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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 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
6.6
Pure Storage FlashBlade reduces total cost of ownership by enhancing efficiency, enabling fast restorations, and supporting diverse use cases.
Sentiment score
6.6
Dell PowerScale offers scalable, cost-efficient storage enhancing data management, performance, and durability, benefiting business growth and resource optimization.
Sentiment score
6.9
Nutanix Unified Storage boosts ROI by reducing costs, enhancing uptime, scalability, and efficiency, while improving data management and productivity.
It does not require much management once you set up correctly, so it saves time, allowing an admin to focus on other work.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Despite being more expensive than Huawei, it is stable and most enterprises accept the price due to its stability.
Senior System Engineer at Atlas Security
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.
Storage & Data Protection Specialist at General Dynamics Land Systems
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.
Senior System Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
For me, the biggest return on investment when using this solution is that we do not have to have much support staff to run it.
Senior Manager, IT Infrastructure & Support at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
The scalability challenge with previous systems is lessened with Nutanix since we can expand by adding new hardware without needing migrations.
Infrastructure Architect & Manager at a real estate/law firm with 201-500 employees
We are saving approximately 20% to 25% compared with the competition.
Global of Central Computing IT Operations Head at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Pure Storage FlashBlade's support is generally praised for responsiveness, despite occasional delays and communication issues, maintaining a favorable reputation.
Sentiment score
7.1
Dell PowerScale's support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though some suggest improvements in first-line response times.
Sentiment score
7.5
Nutanix Unified Storage customer service is efficient and knowledgeable, with high satisfaction but room for improvement in complex cases.
I would rate them an eight out of ten.
IT Field Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Their technical support has been perfect lately, so I would give it a 10.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
Support online is definitely a ten out of ten.
Pre-Sale Engineer at Arab Operators
Dell provides support within four hours, and they always fulfill their promises.
Senior System Engineer at Atlas Security
They have managed previous issues well.
IT Manager at Regional Health Services
They come on the call, start troubleshooting immediately, and resolve issues effectively.
Senior System Administrator at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
They are very knowledgeable, and if they can't solve the problem, they find the answer within a day or so.
Manager, System Engineering at a mining and metals company with 10,001+ employees
I would give the customer service and technical support a ten out of ten.
PreSales at IKUSI
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.6
Pure Storage FlashBlade excels in scalability, with seamless expansion, downtime-free growth, and praised support across various sectors.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dell PowerScale offers seamless scalability, efficient petabyte-level storage, and easy integration, with some initial complexity and node compatibility challenges.
Sentiment score
7.8
Nutanix Unified Storage offers scalable, efficient, and stable storage expansion with easy integration and intuitive licensing for diverse environments.
Pure Storage FlashBlade is scalable.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
There are between 5 and 10,000 people using it in our organization.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
We started on PowerScale with around about 300 terabytes and are now two and a half petabytes, still on the same file system.
Storage Architect at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
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.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
As an unstructured data storage solution, writing into it and accessing it from the other nodes is highly scalable with no issues.
Senior Technical Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
This means you don't have to buy everything upfront; you can buy what you need and add more as you grow, which is advantageous.
Sales engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
These three components utilize scalability tools, enabling storage addition to nodes and supporting independent, linear performance growth.
System Engineer at Tata Consultancy
I find the scalability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) to be excellent, and I would rate it a ten based on my clients' requirements.
Technical Lead at Cognizant
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Pure Storage FlashBlade offers exceptional reliability and impressive stability, featuring 99.999% uptime, seamless upgrades, and high performance.
Sentiment score
8.1
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) provides high stability, minimal downtime, with easy management and frequent upgrades ensuring nearly 100% uptime.
Sentiment score
8.0
Nutanix Unified Storage is stable and reliable, offering smooth upgrades, quick issue resolution, and effective technical support.
In case there is any issue with any blade, the data is moved to another.
IT Field Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Since we have good protection levels, the data is secured and replicated across the disks.
Pre-Sale Engineer at Arab Operators
Even if a node goes down, other nodes can respond and provide data back to the user without issues.
Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group
I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as perfect.
Storage & Data Protection Specialist at General Dynamics Land Systems
We have not experienced these issues with Nutanix, which I attribute to the all-flash technology, the quality of their platform, and the responsiveness of the hyper-converged infrastructure.
System Administrator II at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very stable.
Senior System Administrator at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
It automatically triggers tasks, causing performance issues.
Nutanix Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users recommend better pricing, cloud integration, support, documentation, and analytics for Pure Storage FlashBlade, improving efficiency and compatibility.
Dell PowerScale needs cost reduction, better usability, improved cloud integration, enhanced security, and streamlined management and support features.
Nutanix Unified Storage requires upgrades in storage capabilities, ease of use, FTP compatibility, analytics, security, support, and pricing.
Technical support definitely needs significant improvement.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Its configuration should be easier.
IT Field Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
One way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray and FlashBlade.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
Hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline.
Senior Engineer at Continental Tire
I would want to see more AI features with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).
Storage & Data Protection Specialist at General Dynamics Land Systems
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.
Senior System Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
The main concern is pricing, which could deter some customers; addressing this would enhance its appeal.
Senior Solution Software Engineer at Gigamon
The system should move towards AI-driven optimization and enhance S3 object storage capabilities.
Corporate Trainer at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
System downtime can disturb the entire ecosystem and impact all applications.
System Engineer at Tata Consultancy
 

Setup Cost

Pure Storage FlashBlade is costly but valued for performance, reliability, and reduced administrative overhead, justifying its premium price.
Dell PowerScale's ease of management and flexibility justify its higher cost against competitors, offering a compelling total cost of ownership.
Nutanix Unified Storage offers competitive pricing, appreciated for cost-effectiveness, but may be expensive for small businesses or specific regions.
The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the past, but one benefit is that they have built-in ransomware protection.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making it good for us.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Cheaper nodes will cost less, while higher performance nodes will be pricier.
Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group
Costs align well with what it delivers, making it a fair price for a powerful tool that meets all our needs.
Tv Systems Technical Supervisor at a media company with 501-1,000 employees
Compared to buying three or four vendor solutions, it is much cheaper.
Senior Manager, IT Infrastructure & Support at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
The cost has doubled for the same amount of data, which was a challenge when presenting use case justifications for the increased cost.
Infrastructure Architect & Manager at a real estate/law firm with 201-500 employees
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) has definitely helped reduce our total cost of ownership.
Information Technology Managed Services Provider at SCE
 

Valuable Features

Pure Storage FlashBlade excels with ease of use, fast performance, scalability, seamless integration, and efficient storage features.
Dell PowerScale excels in scalability, flexibility, data management, and cost-effectiveness, offering seamless integration and efficiency for large-scale operations.
Nutanix Unified Storage offers scalability, efficiency, robust security, seamless cloud integration, and simplifies IT management, enhancing storage reliability.
We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.
IT Field Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The best features of Pure Storage FlashBlade include better throughput and better performance.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Pure Storage FlashBlade's scalability is one of the most valuable features, and importantly, it always works, allowing for seamless upgrades.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
Dell PowerScale offers high scalability and stability as well, making it a valuable solution for enterprises.
Senior System Engineer at Atlas Security
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.
Senior Technologist at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
Systems Engineer at Unisity LLC
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is appreciated for its fault tolerance and redundancy at the cluster level, which ensures reliable storage of files, folders, and other information accessible on the client side.
Nutanix Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The cybersecurity features of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) when dealing with unstructured data, such as ransomware threats, provide the ability to detect and back up block-based storage, allowing me to restore repositories or sets of block storage with one button click, which is automatic.
Network Engineer at Alabama A & M University
My experience with using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) for data-intensive workloads is that we have many SQL Servers and they perform much better than they did when we used hybrid converged previously.
Senior Manager, IT Infrastructure & Support at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Ranking in File and Object Storage
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (12th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th)
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)
Ranking in File and Object Storage
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
NAS (2nd)
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Ranking in File and Object Storage
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (6th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (2nd), Public Cloud Storage Services (5th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.3%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 7.1%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 2.6%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File and Object Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)7.1%
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)2.6%
Pure Storage FlashBlade5.3%
Other85.0%
File and Object Storage
 

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades
In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.
BE
Systems Engineer at Unisity LLC
Flexibility and reliability have supported seamless data growth
I cannot think of anything to improve about Dell PowerScale (Isilon). The hardest challenge we have is due to how we've bought things over time. The way that we moved to the PowerEdge platform for the newer systems creates a scale problem as I still buy the older style systems, which are more dense storage. They're different chassis, so the problem we run into in the data center is the depth of the actual equipment. The newer equipment, if we buy an FX910 or a 900, it's a lot shorter in scale than if I buy an 83,000, which is much bigger. This makes it more complicated for deployment.
Amarnath Charugundla - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Tata Consultancy
Unified management and cost-effectiveness lead to positive experiences and future savings
Improvement is necessary wherein the memory or storage should not breach 90%, because if breached, it becomes unmanageable. We have to set alerts or CPU triggering for 95% for the first warning. Other activities on nodes or file systems should be properly maintained. We must monitor the dashboard for P1, P2 alerts in the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) file share system including SMB, NFS, objects, and blocks. Attention should be maintained for any alerts such as CPU, memory, and RAM alerts, as exceeding these creates issues within teams. If triggered to 95% and forgotten, it crosses the SLA breach, causing disturbances to application, web, and platform teams. Continuous monitoring on the Nutanix dashboard is essential. Even a highly experienced person in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cannot provide a 10 rating out of 10 because it is a vast system. I would rate it eight from my perspective.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise42
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise64
 

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?
Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...
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)?
As for my experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing, we have had Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for a while no...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
I think Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is very good right now. Perhaps improvements could be made on the CPU level with a b...
What do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?
Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?
It is very cost-effective compared to the traditional environment. With new hardware, it's a long-term investment but...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?
To improve Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), cost is always an issue for every company, especially when we talk about la...
 

Also Known As

No data available
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
 

Overview

 

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,
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.