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Dell PowerScale vs Quantum ActiveScale 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
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
Dell PowerScale
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
NAS (1st), File and Object Storage (1st)
Quantum ActiveScale
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (27th)
 

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.
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.
FL
Architecture Department at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Good performance and reliable but the setup is complex
We would like to see a self-sufficient installation. Nowadays it's open-source, but the installation is still tied to the vendor, which means it is unlikely that it is going to scale. I want them to tap into the broader community. It is really emerging, they have a year over year, 50% annual growth. With a 10-year-old company, it will certainly bring a lot of interest, and will certainly make it more successful, if they tap into that growing customer base. They have to make themselves relevant to the industry. The industry is totally geared to the Cloud, DevOps, and geared for agility. The software with the appliance in my set is already outdated, and it is not that it cannot sell, but it has to be tapping into the emerging and growing sectors to continue with the customers and businesses. This is what the requirement is, to improve their technology. Which means that they have to make themselves relevant to the industry.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We tested our VDI environment on this array and it performed flawlessly and boosted the user experience."
"Everpure FlashArray is probably not cheap storage, but it provides great performance, scalability, and everything a customer needs."
"The console is simple to use. It has good performance. It is easy to install, understand, and manage, with a good ratio of deduplication and compression. It is doing its job."
"This solution has improved our organization. In the past, we had reports that were taking up to two hours and after switching to SSD storage the overall processing power dropped to half an hour. The end users saw an immediate performance gain."
"The simplicity of it. The performance is good, but the simplicity is the best thing. Storage management is quite complex, but Pure Storage is easy to manage."
"All updates, upgrades, and hardware work are all performed on-line with no impact."
"Go with Pure (or a flasher rate which is similar) because of the ease of management and performance."
"This is a very good product at a very good price, with very good support."
"The features that I have mentioned improve my company through the reliability of the storage; it is always available, and it works, which is the important thing."
"PowerScale, in our infrastructure, is really a winning piece because today we have three times the performance on the I/O at an affordable price while greatly improving the performance and reliability of our HPC storage."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) integration with other solutions because of the standard file system protocol."
"What I like the most about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that the storage capacity is very high."
"The features of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) that I prefer the most include some of the newer technologies that are on it, which would include SmartSync and the ability for the data mover to continue to make incremental changes."
"It is stable and very user-friendly."
"Features like ransomware protection, file lock retention, and third-party integrations (e.g., Superna for ransomware protection) are significant benefits."
"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."
"The technology is stable which is good."
"The operations and the functionality are very simple."
"Quantum ActiveScale is a reliable solution."
"Workflow is easy to manage and maintain."
 

Cons

"Some of the issues are that it's probably not on a par with other large storage enterprise type products."
"Larger capacity and more storage ports would be the two things I'd like to see."
"The one major gripe I have is that there is no snapshotting enabled by default on the SAN."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution. Right now, you have to click and schedule an appointment with Pure Storage to be able to upgrade. I would love for it to automatically download, install, and fall-over every controller as it updates."
"We did have one hiccup with the integration of vCenter. When we were installing Pure Storage, we were using vCenter 6.7, which defaults to the HTML5 Web Client. The current plugin for Pure Storage doesn't show up in that client at all. You have to go and use the legacy FlexFlash client to see the Pure Storage plugin in vCenter."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"The data reduction that we had initially anticipated when we bought Pure and we move over, is way lower than the expected reduction. It depends on the workloads, of course. But that has been a challenge at times."
"I wish they could add more of a monitor on the machine itself so you don't have to rely on a KVM or something to look at the display, such as an onboard diagnostic display."
"We have had issues with internal load balancing between some of the shelves. That is an ongoing issue that support is trying to address."
"The pricing is expensive, but I think it's a fair value because it does manage itself."
"For improvements, we can focus on enhancing performance, upgrading the nodes, and accessing data through Isilon for more efficiency."
"Dell's customer service needs improvement. Specifically, hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline."
"Dell's customer service needs improvement."
"It would be nice to see tools like Superna Eyeglass built into PowerScale."
"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."
"The solution lacks a cloud version."
"The setup is very complex, it took 18 hours for the first setup."
"Lacks some ability to integrate with different systems."
"I'd like to see more integrations with different systems and for the product to be more scalable."
"We would like to see a self-sufficient installation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price-to-performance is good. I looked at Pure about three to four years back, but the price-to-performance wasn't right for us. Now, it's right."
"There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
"They have a standardized fee; it's been the same price for 10 years straight. I am happy with the price — I think it's good."
"Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive."
"No storage device is cheap, but Pure Storage is fairly priced and offers what you pay for. You get all the licenses in the future when you purchase a license."
"For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
"The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."
"We would like them to improve the pricing, so we could put them to use some more product, like backup or long-term storage. In the future, if the price goes down, then we could buy different types of products."
"Dell PowerScale is expensive on the start-up side but we can recoup those costs quickly by not having to reapply the savings to other equipment."
"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 is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo."
"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 price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."
"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."
"Our company finds the pricing high, but it decreases over time."
"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."
"Quantum ActiveScale is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise53
No data available
 

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?
I have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
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 provisio...
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 m...
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 req...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
ActiveScale, Quantum ActiveScale Object Storage, ActiveScale Object Storage
 

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,
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Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale vs. Quantum ActiveScale and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
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