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Dell PowerScale vs FreeNAS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 2024

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
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (1st)
FreeNAS
Ranking in NAS
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerScale is 13.8%, down from 17.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FreeNAS is 3.9%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerScale13.8%
FreeNAS3.9%
Other82.3%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

RahulSharma8 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Vincenzo D'Aniello - PeerSpot reviewer
Software developer at TREXON S.R.L.
Open-source with great disk management and task synchronization
The system itself allows you to add any feature. The only bad thing is that this maybe depends on FreeBSD, and sometimes finding documentation is difficult. For example, we knew that previous versions automatically enabled the Linux kernel, yet with the recent version, this was no longer the case. Now, there was the possibility of being able to create Debian-based jails, and finding the documentation was not easy or fast. That said, in the end, we succeeded. If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Dell has the AI to protect the EMA."
"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."
"On a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a ten."
"Eyeglass is used to monitor for malware, which is very useful for us."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) actually combined a shared file system that scales seamlessly and works effectively, making the blocking and tackling exactly what was advertised."
"Dell PowerScale is performing well with the growing needs of my organization, with no issues so far."
"Dell PowerScale is much more advanced compared to competitors, offering more flexibility with different types of drives and nodes, and in terms of simplicity in management."
"After using FreeNAS I will never spend money for commercial products like Dell or 3Par."
"The program is fast, fun to work on and easy."
"The stability is quite good; our system is in production and we have not had any problems with it, and when a drive fails, we don't really have any disruption because we can easily rebuild the disk, even if it is very large."
"The fact that no data are lost when a hard drive fails is extremely reassuring, as I have had two of five drives fail at one time and no data were lost."
"Its stability is the most valuable. It is reliable, and we don't have to worry too much about it."
"It integrates well into either Windows or Linux environments."
"What I like about it is that I can work on it from any computer or any device. The initial setup is very simple. The setup wizard is really helpful."
"It has the best storage capacity."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see more Iceland products in the cloud so that we can port our data into different environments if needed. I would also like to see a virtual appliance or software-defined Iceland product."
"We used to have a chat feature available on the support site. It's not available to us anymore."
"I would want to see more AI features with Dell PowerScale (Isilon)."
"Improvements could be made on the object storage side."
"The thing that they are working on now, and we are following closely is more native cloud integrations. The way that we envision workloads in the future is around moving compute to data instead of the other way around. So, we would like to have a single pane glass to manage storage across a variety of different platforms, including native cloud. That would be awesome."
"My experience with customer service and technical support has been challenging. The reason is that it is difficult to find subject matter experts around the solution."
"Dell PowerScale's deployment is not easy."
"I would like to see Dell PowerScale (Isilon) improved by enhancing the user interface, OneFS, to make advanced conversation and troubleshooting more specific, upgrade and batch management, providing deeper built-in analytics for performance and capacity planning."
"Make it easier to find out how to fix things when something goes wrong."
"The latest version of the dashboard doesn't work as good as the previous version. Sometimes we change our dashboard back to the previous version because the latest version just doesn't work as good."
"They can improve the integration with PSA systems. This functionality could be better."
"The one thing that I find difficult to do which is very time-consuming is that I like to have a backup of the important files."
"They should include clustering for the solution."
"One of my hard drives has failed and the documentation that I've been able to find has not helped."
"FreeNAS should be better prepared for clustering."
"The support for S3 needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I always want things to be less expensive. However, I would say the pricing is fair. Their costs are in alignment with their competitors. It is a good value for the money."
"The pricing is excellent."
"The price of the solution can fluctuate. The price can be competitive or other times not. The price of the solution could be better."
"The platform is not cheap. However, on the software side, you can choose what you want license. So, you can start your licensing with the features that you need, then after buying the platform add some other features."
"Dealing with the product costs and licensing areas is getting easier since Dell is simplifying the licensing process and licensing packages offered to users."
"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."
"The only drawback for us is that it's a large upfront investment. This was a huge decision for a startup company to make. It took a bit for us to get over the line on it, but we have not regretted it."
"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."
"Its licensing cost is based on the hardware capacity."
"Its price is okay. It suits our needs."
"We use the free version of the program."
"For our configuration, we pay a little bit less than €10,000 ($12,000 USD) per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Performing Arts
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise55
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Dell PowerScale has been expensive. Setup costs or provisioning experience has been pleasant. Typically you have kickoff meetings and there...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
For improvements, we can focus on enhancing performance, upgrading the nodes, and accessing data through Isilon for more efficiency. Additionally, improvements to interfaces and certain aspects of ...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Dell PowerScale is our main NAS environment storage where we create CIFS and NFS file shares for users.When users request a CIFS file share, they specify the SMB share name and the SmartConnect zon...
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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,
Morroni Technologies Inc., Creative Integrations
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale vs. FreeNAS and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.