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Buurst SoftNAS vs Dell PowerScale comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Buurst SoftNAS
Ranking in NAS
16th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerScale
Ranking in NAS
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Buurst SoftNAS is 1.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale is 13.8%, down from 17.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerScale13.8%
Buurst SoftNAS1.6%
Other84.6%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

SD
Infrastructure Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Shared file access has improved collaboration but documentation and support still need work
Buurst SoftNAS can be improved regarding enterprise features, as those are not yet matured enough for enterprises. It covers most of the NAS requirements, but some of the advanced features available in premium storage platforms could be more mature. Organizations like ours, which are highly specialized for storage requirements, need additional validation before large-scale deployments. Regarding the needed improvements, I think the documentation and troubleshooting guides are not up to standard and could be improved. The best practices, architectures, and advanced configuration examples should be included in those documentations. Customer support for Buurst SoftNAS can be improved, as I have not seen major support.
RahulSharma8 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group
Unified file sharing has simplified multi-tenant access and has delivered seamless data replication
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) includes its replication features; when we decommissioned our old Isilon cluster, we migrated all of the data to a new cluster, and it was pretty seamless. All you have to do is create the certificates and make those certificates available to the target cluster, then initiate a few jobs. The inter-cluster replication feature, called SyncIQ, allows you to set up all of the jobs and move your data entirely, either timely or all at once. Another suitable feature is the ability to back up your directories; you can take snapshots for all of your directories, and in fact, I believe you can take around a thousand snapshots for a single directory. The inter-replication, geo-replication is one feature. Dell provides a variety class of hardware suitable for your workloads, meaning if your data is just lab and not critical, you don't have to spend much on the hardware; conversely, if your data is mission-critical, you can buy a high-performance node from Dell. Additionally, you can span Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cluster to a large number of nodes, and code upgrades are pretty smooth because all protocols will be upgraded under a single piece of code. Since it provides a single file system that spans across the nodes, you don't have to worry about that directory structure being separately created on individual nodes, making it a fitting solution for a data lake solution because you can access the same data from multiple protocols.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Buurst SoftNAS has impacted my organization positively through cost efficiency compared to other NAS platforms, offering a compelling value proposition."
"Certainly, we have seen return on investment and peace of mind, especially with our two clusters that are linked together, where one is a disaster recovery solution for the other."
"Currently, Dell PowerScale is the center of our mainframe of our core of our business, and it is where we store everything."
"I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as a product a ten out of ten."
"Its scalability has been huge for us."
"The solution has simplified management by consolidating our workloads, and rather than managing all the different workloads on different storage arrays and Windows Servers, we just have one place per data centre where we manage all their unstructured data, saving us time."
"Dell PowerScale is much more advanced compared to competitors, offering more flexibility with different types of drives and nodes, and in terms of simplicity in management."
"Customer service has been really good."
"Dell PowerScale has positively impacted my organization as the students and the teachers are much happier using our services."
 

Cons

"Buurst SoftNAS can be improved regarding enterprise features, as those are not yet matured enough for enterprises."
"It would be good to have synchronized mirroring between two clusters without using a third-party program."
"The solution isn't suitable for small environments or small customers."
"It would be nice to see tools like Superna Eyeglass built into PowerScale."
"The solution's rate structure or rate redundancy needs to be improved."
"The cost of Dell PowerScale is currently high and there is room for improvement."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) certainly has room for improvement; since it does not provide SAN at the moment, I would look for Dell to create a complete unified solution just like NetApp."
"One downside of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that it is really complicated to configure."
"Since our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is our own on-prem in-house built system, we don't have many up-to-date resources, and we're still a few years behind."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The only drawback for us is that it's a large upfront investment. This was a huge decision for a startup company to make. It took a bit for us to get over the line on it, but we have not regretted it."
"It is a really expensive solution."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is an expensive solution."
"The solution is expensive; it is not the cheapest solution out there. If you look at it from a total cost of ownership perspective, then it is a very compelling solution. However, if you're looking at just dollar per terabyte and not looking at the big picture, then you could be distracted by the price. It is not an amazing price, but it's pretty good. It is also very good when you consider the total cost of ownership and ease of management."
"The price of the solution is high."
"The solution's licensing cost varies based on capacity and performance requirements."
"The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."
"The pricing is expensive, but I think it's a fair value because it does manage itself. It definitely is much simpler than any of the other scale-out storage platforms that we've looked at in the past."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise55
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Buurst SoftNAS?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Buurst SoftNAS was that the pricing was initially high. After discussions with the team of Buurst SoftNAS, I was able to negotiate, and as ...
What needs improvement with Buurst SoftNAS?
Buurst SoftNAS can be improved regarding enterprise features, as those are not yet matured enough for enterprises. It covers most of the NAS requirements, but some of the advanced features availabl...
What is your primary use case for Buurst SoftNAS?
I have been using Buurst SoftNAS for two years. File workloads are my main use case for Buurst SoftNAS, and the SMB environments are where we primarily use Buurst SoftNAS. We provide our users with...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Dell PowerScale has been expensive. Setup costs or provisioning experience has been pleasant. Typically you have kickoff meetings and there...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
For improvements, we can focus on enhancing performance, upgrading the nodes, and accessing data through Isilon for more efficiency. Additionally, improvements to interfaces and certain aspects of ...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Dell PowerScale is our main NAS environment storage where we create CIFS and NFS file shares for users.When users request a CIFS file share, they specify the SMB share name and the SmartConnect zon...
 

Also Known As

SoftNAS Cloud Enterprise
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Boeing, Nike, Coca Cola, Hearst, Ndemand, Carbon Media Group, Atypon, The Street, MagHub, CenturyLink, InfoSys
OMRF, University of Utah, Translational Genetics Research Institute, Arcis, Geofizyka Torumn, Cyprus E&P Corporation, Colburn School, Columbia Sportswear, Harvard Medical School, University of Michigan, National Library of France,
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, CTERA and others in NAS. Updated: August 2026.
909,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.