Dell PowerScale Reviews

I have been a technical support engineer in Dell PowerScale (Isilon). If you raise a ticket to Dell support for Dell PowerScale (Isilon), it will come directly to us and we will work on that to help you resolve the issue. If you need any documentation or guidance to perform a configuration, we will help you with that. If you need any technical assistance, I will be helping you with that.

What I like the most about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that the storage capacity is very high. Compared to other cloud services for archiving purposes, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has been highly cost-efficient.

The downside of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that if we are replacing a drive, sometimes in the worst-case scenarios, some of the other drives will also go to the SmartFail state. That is the very worst thing for me in Dell PowerScale (Isilon). Additionally, even a battery replacement will make the particular node into a read-only state. It is not good for a use case. If we are using a three-node or four-node cluster, moving a particular node to read-only state just for a battery replacement is not good. That is my suggestion on Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

The initial deployment of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a bit difficult. Deploying in the initial stages requires more effort. We need to engage some subject matter experts to deploy it. It is a bit of a lengthy process to deploy.

I have been using it in my career for three years.

We do not face any instability in Dell PowerScale (Isilon). The load balancers work well with this unstructured data storage, so up to 90 percent of the time, we will not face any downtime or instability in storage while accessing or writing in Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is highly scalable. There are no issues with that. As an unstructured data storage solution, writing into it and accessing it from the other nodes is highly scalable with no issues.

I am the technical support engineer in Dell PowerScale (Isilon), so I am not going to contact any external support. I am the technical support engineer in Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and I work for Dell as a vendor. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) does require some maintenance on my end. In the initial configuration, it will not require much maintenance.

The initial deployment of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a bit difficult. Deploying in the initial stages requires more effort. We need to engage some subject matter experts to deploy it. It is a bit of a lengthy process to deploy.

We need an on-site engineer, a networking engineer from the client team, a subject matter expert, and a technical support engineer. Around five to six members are required for an initial deployment.

I am not aware of the pricing in Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

I would rate this product a 7 out of 10.

My main use case for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is storage. I use it for NAS storage. I can outline that there's no specific use case for the organization, as it's regular storage for all users.

I buy Dell PowerScale (Isilon) because of the price, service, and technology. The technology that is particularly good for my company is that I have two Dell PowerScale (Isilon) systems in two sites, and I use replication between them with Superna software, which is a third-party Dell technology.

Sometimes, it takes too long to set up everything. That's something I would want them to improve. The main challenge I face with it now is that my team is accustomed to using other vendors, and when I try to use Dell technology, it's difficult for them to use something new.

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

I would evaluate the customer service from Dell as pretty good. The Indian support is not cooperative, and we ask to move to European support.

Positive

The experience of pricing, licensing, and setup costs is good. I have an account manager, a good account manager that helped me with all the maintenance, other requirements, and troubleshooting problems.

I have seen return on investment already, and it's a good ROI.

The cost is competitive with other vendors such as HP. I always compare prices between two vendors, and they are good in this situation.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) does not play a role in my organization's AI initiative. I have not supported features or aspects such as AI-driven data insight, automation, or advanced workloads; it's just storage. The size of my company is 10,000 users and approximately 1,000 servers. 

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

My primary use case for Dell PowerScale is to meet data storage requirements in the cloud. We use Dell PowerScale to store data when running GPU training.

Dell PowerScale's best feature is the solid support system. When we contact them about something we don't understand, they usually respond very quickly, which is extremely helpful. When we express our desire to perform some specific task, they provide answers through support, making that another area we find very helpful.

After implementing Dell PowerScale, the positive impact on my company is that before, we only had one type of storage we could offer to customers. Now we're able to provide them with options. The biggest benefit of being able to offer customers options is cost. The other vendor's product has very high performance, but because of that, the price is also high. Some customers don't need that level of performance, so we can offer Dell PowerScale, which has better cost performance.

I would appreciate seeing improvements in Dell PowerScale, particularly because it has been weak with small file writes. Recently, Lightning was released, so I'm expecting improvements in that area. At this point, I'm mainly interested in the specs of Lightning.

I have been using Dell PowerScale for three years.

Regarding the stability of Dell PowerScale, we've had few failures so far, so I think it's particularly good.

As for the scalability of Dell PowerScale, we've already expanded it once or twice, so I think the scalability is more than sufficient.

Dell PowerScale's support system is very strong, so I do recommend it. For that reason, I think people should consult with Dell.

We haven't switched to any other solutions at this time; we're currently using DDN in parallel.

Before selecting Dell PowerScale, we did consider DDN.

In terms of random read performance, I find that Lightning, which has recently come out and is newer, piques my curiosity. However, as for my current use cases with Dell PowerScale, there's nothing in particular.

I feel that the reliability and availability of Dell PowerScale have positively affected my company's data operations as it's running stably, and we haven't had service outages or anything of that nature, so it's been very helpful. Regarding the operational efficiency and ease of use of Dell PowerScale, I actually did the racking and cable connections, and it was easy to use.

In terms of expected developments for enterprise data management going forward, Lightning is the biggest factor. Many of our customers have workloads with frequent small data writes, so we're hoping that area will improve. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is used as a NAS in our Media Asset Management system, which was the first one, and we have another that covers the graphics computing department, serving different departments, but the main idea is as production storage.

We use AI but primarily from cloud providers, as we don't utilize our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) on-premise storage for AI demands; when we have workloads using AI, we use AWS or other providers, while our main purpose for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is to manage video files for editing in our production system.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has powerful security, which makes it a very reliable storage solution for our content, and also the support and observability of our system; the call home feature is fantastic because when it presents an issue, Dell automatically opens a ticket regarding any warnings or alerts, allowing us to have a complete view of our system's health.

We have daily reports delivered by email regarding network performance and client actions, showing if our storage has presented some issues; fortunately, we don't have many performance issues since if something goes wrong, our customers contact us, and thankfully, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has never presented an issue in production, confirming its reliability.

We realized significant improvements by consolidating various silos that previously did not communicate well, drastically enhancing time and cost efficiency, although I cannot quantify a specific number at this moment.

Regarding areas for improvement in Dell PowerScale (Isilon), I currently cannot recall any particular feature needing enhancement since it has undergone many improvements over the past ten years, including advancements in file filters and extensions; if needed, I can check with my colleagues, but they do not seem to remember any points for now.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) since 2017, having had two models; I started with the Isilon X410, and after that, I made a tech refresh with the All-Flash PowerScale H700 model, so it has been nine years I have been using it.

In terms of stability, I would rate it a nine out of ten since I have never experienced significant issues.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a scalable solution for our business, and I would rate its scalability similarly at eight out of ten due to its ease of scaling.

I would rate Dell's technical support an eight out of ten, reflecting my overall satisfaction.

Positive

The deployment was initially challenging due to a lack of familiarity with the product, but after the tech refresh two years ago, the subsequent implementation was much smoother, especially thanks to helpful technical and administrative training I received.

The first implementation took nearly three weeks to one month due to numerous discussions and technical configurations, as our biggest system has 28 nodes from Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

My role with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is as a technical supervisor, where I manage the system along with my team, which is responsible for a lot of access rules and the rights to access, and we do manage it accordingly.

I cannot provide a specific percentage for the return on investment from Dell PowerScale (Isilon); however, we realized significant improvements by consolidating various silos that previously did not communicate well, drastically enhancing time and cost efficiency, although I cannot quantify a specific number at this moment.

I find Dell PowerScale (Isilon) to be cost-efficient, as we use it today with APEX, with some specific volume contracted, and this approach has been beneficial for us, with costs aligning well with what it delivers, making it a fair price for a powerful tool that meets all our needs.

We have tried NetApp in a node storage context and Facilis TerraBlock, but neither was ideal for us; we also worked with legacy systems such as Avid ISIS; overall, we have established that Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is our primary choice due to validation from our Media Asset Management software, which preferred Dell for its features.

My advice for others considering Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is to ensure all requirements are met and to consult with the Dell team to address any potential issues; it is a trustworthy product without concerns, and understanding the configuration options is crucial since it offers various types, so discussing needs with a Dell specialist is beneficial.

I would recommend Dell PowerScale (Isilon) without hesitation.

To achieve a rating of ten, perhaps the pricing could see improvement, suggesting it might be that aspect of the offering that needs some adjustment. My overall review rating for this product is eight out of ten.

We are using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) extensively to host data from our investigations at the Federal Police. We have to host data that forensic IT experts extract from hard drives and cell phones, storing it on Dell PowerScale (Isilon) to analyze it and provide feedback to justice. Regarding the use case specifically for AI, we are beginning now. We are trying to make our team use it, though we don't have a use case currently. We are planning to use AI for all the data that we will host to work with and analyze it, and the data will be on Dell PowerScale (Isilon). That's the future work we have with these other teams.

The most valuable features of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) are its multi-protocol purpose and the performance it provides. It's very useful for many purposes and any other case we want to use, providing us with a really useful tool for our needs. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a platform that is very easy for teams to work with. We have many IT professionals who can use it very easily. It's not complex to meet its requirements, and it's useful in many aspects. We can work with data lakes, use NFS, work with a solution using CIFS, and we can even use S3 since we have bought ECS. This makes it very flexible.

Dell is thinking ahead about improvements. The features they are showing at this event are wonderful. The backup they will provide in the new OneFS will solve a major issue we are addressing now, so we don't have anything to add, but what's coming from Dell is really useful.

The performance of the equipment is so good that we don't need to consider an all-flash solution at this point, although with AI we might need to explore that in the future, but the hybrid solution performance is wonderful and adequate.

The support from Dell for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is really good. One of the points we appreciate about Dell is their approach to partnership; they want to help improve our institution because our work matters for our nation, creating a really good feeling about working with them. I would give Dell support a rating of 10.

We already have a background with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) because we had Isilon, so it was very easy to deploy and implement.

We have good system engineers who work with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and have knowledge, making implementation very easy.

I have seen a return on investment from Dell PowerScale (Isilon). However, the return on investment in government institutions is different. We see a high-performance storage return where we meet all the needs from our business sectors. We don't let them face challenges alone; we provide them solutions with what we have, which is very good.

It's very hard for us to specify and buy from a specific vendor. In our recent acquisition of the H7000, we considered NetApp and HPE as well. HPE also approached us, but the best solution that fits in terms of cost, performance, and all features was Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

Organizations considering purchasing Dell PowerScale (Isilon) need to assess their needs. If you really need something that can provide a multi-protocol solution with good performance, you should opt for high-end solutions such as the exceptional storage that Dell PowerScale (Isilon) provides. It depends on your specific use case. Dell is a very large company that we can work with, and the solutions they provide will help us in many ways. We have issues in Brazil with the procurement of solutions because we have to check the entire market and justify the pricing to our audit institutions, making it difficult to keep with the same vendor. However, we always try to get the best solutions and specify very specifically to fulfill our mission. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a 10.

We use Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for SMB and NFS storage. Our specific use cases involve SMB file storage right now, as we've got a lot of migrating from old Solaris to a lot of Red Hat 8 environments, moving from our old Unities and all that to now utilizing Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for all of our SMB stuff.

What I appreciate best about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is the UI and the use of scripting that we can implement with it to automate a lot of our workloads. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has benefited our organization overall by helping a lot of our end users more than the actual IT group, and it has been awesome.

Since our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is our own on-prem in-house built system, we don't have many up-to-date resources, and we're still a few years behind. We don't use much of the PowerScale yet with AI, though we have plans to work towards that in the next month or two. I would want to see more AI features with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

We have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) since we installed it in January of this year, and we've had it up and running, using it mostly for production stuff, for about two or three months now.

I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as perfect, as we haven't had any hiccups with it so far.

There are no specific scalability issues at this time.

I would evaluate the customer service and technical support for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as great. We've sent out emails at 6:00 in the morning and received replies at 7:15. We've been working with the same team for at least as long as I've been there, which is about two years, and this consistency has been awesome. If I had to rate them from one to ten, with ten being the best, I would definitely give them a ten.

Positive

Before adopting Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we were using a few old Unispheres, Unities, and PowerStore. Most of those were all end of life, which is why we made the change.

My experience when deploying Dell PowerScale (Isilon) was very straightforward, as we had Dell come on site to do all the actual setup, which was a big help.

The deployment took about a week and a half with a person on site getting everything ready.

In terms of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) specifically, we have seen a return on investment due to faster performance than our last few storage arrays, and the general usability is a lot better.

I don't have too much experience with the pricing, setup cost, or licensing. As a partner of Dell for a long time, Dell did help us a lot with the pricing.

We did consider other solutions before going with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), looking at PowerFlex within Dell itself, and I'm sure we'll move that in the next year or two, but we were pretty focused on Dell PowerScale (Isilon). We chose Dell PowerScale (Isilon) over PowerFlex because we didn't think we needed all of the usability that PowerFlex provides; we were more centered on just SMB and NFS storage for now.

If someone from another organization asked for my opinion on employing Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for themselves, I would say if they're working towards file storage, then definitely look into it. 

On a scale of one to ten, with one being best and ten being worse, I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a nine.

Dell PowerScale's primary use case for our organization is server virtualization.

I would describe the overall operational efficiency and ease of use of Dell PowerScale as satisfactory given our current testing phase. We purchased the entry-level model, so the speed is not optimal, but we do not require high speed, which is acceptable for our needs. Regarding efficiency, we have not yet started the service. We will begin our main service one month later, so I am unable to evaluate the other functions at this time. We have not yet conducted measurements on these capabilities.

I believe the support engineers need to improve their skills. In our case, the engineer provides adequate hardware support, but they lack expertise in supporting Dell PowerScale's API and Kubernetes-related APIs such as CSI API. Although Dell PowerScale can support Kubernetes API, our engineer does not possess the necessary knowledge in this area.

I have been working with Dell PowerScale for only one or two months since we purchased it two or three months ago. We acquired Dell PowerStore one month prior to that. The timeframe has been too short to fully evaluate the solution.

Dell PowerScale has demonstrated scalability, with our company having more than 30,000 people testing it.

I would rate Dell technical support as normal and not problematic. As I work in Korea, the server and related support is excellent, but the storage support is somewhat inconsistent.

On a scale from one to ten, I evaluate Dell technical support as six or seven.

I believe the product itself is adequate, but the Korean support engineer needs to improve their skills.

Before Dell PowerScale, we had already used Dell servers, but this is the first time our company has implemented storage from Dell.

The initial setup was easy because we received support from their partners, which enabled us to install it without difficulty.

We require approximately 50 administrators for this implementation.

To measure the effectiveness of Dell PowerScale, before we purchased the product, our requirement was efficiency of at least three times. We did not have many additional requirements beyond this efficiency goal and the project schedule and delivery timeline.

Regarding the price of Dell PowerScale, I consider it a budget storage solution.

We purchased Dell PowerScale from their partner. I provide this review with a rating of six out of ten.

The use case for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is for most applications, including policy management, end user needs, file management, forensics extraction, analysis, smartphones, and media applications.

The benefit to our organization from using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that we can execute our jobs and activities effectively because we have the necessary capacity. With this latest technology, we can execute our activities in a better form.

The most helpful feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is the integration with ECS, now called ObjectScale, because we can implement Tier functionality. This allows us to move data between hot areas and cold storage areas, which is a very good resource for us.

I would make Dell PowerScale (Isilon) better by improving SmartSync in the graphical user interface. Currently, everything has to be done through the command line, and I prefer having a graphical interface.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for six months.

I find Dell PowerScale (Isilon) to be very stable and reliable. We have not had any problems in six months.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) does grow with our business needs. We currently have Isilon, and with the purchase of Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we can expand our environment significantly. It is very scalable.

I have not used customer service and support for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) yet, but I don't anticipate that we will have any problems.

On a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a ten. It is perfect.

Dell PowerScale has been in use for approximately four months. Our main use case for Dell PowerScale is for AI, as we have several projects, and we really appreciate the availability, the data availability, and the power management.

Our AI project is about helping university staff work better, and Dell PowerScale offers very good data availability for the needs of our students and teachers.

Dell PowerScale plays a role in our organization's AI initiatives as it helped with automation and great data availability.

The best features Dell PowerScale offers in my experience are the availability and the storage management.

I appreciate the storage management because I can always manage the storage, and I can manage it better than other products.

Dell PowerScale has positively impacted my organization as the students and the teachers are much happier using our services. They used to complain about some availability of our servers, but now it is not a problem anymore.

We have measured fewer complaints and faster access to data.

I am very satisfied with the product at this time and do not see areas needing improvement.

I have been working in my current field for four years.

Dell PowerScale is stable.

Dell PowerScale's scalability is good.

The customer support is great.

We did not previously use a different solution.

Dell PowerScale integrates very well with our existing IT infrastructure for operational efficiency, and it had no problem integrating.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was fine, as the pricing was acceptable.

I have seen a return on investment in terms of time saved and fewer complaints, but we cannot really measure the money saved being a university.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing Dell PowerScale.

I would rate Dell PowerScale a 10 out of 10. I chose this rating because it is the best product I have ever used.

The performance metrics I use to measure success with Dell PowerScale include fewer complaints from teachers and students.

I would describe the overall operational efficiency and ease of use of Dell PowerScale as very easy to use, and I had no problems.

My advice for others looking into using Dell PowerScale is not to be held back by anything, as it is a very good product. Overall, I would give this product a rating of 10.

We were looking at getting a solution in for storage. I have worked with storage before, and I have worked with parallel storage systems more than NAS appliances.

I have worked with Lustre, PowerScale, and NetApp as well. I would describe myself more as a user of NetApp and PowerScale. I work with customers who work with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

We are a consultancy firm, so we also partner with Dell and we deploy and deliver AI solutions, and Dell PowerScale (Isilon) sits underneath those. This makes it very important to our operations.

The top three valuable features for me are the redundancy, reliability, and mixed NFS and Samba share, SMB sharing.

We use a tool called IOR, which measures the IOPS and the throughput for very tailored and specific I/O scenarios. This allows you to test it under different conditions.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is brilliant for scalability and really, really good in that regard. They are adding new features all the time, which I have not used yet, but they are adding RDMA technology. This provides really low-latency connections between the clients and the machine itself, which is really good for AI-type workloads as well.

The product is feature rich.

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

I have experience with others. No switching involved.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)  is very expensive compared to NetApp and compared to Nutanix as well.

The flash arrays, which are important for high-performance computing and AI initiatives, would be overpriced compared to some of their competitors.

Product support is great. There are definitely some challenges on deployment. Find a good partner to perform the deployment or be prepared to invest some time into the deployment.