Dell PowerScale vs EXAScaler comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Dell Technologies and DataDirect Networks are both solutions in the NAS category. Dell Technologies is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8, while DataDirect Networks is ranked #16 with an average rating of 9.0. Dell Technologies holds a 13.3% mindshare in N, compared to DataDirect Networks’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of DataDirect Networks users who would recommend it.

Dell PowerScale

Read 107 Dell PowerScale reviews

18,812 Views
10,535 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

EXAScaler

Read 1 EXAScaler review

1,360 Views
666 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Dell PowerScale

EXAScaler

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell PowerScale and EXAScaler based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, CTERA and others in NAS.

To learn more, read our detailed NAS Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

NAS

September 2026

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Helped 914,938 peers since 2012

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

Dell PowerScale

Ranking in NAS

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

107

Ranking in other categories

File and Object Storage (1st)

EXAScaler

Ranking in NAS

16th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

8.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

File System Software (8th), Cloud Storage (18th), Storage Performance (3rd), Cloud Master Data Management (MDM) (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerScale is 13.3%, down from 16.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of EXAScaler is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NAS Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dell PowerScale	13.3%
EXAScaler	1.0%
Other	85.7%

NAS

Featured Reviews

RahulSharma8

Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group

Unified file sharing has simplified multi-tenant access and has delivered seamless data replication

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) includes its replication features; when we decommissioned our old Isilon cluster, we migrated all of the data to a new cluster, and it was pretty seamless. All you have to do is create the certificates and make those certificates available to the target cluster, then initiate a few jobs. The inter-cluster replication feature, called SyncIQ, allows you to set up all of the jobs and move your data entirely, either timely or all at once. Another suitable feature is the ability to back up your directories; you can take snapshots for all of your directories, and in fact, I believe you can take around a thousand snapshots for a single directory. The inter-replication, geo-replication is one feature. Dell provides a variety class of hardware suitable for your workloads, meaning if your data is just lab and not critical, you don't have to spend much on the hardware; conversely, if your data is mission-critical, you can buy a high-performance node from Dell. Additionally, you can span Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cluster to a large number of nodes, and code upgrades are pretty smooth because all protocols will be upgraded under a single piece of code. Since it provides a single file system that spans across the nodes, you don't have to worry about that directory structure being separately created on individual nodes, making it a fitting solution for a data lake solution because you can access the same data from multiple protocols.

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reviewer2544219

Chief Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Solution enables exceptional performance and immense scalability for AI cluster training

I am a system integrator, and my customers are using EXAScaler as the de facto parallel file system for Google Cloud. They primarily use it for large AI cluster training EXAScaler provides amazing performance in terms of sequential read and random access, and it has a significant scalability…

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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

"This solution offers flexibility in supporting various data workloads and is very easy to work with, making it our go-to solution for all data storage."

"This has really changed the way our company can acquire and process data in the field, allowing us to differentiate ourselves against all our competitors."

"The solution's scalability is very good."

"We have been using it for a little while now, and what we have seen is that the NAS performance is quite good, and the ones we are using for data integration and AI factory are working very well as well."

"PowerScale is one of those things that will grow in your environment; once you start it with one thing, you'll learn that it can do much more, very quickly."

"The recent introduction of inline deduplication and compression has drastically improved our efficiency ratios to make it an economical product. This solution has also had a positive impact on our employees' productivity because it reduces the amount of admin that our staff needs to handle."

"Regarding stability, I find no lagging, crashing, or downtime with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), and it is a highly scalable, stable, and reliable solution that I have experienced."

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

More Dell PowerScale pros

"EXAScaler provides amazing performance in terms of sequential read and random access, and it has a significant scalability advantage as it is scalable to petabytes."

"The customers who use DDN EXAScaler are happy, especially when using large AI clusters for training."

Cons

"The pricing is expensive, but I think it's a fair value because it does manage itself."

"To improve Dell PowerScale, the user interface could be polished to meet new standards."

"We're still fairly new with it. It's been a pretty positive experience thus far. However, they could improve implementation, as we had to rack and stack it ourselves."

"Dell PowerScale can improve in speed and IO throughput."

"The management and monitoring tools comprise a disparate suite of products and the roadmap is very unclear. We've got four different products that look after the Isilon, management-wise, and it's a bit of a mess."

"We used to have a chat feature available on the support site. It's not available to us anymore."

"The downside of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that if we are replacing a drive, sometimes in the worst-case scenarios, some of the other drives will also go to the SmartFail state."

"My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Dell PowerScale has been expensive."

More Dell PowerScale cons

"One challenge with EXAScaler is during upgrade time, as it can be problematic when upgrading node by node. Additionally, it is not multi-protocol by nature, requiring additional hardware to support various protocols like NFS or object storage."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for this solution is reasonable."

"Pricing for this solution is reasonable."

"The solution's licensing cost varies based on capacity and performance requirements."

"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."

"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."

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

"The price of the solution can fluctuate. The price can be competitive or other times not. The price of the solution could be better."

"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."

More Dell PowerScale pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	30
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	66

No data available

Questions from the Community

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

The on-premises solution with Dell PowerScale, when we buy directly from Dell, is economical. We have done some level of comparison. Although in the current markets we have seen the price differenc...

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What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

Dell PowerScale can improve in speed and IO throughput. Additionally, it could benefit from more integration options and additional automation activities. I would add that some competitors in the m...

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What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

My main use case for Dell PowerScale is for S3 or NAS. Dell PowerScale plays a role in my organization's AI initiatives as it supports AI-driven data insights, automation, and advanced workloads.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for EXAScaler?

EXAScaler is a bit expensive, particularly when comparing the total cost of ownership.

See all answers

What needs improvement with EXAScaler?

One challenge with EXAScaler is during upgrade time, as it can be problematic when upgrading node by node. Additionally, it is not multi-protocol by nature, requiring additional hardware to support...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for EXAScaler?

I am a system integrator, and my customers are using EXAScaler as the de facto parallel file system for Google Cloud. They primarily use it for large AI cluster training.

See all answers

Comparisons

NetApp FAS Series vs Dell PowerScale

Compared 16% of the time

Everpure FlashBlade vs Dell PowerScale

Compared 7% of the time

Qumulo vs Dell PowerScale

Compared 5% of the time

VAST Data vs Dell PowerScale

Compared 3% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Dell PowerScale

Compared 3% of the time

More Dell PowerScale Competitors

CTERA Intelligent Data Platform vs EXAScaler

Compared 42% of the time

Nasuni vs EXAScaler

Compared 16% of the time

DDN A3I vs EXAScaler

Compared 12% of the time

More EXAScaler Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale

September 2026

Download Dell PowerScale product report

Buyer's Guide

File System Software

September 2026

Download EXAScaler product report

Also Known As

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon

No data available

Overview

As a storage engine in Dell AI Data Platform, Dell PowerScale is the world's #1 scale-out NAS platform for enterprise unstructured data. Trusted by more than 25,000 customers, including more than 1,500 customers running GPU workloads, PowerScale uses OneFS operating system to provide a single namespace and unified file and object access for AI/ML training, RAG pipelines, analytics, media production, and life sciences, and other demanding workloads. PowerScale F710 was the world’s first Ethernet-based storage appliance certified with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD. Selected configurations support NVIDIA GPUDirect Storage, pNFS, and NFS over RDMA for high-throughput parallel AI data access. PowerScale supports near-linear, non-disruptive scaling from terabytes to petabytes. Available in all-flash, hybrid, and archive configurations for on-premises and cloud deployment options, including AWS and Azure. Supported next-generation configurations deliver up to 35 GB/s read throughput per node.

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

EXAScaler is a high-performance, scalable storage solution tailored for data-intensive environments, enhancing efficiency for enterprise operations.

Designed for demanding workflows, EXAScaler optimizes data throughput and reliability. It supports immense data sets, ensuring seamless integration with high-performance computing and AI workloads. Its architecture facilitates rapid data access and robust storage management to boost operational efficiency.

What are EXAScaler's key features?

High Scalability: Adapts to growing data needs by expanding storage capacity.
Optimized Performance: Delivers fast data access for critical workloads.
Seamless Integration: Compatible with various IT environments.
Reliable Data Management: Ensures data integrity and security.

What benefits should users consider when evaluating EXAScaler?

Increased Efficiency: Streamlines data handling processes.
Cost Savings: Reduces storage and operational expenses.
Improved Data Insight: Facilitates analytics with swift access to data.
Enhanced Scalability: Easily adjusts to changing demands.

EXAScaler is implemented across sectors like financial services, scientific research, and healthcare, where high-speed data processing and robust storage solutions are crucial for success. Its ability to manage extensive data sets efficiently supports innovation and productivity in these industries.

DataDirect Networks

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,

Information Not Available

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, CTERA and others in NAS. Updated: September 2026.

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