Dell PowerPath provides advanced load balancing and seamless OS migrations with integrations to EMC storages. It's known for robust disaster recovery and flexible configuration options, ensuring efficient operation across multiple operating systems with high scalability and stability.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Dell PowerPath | 14.8% |
| DataCore SANsymphony | 22.2% |
| NetApp ONTAP | 20.0% |
| Other | 43.0% |
| Type | Title | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Storage Software | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Product | Reviews, tips, and advice from real users | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | Dell PowerPath vs NetApp ONTAP | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | Dell PowerPath vs DataCore SANsymphony | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | Dell PowerPath vs QoreStor | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Title | Rating | Mindshare | Recommending | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DataCore SANsymphony | 4.6 | 22.2% | 97% | 59 interviewsAdd to research |
| QoreStor | 4.0 | 12.4% | 100% | 10 interviewsAdd to research |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 3 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 2 |
| Large Enterprise | 2 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 28 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 11 |
| Large Enterprise | 52 |
PowerPath is key for multipathing, boosting high availability and performance across AIX, Linux, and Windows. It serves storage needs, load balancing databases, and seamless connectivity to EMC storage. The interface is intuitive, with an easy setup process, making it ideal for standalone and virtual hosts. Although it suffers from bugs during OS upgrades and limited compatibility with select products, it simplifies vendor interactions by centralizing support. Users recognize some gaps in pricing, support quality, lack of automatic disc scanning, and difficulties in integrating with other storage technologies.
What are its most important features?In industries reliant on high-performance computing, Dell PowerPath is implemented to streamline processes in storage management and optimize server utilization. It assists in industries such as finance and healthcare, where load balancing and efficient data access are crucial for operational success, ensuring reliable and fast access to critical applications and data.
Dell PowerPath was previously known as PowerPath.
Healthcare Residential Service Company
| Author info | Rating | Review Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Senior Manager of Operations at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees | 4.0 | I use Dell PowerPath for load balancing our databases and I/Os, finding its multipathing capabilities with technologies like Round Robin valuable for optimizing service times. It requires better integration with technologies like HPE 3PAR and Dynatrace. |
| Co Founder at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees | 4.5 | I find Dell PowerPath to be a sturdy, reliable solution with excellent disaster recovery features, though its cost is high, and support quality has decreased since Dell's acquisition of EMC. Despite these concerns, the ROI is generally good. |
| Manager Systems and Data Center at Central Depository Company of Pakistan | 4.5 | I use Dell PowerPath primarily for backup due to its reliability, as it consistently performs well during restorations. However, it needs better reporting on backup issues and compatibility with Linux VMs. We also use solutions from HPE and IBM. |
| Enterprise IT Architect at ESTI Consulting Services | 4.5 | I've used Dell EMC PowerPath for eight years for multi-pathing, finding its disruption-free migration invaluable. It's stable, though a few kinks remain, with good support and straightforward setup. Pricing is fair. I recommend it with a 9/10 rating. |
| Data Center Solution Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees | 5.0 | I rate this flexible, scalable solution 10/10 for its easy setup and functionality across multiple OS. While Dell's first-level support declined, my experience has been very good, though I wish for a data migration GUI. |
| Vice President - Digital Technology at MSPL Limited | 3.5 | I find Dell EMC PowerPath offers a good UI, easy setup, and fair price. It's scalable, but technical support isn't always available. I've used it five years and rate it seven out of ten. |
| Manager, Storage and Virtualization Infrastructure at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees | 3.5 | I rate Dell EMC PowerPath 7/10, recommending it for EMC hardware due to its performance and high availability. However, it needs improvement for persistent bugs during OS upgrades and its currently limited compatibility with other vendors' storage solutions. |
| Head - Solution Design & Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees | 4.5 | I find Dell PowerPath beneficial for its OS-aware multipathing, which our clients use for storage solutions. However, it's primarily adopted by those using Unix or Linux, limiting its popularity. There aren't significant ROI details or alternative solutions noted in the review. |
We use the solution for load balancing our database and I/Os. It works well with EMC storage.
The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy. It is a smart solution. If we bring down an array, it would queue the I/Os. It provides resilience and availability. It performs well.
It has many load-balancing technologies like Round Robin. We can tweak and configure it really well. The product has good performance metrics for service times. I can see how well our databases are performing by service times. It is mainly a multipathing tool.
The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR. When we use 3PAR storage, we have to use another technology to load balance. The product must be integrated with other products like Dynatrace for reliability management.
I have been using the solution for 15 years.
I rate the tool’s stability a nine out of ten.
I rate the tool’s scalability a nine out of ten.
The support is really good.
Positive
I have used Veritas’ multipathing product. I have also used Red Hat’s native multipathing tool. They're not as smart as Dell PowerPath.
The initial deployment was straightforward.
We have a 99.99% availability. If we did not have PowerPath, we would just have 99.9% availability.
The product is a little bit expensive. It is a little pricey because it provides multipathing with other OSs. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.
People who want to buy the solution must create a scorecard of Dell PowerPath against other products. They must run database tests. They must consider factors like pricing, performance, ease of use, visibility, and reliability. They must also run tests to understand which product recovers faster. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
Dell PowerPath is a one-stop solution that one can get from Dell EMC. Dell PowerPath is a very good solution that can be deployed easily. Support and everything is easy to get with Dell PowerPath. My company uses Dell PowerPath to avoid being dependent on multiple vendors for the solution. We get support from a single point in case of any issues with the tool. The solution is sturdy. Solutions that fall under Dell EMC are very good.
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that disaster recovery scenarios are very good and easy to use in Dell PowerPath since it is available in a simplified form.
Dell PowerPath should cost less since it has become very expensive nowadays. The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required.
After Dell took over EMC, the support has actually degraded, meaning the quality of support has gone down a bit. Even though you get a single window of approach and all those things with the support offered by Dell, there are definitely a lot of improvements required.
I have been using Dell PowerPath for seven to eight years. My company operates as a system integrator and a reseller since we buy Dell PowerPath from Dell, and then we implement it for our customers. I use the solution's old and latest versions.
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
My company's clients who use the product are medium and enterprise-size businesses.
I do use Dell PowerPath day in and day out. My company has a team that manages Dell EMC devices, so we use Dell PowerPath.
I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.
Positive
I rate the product's initial setup phase a seven or eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.
The product's installation phase was neither straightforward nor complex.
The solution is deployed on a hybrid cloud, and my company has opted for the cloud services provided by Microsoft Azure.
The solution can be deployed in a few hours.
With Dell PowerPath, the maintenance part is expensive, though the returns from the use of the product are good. In terms of functionality, everything is good in Dell PowerPath, making it a trouble-free tool for users. Customers face fewer difficulties with the solution, making it a good product. In general, Dell PowerPath's ROI is good. Over a period of time, it ensures that users experience a good ROI from the use of the tool, but the costs may be a bit on the higher side.
I rate the product's price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is affordable, and ten is really expensive. Dell PowerPath is an expensive tool.
My company recommends the solution to those who plan to use it.
I rate the overall tool an eight to nine out of ten.
I use the solution for backup.
The product is very reliable. It works fine whenever we try to restore the backup.
The solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures. It must allow us to perform backups for Linux VMs.
I have been using the solution for the last six years.
Around 50 people in the IT department use the product. We also maintain the tool. We have three engineers in our technical team. I rate the tool’s scalability a nine out of ten.
The support is very good. We get responses on time.
Positive
We also work with HPE and IBM.
It is easy to deploy the tool. We took two months to complete the deployment. The initial deployment can be completed in a week. The rest of the time is to complete the deployment in production.
The solution is expensive.
Overall, I rate the tool a nine out of ten.
Dell EMC PowerPath is primarily used for multi-pathing for both standalone and virtual hosts.
The most valuable feature of this solution is migration without disruptions.
The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks.
I have been working with Dell EMC PowerPath for eight years.
I believe that we are working with version 7.
Dell EMC PowerPath is quite stable.
It's only needed per host.
Technical support is good.
The initial setup is straightforward.
Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution.
In the last four or five years, we have not had any issues.
It's a good option, but it depends on your use case scenario. It's fit for a purpose.
This is a product that has been available for several years. They have worked out the majority of the kinks. It's not a huge product, but it's a product nonetheless. It essentially performs multi-pathing for a host, which is all it does, they have got it pretty solid.
I would rate Dell EMC PowerPath a nine out of ten.
We are implementing the solution for our customers.
We primarily use it for multiple operating systems. It has been implemented for AIX. It was implemented for Linux and Windows. Basically, we've used it with all of them.
Normally, clients are without a license. We install it in order to utilize it instead of the native multipathing. The solution offers load balancing, which is great.
The overall functionality has been really good.
The setup is really easy.
We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable.
We haven't had any stability issues.
While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective. I would love to have this feature in the future. I would love to work in host-based migration instead of the native operating system tools.
If there is an operating system that is discontinued, PowerPath will now also stop the support for that operating system; for example, in the case of Solaris. I would prefer them to keep supporting that system, however, at the same time, I can understand why they have discontinued services.
We started dealing with the product in 2006.
In terms of stability, we are providing support to our clients, and I don't recall having that much feedback in terms of issues related to PowerPath.
The solution is scalable. The flexibility is there.
We provide support and there really haven't been too many issues.
We were working with EMC before the joint venture between Dell and EMC. The performance of EMC was better than the performance of the support with Dell after the JV.
Recently, from what I saw in the support team, for the first level of the support, they do not seem to be very experienced like the people who were working in the support at the time of EMC. The quality has gone down.
The said, once you get past the first level, the level of support is good.
I wasn't directly involved in the implementation process. It's my understanding that the initial setup is very easy and quite straightforward. It's not overly difficult.
I have no idea about the pricing of the solution, especially in relation to other solutions. I cannot compare it.
I haven't compared it with other products.
We have a partnership with Dell EMC. We have a Titanium partnership with Dell EMC and a Gold partnership with VMware.
I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten overall. I have no experience with any other third-party multipathing software to compare it to, however, my experience with this product has been very good.
The user interface is good.
I have been using this solution for five years.
The solution is scalable.
The technical support is good but they are not available all the time.
The installation is easy.
The price of the solution is fair.
I rate Dell EMC PowerPath a seven out of ten.
Dell EMC PowerPath is a multipathing software which connects to the back-end storage. It provides a high availability and will increase the performance of any server or operating system.
They are two different multipathing softwares which come with hypervisors or operating systems, which are native multipathing software. Apart from that, we have EMC PowerPath, which comes with Dell EMC storages, EMC, VMAX, Aternity or VNX. There are different varieties of storage in the market for Dell products. This multipathing software has certain features which we normally don't have on native multipathing software, especially in terms of load balancing and the way it captures the IO metrics and boosts the performance of different operating systems. This is something very specific to it and it has the flexibility apart from this multipathing capability.
PowerPath also acts as a PowerPath migration software. For example, if I want to migrate any OS that's currently running on a different EMC product, PowerPath has the capability to act as a centralized software to migrate the operating system from one storage to the another EMC storage, but remain in the EMC portfolio. EMC has different portfolios, like the VMAX, VNX, and Unity. So with this one single software I will be able to migrate data from one storage to another storage.
Although PowerPath is very mature and has been on the market for more than 15 years there are still a lot of bugs that have been profiled with PowerPath, specifically during any OS upgrade. In certain cases PowerPath doesn't have the capability to do an automatic scanning of discs. Also PowerPath is very specific to EMC portfolios and very few other products on the market. It is not wide open for the other vendors in the market. And EMC has competitors like HP, Hitachi, IBM, and Pure Storage. There are a lot of other competitors for EMC storages, but PowerPath doesn't have the capability to support a wide variety of storages in the market, it only works with specific products. I felt that being in the market for more than 15 years it should the capability and have matured enough to support the various products in the market. This is what I feel needs improvement.
Specifically, they have to open their compatibility with other products in the market. That is what I would see improved first.
Additionally, let's say a customer is moving towards a private cloud. How is PowerPath going to play a role? They need to educate the customers with what the product can do.
I have been using Dell EMC PowerPath for more than 10 years now.
From the stability point of view, yes it is stable, but not a 100%. I would rank the stability three out of five because it still needs certain improvements going forward.
I don't know how I can put the scalability in perspective because it depends on the license. It's based on the host-based license. For example, if you bought licensing for a hundred hosts, one single license is unlimited so you can place it on any number of operating systems. It's not license specific so it is scalable.
The technical support is pretty good with EMC.
PowerPath doesn't play as a major role as in earlier times. Now, with a lot of competitors in the market PowerPath doesn't play a key role on costing because it comes along with the storages that customers buy. So it doesn't involve a huge amount of cost when the customer buys the software.
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Dell EMC PowerPath a seven out of 10.
I would definitely recommend EMC PowerPath, there's no doubt. But what I would suggest is if you're going with EMC hardware, then definitely go with EMC PowerPath. If not, then I would definitely suggest to go with the native.
Our clients use it for storage and multipathing.
OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product.
Customers do not choose PowerPath unless they have Unix or Linux. The adoption rate for the product is not much.
I have been using the solution for approximately seven years.
I rate the product’s stability a nine out of ten.
I rate the solution’s scalability a nine out of ten. Our clients are mostly medium-sized businesses.
The initial setup is easy. I rate the ease of setup a ten out of ten.
The deployment takes not more than five minutes.
I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. There are no additional costs associated with the product.
I will recommend the solution. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.
