No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Dell PowerScale vs Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 18, 2026

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
6.9
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (1st)
Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct
Ranking in NAS
15th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerScale is 13.3%, down from 16.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerScale13.3%
Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct0.8%
Other85.9%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

RahulSharma8 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group
Unified file sharing has simplified multi-tenant access and has delivered seamless data replication
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) includes its replication features; when we decommissioned our old Isilon cluster, we migrated all of the data to a new cluster, and it was pretty seamless. All you have to do is create the certificates and make those certificates available to the target cluster, then initiate a few jobs. 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. Another suitable feature is the ability to back up your directories; you can take snapshots for all of your directories, and in fact, I believe you can take around a thousand snapshots for a single directory. The inter-replication, geo-replication is one feature. Dell provides a variety class of hardware suitable for your workloads, meaning if your data is just lab and not critical, you don't have to spend much on the hardware; conversely, if your data is mission-critical, you can buy a high-performance node from Dell. Additionally, you can span Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cluster to a large number of nodes, and code upgrades are pretty smooth because all protocols will be upgraded under a single piece of code. Since it provides a single file system that spans across the nodes, you don't have to worry about that directory structure being separately created on individual nodes, making it a fitting solution for a data lake solution because you can access the same data from multiple protocols.
EA
Senior IT Analyst at a government with 201-500 employees
Unified backups have protected our government data and streamlined daily user lifecycle management
One way Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct can be improved is the interface is fine and everything looks good. However, I think we should be able to do more at the kernel level, I mean the CDM level, the CLI level. I am very heavy in CLI, so I would want more of the features to push into the commands as part of the CLI. The other thing I want to add is that the documentation is kind of vague sometimes. I skim through a lot of documents, but I always end up doing things my own way. I would really want the team to improve on the documentation with a lot of screenshots and go-throughs. So far, it has been okay. If I could change or improve one thing about Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct, the features so far are okay for now.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Features like ransomware protection, file lock retention, and third-party integrations (e.g., Superna for ransomware protection) are significant benefits."
"It is stable and very user-friendly."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) definitely deserves ten out of ten for scalability."
"I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as a product a ten out of ten."
"PowerScale allows us to manage storage without managing RAID groups or migrating volumes between controllers. It has really simplified things. We're not having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. That takes care of itself. We just worry about the data. It's really easy for deploying and managing storage at the petabyte scale."
"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 best features Dell PowerScale offers are the soft elements, such as supportability, resilience, after-sales services, the brand, and its reliability."
"I appreciate the high-availability data storage feature of Dell PowerScale the most, as it has benefited my organization by improving storage and collapsing technologies, making it easier for the users and aligning with our digital transformation initiatives by collapsing a large environment to a small footprint."
"Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct has positively impacted my organization by showing at least a seventy to eighty percent reduction in manual effort for agent monitoring and investigating, which is exceptional."
"Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct has positively impacted my organization as the holy grail for our county because we basically rely on it every day for off-boarding, on-boarding, accounts being purged, and we are able to bring them back to life, attach old mailboxes to users, detach mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint, and basically everything, making it such a winning member of the team."
"Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct has improved my organization with secured backups, and even in case of attacks, we are safe with respect to the backup data we have."
 

Cons

"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."
"The technical support is average. There are certainly not the best that we have ever dealt with, but far from the worst ones."
"I believe the support engineers need to improve their skills."
"The analytics could be improved."
"I think Dell PowerScale (Isilon) can be improved, as the cost models are quite expensive for administration."
"Dell PowerScale can improve on its multi-tenant part because as a service provider, we have bigger clusters in data centers where we can serve multiple customers and grant them dedicated management points and automation features that can be managed in a multi-tenant environment."
"Always, there is room for improvement in terms of cybersecurity, as new challenges are continually emerging in the market."
"The biggest weakness is small file handling. Small file compression options are not enabled out of the box. It would be good to have this enabled by default."
"The other thing I want to add is that the documentation is kind of vague sometimes."
"In terms of stability, Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct is still not stable as it is evolving, so I would give it a seven or eight."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a really expensive solution."
"It is an expensive product with a high storage capacity suitable for large data requirements."
"The price of the solution can fluctuate. The price can be competitive or other times not. The price of the solution could be better."
"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."
"Pricing for this solution is reasonable."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is excellent."
"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."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which NAS solutions are best for your needs.
914,938 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise66
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
The on-premises solution with Dell PowerScale, when we buy directly from Dell, is economical. We have done some level of comparison. Although in the current markets we have seen the price differenc...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Dell PowerScale can improve in speed and IO throughput. Additionally, it could benefit from more integration options and additional automation activities. I would add that some competitors in the m...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
My main use case for Dell PowerScale is for S3 or NAS. Dell PowerScale plays a role in my organization's AI initiatives as it supports AI-driven data insights, automation, and advanced workloads.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct?
Regarding the pricing of Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct, I am not sure because there is a separate team who is working on the cost.
What needs improvement with Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct?
Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct is working as expected, and I cannot come up with any improvements. It has given us a great return. Before we take aggressive blocking rules, there is a risk of creating unn...
What is your primary use case for Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct?
My main use case for Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct is taking real-time actions to see how they are responding if an agent is working in a certain behavior and how it's going if an agent is misbehaving. I...
 

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,
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale vs. Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,938 professionals have used our research since 2012.