Dell PowerScale Reviews

I have been with DTE for 30 years, and my role involves using and managing Dell PowerScale. We are in the infant stages for many of our AI initiatives, but I see that progressing with Dell PowerScale.

OneFS makes it simpler to manage, which is beneficial. I appreciate the soft and hard quotas, and I want to implement chargebacks now. I can control access through Active Directory with Dell PowerScale, allowing people to get their file shares that way, which is convenient for them. Snapshot is quite good; I had that with my Unities, but it appears to be easier to manage on the Isilon platform.

Dell PowerScale provides better performance than some of my smaller Unities that hold considerable data. I have data sitting in there that I migrated which is 10 to 15 years old, and unfortunately, nobody wants to clean it up. With Dell PowerScale, I can keep scaling where Unity had a head limit.

An example of how Dell PowerScale can be improved is that we had a situation where somebody accidentally renamed our home directory to a different folder, and then my team could not put it back because it kept recreating the home folder every time they moved it. I quickly moved it at the Unix level, renamed it, copied the original back, and recovered it immediately. However, we discovered that a bunch of user permissions got changed, so we had a challenge resetting permissions. Dell explained how to fix it, but I wish we had a method to discover such conditions before the user points it out.

I foresee challenges such as cleanup and trying to get rid of things we do not need anymore, as people find it easier to just expand rather than go through and figure out what must be removed. I do appreciate that Dell PowerScale is introducing cyber resilience, which I look forward to, and we are using Superna Eyeglass to integrate some of that functionality.

I have been using Dell PowerScale since we replaced our Unity 500 about four years ago, starting with the Isilon before it was relabeled.

I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale to be strong. We have had a few performance issue calls, particularly from a group that does file transfers who noted that it is somewhat slow, but I do not think it is on the Isilon side. I believe it is more related to their processes.

Dell PowerScale is performing well with the growing needs of my organization, with no issues so far. We have expanded usage; we bought it fairly large and sized it for our needs, ensuring sufficient headroom capacity. I project three to five years down the road and buy that size when we upgrade. We are currently in year four and still in good shape.

I evaluate customer service and technical support as better than the support group we outsource at DTE that runs our data center.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerScale, we were using Unities. We still have Unities, but in smaller scale environments that are more stand-alone, while our big NAS is now using the Isilon.

We considered other solutions such as NetApp, which looked decent. It is not forklift, but Dell PowerScale follows that same model, which helped us make the decision.

I measure success with Dell PowerScale by noting that there are no complaints from the customer. I would rate customer service support a nine out of ten because they get my offshore support team over the hump to get things done. Those team members do not even try; they just open a ticket and let the vendor handle it, which frustrates me since I used to be hands-on and knew how to handle 99 percent of these issues. I would rate Dell PowerScale a ten out of ten, and I am very happy with it and would advise organizations considering it to definitely move forward. My overall review rating for Dell PowerScale is ten.

My day-to-day activities include cluster health monitoring and capacity management as well as SMB and NFS administration. The primary use case of Dell PowerScale is enterprise file and shared storage for application and infrastructure workloads. We use SMB and NFS depending on whether the workload is Windows or Linux based. Both environments are managed, and day-to-day, I work on capacity monitoring, share export management, access permissions, performance checks, and troubleshooting file access issues. We also use Dell PowerScale as part of our hybrid cloud environment where some applications have dependencies across on-premises and cloud infrastructure.

Recently, we used Dell PowerScale to support an application workload that required shared file storage over SMB. I checked the available capacity, cluster health, and node performance before processing the request for storage access. After configuring the required share and permissions, the application team validated file access from their servers. I also monitored the cluster after onboarding to ensure there were no abnormalities, latency, or performance issues.

We have seen a noticeable reduction in manual effort because OneFS provides centralized visibility across the cluster. For example, when troubleshooting application performance issues, I can check cluster health and node utilization. In the node, I can identify the processes causing high utilization while checking latency, throughput, and protocol activity from the same platform using OneFS. This usually allows us to narrow down the storage side of an issue much faster before involving the application or network teams. Capacity management is also easier because we can monitor utilization and pinpoint bottlenecks, latency, and performance issues centrally so we can manage and plan expansion before reaching critical levels. I do not maintain specific KPIs for hours saved, but measurable improvements for us include faster troubleshooting and less manual administration.

PowerScale has improved our enterprise file-storage operations by giving us a centralized OneFS-based platform instead of managing separate storage systems for different workloads.

We use SMB and NFS for Windows and Linux workloads, which simplifies application storage integration and access management.

The scale-out architecture also makes capacity expansion easier because we can add nodes as data requirements increase.

From an operations perspective, OneFS gives us better visibility into node health, capacity, latency, throughput, and protocol activity during troubleshooting.

Overall, the main benefits have been easier administration, better scalability, and faster isolation of storage-related issues.

Almost every feature is valuable to me, but the biggest feature is the scale-out architecture, where multiple nodes operate as a single cluster. Multi-protocol support for SMB and NFS is also very useful because we can support Windows and Linux workloads from the same platform. I find the centralized OneFS management useful for monitoring cluster health, capacity, and performance. The ability to add nodes as our capacity or performance requirements grow is important for our environment. Data protection and the distributed architecture provide good resilience for production workloads. The CLI is another useful feature for deeper troubleshooting beyond the GUI. These capabilities reduce day-to-day administration compared with managing multiple independent storage systems.

Dell PowerScale is strong overall, but a few areas such as OneFS, QA, and reporting could be more intuitive, especially when analyzing detailed performance and capacity information. Some troubleshooting activities still require using CLI and going through multiple outputs. A more consolidated diagnostic view would help. I would also like deeper cloud integration and automation for improvements, particularly for hybrid cloud environments. Better integration with monitoring, ITSM processes, and automation platforms would reduce manual operational tasks. These are mainly usability and integration improvements rather than major issues with the core storage platform.

One area I would like Dell to improve is the OneFS management and reporting experience. The integration with ITSM and hybrid cloud platforms, and monitoring areas require automation. If these areas are improved, I would rate Dell PowerScale very highly compared to other products.

I have been using Dell PowerScale for around three years.

Yes, I find Dell PowerScale stable for our day-to-day enterprise storage workloads.

The OneFS cluster architecture provides good resilience across nodes and helps avoid single-node dependency.

We have been able to run SMB and NFS workloads consistently without major stability concerns.

OneFS also provides good visibility into node health, capacity, and performance for proactive monitoring.

Overall, its stability and centralized management are strong points for production environments

PowerScale has been very scalable for our enterprise file-storage requirements because of its scale-out architecture.

Instead of replacing the existing storage platform when capacity or performance requirements increase, we can add additional nodes to the OneFS cluster.

The cluster presents the storage as a single namespace, so applications do not need to be redesigned around individual storage nodes.

This is particularly useful as data volumes and concurrent SMB/NFS workloads grow over time.

From an operational perspective, the ability to expand capacity and performance without a major storage redesign is one of PowerScale’s strongest advantages.

I would rate Dell technical support as good based on our experience.

For issues requiring vendor assistance, the support team was able to review OneFS logs, cluster health, and node-level information and guide us through troubleshooting.

The technical communication was generally clear, especially for storage and OneFS-related issues.

For critical issues, having access to Dell support and the relevant knowledge base was useful for faster resolution.

Overall, I would consider the support reliable, with room for improvement in response time for some non-critical cases.

Yes, we previously used NetApp ONTAP for some enterprise file-storage workloads.

We moved to PowerScale mainly because of its scale-out architecture, single namespace, and flexibility for SMB/NFS workloads.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward, but it required proper planning before implementation.

The main areas were network configuration, cluster setup, Active Directory integration, SMB/NFS requirements, and access permissions.

Once the basic configuration was completed, OneFS made day-to-day administration much easier through centralized management.

The more complex part was validating application access, networking, and security requirements before moving workloads to the cluster.

Overall, I would describe the setup as moderate in complexity, especially for an enterprise environment.

Yes, the deployment was supported by an external implementation team along with our internal infrastructure team.

They assisted with the initial PowerScale cluster configuration, networking, Active Directory integration, and storage setup.

The knowledge transfer to our operations team was useful for understanding OneFS administration and troubleshooting.

After the initial deployment, our internal team handled most of the day-to-day monitoring and operational activities.

Overall, the implementation support was good and helped us transition into regular operations

Yes, we have seen ROI mainly through reduced operational effort and easier capacity expansion.

The centralized OneFS management reduces the need to manage multiple standalone storage systems.

Troubleshooting is also faster because we can review cluster, node, capacity, latency, and protocol information from one platform.

The scale-out architecture allows us to add capacity as required instead of replacing the complete storage platform.

We don't currently track a formal financial ROI metric, so I would not quote a specific percentage, but the operational savings are noticeable

From my side, the initial setup requires proper planning for the cluster, networking, capacity, SMB/NFS requirements, and integration with Active Directory and backup infrastructure.

Licensing and commercial discussions were mainly handled by our procurement and management teams, so I was not directly involved in the contract negotiation.

Operationally, the main cost consideration is planning the right node and capacity requirements upfront.

The scale-out model is useful because additional capacity or performance can be added by expanding the cluster as requirements grow.

Overall, I found the platform commercially suitable for an enterprise storage environment, although pricing depends heavily on the required capacity, nodes, and support package.

We evaluated other enterprise file-storage options, mainly NetApp ONTAP and HPE Alletra.

PowerScale stood out for its scale-out architecture, OneFS single namespace, and strong SMB/NFS support for our mixed workloads.

NetApp has strong data-management and storage-efficiency capabilities, while HPE has good integration across broader infrastructure environments.

The main advantage we saw with PowerScale was the simpler scale-out model for growing file-based workloads.

The trade-off is that PowerScale’s management and reporting could be more intuitive compared with some competing platforms.

I mainly monitor IOPS, throughput, latency, node utilization, capacity utilization, and SMB and NFS protocol activity. These are the main areas to measure Dell PowerScale performance. For example, when an application reports slow file access, I check cluster and node-level performance along with protocol activity to identify whether storage contributed to this issue or not. This helps us isolate the storage layer faster. We also track capacity growth and cluster health to plan expansion before utilization becomes a concern. The main operational improvement has been faster troubleshooting and better visibility into storage performance.

Operational efficiency with Dell PowerScale is relatively easy to operate. The team is very familiar with OneFS. The centralized management of the cluster makes routine tasks such as capacity checks, node health monitoring, SMB and NFS administration, and performance checks straightforward. If you log in to OneFS, you can check everything in one centralized location. For troubleshooting, OneFS and CLI provide detailed information, though it requires some additional technical knowledge. The scale-out design also simplifies capacity planning because we can add nodes as requirements grow. Overall, I find it efficient for day-to-day administration, with the main improvement area being a more intuitive UI and consolidated reporting.

I look at AI-related capabilities mainly from a security and governance perspective. I would not allow AI-driven recommendations to directly change storage administrative reviews and approvals. We still follow the normal RBAC controls, audit logging, and change management processes for Dell PowerScale administration. AI-generated insights should be treated as recommendations and validated against actual cluster data before any action is taken. Dell could provide more detailed visibility into these processes.

We use Azure for our public cloud environment. This helps us meet storage requirements for NFS.

I rate this product a nine out of ten overall.

Before we implemented Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we used an AIX configured as NFS, and that runs on IBM Power and has its own limitations because it shares resources with other LPARs. When our data becomes large, we need to scale out enterprise storage systems like Dell PowerScale (Isilon). Since our organization is a governmental organization, and direct purchase is not allowed, we prepared an RFP, and the vendors participated with the formal bidding process. Different bidders and vendors participated in the bid, and Dell PowerScale (Isilon) fulfilled our requirement with the most cost-effectiveness. We selected Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and use it for file storage. The main purpose we use it for is large files in our environment, and it supports multiple protocols like NFS, SMB, and S3 with a single storage plus.

We primarily use Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as NFS and SMB. The features we appreciate from it are the SyncIQ feature that supports replication from two site states for disaster recovery purposes. This is beneficial for our disaster recovery plan and for business continuity. SyncIQ is a great feature that we use actively.

Additionally, NFS, SMB, and S3 are good features that we primarily use. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) deployment is user-friendly with a good graphical user interface. It is easy to use and provision the storage for different application purposes.

I have experienced a RAM failure in some of the nodes of Dell PowerScale (Isilon), and that required hardware replacement. For large file replication from site to site, it takes a long time. This leads to issues when we plan a switchover from site to site, as the replication is not finished within minimal time. It takes a long time and leads to some downtime until the file is fully synchronized. For a large amount of files, the site-to-site replication takes considerable time, leading to some downtime during planned switching over.

Otherwise, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is good. It is scalable, reliable, and it supports node cluster architecture. Overall, it is a solid solution.

I have been working with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) since 2021.

Regarding stability, I find no lagging, crashing, or downtime with Dell PowerScale (Isilon). It is a highly scalable, stable, and reliable solution that I have experienced.

I have contacted technical support for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) through Zoom sessions and email conversations. There is also a person in our country who supports the Dell solution, and they actively assist us with any issues we raise. The quality and speed of support for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) are good. From my experience, I have confidence in the support. When we face issues, we raise a ticket through the valid portal, and they respond immediately and assign a local engineer to coordinate the support process.

Positive

Before Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we used AIX as NFS. We configured the AIX server as NFS. We did not have enterprise scale storage like Dell PowerScale (Isilon) before; this is the first one we have used.

When I compare Dell PowerScale (Isilon) with AIX configured as NFS storage, there is a significant difference. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) supports multiple protocols with a single solution, including NFS, SMB, S3, FTP, and HTTP. It is beneficial to support different applications. Additionally, it has a cluster node architecture, which is beneficial for performance and to get more capacity. It is easy to maintain. When we run on AIX, it leads to long downtime when we plan a maintenance task on AIX servers. AIX shares resources with other LPARs, leading to performance issues. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a better solution in comparison.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) requires maintenance on our end, but the maintenance tasks cannot be performed by our organization's team; they must be executed by experienced Dell personnel. We experienced a RAM issue that was replaced during planned maintenance time. Additionally, we perform planned firmware upgrades regarding the software and hardware. The RAM issue was the problem related to Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

For the initial deployment of Dell PowerScale (Isilon), it cannot be done by one person alone. In our organization, we built a team for the deployment, and from Dell, they also assigned an experienced person to deploy the solution. From our organization's side, there was a prepared team for the deployment, and from the vendor side, experienced personnel were assigned to deploy the solution. It was deployed effectively.

As I mentioned before, we did not purchase Dell PowerScale (Isilon) directly. Since our organization is a government entity, the country policy does not allow direct purchases; it goes through a formal RFP process. We prepared an RFP, and the bidders and vendors participated in the bidding process. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) fulfilled the requirement and was the most cost-effective option. This is how we made our selection.

For the support of Dell PowerScale (Isilon), I would rate it nine out of ten.

For the overall solution of Dell PowerScale (Isilon), I rate it eight out of ten because the SyncIQ replication feature takes a long time for large files, which leads to downtime during planned site switching. Additionally, we have experienced a RAM issue, which is why I rate it this way.

In terms of scalability, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is quite good. I have scaled Dell PowerScale (Isilon) once, and we also have plans to scale it again. It is beneficial for adding capacity and performance. If one node fails, the system continues to work with other nodes, avoiding interruptions and supporting business continuity. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a good scalable solution.

We immediately saw the benefits of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) because our files are large. During the deployment of this solution, we did not wait to test the solution; we immediately started migrating the files to the solution. My overall review rating for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is eight out of ten.

Dell PowerScale serves as a secure backup target for government systems. The typical scenario involves two Dell PowerScale clusters in different remote data centers. Government systems place backups on the primary cluster, which is then replicated to the secondary cluster in the secondary data center and subsequently moved to a tape library for storage in a safe location. Automatic failover between the clusters is implemented, so if the primary cluster fails, the secondary cluster will take over. The backup target is maintained for all systems backing up to this infrastructure.

Throughput for the backup is important, as the backup windows are short. Dell PowerScale uses erasure coding, which protects the data and guarantees that there is no change in the data.

From my perspective of operation, I appreciate the mission-critical support from Dell PowerScale, which prioritizes cluster care. With any small hardware issue like a disk or ventilator failure, it has no impact on the running of the systems, but they treat such issues with high priority.

Regarding my experience with mission-critical support, spare parts are provided as soon as possible. In one situation involving another Dell system, a representative drove an Audi A7 just to deliver me a spare part that I could change immediately.

A valuable feature of Dell PowerScale is the documentation regarding protocol feature sets and integration with systems from other vendors. This documentation helps clarify whether an issue is with Dell PowerScale or the other vendor's system.

With Dell PowerScale, there is no concern about whether the system is running. Dell PowerScale operates in all circumstances. I can confirm that we have experienced six years of zero seconds of downtime.

Regarding Dell PowerScale's AI capabilities, the governance and security are very high because tenants can be separated on Dell PowerScale. We run systems with separate tenants on the government system.

To improve Dell PowerScale, the user interface could be polished to meet new standards. This is only a cosmetic enhancement, as the core functions without any issues.

I have been using Dell PowerScale for six years.

Dell PowerScale is 100% stable and as reliable as a rock. I can confirm that we have experienced six years of zero seconds of downtime.

Regarding scalability, Dell PowerScale is easy to scale. You simply purchase the additional box. When Dell PowerScale is sized well, there are no problems with performance when managing complex data sets. Success depends on the right scaling of the systems. If you understand your workload, there are no problems after that.

Customer support for Dell PowerScale functions as mission-critical support. They call you; you do not need to call them. My advice for others considering Dell PowerScale is that the solution is rock solid, and combined with the good level of support, you do not need to worry about it.

Before using Dell PowerScale, we had an HP solution with local per-system backups. We switched to the centralized backup solution to eliminate the risk of losing any backup, to monitor one backup system, and to verify that all systems have relevant backups.

I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerScale. It clearly protects the data. Time saved means we do not need to worry about it. On our side, it requires minimum administrative efforts. Managing a few personal computers is much more intensive than managing Dell PowerScale.

Regarding my experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing with Dell PowerScale, the setup costs were low over the longer term. Licensing has no hidden costs. We won the public tender with this solution, so the pricing was very competitive.

Before choosing Dell PowerScale, when I was proposing this solution, I was confident that this solution was the best option available at that time.

Operational efficiency with Dell PowerScale is very high because you only need to monitor the system. It runs itself very well. Regarding ease of use, in some cases you need to consult the documentation, which is very well written, so there are no problems.

The performance metrics and benchmarks I use to measure success with Dell PowerScale include availability and throughput, which are very important. Dell PowerScale's reliability and availability impact my organization's data operations by making them smoother. When you do not need to solve any issues, you can fully rely on the system. I give this review a rating of ten out of ten.

I am already using Dell PowerScale for files and unstructured data, which is the focal scope purpose to propose Dell PowerScale product.

Flexibility, performance, and cooperation stand out for me in the benefits of Dell PowerScale product for unstructured data overall.

Flexibility from our side, compression of data, plus performance and usability make Dell PowerScale flexible to use, easy to install, and we can sometimes negotiate the price with Dell.

Dell PowerScale includes automation features, and I think more AI features will be added in the upcoming years.

I measure success with Dell PowerScale by ensuring the customer is satisfied with the operation and that the installation is easy. It is flexible and not a complex solution. At the same time, it offers compressed storage compatible with all file types, and price is a good point for our customer, along with compatibility with other vendor servers and networking.

I see a disadvantage if I cannot integrate Dell PowerScale with the public cloud, as I have not used this feature before. If I could use Dell PowerScale on AWS, I would recommend it for public cloud use. For a hybrid solution, I want to migrate data from on-premises to cloud, and compatibility with all cloud providers would be a good and added point.

The only concern is that integration with public cloud and hybrid cloud is not currently available.

I have been working with Dell PowerScale products for seven years now specifically.

Dell PowerScale is reliable and I do not see any problems from our side. It is good and stable.

For scalability, Dell PowerScale is a good solution, and we can scale up at any time.

Technical support is good.

For time-saving, this will be added value, as every case is different. Sometimes, we can take a good price from Dell based on the customer, especially if this is a new customer with Dell, which allows us to obtain a competitive price when replacing another vendor. This reflects both time-saving and money-saving advantages.

I have worked before with some products from HP, but I recommend Dell PowerScale all the time for files storage.

The installation and deployment of Dell PowerScale are not complex. It is quick and easy. I have a professional service engineer team experienced with Dell PowerScale installation, and I have not received any problem cases with the installation before.

The price is not dependent on the solution. It depends on the number of terabytes and user capacity, and the price will be calculated based on that.

I recommend any product integrated with artificial intelligence. For example, if the product includes more automated features from AI, this will be added value.

Dell PowerScale already serves enterprise customers and sometimes medium customers.

The primary need for small and medium organizations is flexible storage to save unstructured data and compatibility with any other servers and networking, plus a good price. This is the primary point from our customer.

The compatibility from Dell is good, and the usability and flexibility of use, along with the GUI for the interface and installation, are familiar to all engineers in the Egypt market.

I would rate this product a nine out of ten.

One of our use cases for Dell PowerScale is to have a storage system for us. We are basically using it for hosting our NAS and as shared storage. We also have a couple of servers for our AI factory, which is still in POC with the NVIDIA GPU. Compute is our primary focus at the moment.

We are not using Dell PowerScale for data management at the moment; perhaps in the future, we might use it as a warehouse or for some other use, but currently it is just a NAS that we are using to store our databases locally, and those databases are not that operation-intensive.

Dell PowerScale does play a role in our organization's AI initiatives. It is still in POC, but it does contribute to our efforts.

We chose Dell PowerScale because we already had Dell management, so we know the hardware is solid and it comes with NVMe SSDs. The IOPS is there, and we were looking for use cases to build our own in-house generative AI. The contenders were either using Cisco UCSX or going with Dell PowerScale. Since our whole environment was already Dell PowerScale, we went with Dell. Additionally, there is also integration with OEM, which makes our lives much easier and we can have a single point of focus.

The integration of Dell PowerScale with our existing IT infrastructure is pretty efficient for operational efficiency. We have been using it for a little while now, and what we have seen is that the NAS performance is quite good, and the ones we are using for data integration and AI factory are working very well as well. OEM integration is there, which makes our lives much easier.

The previous versions do not support features like object storage; S3 and better cloud connectivity are things I would like to see. A policy-based management system would also be much better.

I have been working with Dell PowerScale for more than two years now.

Till now we have not seen any issues with the overall operational efficiency and ease of use of Dell PowerScale. We are running somewhere around 500 TBs on each server, and we have not faced any issues with IOPS or network connectivity.

In terms of performance and reliability, we have not had much experience with complex data sets; we are still using it for basic NAS purposes. Whatever we have done so far, we have not seen any issues. We have not had any hardware failure yet, so we do not know what kind of redundancy or failures to expect in the future. At the moment, it is quite stable, as are the other servers from Dell.

Dell PowerScale seems scalable as it uses OneFS. While I am not entirely sure what kind of enterprise data protection and compatibility it will have in the future, it seems scalable for us at the moment.

Regarding the technical support and customer service teams, from what we have seen, Dell tech support is quite good and on point; we do not have any complaints. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Dell tech support as a nine or ten; the support is there for us anytime we need it.

For our AI practices, we did not use a different product prior to adopting Dell; it is a really new initiative for our team and our product. We were using PowerEdge and also using EMC, though.

The initial setup process of Dell PowerScale is quite straightforward; everyone has worked on Dell before. The UI was familiar even though a couple of changes were made, but it was not that difficult for us.

We did the deployment in-house.

We have not had trouble managing aspects like AI-driven data insights and automation with Dell PowerScale; since it supports RDMA and RoCE version two, that is one of the great things we have. Additionally, NVIDIA GPUs are integrated with that, and I would have to go more in-depth since we are using a couple of custom software solutions, and that can be a violation for me.

I do not know what the purchase price was as I am not included in the budgeting discussions. From what I know about the physical racking, stacking, and everything, it seems to be quite efficient at the moment. However, we acquired it a couple of years ago, and we just recently started, so I am not sure what the current price point is in the global market.

The contenders were either using Cisco UCSX or going with Dell PowerScale. Since our whole environment was already Dell PowerScale, we went with Dell.

We work with Dell EMC and then we have Dell PowerEdge. We do work with Dell PowerScale.

We have not had cloud-based operations; however, we have done it with Dell PowerEdge. From my experience with Dell, it works fine. We are using a couple of servers with an open-source OS for our edge routers, and it just works fine. We are terminating a lot of cloud infrastructure on those, and it is able to handle traffic quite well; the only issue I might have seen is sometimes the IOPS drops, but that is again a firmware issue we had. Other than that, we have not seen any specific issues related to the cloud.

One of the reasons we chose Dell PowerScale was its capacity; if I remember correctly, the row capacity for it is somewhere around one petabyte. That was one of our key points. It also stores NVMe, has in-transit and at-rest encryption, and can be clustered up to a couple of hundred devices. We currently have a few devices coupled up, not in physically clustered, but virtually clustered, and we are not having any issues. The physical efficiency is also there, so all of that you are basically getting in one rack unit, which is not a huge physical footprint for us.

I am an administrator on a star team managing everything; we are the ones responsible for it. From physical management to software management, the underlying OS management, everything falls on us.

One of the performance metrics we use to measure success with Dell PowerScale is IOPS. Network connectivity is again important, and we also measure on our observability platform what kind of power consumption it is doing, what the expected power consumption is, and how well it is communicating with our other virtual clusters. These are the basic benchmarks at the moment, but I think that will change in the near future.

From a security point of view, we are using hardware security at the moment; we have TPM and Intel Secure Boot enabled, and our NVMe drives are encrypted. That is all we are doing for security at the moment.

We have not used Dell PowerScale much yet, so I cannot give feedback until we push it to the edge and see what goes haywire. The OS seems quite stable, and the integration goes quite well; we are not using it for intensive workloads at the moment, so it is hard for me to say what results it will bear under pressure.

I would recommend Dell PowerScale. However, it depends on what every customer is looking for and what kind of usage they have from use case to use case. If it is similar to ours, then that is the recommendation.

I have been working in my current field for almost seven and a half years now. Overall, I would rate Dell PowerScale as a 7.5 or 8 on a scale of one to ten.

My role in using or managing Dell PowerScale is that I'm a director, so I manage a team of systems engineers and architects that administer and support these platforms.

I have been using Dell PowerScale since we migrated from the Isilon platform this year, and during that initial migration, we noticed a noticeable increase in performance from switching over to PowerScale.

Dell PowerScale aligns with my organization's strategic goals of improving operational efficiency through platform modernization, since having Isilon before that was not all-flash. Moving to Dell PowerScale all-flash results in a noticeable jump in performance, with outreach from people on the engineering side noticing the speed in which they could open CAD/CAM workloads on Dell PowerScale, much faster than Isilon. The fact that the business saw a noticeable improvement in performance the day we switched over was a game-changer, not to mention the ability to seamlessly swap out the nodes to move from the older Isilon platform to Dell PowerScale, with no data migration, making everything seamless, done behind the scenes, and users only noticing the jump in performance.

We are extremely happy with the performance and the features that we have been given regarding Dell PowerScale, so I could not think of anything else right now, other than making it cheaper.

The pricing, licensing, and setup costs are interesting for us as we utilize Dell Flex on Demand, paying for it with a consumption-based OpEx model. There is an initial upfront commitment, and as we grow, that ability to scale out as our growth scales, while not paying anything more than what we are using, holds great value for us.

The comment about pricing improvement was more of humor, as we bought it on capital. With the consumption model, we pay a certain price per gigabyte, and as we grow and scale, that price gets lower the more we grow, so seeing that drop a bit more to be more competitive might help, but from a market perspective, Dell PowerScale was the leader from a cost standpoint when we did the pricing.

I have been using Dell PowerScale since we migrated from the Isilon platform this year, and during that initial migration, we noticed a noticeable increase in performance from switching over to PowerScale.

The stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale have been rock-solid for us. Even with Isilon, I do not think we ever had something as much as a failed drive or a bad cable, so I am expecting that same kind of consistency and performance level with Dell PowerScale.

There has been no downtime whatsoever, not even during the migration.

Dell PowerScale absolutely grows with the needs of my organization.

The Flex on Demand growth model allows us to scale up and scale out as we need to for data migrations. That seamless back-end process with no disruption was huge for us, unlike when we migrated from our older platform to Isilon the first time, which required a third-party software tool for data migration that was noisy and disruptive. This time, it was all done seamlessly just by swapping out the hardware.

Since I have not used customer service and technical support, I do not need to rate them. Dell PowerScale has been rock-solid for us from a performance perspective. We have not had to need support, which is a good thing, but we know if we ever do need them, we have a TAM on our account and, from support engagement we have done for other products in the past, there are no concerns from that perspective.

Before Isilon, we had a traditional Windows file system that ran on top of the Unity storage platform.

We switched because Unity was a hybrid flash array, whereas Dell PowerScale is now all-flash, so from a performance and a modernization perspective, it made sense for us to do so.

I think we have seen return on investment with Dell PowerScale, just in the speed in which we can access the files and the engineering capabilities. We are also seeing where engineering uses it as a landing zone to run workloads, which in the past we never really allowed them to explore doing.

We have identified other opportunities just outside of that traditional file share workload where we are permitting engineering to use it as a landing zone to run VMware workloads.

Data governance is certainly a big emerging challenge for us as managing enterprise data. It is not just going to be dependent on our strategy for file shares but also involves our landscape with SharePoint sites and so forth. I think it is really more of a purpose-built solution, giving us that visibility in that space that we have never had before.

Dell PowerScale does not currently play a role in my organization's AI initiatives, as we are a very big Microsoft shop doing a lot in the Copilot space. However, being an aerospace and defense company, we have limitations on what we can use from a cloud perspective. I think the tagging part will help because as we better understand where our data is and what access we are going to allow these AI tools to have, it will pay dividends in the future.

I would rate Dell PowerScale a 10 overall.

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.

The best features Dell PowerScale offers include online expansion. Dell PowerScale has positively impacted my organization through patching and upgrades, as there is no downtime; you can perform these tasks online without application interruption.

I have noticed specific improvements from using Dell PowerScale's online upgrade feature, as it has significantly reduced the time required for our BAU activity, especially for upgrades and expansions. There is no downtime, and it is easy to plan the activity by scheduling.

I would describe the overall operational efficiency and ease of use of Dell PowerScale as having a very user-friendly interface.

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 market have more integrations such as virus scanning, Active Directory, or other LDAP services; these types of integrations are needed.

Regarding Dell PowerScale's AI capabilities, I believe its governance and security are more important for financial or government sectors, so governance and security will require additional upgrades and hardening.

I have been using Dell PowerScale for approximately two years.

Dell PowerScale is very stable in my experience.

Dell PowerScale's scalability is what we appreciate, as the expansion capability is very useful and scalable. There is no need to purchase the entire product; we can simply add nodes incrementally.

The customer support for Dell PowerScale is very satisfactory.

We used Hitachi before and shifted from Hitachi NAS to Dell PowerScale because of its scalability, which was the main consideration.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing Dell PowerScale.

My company is an end user, and we do not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerScale, as it has definitely saved many of our resources. After deploying our skills in production, there have been no incidents; it has proven to be very stable and secure.

My advice to others considering Dell PowerScale is that it is stable and has fewer issues while being highly scalable.

Regarding Dell PowerScale's AI capabilities, I believe its accuracy and reliability of output are very good.

I use the benchmark of IO, bandwidth, and transfer speed most of the time to measure success with Dell PowerScale.

For operational efficiency, the integration of Dell PowerScale with my existing IT infrastructure is very friendly for Dell products, but we have some third-party solutions such as BMC or virus scanning that still have some gaps requiring improvement.

I would describe Dell PowerScale's reliability and availability for my organization's data operations as very good because Dell PowerScale can support individual node failures or have redundancy with no application interruption or path failure.

My experience with Dell PowerScale's data protection and security features is limited; however, from what I know, it is a very powerful feature.

Emerging challenges I foresee in managing enterprise data include AI licensing, log analysis, data collection, troubleshooting, and AIOps solutions.

I would rate this review an eight out of ten.

Dell PowerScale serves as our primary storage for our PACS imaging, storing all of the radiology images across our entire business. Because of this critical function, it is extremely important that it remains up and running at all times.

The features of Dell PowerScale that I appreciate most include the ease of redundancy over networks, as we have one cluster in one location and another cluster in a disparate location. If one fails over, it is fairly easy to fail over to the secondary cluster.

Dell PowerScale aligns with our organization's strategic goals of improving operational efficiency because it has always been targeted at unstructured data, which we use for our PACS imaging. It has always been well-aligned for what we needed, and we have been using it for quite some time, finding it very effective for our imaging.

Dell PowerScale aligns with our organization's goals of supporting digital transformation initiatives, as we started with PowerScale nodes that only had spinning drives and have since moved to SSDs. Those SSDs have been faster, which improved our performance with our PACS systems.

Dell PowerScale is a very solid product right now, and I do not see any immediate improvements that it needs, but possibly some UI tweaking here and there and unification of settings would be beneficial. However, it still performs very well. I think it does need some easier user-facing management.

An example of something that is problematic at the moment or that I would want to see improved is that there needs to be further delineation between access zones and settings. Things are not always clear as to what I am managing or what section of Dell PowerScale that I am actually managing. Additionally, the networking portion can be a little confusing in terms of access zones and what features I am actually editing or modifying. On top of that, the isi commands can get confusing at times; some only work on individual nodes while some are cluster-wide. There needs to be a little more clarification and more end-user ease of doing certain configuration tasks.

I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale as top-notch, as the only issues we have ever had are just failed drives, which is to be expected. We receive new drives proactively, and they are sent to us and are very easy to replace. Drive failure has been less prominent now that everything is solid-state, and it really is very reliable. We have never had a node motherboard fail or anything bigger than a drive, so it has all been very smooth.

Dell PowerScale scales with the growing needs of our organization very simply, as all you do is attach nodes to your network, usually your top-of-rack switch, and you join it from the command line. It is a very simple process with only a few steps, and after that, I can get granular in my configuration for the nodes I have deployed. Initially deploying is very simple. Dell support is always there if I have questions after deployment.

I evaluate the customer service and technical support for Dell PowerScale as very good, since it was actually the first enterprise application support that I have dealt with, and I have never had any problems. They have always gotten back to me within a couple of hours usually, and if there are higher priority cases, we have gone to our account supervisors, and they have been great. The general support is excellent; I never really had any problems with it. We use them for upgrades and general support, and both have been great. I would rate Dell PowerScale customer support a nine on a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, as I have never had that many problems with support.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerScale, we were using another solution to address similar needs, but I am not sure what the solution was. What we were using previously was slower. I think we have been using Dell PowerScale for approximately twenty years now, when it was previously Isilon. When we did adopt Isilon/PowerScale, we saw a major improvement.

Regarding how easy or difficult it is to deploy Dell PowerScale and how long it takes to deploy, I am Isilon certified, which was previously PowerScale certified. I have done several virtual deployments and also physical, real deployments within our organization, and it is very easy to do. There are a couple of join commands that you do once the nodes are networked up, and it literally just adds the nodes to your cluster. There is no hassle; you configure them a little bit afterwards, but really, it just pushes those new nodes right into your cluster. The process is very simple.

I have seen return on investment with Dell PowerScale, as any amount of time that can be saved for our radiologists is ROI for us. The fact that Dell PowerScale is fast enough to support their needs means that we do not hear complaints, and second of all, images get read faster and patients get better quality of care.

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing is minimal. I have set up a few nodes in my time, but it has always been very easy. I do not have the actual pricing or anything, as I have not deployed nodes and been involved in the pricing structure.

Dell PowerScale does not play a role in our organization's AI initiatives right now.

My advice to organizations considering Dell PowerScale is that if you are an organization that uses unstructured data, it is a beautiful way to go. Definitely consider it as one of your top choices. I would rate this review a nine on a scale of one to ten.

Our primary use cases include virtualization storage and external storage via NFS.

I find that the features of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) are not extensive. Our customer chooses Dell PowerScale (Isilon) because of the pricing issue, not the functionality. They discovered that the reseller in Taiwan has a per gigabyte price that is more expensive than Dell PowerScale (Isilon). The maintenance is good, but the subscription fee is higher than other storage solutions.

The maintenance is very good, and the deployment is straightforward as well. Pure Storage is still our first choice if we want a very fast deployment or engagement.

In our customer's company that is a campus, around 5,000 people use Dell PowerScale (Isilon). Among corporate enterprise customers, they do not use larger options like the big FlashArray; they are only using smaller solutions like FlashStack, which may accommodate around 100 to 200 employees in each enterprise customer.

I think Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve some functions such as Apache S3 or containerized storage support, as these aspects are not well-developed. Their support system is weak; many issues require us to conduct our own research and apply solutions to the equipment, so using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) demands more maintenance effort from us.

Not much noticeable improvement or impact from Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is observed in our customer's business operations. We still discuss with our customer that Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is not the best or most suitable choice. Our customer is always focused on three things: they want to minimize maintenance effort, they question pricing if functionality is not different, and they consider our professional services. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) requires us to spend more man-hours on maintenance compared to Pure Storage.

In terms of what Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could learn from Pure, I would say they lack certain features such as upscaling; they do not have an Evergreen program as Pure has, and their support system is weak. Firmware or software updates become effortless with Pure, but with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we must evaluate or conduct trial runs to ensure that these operations will not harm our customer's system; their software is not adequate.

Currently, the AI capabilities of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pertain more to lake services. However, our customer does not have this big data storage; their dataset is average, around 100 gigabits or 100 gigabytes. With 100 gigabytes, the performance will be comparable between Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and Pure, especially within FlashArray, as the dataset is not enough to push the machine's limits.

We always use random write and read metrics with 4K files, and possibly also 1K files. This is a script we have coded via some cloud solutions. Currently, our customer does not face throughput issues because the network infrastructure does not keep pace; the bottleneck is consistently the latency of the switch.

Beyond containerized storage support and software updating, I have had very bad experiences with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) because they present more issues than other storage options, even when compared with NetApp. They lack sufficient support, and their software is not user-friendly. If I were to suggest any improvements, it would be to enhance their software. I would rate this review overall as a seven out of ten.