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Dell PowerStore 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 PowerStore
Ranking in NAS
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), Enterprise SAN (1st), All-Flash Storage (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
Panasas ActiveStor
Ranking in NAS
22nd
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 August 2026, in the NAS category, the mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 7.2%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Panasas ActiveStor is 1.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerStore7.2%
Panasas ActiveStor1.7%
Other91.1%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2304864 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vmware Windows Senior Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Resilience has supported proactive management and secured audit readiness across multiple sites
The resilience in Dell PowerStore benefits my company from an auditing perspective because we know we have that resilience in place. I see Dell PowerStore playing a bigger role in the future because we are starting to use it more, and that is pushing it. The biggest return on investment for me when using Dell PowerStore is scalability. Scalability is key. I can amplify that scalability is the biggest return on investment because we have redundancy between two sites; if something goes down, we have to manage it, but we want to do it proactively.
MW
Project Manager at Realnux
A stable solution with good performance and bandwidth
The tool's setup is not difficult. The deployment is completed within two to three days and we would require three engineers to handle the process. First, we need to install the software which can take around two to three hours. Next, comes the configuration and connection to the central network which is complex. It can take about eight to ten hours to complete.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dell's pricing and licensing have made it incredibly easy for a small to medium business like ours to access enterprise class tools that fit our specific requirements."
"My company found the tool to be really easy to use, expand, and manage."
"For our demo lab, before we got PowerStore, we were running on a really outdated storage platform that was running out of space and didn't have enough internal resources to be able to power our customer demos, and this product really helped facilitate and we do quite a few PowerStore demos since we have that device."
"We have seen the benefits of consolidation, compression, and reduction in overall storage, and all of our performance is now improved, and all of our customers are happy; they're not complaining anymore about performance."
"The most valuable feature about Dell PowerStore is speed and reliability."
"From a CAPEX perspective, the main advantage is data reduction, and the second advantage is the DRE feature, which allows a single drive to be used for storage, also representing an OPEX option, because traditional configurations require four or five drives but Dell PowerStore can function with a single drive based on customer requirements, which is a major advantage."
"The most impactful feature is the data reduction."
"The management portal is particularly user-friendly. We can access it easily, and the management software is not complicated."
"The stability is excellent and we've found the product's performance to be very good."
"I am impressed with the tool's performance and bandwidth."
"We've found the product to be quite flexible."
 

Cons

"However, Dell PowerStore is not the right solution for every situation."
"If I could improve Dell PowerStore in any way, I would enhance the socialization of the good skills this equipment has, improving communication with partners as the good features are inside Dell PowerStore, however, many customers don't know how powerful it is."
"In terms of improvement for Dell PowerStore, I think it would be good to integrate it with IBM workloads."
"I think it could be improved by maybe unifying it with NAS, the file storage part."
"My experience with technical support from Dell has been pretty good, although I have occasionally encountered situations where the person I spoke to did not fully understand my issue, but I've learned to simply hang up and call again to usually get a better response."
"As a partner, I'd like to be added to each customer's CloudIQ to take a look."
"The upgrades themselves are running fine, but after the upgrade is when we have a problem. With the update to 1.4, we had a head crash. They told us, 'This is a known issue. Please upgrade to 2.' We upgraded to 2 and, one week later they told us, 'Yeah, there are some issues in 2.0.0. You can lose data. Please upgrade to 2.0.1.' Overall, they need to make the system stable."
"The design needs to be something similar to Pure Storage. It would be beneficial if there are different color or lighting options for different product casings. Different colors are helpful when working in the data center server room."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Dell PowerStore is affordable and the license is just a face license which is great."
"The solution is expensive."
"The licensing for this solution is good and is in the mid-range tier."
"In terms of licensing, my organization has Dell Technologies End User License Agreement (EULA), but I don't know exactly how it works, though it is a big bundle of licenses for Dell Data Domain, Dell EMC Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Dell ECS, and all such kinds of storage arrays."
"It is easy to work with Dell from the licensing perspective."
"If we use the 500 or 1000, the licensing and pricing are reasonable. PowerStore can compete with any vendor and the price isn't that expensive."
"Dealing with the licensing part of the product is very simple, especially considering the fact that we don't have many licenses associated with the tool."
"We are currently using Dell PowerStore for our smaller storage and there is no competition for pricing."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business78
Midsize Enterprise45
Large Enterprise116
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and next-gen apps. It is only Flash and can support many workloads from today's app...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated management of resources feature provides a more simple administration. I found the flex...
What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell offerings and integrated into the PowerStoreOS. The installation and setup have a ...
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Also Known As

PowerStore
ActiveStor
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 PowerStore vs. Panasas ActiveStor and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.