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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Dell PowerStore comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.3
Dell PowerScale scales efficiently, consolidates workloads, and optimizes costs, enhancing data management and storage reliability across sectors.
Sentiment score
6.9
Dell PowerStore delivers strong ROI through cost reduction, improved efficiency, reliability, and long-term value with NVMe technology.
Despite being more expensive than Huawei, it is stable and most enterprises accept the price due to its stability.
In terms of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) specifically, we have seen a return on investment due to faster performance than our last few storage arrays, and the general usability is a lot better.
The second cluster of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) gives us flexibility for small things like code upgrades, all the way to scenarios where we have lost this data center or data, allowing us to check if data is still intact on the other side.
If you purchase storage with 300 terabytes, you can easily achieve one petabyte of effective capacity.
It's been trouble-free the entire time, with very high performance, as it has been designed and built properly.
We have reduced infrastructure but the same performance.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.4
Dell PowerScale support is helpful yet inconsistent; higher-tier engineers excel, but COVID-19 strains first-line support response.
Sentiment score
6.1
Dell PowerStore support is praised for responsiveness but experiences vary, with issues in ticket handling and personnel performance noted.
Dell provides support within four hours, and they always fulfill their promises.
They have managed previous issues well.
I would evaluate the customer service and technical support for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as great.
If necessary, they will search for a specialist within their Dell network who we can approach with our questions.
I would rate the technical support of Dell PowerStore between nine and ten out of ten.
They're responsive, knowledgeable, and have a quick turnaround.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Dell PowerScale excels in scalability and integration, managing large workloads efficiently while offering flexible storage solutions for enterprises.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dell PowerStore offers flexible, seamless scalability and cost-effective expansion, popular for its NVMe storage and ease of use.
We started on PowerScale with around about 300 terabytes and are now two and a half petabytes, still on the same file system.
That's really saved us in certain areas as we didn't have funding to expand Dell PowerScale (Isilon) until next year, which is why we utilized the cloud pools functionality to offload.
Dell PowerScale is highly scalable, as evidenced by the reduced physical hardware and the efficient use of rack space.
The solution's scalability is a ten out of ten.
The customer likely exceeds 20,000 users globally.
You can create as many tools as needed, providing scalability based on the use case.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) offers reliable, stable performance with minimal downtime and resilience against unexpected issues, despite minor setup challenges.
Sentiment score
7.7
Dell PowerStore is stable and reliable, with minor issues not affecting operations; users rate its performance highly.
I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as perfect.
I find the product to be resilient and stable. There's no downtime and no crashes.
I find Dell PowerScale (Isilon) to be very stable and reliable.
When I removed all the cables, it failed over within five minutes.
There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze.
I would rate the stability of Dell PowerStore as ten out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerScale could improve with better cloud integration, simpler configuration, enhanced data management, security, and performance, especially for small files.
Dell PowerStore requires major improvements in features, integration, user interface, support, pricing, and overall functionality for enterprise users.
Hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline.
I would want to see more AI features with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).
If I could improve one thing on Dell PowerScale (Isilon), it would be better object storage as it recently breached into S3, and that capability could be broadened.
If you want to delve into where your I/Os are going, the reporting might need more in-depth information to make informed decisions.
In my organization, we have had to go through two weeks with no replication, which is not very handy for our production environment.
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.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerScale is pricey but offers value in total cost, scalability, and performance, making it a worthwhile investment.
Dell PowerStore is perceived as both expensive and competitively priced, with mixed opinions on its price-value ratio.
It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have.
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) shows it's a premium platform, so it's a big amount of money.
The pricing is excellent.
Likely the cost is $400,000 whereas IBM may be $250,000.
Based on my experience, the cost of Dell PowerStore for around 500 GB of capacity is very competitive compared to any other platform in the market.
There's no need to pay for a license; it's all-inclusive.
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerScale offers easy management, scalability, strong data protection, integration, and supports diverse workloads with high reliability.
Dell PowerStore offers high performance, efficient scalability, seamless VMware integration, and energy-saving storage with exceptional data reduction and compression.
Dell PowerScale offers high scalability and stability as well, making it a valuable solution for enterprises.
In our AI initiatives, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) plays a significant role in data analysis, data fusion; principally, it is involved in data analysis, data extraction, and statistical analysis.
Single files are limited to four terabytes in our configuration, however, the system can support up to 16 terabytes, so we can scale based on that too.
The solution promotes data reduction, often meeting the compression ratio.
The PowerStore's compression ratio is even higher than the Unity system.
The deduplication part of the solution is valuable since, as a user, you get more space for less money.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)
Ranking in NAS
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (3rd)
Dell PowerStore
Ranking in NAS
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
119
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), Enterprise SAN (1st), All-Flash Storage (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 17.7%, up from 17.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 11.9%, up from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

Scott Taylor - PeerSpot reviewer
Manages large data sets efficiently with hybrid cloud integration
My organization is quite large, with about 30,000 employees. The growth has been substantial in areas such as radiology and genomics. One of the best features we've utilized recently is offload to cloud pools due to capacity constraints on-premise. We didn't want to expand Dell PowerScale (Isilon) straight away, so we utilized cloud pools to offload some data to Azure. That's really saved us in certain areas as we didn't have funding to expand Dell PowerScale (Isilon) until next year, which is why we utilized the cloud pools functionality to offload.
Hassan_Zaki - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrated AI and clustering enhance storage operations effectively
I promote and recommend Dell PowerStore for all workloads to my clients and customers. Most of my customers have one appliance per site. Approximately 80% of my customers have Dell PowerStore implemented in their data centers. We always use CLS as another Dell solution for cybersecurity and data security. The CLS is integrated with the Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain, not with Dell PowerStore. Windows, Linux, and some customers use Red Hat or SUSE. We have many operating systems working with Dell PowerStore in the same environments and data centers. CloudIQ and Storage IQ are used by some customers, but Apex AIOps has not been widely adopted yet. Dell PowerStore has integration with VMware and Kubernetes. Most workloads work fine and have very good integration with Dell PowerStore, except for one or two specific workloads in the market. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell PowerStore a nine.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
The solution provides massive performance, scalability, efficiency, and ease of management.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
We have to go through a certified reseller for Dell PowerScale (Isilon). From a value standpoint, it performs very well.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
I would make Dell PowerScale (Isilon) better by improving SmartSync in the graphical user interface. Currently, everything has to be done through the command line, and I prefer having a graphical i...
What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and next-gen apps. It is only Flash and can support many workloads from today's app...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated management of resources feature provides a more simple administration. I found the flex...
What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell offerings and integrated into the PowerStoreOS. The installation and setup have a ...
 

Also Known As

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
PowerStore
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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,
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Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Dell PowerStore and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.