Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Scality RING comparison

Dell Technologies and Scality are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.6, while Scality is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.0. Dell Technologies holds a 8.8% mindshare in FaOS, compared to Scality’s 4.1% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Scality users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Scality RING and Dell PowerScale compete in the storage solutions category, focusing on scalability and data management. Dell PowerScale holds an advantage due to its advanced data management features and long-term cost-effectiveness.

Features: Scality RING offers unified file and object storage, high scalability, and flexibility for handling unstructured data. Dell PowerScale provides intelligent data tiering, in-depth analytics, and enhanced data management, offering significant insights and storage efficiency.

Room for Improvement: Scality RING could benefit from enhanced analytics capabilities, expanded data tiering options, and more comprehensive integration with other platforms. Dell PowerScale may improve by simplifying deployment processes, increasing cost-effectiveness for smaller enterprises, and expanding support for hybrid cloud environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Scality RING is known for its simple deployment and robust support services, appealing to companies seeking easy onboarding. Dell PowerScale's deployment is complex due to its comprehensive features but is supported by extensive customer service ensuring necessary assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Scality RING offers competitive pricing with a flexible cost structure, providing quick ROI for SMEs. Dell PowerScale, with higher initial costs, offers long-term returns supported by its robust features and cost efficiencies, proving beneficial for larger enterprises needing extensive data solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Scality RING Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Scality RING

April 2025

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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 May 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.8%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 8.8%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Scality RING is 4.1%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

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. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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Eric Burgueño

High-Performance Computing Services Manager at The New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Limited

Simplified data management, tremendously reducing our users’ cognitive overhead

The only thing that I think PowerScale could do better is improving the HTTP data access protocol. At the present, you cannot protect access to data via HTTP or HTTPS the same way that you can secure data access through other protocols like NFS or SMB. You can either access a file because it can be access by anyone in the organization, or you cannot at all. There is no in-between. HTTP is not considered a first-class data access protocol, so the Unified Permission Model that would allow a user to authenticate before being able to access a private file, does not apply. However, with the recent introduction of S3 starting from OneFS 9, I believe the necessary plumbing is already there for HTTPS to also be elevated to a first-class protocol in the future because both protocols sit behind a web server under the hood. It does not sound like it would be too complicated to implement, but it would be a valuable feature and it is currently missing.

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Sebastien Foucou

Infrastructure architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Leverages seamless data access with efficient storage management

I would improve Scality RING by bundling the Operating System with RING and modernizing the graphical interfaces. As for areas for improvement—if I had to summarize—a technical aspect would be the Operating System part, which today isn't really covered by Scality RING, whereas it is with Artesca. It would be a real advantage for customers to have a bundle that includes both the Operating System and Scality RING, with an install and maintenance model handled by Scality. Secondly, perhaps a more cosmetic point—the graphical interfaces could be modernized a bit. There's been work done on Artesca; maybe it should be extended more to RING. I believe that should come with version 10, so I'm not too concerned. I find RING's cyber resilience against ransomware threats somewhat complicated to assess. The product itself offers sufficient protection, and the features provided via S3 allow you to protect against this kind of attack—provided you implement these features, such as object lock with retention and everything that goes with it. If I had to identify an area for improvement, it would be the OS part—but that doesn't necessarily concern RING, unlike Artesca, which comes bundled with an OS. There's been real work done by the Scality teams to secure the system layer in Artesca. It didn't influence us. We know the product and what needs to be implemented to protect data, and it's part of the best practices we also pass on to our clients.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"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 ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

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

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"It has absolutely simplified our storage because the dashboards on the consoles show a clear understanding of where you are, and it is also very easy to provision. This been a big help for our teams."

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The solution is stable."

"Dell PowerScale's performance is good."

"Features like ransomware protection, file lock retention, and third-party integrations (e.g., Superna for ransomware protection) are significant benefits."

"PowerScale has made it extremely easy to scale file data across our organization. We have two implementations of Isilon. One is a replica of the other. When scaling, we add nodes to each location and expand the cluster. The process is straightforward."

"The solution is extremely easy to manage. This is its most valuable feature."

"The tool's most valuable features are scalability and stability."

"The product's scalability feature is super easy to use."

"Customer service is absolutely satisfying, rating at least nine out of ten, as they have managed previous issues well."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pros

"Another feature I like is the life cycle management that helps me with data storage efficiency."

"The most valuable feature of Scality RING8 is its performance and good interface."

"Scality RING is more stable and performs better than before; we don't experience issues from mechanical failures, only from human intervention."

"I would give customer service and technical support a 10 on a scale from 1 to 10 based solely on my own experience."

"The best features of Scality RING are its object storage solution, scalability, and durability."

"I think it's the economic factor. This solution has the lowest cost for storage systems."

Cons

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

"The speed could be improved."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Improvements could be made to reduce the costs and the high level of knowledge needed to maintain and use them."

"The product needs to improve CLI since commands are complex. The search option is also difficult since you must give the full path."

"Dell's customer service needs improvement."

"Some improvements to the NFS support would be of interest to us."

"We had some issues with level 1 support. We had to fight with them on repeated issues. There is room for improvement in level 1 support."

"Dell PowerScale's deployment is not easy."

"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."

"The only thing that I think PowerScale could do better is improving the HTTP data access protocol. At the present, you cannot protect access to data via HTTP or HTTPS the same way that you can secure data access through other protocols like NFS or SMB[...]the Unified Permission Model that would allow a user to authenticate before being able to access a private file, does not apply."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cons

"I evaluate the simplicity of managing large volumes of data via Scality RING's user interface as limited because the user interface is mainly used for administration or monitoring purposes."

"Scality RING is not easy to learn for someone new. It is a little bit difficult. There are a lot of components to it, and you also need to understand them to work with it effectively."

"When we used this solution in 2015, it was not scalable at all. I don't know if they have improved on that, but at the time, scalability was just horrible."

"I would like to see more possibilities in the UI for managing aspects of the RING as indicated in the roadmap for the next version of their product."

"Scality RING8 could improve by having more features. We have to use two automation tools to meet our needs. We would prefer to use only one."

"I would like to see more possibilities in the UI for managing aspects of the RING as indicated in the roadmap for the next version of their product. Apart from the UI improvements, I would like to see more features implemented with S3 since not all features are implemented in Scality RING, particularly features such as the S3 select in AWS and the possibility to manage all RINGs with one portal."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

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

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

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

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"The product is very expensive."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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 general cost for a system like this is expensive. The total cost depends on your use case. You need to pay for every additional feature that you use."

"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."

"It is an expensive solution."

"Pricing for this solution is reasonable."

"Dell PowerScale is expensive on the start-up side but we can recoup those costs quickly by not having to reapply the savings to other equipment."

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

"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is an expensive solution."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pricing and cost advice

"The initial cost (CAPEX) to set up the infrastructure is expensive due to the specific hardware required."

"The cost of Scality RING8 could be less expensive. It is difficult for smaller businesses to afford it."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

27%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

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

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

The solution provides massive performance, scalability, efficiency, and ease of management.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

Every time we purchase a PowerScale solution, we buy four nodes for one data center and four for another, with five y...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

Dell's customer service needs improvement. Specifically, hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within ...

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What do you like most about Scality RING8?

Another feature I like is the life cycle management that helps me with data storage efficiency.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Scality RING8?

It's a very good product, but for large-scale usage, it has limitations. Scality RING's lack of extensive testing and...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Scality RING8?

I work with Scality RING for storage, and we have a concrete strategy to offer it to business customers. Many custome...

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Comparisons

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 2% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

NetApp FAS Series vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 14% of the time

Dell ECS vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 12% of the time

Qumulo vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 9% of the time

HPE StoreEasy vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 6% of the time

VAST Data vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Competitors

MinIO vs Scality RING

Compared 16% of the time

Dell ECS vs Scality RING

Compared 15% of the time

Cloudian HyperStore vs Scality RING

Compared 15% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Scality RING

Compared 14% of the time

VAST Data vs Scality RING

Compared 2% of the time

More Scality RING Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

May 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

May 2025

Download Dell PowerScale (Isilon) product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

April 2025

Download Scality RING product report

Also Known As

No data available

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon

Scality RING, RING8

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 EMC PowerScale (Isilon) storage solutions are designed to help manage data for enterprises of all types. Dell PowerScale systems are simple to install, manage, and scale to virtually any size and include a choice of all-flash, hybrid, or archive nodes. Dell PowerScale solutions stay flexible and reliable no matter how much storage capacity is added, how much performance is required, or how business needs change in the future.

With Dell PowerScale, your data lake always stays simple to manage, simple to grow, simple to protect, and simple enough to handle the most demanding current and future workloads.

Ideal for companies of any size, from small enterprises to multi-national ones, Dell PowerScale storage provides secure collaboration, modular scalability, flexible consumption models, and easy cloud integrations, all with management tools spanning multiple platforms.

Key Benefits of Dell EMC PowerScale Storage

Centralized management: Manage your storage infrastructure from a single unified platform.
Data protection: Dell PowerScale offers security, data protection and replication tools. Back up and protect your data from cyber-attacks with an integrated ransomware defense system.
Artificial intelligence: PowerScale is the foundation for building an integrated and optimized IT infrastructure for AI projects, from concept to production.
Cloud support: Store and manage your data on the cloud and move data between your data center and the cloud. Dell PowerScale runs data-intensive cloud workloads with no outbound traffic costs.
Long-term storage: Dell PowerScale offers highly efficient and resilient active archive storage or long-term data retention for large-scale data archives. With the proven scalability architecture of PowerScale, you can meet your growing archiving demands. Dell PowerScale has a wide variety of enterprise-grade data protection and security options to keep your archived data safe.

Reviews from Real Users

Dell EMC PowerScale storage stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its scalability capabilities and its user-friendly centralized management system.

Rachel B., a chief operations officer & acting CFO at Like a Photon, writes, "PowerScale allows us to manage storage without managing RAID groups or migrating volumes between controllers. It has really simplified things. We're not having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. That takes care of itself. We just worry about the data. It's really easy for deploying and managing storage at the petabyte scale."

Keith B., the director of IT at NatureFresh Farms, writes, "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."

Dell Technologies

Scality RING object storage enables enterprises and cloud service providers to run petabyte-scale, data-rich services like web applications, VOD, active archives, compliance archives, and private storage clouds. The RING is software, so you can deploy it on standard x86 servers of your choice, taking advantage of server and media innovation over time. Acting as a single, distributed system, the RING can scale linearly across thousands of servers, multiple sites, and an unlimited number of objects. Data is protected with policy-based replication, erasure coding, and geo-distribution, achieving up to 14 9s of durability and 100% availability.

Scality

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,

Comcast, TimeWarner Cable, EuroSport, Orange, Deluxe, DailtMotion, SFR, RTL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Telstra

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Scality RING

April 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Scality RING

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Scality RING and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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