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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

 

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
7.1
Dell PowerScale enhances management efficiency and scalability, improving storage performance, reducing costs, and delivering strong ROI and peace of mind.
Sentiment score
8.5
Pure Storage FlashBlade boosts ROI by reducing costs, enhancing efficiencies, increasing VM density, and saving 20%-85% in time.
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.
It does not require much management once you set up correctly, so it saves time, allowing an admin to focus on other work.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.2
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) support is praised for expertise but criticized for first-line issues and occasional communication barriers.
Sentiment score
7.0
Pure Storage FlashBlade support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge but criticized for slower responses and occasional language barriers.
Support online is definitely a ten out of ten.
Dell provides support within four hours, and they always fulfill their promises.
They have managed previous issues well.
I would rate them an eight out of ten.
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.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Dell PowerScale offers scalable, flexible storage for growing enterprises, supporting seamless capacity expansion and stable performance with automatic tiering.
Sentiment score
8.8
Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for scalability, ease of expansion, and support, despite some areas needing improvement.
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.
Pure Storage FlashBlade is scalable.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Dell PowerScale is reliable and easy to manage, with high availability despite occasional support and load balancing issues.
Sentiment score
8.8
Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for its impressive stability and reliability, with minimal disruptions and consistent uptime even during upgrades.
Since we have good protection levels, the data is secured and replicated across the disks.
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.
In case there is any issue with any blade, the data is moved to another.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerScale is costly and lacks cloud integration, with usability, support, and management improvements needed for better user experience.
Users seek better cloud integration, enhanced deduplication, improved support, protocol enhancements, simpler configuration, and a more intuitive interface.
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.
Technical support definitely needs significant improvement.
Its configuration should be easier.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerScale, though costly initially, provides valuable features, ease of management, and competitive pricing for business needs.
Pure Storage FlashBlade offers high performance and features, justifying its cost with no extra software fees and fixed support costs.
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.
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.
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerScale excels in scalability, performance, and security, offering efficient storage consolidation and resource optimization for organizations.
Pure Storage FlashBlade offers fast, scalable, and user-friendly storage with efficient integration, analytics, and versatility for diverse needs.
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.
We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.
The best features of Pure Storage FlashBlade include better throughput and better performance.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)
Ranking in File and Object Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
NAS (2nd)
Pure Storage FlashBlade
Ranking in File and Object Storage
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (15th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 8.6%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.7%, down from 6.2% 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)8.6%
Pure Storage FlashBlade5.7%
Other85.7%
File and Object Storage
 

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.
Parul-Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise36
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise20
 

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)?
It's considered between mid and high-end regarding. Dell usually knows how to position each model. If the customer wants something inexpensive, there's PowerVault. The system is marketed for mid-ra...
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. So far, the system is adequate as a whole. Perhaps if there was a local chatbot b...
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 outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensure...
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 past, but one benefit is that they have built-in ransomware protection. Approximate...
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 bit complex to understand. You have to understand it more deeply because it's hard...
 

Also Known As

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
No data available
 

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,
ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,089 professionals have used our research since 2012.