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Dell PowerScale vs Huawei OceanStor 9000 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
97
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (1st)
Huawei OceanStor 9000
Ranking in NAS
17th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerScale is 14.6%, down from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huawei OceanStor 9000 is 2.0%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerScale14.6%
Huawei OceanStor 90002.0%
Other83.4%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

SK
Solutions Architect at a university with 10,001+ employees
Operates seamlessly and minimizes downtime while meeting enterprise file share demands
The features of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) that I appreciate the most include the scale of architecture and the way it is designed. These features benefit my company by providing less downtime and less overhead. While I have not calculated an exact number regarding the reduction in downtime, we have always been using the product, so we have no baseline to compare it to. However, it is a very good product. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) scales very well with the growing needs of my company.
ChukwuemekaOnyemelukwe - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Administrator - Server, Storage & Virtualization at MicroAccess Ltd
An entry-level, flash-based storage system designed for enterprise-class applications
It took significantly longer to set up the solution with Huawei compared to other options. But when creating servers for VMware virtualization in one data center, it was a relatively quick process. The Huawei's solution, even with the assistance of an engineer, took more than one month, possibly extending to two months. Chinese engineers were involved in the process, which contributed to the delays.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as perfect, as we haven't had any hiccups with it so far."
"I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale as top-notch, as the only issues we have ever had are just failed drives, which is to be expected."
"The most valuable feature for me is SyncIQ."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is brilliant for scalability and really, really good in that regard."
"On a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a ten."
"With Dell PowerScale (Isilon), it uses not just a terabyte but petabytes of data, storing a large amount of data takes within minutes, and you can bring it down to seconds as well, as it does not take much time to upload or copy the data here and there, and upgrades also do not take much time."
"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."
"The fact that we were able to set it up, use it, and, for the most part, didn't have to worry about it after we had it set up has been valuable."
"The storage capacity is really one of the most valuable features. Also, the GUI is very friendly and the switches gives high performance. The technology used in storage is RAID which as helped us a lot to expand and store various items ."
"It has many options for scalability, and it is stable."
 

Cons

"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."
"We lost our technical sales reps about two years ago. We haven't gotten one assigned to us and we'd love to have one."
"It would be nice to see tools like Superna Eyeglass built into PowerScale."
"PowerScale is not suitable for virtual environments."
"Improvements could be made on the object storage side."
"The solution's rate structure or rate redundancy needs to be improved."
"There is room for improvement in its handling of object storage."
"The only thing that I think PowerScale could do better is improving the HTTP data access protocol."
"The call charges and the management cost should be more friendly. They can also include monitoring and management."
"The handling of data deletion and bulk servers setup could have been more straightforward and easier when dealing with data removal or setting up servers. I believe Huawei could enhance their solutions, especially managing storage, to provide a better experience for customers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a really expensive solution."
"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."
"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 price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."
"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."
"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."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is an expensive solution."
"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 is cheaper than other solutions."
"The installation is expensive as they often come as a comprehensive package. The design is more integrated, and everything is bundled together as part of the solution. This is what contributes to the higher cost of their solutions because when you purchase one element, it often comes with additional features and components, and you end up paying for the entire package."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
University
13%
Educational Organization
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise53
No data available
 

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
OceanStor 9000 Scale-out NAS
 

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,
Piraeus, Clinique Univeritaires Saint-Luc, Absolut Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale vs. Huawei OceanStor 9000 and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.