Overall, they need to make the system stable. Again and again, we have problems with upgrades. The upgrades themselves are running fine, but after the upgrade is when we have a problem. With the update to 1.4, we had a head crash. They told us, "This is a known issue. Please upgrade to 2." We upgraded to 2 and, one week later they told us, "Yeah, there are some issues in 2.0.0. You can lose data. Please upgrade to 2.0.1." Overall, they need to make the system stable. I try to avoid updates for such important, central systems. They require downtime for the whole company, as this is our only storage. It's not good to do so many upgrades. I have used other storage systems and, with them, it was never necessary to do so many upgrades in one year. Last year, I did four upgrades for the PowerStore but I have never done four upgrades over the lifetime of other storage systems. They have run four, five, or six years, sometimes more. I have never patched so often as I have with PowerStore.

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.

Where the system needs to improve is by adding more enterprise features like replication on other sites. We would also like it to be much more aligned with the VMware version. For example, today we have two different versions of VMware ESXi running to keep the PowerStore online. It would be better if the software cycling was faster.