Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Reviews

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) integration with other solutions because of the standard file system protocol.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve the load distribution capability. For example, in some cases, the system load is not distributed automatically on all the nodes but is concentrated only on one. You have a peak request on only one node and the others don't do anything.

In an upcoming release, the solution should have security features embedded, not external software.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for approximately nine years.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a reliable solution.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is scalable. It is easy to expand capacity.

Most of our customers are enterprise-sized companies and the solution is suitable only for companies with a lot of data. For example, you can have a start-up company dealing with a large amount of data, but only have 10 people working on it. In this case, you will need a solution with this capability.

I am satisfied with the support.

If you have used the solution previously then the initial setup of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is easy, if not then it is difficult. If you have good planning and preparation then the implementation can take two to three days.

We do the implementation of this solution for our customers.

The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable.

My advice to others is they should work with a provider that knows the solution well and the features in order to implement it correctly.

This is a good solution but it is not always the best choice, it depends on the use case.

I rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) an eight out of ten.

We have massive unstructured data. It's only used to keep up with our data growth.

Its scalability has been huge for us. Before that, we were using Windows File Servers and there were a lot of labor-intensive log-on activities to build all those servers. With Isilon, we just add nodes and grow capacity. We realized those benefits as soon as we had Isilon online.

We love the scalability with OneFS. It is a one-file system that just grows. It is able to keep up with our massive data and ingestion.

We don't use applications on Isilon, however, it manages the growth of our data and structured data.

The solution's flexibility for supporting various data workloads while keeping them protected is okay. It does the job. I didn't really think about it in terms of protection with its resiliency and its ability to grow.

It's important that PowerScale helps us secure data from cyber attacks, however, budgets control everything we do, so we can only use it as far as what our budget allows.

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.

We would like to see both performance and security improvements which are in all of the releases. We haven't leveraged S3 yet, however, at some point we're going to leverage S3. We're working towards the 9.0 releases. Therefore, we'd like to see some improvements in the protocols. 

I've been using the solution for five or six years.

OneFS seems very stable. I just wish support would get a little better. I realize with COVID 19 it's been hard to keep people.

The scalability is awesome, this is why we have it. 

There are challenges when providing economies of scale for a large cluster, however, it's nothing. It's hard to quantify that because it is just a cluster, but we've been pleased with the scalability overall.

In the past year, it hasn't been as great. They seem to just follow KBS. Prior to that, they were awesome. I'm hoping they get it together.

Negative

We just used Windows File Servers before Isilon. We didn't have any NAS to speak of. We might have used NetApp, however, that's not a scalable solution. We evaluated others and we chose Isilon.

It is very straightforward. It's a little complicated setting up, however, other than that, you just allocate file shares and maintain security patches, and management is easy. It's pretty similar to other systems. It's very straightforward once it's set up.

I deployed it myself. My implementation strategy was to just do it. I have a template that I modify for every deployment and I rack it a certain way so that we can manage the backend cabling, which is a really big deal. I rack it, set it up, and configure it.

We have it in our major data centers, including Seattle, San Francisco, and Phoenix. I do all the maintenance which includes dealing with failed hard drives. There are always errors popping up. I'm just keeping ahead of all the little things that come up, engaging with support, and so forth.

I did not use an integrator, reseller, or consultant for the deployment. I did it myself. 

We have seen an ROI. For example, we don't build Windows File Servers anymore and that eliminates that labor. We have massive data growth and it helps us keep up with adding nodes. However, we have no quantitative numbers for that to share.

The pricing seems reasonable to me. We always evaluate new storage platforms and we've stuck with Isilon.

The costs involved purchasing the hardware licensing and extending maintenance. However, that's with every product.

We haven't really looked into PowerScale's cybersecurity, including its ransomware protection.

We have some Gen 5 and Gen 6 nodes, and we have five clusters. We just purchased the newer Gen 6, A3000, and H700 nodes in our Phoenix data center.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. If there was better support I'd give it ten out of ten.

It's an awesome product. I'd advise others to evaluate all the products and just pick the one that's best for them.

Things are in the details and I've always paid attention to that, however, you have got to handle deployment carefully and think ahead to what could go wrong. If you do that, everything will be fine.

The solution provides file-based access for everyone. It's a simplified platform for user-based access to files. It's also very simple to do data center replication for disaster recovery with Isilon.

It's hard to think back to the beginning when we actually got it and how it helped us improve. Of course, it is leaps and bounds over any Windows-based file share that may have existed back in the early 2000s. However, it's really helped engineers manage and maintain it. It's a very simple platform to work with.

The file-based dumping for SQL backups is great. We use that fairly heavily, especially with the flash-based nodes on Isilon. It's been our go-to platform for user-based file access.

The solution's flexibility for supporting various data workloads while keeping them protected is great. We integrate and have Avamar-based backups with Isilon. The protection is great.

Our main goal is to do disaster recovery with whatever solution we use and Isilon makes it pretty simple to replicate those workloads over to our secondary data center.

Cyber security, including ransom protection, is good. We haven't really leveraged a lot of those features as we should. We know that they're there and we work with our partners to help us implement those pieces for us.

The impact PowerScale has had on our organization's storage efficiency is positive. It's tough to talk about efficiency, as we love using it and we dump everything into it. What it retains gives us a great DD compression on the array. We find ourselves overusing it, however, we do have it plugged into Cloud IQ. That helps us with alerts to let us know when we're getting close to our thresholds for capacity.

PowerScale has helped us free up our employees' time to focus on other business priorities. They're not spending a lot of their time managing user files. Everything's managed from the array itself.

PowerScale helped reduce our overall risk. It helped us reduce our overall risk mainly due to the fact that we're replicating between data centers. We don't have to worry about a single point of failure within our data center. I can check on the health of our arrays really at any time with CloudIQ, and everybody sleeps better at night.

If they integrated some functions, as they have on Data Domain with a cyber recovery vault, it would be ideal. They have immutable snaps that they can leverage, however, it would be nice to have something folded in with CyberSense where we could detect points in time when we need to do recovery for anything that may be compromised.

We've had Isilon for many generations. I'd say we've used it for the last eight to ten years.

We have had issues with internal load balancing between some of the shelves. That is an ongoing issue that support is trying to address. We're still waiting on a resolution for that, but that's really been our only issue with the stack that we have.

We haven't had any issues with technical support.

Positive

In terms of what we used before, I can't remember that far back. If we did it was probably some sort of Windows-based file share that was all manual controls. It's hard to compare what we used in the past as we did not switch from another vendor.

I was not directly involved with the initial development of the solution. My involvement was just the management of the storage engineers managing the system. We like to keep everything in the Dell ecosystem so it was easy enough for us to turn it over to the storage engineers.

It wasn't complex at all. Even the upgrades and controllers that we've done have been pretty straightforward, however, we've got two guys today that manage the environment.

It's deployed across two data centers.

The solution does require maintenance. We do continuous controller updates and the like, however, we do it in conjunction with support.

We have seen ROI, however, it's tough to compare since we haven't really looked at other platforms. It's been easier for us to use the platform we have.

The price is reasonable. The ease of use with the array and the functions that we get from it still seems to be better than other products that are on the market today.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's still great, however, there are some internal issues that need to be resolved. That said, I understand it's always under continuous development.

I would advise potential users to not focus on the price tag right away. I know there are other cheaper solutions, however, they may not have the functionality that Isilon has and the same tie-ins that you'll get with the Dell ecosystem with features like Data Domain and Avamar, et cetera.

We use this solution to facilitate sharing data access across multiple platforms. We are a children's hospital and have a lot of PHI data that is critical to keep secure. 

One of the benefits that we have seen from our research department is quotas and chargeback. They are able to control costs based on the projects that they're given and the grants that they receive from the state and federal levels. They are able to track the quotas and chargebacks, which is made possible through Isilon.

Implementing Isilon has removed the previous silos that existed between different teams. Everyone has been able to virtually separate their resources, but still store them physically on the same box.

PowerScale helped free up our employees' time to focus on other business priorities. There are now automated jobs such as backing up and replicating data, that reduce the footprint we have. Those types of tasks were previously done manually.

Isilon also makes it possible to delete large amounts of data and fix active directory permissions. Previously, we would have to create scripts and run them manually. It also reduced our risk of data loss and gave us the ability to recover from snapshots and replicated data.

We have data that is accessed from multiple OS from different models and in departments in our company. The ability to serve up that data to all those different platforms is very useful.

One of the best features of Isilon is its reliable performance and ability to report on its performance. Reliability is really important in our environment, with a 24/7 shop that serves patients. In many instances, data access is critical.

Prior to Isilon, we had to access data from multiple different platforms. This solution offers unified storage and the ability to consolidate and migrate data which was a big step forward. It allowed us to cut costs by eliminating multiple platforms, putting it all on one array.

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.

I have used this solution for eight years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This solution's scalability in an on-premise environment is impressive. We continue to throw large workloads at it and performance has been pretty stable. It has multiple nodes, which is useful when we have outages or code upgrades. We're still able to perform those without interruption of service.

The EMC field support is great. They're easily accessible. We have a specific person we call which is invaluable. We are able to open tickets online instead of spending hours on the phone, no matter what day or time. The only challenge we sometimes experience is a language barrier. 

Positive

The initial setup for this solution is complex. The F900 uses Dell PowerEdge Servers instead of the traditional nodes. We needed to disable memory allocation features on those servers. When we did that, with EMC support, it brought the cluster down and it was down for a couple of weeks. 

The deployment involved a storage analyst, data center analyst, and EMC staff. The data center analyst handled the power requirements and cabling requirements. There are 15,000 users across multiple sites. 

This solution requires three people to handle maintenance. Maintenance requires verifying whether jobs are successful, identifying failures, and ensuring that replication is occurring correctly.  We do regular creation and deletion of shares, files, and folders.

We are able to better handle and reign in budgets by making departments responsible for the data that they are consuming for the grants that they get. The deduplication of data has freed up some of the storage costs that we've traditionally experienced. Some of the newer technology allows us to store more data on less equipment, which means that we're using less footprint in our data center.

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.

We evaluated Pure Storage but their support was unreliable. We need fast and reliable support, and EMC has always proven that when we have an outage, they're there to help us.

The user interface is very simple to use. Support is critical when deploying this solution. When we were deploying the F900, there were a lot of problems that were beyond our scope. We frequently needed to touch base with system engineers from EMC. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I use the solution in my company for our customers who are from the media, and as per the vendor, I can say that the tool is scalable for data storage.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the unlimited scalability. The tool has high availability and high storage capacity. The tool also offers flexibility in connection.

My company uses the tool's basic features, and some of our organization's customers moved to the product after seeing its functionalities. Our customers only use the scalability offered by the product for storage purposes, along with whatever the vendor provides as an extension for the tool.

As the product is used for basic purposes, there are not many areas in the tool that require improvement. The product is just fine for now. My company does not use many of the features of the product. I can tell what my customers want to improve in the product, and I believe that they don't want anything to be changed in the solution.

The support offered by the product is an area of concern where improvements are required. My customers don't receive much support. The support has slowed down a bit. For Vietnam, the support has to be worked on since it is slow in our country.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for three years. My company has a partnership with Dell.

It is a stable solution. We don't have issues so much with the stability part. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

My company's customers are from the media involved in games and movies.

For scalability, there is just a need to connect to the right connections.

My company's clients are medium-sized businesses.

The solution's technical support team is slow in Vietnam. I rate the technical support a six out of ten.

Neutral

The product's initial setup phase is taken care of by the engineers from the product side, so my company does not have much experience in it. My company gets a deployment service from Dell, so we don't need to configure anything as everything is already configured. We just need the information for the configuration, though it is all completed for me.

The solution is deployed on the private cloud.

The solution can be deployed in a day.

The product cost is affordable. It was not very high and not too cheap.

Speaking about the integration part, just mapping the NIS server is enough. An NIS server can be integrated with the tool, making it possible to share parts with the client.

In the media, there is a need to switch files without connecting to the internet, so on the website, they don't use much of anything. Customers move the data to Dell PowerScale, especially the things they can't just use over the internet. We don't use AI for now.

The biggest benefits experienced by the users of the product revolve around the fact that the tool offers scalability.

I can recommend the tool to others.

If you have more data to store and need to scale up, then I recommend that you use Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

The product allows us to handle NFS file systems with SMB shares. It's object-oriented as well.

Our major use is for SMB and NFS file exports for the open systems area. Both are heavily used in our company.

PowerScale is used across different platforms to help consolidate data storage and multiple applications into a single platform. We have file systems that are both NFS, and they are being shared with our open systems. However, some are also SMBs, so they can get to it from their Windows systems as well. It's very helpful for our applications.

PowerScale cybersecurity, including its ransom protection, is very important to our organization. I've got a session coming up where I'm going to learn more about that. We had a presentation on that at my work with our technical support group.

The solution in general has allowed us to move off of multiple Windows boxes where they had huge data stores, and we migrated it to the Isilon. There is just one point of contact there. It's made it easier and more cost-effective.

PowerScale has helped free up our employees' time to focus on other business priorities, however, it's hard to assess an exact number.

It's easy to manage. The web UI is very intuitive, and there's CLI also that you can use to manage it.

I'm happy with the product the way it is, however, I like the improvements that always come out with the new 1FS code upgrade.

Technical support could be improved. Whenever we have a hiccup, we'd like to get it fixed maybe quicker. 

I've been using the solution for about six years. 

The solution is stable. 

We have 800 people using the solution.

In terms of increasing usage, we're not going to implement it elsewhere, however, we always have new employees coming on.

Technical support varies depending on the person you get.

We used to have a chat feature available on the support site. It's not available to us anymore. We tried to use it and it comes up saying, "No one is available."

It used to be easy. We would get on the chat and we could solve something within an hour. Now, we have to open an SR and wait for somebody to get back to us.

Positive

We previously used an EMC product, however, I don't remember what it was called. It might have been Virtual Gateway or something like that. We use that as a front end to VMAX storage. There was newer technology which was why we made the switch.

We have the solution deployed in two locations, in our production data center, and in another disaster recovery data center. We're syncing data between the two and it's used by all our employees. That's where their personal drives are, along with corporate drives and departmental drives, that are off this storage as well.

There are three of us that maintain the solution. It's not a lot of work once it's all set up and running.

We have seen a return on investment in terms of the amount of storage that we have. There are a lot of things watching it, it's very helpful.

I'm not really involved with the pricing. 

Our company is a customer.

We're not using it in the cloud. We are starting to get into the cloud a little bit in our business. We're heavily using it for the NFS and SMB shares.

I'm not sure whether it reduced our risk or not.

We just recently upgraded our Isilon nodes to the new PowerScale nodes.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I'd advise other users that it is cost-competitive. There are other solutions out there. This has an all-flash option as well. If you need the speed without the old flash, that's available as well. However, we have hybrid models of it.

We have to deal with a lot of data, be able to get it across to and from different locations, and be able to store it. We use this solution for these purposes.

Overall, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has made the management of the data and networks easier. Because we are using the same solution for multiple platforms, our personnel have become more efficient.

The fact that we were able to set it up, use it, and, for the most part, didn't have to worry about it after we had it set up has been valuable.

PowerScale's cybersecurity, including ransom protection, is very good. We've never had an issue with it.

This solution has helped free up employees to focus on other business priorities.

Data storage performance needs to be improved.

We've been using this solution for several years.

It's been very stable.

I would give technical support a ten out of ten. We generally don't need a lot of technical support unless something breaks.

Positive

We previously used another Dell product, and we switched because it became outdated.

Deployment usually takes about three to four months. We implemented it one network at a time.

Maintenance-wise, it requires standard stinging and patching to ensure that security is followed.

We haven't lost any data, and that's probably the biggest return on investment, being able to maintain data integrity.

A technical solution has to meet the requirements, and you have to know what you need in order to figure out what tool is going to best work for that.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a good product. It does the job, and it takes care of the data. I would rate it at nine on a scale from one to ten.

We use this solution for the primary file storage for our organization for both the government and health department of Nova Scotia. We use the data domain for backup along with Isilon for our file storage.

This solution offers flexibility in supporting various data workloads and is very easy to work with. It is our go-to solution for all data storage. It is stable, it runs in the background and our users are barely aware that it exists. It operates seamlessly and this is the biggest benefit for our business. 

PowerScale has made it extremely easy to scale file data across our organization. We have two implementations of Isilon. One is a replica of the other. When scaling, we add nodes to each location and expand the cluster. The process is straightforward.

We have eliminated the need for any silos in our data center using this solution. It has also freed up our employees' time to focus on the other business priorities because it is easy to manage and add nodes when necessary. Replication works seamlessly. We are able to meet all of our auditors and governance requirements.

The way it scales easily, is easy to use and its security are the most valuable features. 

It would be nice to see tools like Superna Eyeglass built into PowerScale.

I have been using this solution for ten years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is an easy solution to scale. 

The solution's service and technical support are excellent. I would rate them a ten out of ten. 

Positive

Many years ago, before Dell, we used a solution for file sharing and office servers. We moved to storage area networks, and the transition to Dell seemed like the right move. 

The initial setup was straightforward. We did receive some assistance from Dell for the setup and they continue to assist us with maintenance on a regular basis.

A reseller assisted us with the implementation. They were excellent. To deploy this solution, we did not require more than our existing operational staff. These three team members take care of storage and backup.

Our biggest ROI in using this solution is the ease and centralization of management. This has freed up team members to focus on other tasks in the data center.

The pricing for this solution is reasonable. 

We evaluated a lot of other alternatives and this solution came out on top. 

I would recommend this solution to others. 

I would rate it a ten out ten.