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Dell PowerScale vs Panasas ActiveStor 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)
Panasas ActiveStor
Ranking in NAS
21st
Average Rating
9.0
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 Panasas ActiveStor is 1.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerScale14.6%
Panasas ActiveStor1.5%
Other83.9%
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.
MW
Project Manager at Realnux
Easy to use and flexible with great performance
We primarily use the solution for our HPC projects, high-performance computing projects The product has proven itself to be stable. The performance is great.  We've found the product to be quite flexible. It is extremely easy to use.  The solution is quite expensive. The solution could offer…

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."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its performance."
"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."
"Dell PowerScale's performance is good."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) helps improve the way the organization functions through massive scalability, high performance, a single file system, high availability and reliability, flexible protocols, support for NFS, SMB, HDFS, strong security, cloud integration, efficiency, data protection, snapshot, queue, and sync queue, optimized for unstructured data."
"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."
"It assists with eliminating storage silos because it provides SMB and NFS protocols. PowerScale has also helped free up our employee's time to focus on other business priorities."
"The most valuable features of the solution are flexibility and ease of implementation."
"The stability is excellent and we've found the product's performance to be very good."
"We've found the product to be quite flexible."
"I am impressed with the tool's performance and bandwidth."
 

Cons

"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."
"We have had a few performance issue calls, particularly from a group that does file transfers who noted that it is somewhat slow, but I do not think it is on the Isilon side."
"Isilon has limitations on the number of files that can be generated."
"Always, there is room for improvement in terms of cybersecurity, as new challenges are continually emerging in the market."
"I would like to see increased reporting and statistics functionalities."
"We're struggling with the UID mapping and how to configure mapping-related things."
"That said, for the other security features, it would be helpful if Tenable - and I know it's outside the scope of this question itself - had Isilon-specific plugins."
"The solution is expensive. It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have."
"We have received complaints from customers that the tool is not easy to use. The tool's local technical service is slow. The solution is good for Linux customers and not for customers with other operating systems like Windows. The solution should provide storage without client software integration."
"The solution is quite expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is expensive; it is not the cheapest solution out there. If you look at it from a total cost of ownership perspective, then it is a very compelling solution. However, if you're looking at just dollar per terabyte and not looking at the big picture, then you could be distracted by the price. It is not an amazing price, but it's pretty good. It is also very good when you consider the total cost of ownership and ease of management."
"The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
No data available
 

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
ActiveStor
 

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,
Advanced Mask Technology Center Airbus Argonne National Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas School of Arts Technology and Emerging Communication Башнефть Boeing Bosch California Academy of Sciences Caltech Canon Case Western Reserve University Conoco Phillips Deluxe DirecTV Fairfield Technologies United States Federal Reserve Garvan Institute of Medical Research Goodyear Halliburton Harvard Medical School Honeywell In-Depth Geophysical Intel Kawasaki Lockheed Martin 3M Magseis Fairfield Mammal Studios The Man Group McLaren Mercedes-Benz MINES ParisTech NASA US Navy National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center NBCUniversal National Institutes of Health Nio National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Northrup Grumman Novartis Partners Healthcare Procter & Gamble PGS Pratt & Whitney Rutherford Appleton Lab Siemens Sim International Sinopec Solers Square Cnix TGS Toyota Motorsport GMBH Toppan Turner UMass Medical School United Technologies University of Georgia University of California Los Angeles University of Minnesota University of Notre Dame University of California San Diego Center for Microbiome Innovation Whiskytree
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale vs. Panasas ActiveStor and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.