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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
81
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (2nd)
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 May 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerScale is 14.5%, down from 17.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FreeNAS is 3.7%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)14.5%
FreeNAS3.7%
Other81.8%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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

"The solution's most valuable features are scalability and flexibility."
"Isilon is flexible in supporting various data workloads while keeping them protected. Dell continues to release updates and patches which enhance the use of this solution. This includes offering ransomware protection."
"It's easy to manage. The web UI is very intuitive, and there's CLI also that you can use to manage it."
"On a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a ten."
"The tool's most valuable features are scalability and stability."
"I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as a product a ten out of ten."
"The system is robust, has had a big impact on the efficiency of our organization, and serves as storage for our core application, which is a revenue-generating application that plays a key role in our business."
"For maximizing storage utilization, PowerScale is great. When you write the data to it, it spreads it out to all the nodes, so you get all the performance from the entire pool."
"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 ease of use of the 'jail', the management of backups, and copies to easily create test and pre-production scenarios have speeded up the development and distribution of business apps."
"The solution has been very stable so far."
"Its stability is the most valuable; it is reliable, and we don't have to worry too much about it."
"FreeNAS is much simpler and easier to use than other solutions, but we don't have the complete range of features that come with the full version."
"It has the best storage capacity."
"After using FreeNAS I will never spend money for commercial products like Dell or 3Par."
"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."
 

Cons

"The solution is expensive. It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have."
"Sometimes, it takes too long to set up everything. That's something I would want them to improve."
"We have issues in Brazil with the procurement of solutions because we have to check the entire market and justify the pricing to our audit institutions, making it difficult to keep with the same vendor."
"If they integrated some functions, as they have on Data Domain with a cyber recovery vault, it would be ideal."
"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."
"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."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve the load distribution capability. For example, in some cases, the system load is not distributed automatically on all the nodes but is concentrated only on one."
"Backward compatibility is something Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could work on."
"They can improve the integration with PSA systems. This functionality could be better."
"The support for S3 needs to be improved."
"If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented."
"FreeNAS should be better prepared for clustering."
"One of my hard drives has failed and the documentation that I've been able to find has not helped."
"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."
"Its support for Hyper-V clusters."
"Make it easier to find out how to fix things when something goes wrong."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Dealing with the product costs and licensing areas is getting easier since Dell is simplifying the licensing process and licensing packages offered to users."
"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."
"Pricing for this solution is reasonable."
"It is a really expensive solution."
"We paid an additional fee to have Dell's ProDeploy Plus team implement it."
"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."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is an expensive solution."
"Its price is okay. It suits our needs."
"Its licensing cost is based on the hardware capacity."
"For our configuration, we pay a little bit less than €10,000 ($12,000 USD) per year."
"We use the free version of the program."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Performing Arts
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise46
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Large Enterprise2
 

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)?
As I mentioned before, we did not purchase Dell PowerScale (Isilon) directly. Since our organization is a government entity, the country policy does not allow direct purchases; it goes through a fo...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
I think Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve some functions such as Apache S3 or containerized storage support, as these aspects are not well-developed. Their support system is weak; many issues ...
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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: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.