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Dell PowerScale vs Hitachi Content Platform comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
232
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
Dell PowerScale
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
NAS (1st), File and Object Storage (1st)
Hitachi Content Platform
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (14th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Santosh Bharadwaj Rangavajjula - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
File sharing has supported collaboration and disaster recovery but security support still needs work
Dell PowerScale can improve specifically for AI workloads, particularly on the MCPs. I would add that we have not seen an official MCP from Dell PowerScale and are relying on open source. It would be valuable to have an MCP server that we can set up directly with them. Regarding Dell PowerScale's AI capabilities, I think its governance and security could be better. We have Superna that we buy along with Dell PowerScale, but we are seeing very big problems with integrating it. Superna is primarily for the security use case, as we want to prevent cybersecurity attacks and ransomware attacks. If Dell is providing this as a supplementary feature, it should provide better support. Regarding Dell PowerScale's AI capabilities, I do not see much accuracy and reliability of output. This is actually a security problem because Dell does not provide official MCP servers while most other vendors are providing it. This forces us to rely on open source, which is not secure. Dell PowerScale plays a role in my organization's AI initiatives as we want to use the Metadata IQ functionality from Dell PowerScale; however, there is not enough support and extensive documentation for us to be able to do this.
EB
Storage Enginner at BNP Paribas
Archive data reliably for years and have trusted support simplifying complex deployments
An application that can do the monitoring and reporting interface for Hitachi Content Platform would be beneficial. Hitachi Content Platform monitor or intelligent monitoring is known, and deployment of this was attempted, but it appears that Hitachi abandoned this project, so it is not in use. The potential of that application was great, but it does not cover everything. When Hitachi was asked about it, they indicated there is no application in the project they will start to develop for this purpose, and they redirected to Prometheus. They shared some Prometheus metrics that can be integrated with Grafana to get some metrics on Hitachi Content Platform, but having a dedicated interface from Hitachi itself would be great, similar to what other vendors provide. The upgrade process for Hitachi Content Platform is too long. When upgrading for just two mandatory versions, it took weeks because all nodes had to be restarted. A hardware support tool is necessary every time upgrading to another version, and it is not practical for the production environment. A large downtime must be predicted and the application team must be asked to stop and suspend their technical batches, which takes a lot of time to do.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We experience fast demos and zero downtime; we do not experience any downtime with Pure Storage, thanks to resilience with Safe Mode, integration with backup software, and everything related to cyber resilience."
"The management features are well organized and they have a very good dashboard."
"Pure gives us better compression, it's easier to manage, a lot less hands-on."
"This storage has to be the most well thought out and effective storage that I have had the privilege to work with."
"The money I saved by not renewing maintenance on the Dell EMC devices paid for the Pure Storage devices."
"The seamless integration into the public cloud has improved my organization."
"The most valuable feature is its upgradeability."
"The initial setup was really straight forward."
"Dell PowerScale is very stable and scalable; when you are working at one hundred percent capacity without issues, I trust the product, the software, and the infrastructure here."
"We would highly recommend PowerScale; we've been very happy with our overall experience."
"Dell PowerScale is a scalable solution. It allows non-disruptive upgrades and maintenance of the system."
"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."
"With Dell PowerScale, there is no concern about whether the system is running; Dell PowerScale operates in all circumstances, and we have experienced six years of zero seconds of downtime."
"The major advantages include data protection, ransomware protection, and cloud capabilities, and the primary advantage is the ability to use the entire cluster in one unified file system, which is a feature I have not observed in other products."
"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."
"The ease of use of this solution has been the most valuable aspect as well as the SyncIQ and snapshot features."
"The platform helps in efficient data management with the ease of server provisioning."
"In all my experience and feedback from customers, we are confident that this product is very good."
"We are using Content Platform for data migration, and it integrates with our HNS platform, which is good because we can integrate it with our existing HNS and SAP solutions, and the GUI is also user-friendly so it does not take much time to do anything if we know the architecture and the steps, as we can do what we need with a few clicks."
"Integrating Hitachi Content Platform with existing systems is not challenging."
"The stability of the solution is very good."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the versioning and the ransomware protection."
"The Hitachi Content Platform is a stable and reliable solution."
"The features that I have found most valuable are their retention logs."
 

Cons

"If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it."
"I would not say anything because we still do not use Everpure FlashArray fully."
"The setup needs to be improved the most. They can do a little more with the user interface, but the setup is what I would like to see made a bit easier."
"Many high-end platforms from other vendors like Dell EMC or Hitachi, their backend has Active/Active architecture, unlike Pure Storage FlashArray which doesn't utilize an Active/Active architecture on the backend."
"I’d love to view the average, minimum and maximum performance in the reports (Analysis tab - Performance) but it is only graphics and you need to export data in CSV to find this information."
"We have not seen a reduction in our TCO nor have we seen ROI."
"It was a little costly. The price was ultimately higher than both of the other solutions that we evaluated. I'd say that's the only downside."
"They have a product, FlashBlade, which is their object storage integration, and that's something that we haven't integrated with yet. This might be an area for additional focus as it would play into scalability, because the very nature of object storage is that it's infinitely scalable."
"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. You have a peak request on only one node and the others don't do anything."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could be improved, particularly the UI, which could use some polishing as far as ease of use for the customer."
"We see room for improvement in Dell PowerScale (Isilon) because we need personnel to effectively utilize all our infrastructure; it's not easy to find skilled people to work on AI and data analysis."
"I think Dell PowerScale (Isilon) can be improved, as the cost models are quite expensive for administration."
"An example of something that is problematic at the moment or that I would want to see improved is that there needs to be further delineation between access zones and settings."
"The solution’s interface and pricing could be improved."
"The solution can be integrated with an automation system. Dell uses another framework developed in-house. They can integrate it with machines."
"The only thing that I think PowerScale could do better is improving the HTTP data access protocol."
"What is lacking in this solution is a simple process to migrate from existing systems."
"I would advise anyone using this solution to get proper glue. For that process, when you have to have the right glue and you come up with a complete solution - Hitachi can be a bit painful."
"The user interface isn't as user-friendly, and the management platform UI isn't as intuitive as others. So it can be more user-friendly."
"Although they claim to provide NFS, the actual implementation requires an additional gateway, which makes it a costly solution."
"The pricing of the solution could be better."
"This product's ability to track logs for access could be differentiating and still needs to be improved, but that probably doesn't exist on any product in its class either."
"The upgrade process for Hitachi Content Platform is too long. When upgrading for just two mandatory versions, it took weeks because all nodes had to be restarted."
"When you want to replace a disk, we need to start the maintenance from the S nodes. We have to automate maintenance so any onsite engineer can replace it after that, but we don't need to do this on VSP platforms. An engineer can come in and replace that specific disk. If also we could do that on Hitachi Content Platform, it would be great for us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the Pure Storage Flash Array is too high and there needs to be more contact clarity. We went with the Evergreen plan and I don't have clarity on what am I supposed to pay each year or every three years. There was not much contract clarity."
"While more expensive than NetApp, Pure Storage FlashArray offers superior performance that often justifies the higher cost and adds value overall."
"There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"There are no licensing fees aside from the support."
"We implemented Pure Storage FlashArray nine years ago when it was new to the market and obtained it at a preferential price."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is a really cool concept. As long as we maintain our subscription, we will get new controllers every three years and really never have a forklift upgrade like we currently are doing. Just that future-proofing is an ease off of my mind to know that I won't have to do what I'm dong right now again."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"The pricing is excellent."
"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."
"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 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."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is expensive, but I think it's a fair value because it does manage itself. It definitely is much simpler than any of the other scale-out storage platforms that we've looked at in the past."
"Our company finds the pricing high, but it decreases over time."
"Hitachi is more expensive than StorageGRID."
"I think the ROI for this solution is very good because the pricing for it is in between other solutions."
"Pricing is comparable to other solutions in the market."
"The product’s cost is average."
"The pricing could be better."
"The price of the Hitachi Content Platform is very high."
"Overall, it's costly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise160
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise70
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
I think the price is reasonable. We procured this during the time of COVID, around 2022, and the price was very compe...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
The disadvantage that I felt is not hardware-related. I feel that Dell needs to focus on the service aspects. Once th...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Dell PowerScale is used for keeping our company data. Continental is an automotive company, and we keep recording fil...
What needs improvement with Hitachi Content Platform?
An application that can do the monitoring and reporting interface for Hitachi Content Platform would be beneficial. H...
What is your primary use case for Hitachi Content Platform?
Hitachi Content Platform's metadata search feature is not used in any case. It was only used in one tenant designed f...
What advice do you have for others considering Hitachi Content Platform?
Multitenancy is not understood or the term is not known in English. The overall review rating for this product is an ...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
HCP, Hitachi Vantara Content Platform, Hitachi Vantara HCP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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,
Rabobank, Xinhua News Agency, Kremsm'ller Industrieanlagenbau KG, KSC Commercial Internet, AIS Group, Shanghai Interactive Television Co. Ltd (SiTV), China Telecom, Spin Master
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale vs. Hitachi Content Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.