Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs IBM Cloud Object Storage comparison

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. IBM Cloud Object Storage

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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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.7%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 8.6%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Cloud Object Storage is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File and Object Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)	8.6%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	5.7%
IBM Cloud Object Storage	1.0%
Other	84.7%

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

Parul-Patel

Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

High performance and throughput enhance IT backup management

The multi-dimensional scale-out design feature of Pure Storage FlashBlade is not in use in our environment. Regarding data reduction technologies, we don't get much deduplication because the data is already deduplicated from our FlashArray before we get to backup, so there is no benefit of deduplication. Regarding the integration with cloud-native ecosystem tools, we are not on cloud; we are strictly an on-premises solution. Pure Storage FlashBlade is not used by any end-user; it's used only for IT backup, with only about four people in our group managing it. I cannot recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other users depending upon their financial situation because it's an expensive solution, and the cost is very high, including licensing and renewal every year. I rate Pure Storage FlashBlade an eight out of ten.

Read full review

Scott Taylor

Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

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.

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Steve Qualls

Senior Storage Engineer at Q & Q IT Consulting

Offers the ease with which you can move data between on-premises storage and the cloud and then retrieve it back on-premises when necessary

IBM Cloud Object Storage supports big data and analytics workflows. However, I usually have to refer to my documentation for that. Cloud environments are part of almost every project I've been involved in over the last few years, but I rely heavily on documentation whenever I need to do anything in the cloud. I know the basics, but the technical details always need refreshing. I create the drawings or diagrams of how the on-premises and cloud environments interact. So, visual representations are helpful. I'll diagram the on-premises environment, the cloud environment, and any appliances in between and then work from there. The integration capabilities simplified our data workflows. Like, the integration itself is pretty easy. The access appliances create the connection between both environments.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution provides many controllers."

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."

"It performs well and it is also very fast."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The reliability and stability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is good, with no downtime."

"PowerScale helped free up our employees' time to focus on other business priorities. There are now automated jobs such as backing up and replicating data, that reduce the footprint we have. Those types of tasks were previously done manually."

"The most valuable features of the solution are flexibility and ease of implementation."

"Its most valuable feature is the DR capabilities replication."

"The single pane of glass for both IT and for the end-user is a valuable feature. On the IT side, I can actually control where things are stored, whether something is stored on solid-state drives or spinning drives... The single pane of glass makes it very easy to use and very easy to understand. We started at 100 terabytes and we moved to 250 and it still feels like the exact same system and we're able to move data as needed."

"The guaranteed performance, combined with the scalability through its scale-out capability, makes it an excellent choice."

"The most valuable feature is its single space of storage."

"On a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a ten."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pros

"One of Cloud Object Storage's best features is infinite capacity. This is one of the main advantages if you don't want to use your own storage. You also have the ability to write only, write once, and read many. It's like tape storage but software-based. This feature is essential for financial institutions that require that kind of protection if you write backup or data there."

"IBM Cloud Object Storage integrates well."

"The standout feature of IBM Cloud Object Storage is its top-notch security, making it ideal for sensitive applications like mobile financial transactions."

"The most valuable feature I like is when you connect it via CLI plug-in...It is a stable solution."

"Overall, I rate IBM Cloud Object Storage a ten out of ten."

"The capability to replicate data in different locations is valuable since it enables customers to have a cluster over various sites."

"IBM has the most number of additional services, this is the main advantage."

"The integration itself is pretty easy. The access appliances create the connection between both environments."

Cons

"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."

"The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top."

"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Sometimes, it takes too long to set up everything. That's something I would want them to improve."

"Perhaps if there was a local chatbot built within the system or on the dashboard where we could directly ask for anything on the OneFS, it could help us."

"The price always has room for improvement."

"We see room for improvement in Dell PowerScale (Isilon) because we need personnel to effectively utilize all our infrastructure; it's not easy to find skilled people to work on AI and data analysis."

"The improvement should be in AI. Everything is going towards AI."

"The UID mapping and how to configure mapping-related things is a struggle."

"Additional metadata reporting would be great. We have to use a separate tool to report on that. We would like to view the age of data and how long it has been since someone has accessed a file."

"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."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cons

"Room for improvement depends on customer needs. Some customers prefer pure Object Storage using the S3 protocol, while others use a gateway in front of the storage grid to enable CIFS or NFS."

"The performance could improve in IBM Cloud Object Storage. The throughput or objects per second can have degradation."

"One area where IBM Cloud Object Storage could potentially improve is in modernizing its underlying codebase."

"The performance could be better. It isn't bad, but everything is network-based, so you have a performance penalty on the network. You can never achieve the same performance as hardware. That's the disadvantage of cloud storage solutions in general. Cloud performance is one of the main issues clients have."

"IBM has limited cloud storage."

"Sometimes technical support lacks a comprehensive understanding of the entire solution, only focusing on the product they support."

"IBM Cloud storage is not cheap, but it could be."

"If I had to choose one area, it would be making the consoles more intuitive would be helpful. Sometimes, they can be a little complicated if you're not familiar with them."

More IBM Cloud Object Storage cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"The price is a little high."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"The price could be cheaper."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"Dell PowerScale is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo."

"We use the TNA approach which is a great opportunity for us to better manage the licenses based on how much consumption is available for the different customers so we can use that approach and scalability."

"Price was also a significant factor in our decision to go with PowerScale. The team at EMC, now Dell EMC, came through with a highly competitive offer that tipped the scales towards their solution. There was only one other solution around the same price point, but it could not match PowerScale on features. That other solution is no longer on the market."

"Our company finds the pricing high, but it decreases over time."

"It is a really expensive solution."

"This solution is priced slightly higher than others on the market but does offer good quality. With this solution's data reduction and compression, we were able to purchase less. Costs have dropped because of the data rate of compression and deduplication."

"The pricing is excellent."

"It's a high-cost offering amounting to three or four million Swedish kronor, or about $400,000 or euros, for approximately 480 terabytes of storage."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pricing and cost advice

"You have the option of a monthly or yearly license. Most customers choose the monthly option. I understand what you would like to say. IBM also lets you choose among four types of Cloud Object Storage. The difference is usage, performance, etc. Of course, high-performance storage is more expensive, while low-performance storage is for cold data, and it's really cheap."

"Pricing is not cheap."

"Like most cloud providers, IBM likely charges based on storage capacity, typically per gigabyte or terabyte. Their pricing is competitive when compared to AWS or Microsoft."

"IBM Cloud is cheaper than AWS. If you want to scale your cloud infrastructure, it can be bought at almost the same price."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

19%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	17
Large Enterprise	36

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

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)?

It's considered between mid and high-end regarding. Dell usually knows how to position each model. If the customer wa...

What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

With every iteration of the OneFS system, new features are being added, and the UI is being updated here and there. S...

What do you like most about IBM Cloud Object Storage?

The integration itself is pretty easy. The access appliances create the connection between both environments.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Cloud Object Storage?

In general, Object Storage should be a cheaper solution.

What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Object Storage?

The interface can feel clunky and outdated compared to AWS S3 or Azure Blob Storage. While scalable, latency can be...

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Comparisons

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 5% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

NetApp FAS Series vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 16% of the time

Qumulo vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 9% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 8% of the time

HPE StoreEasy vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 6% of the time

VAST Data vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Competitors

MinIO vs IBM Cloud Object Storage

Compared 37% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs IBM Cloud Object Storage

Compared 25% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Cloud Object Storage

Compared 17% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Cloud Object Storage

Compared 11% of the time

HPE File Storage and Object Storage vs IBM Cloud Object Storage

Compared 10% of the time

More IBM Cloud Object Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Download Dell PowerScale (Isilon) product report

IBM Cloud Object Storage

Download IBM Cloud Object Storage product report

Also Known As

No data available

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon

Cleversafe

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Dell PowerScale leads in unstructured data management with unified file and object storage, massive scalability, security, and cloud adaptability, enhancing AI, analytics, and enterprise applications with exceptional performance and resilience.

Dell PowerScale Isilon provides a comprehensive platform for unstructured data, excelling in scalability, management, and performance. With features like single-pane management, SyncIQ, and SmartQuotas, it handles large datasets with flexibility and robust security. Its multi-protocol support and seamless expansion improve operational efficiency. While it offers strong data protection, enhancements in cloud integration, cybersecurity, and performance are sought. Users note potential for cost reductions and streamlined configurations and mention desired improvements in object storage handling and NFS support.

What are the key features of Dell PowerScale Isilon?

Single-pane management: Simplifies data control and monitoring through a unified interface.
SyncIQ: Ensures efficient data replication for business continuity.
SmartQuotas: Provides intelligent quota management for optimized storage allocation.
Multi-protocol support: Facilitates cross-platform data access and integration.
Seamless storage expansion: Allows effortless scaling to accommodate growing data needs.

What benefits should users consider when reviewing Dell PowerScale Isilon?

Operational efficiency: Reduces workload with easy management and automation.
Enhanced security: Offers comprehensive data protection and recovery options.
Scalability: Supports large-scale data storage with flexible growth capabilities.
Performance: Delivers high-speed data processing for demanding applications.
Integration flexibility: Adapts to on-prem and hybrid cloud environments for diverse deployment needs.

Organizations across industries utilize Dell PowerScale Isilon for large-scale unstructured storage, supporting applications like video archiving, genomic data storage, and high-resolution imaging. Educational institutions, research centers, and media enterprises rely on its scaled-out storage capabilities, providing centralized, secure storage for diverse applications in hybrid, cloud, and on-prem environments.

Dell Technologies

IBM Cloud Object Storage is a web-scale platform that stores unstructured data - from petabyte to exabyte - with reliability, security, availability and disaster recovery without replication.

IBM

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

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,

Bitly, Dreamstime, Prime Research

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. IBM Cloud Object Storage