Dell PowerStore Reviews

Dell PowerStore provides measurable benefits in performance because it uses all-flash disks while our old storage relied on mechanical hard disks. We noticed significant performance improvements between mechanical storage and flash storage, and I believe this represents a major impact.

Dell PowerStore has deduplication, but it may need more enhancement because in our case, it was not as efficient as Dell Data Domain. Dell PowerStore's deduplication ratio was 1.5 or two, so perhaps it needs some enhancement in that area. We experienced an issue when we upgraded the firmware of the disks. When Dell released a firmware version and we upgraded it, some disks failed as a result, so we did not upgrade all of the disks. Dell recommended replacing the failed disk afterward and canceled the firmware upgrade from their website because the upgrade had an issue.

From a features perspective regarding Dell PowerStore, the interface is somewhat slow and needs some enhancement. The web interface for Dell PowerStore requires some improvement.

I have been working here since 2010, which is 15 years now.

In terms of operation, Dell PowerStore has supported us and we have not faced any issues with it. In terms of speed and performance, it performs very well.

The technical support I received from Dell for Dell PowerStore was satisfactory. When we faced the firmware upgrade issue, we called them and they solved the problem. It did not take much time, but it was eventually resolved and they replaced the defective parts.

We faced a challenge while deploying Dell PowerStore with the partner in implementing NVMe because it was a new offering from Dell and the partner did not have sufficient knowledge to implement it.

During implementation of Dell PowerStore, we upgraded our virtual infrastructure from VMware 7 to VMware 8, and Dell PowerStore offered a new feature for implementing NVMe over Fibre Channel. This had a significant impact on performance and speed, but at that time, it was a new feature and the partner lacked sufficient knowledge to implement it. After conducting research and trials, we eventually implemented it successfully.

To be honest, the pricing of Dell PowerStore is somewhat high, but in terms of features and performance, it is suitable. My advice to other organizations considering Dell PowerStore is to select the suitable model because there is no one model that fits all organizations. Selecting the suitable model for each company and each specific need will be beneficial. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.

I use Dell PowerStore primarily for the main site, storing database data, and I also use it for data replication between two different sites. Additionally, there are sites where I have it as an independent storage box directly attached to the respective site. For other sites, I use it as shared storage between two different hosts in the data center or servers, employing it as block storage.

I have not clustered any of them; they are always independent per site.

Most of our clients are onboarded with Apex AI Ops, also known as Cloud IQ, to monitor most issues arising in the storage box. This simplifies the lives of these clients because initially we had an on-premise virtual machine that sometimes could go offline, but now it is cloud-based and monitored via AI. It provides different alerts, so I can easily know when a client's storage is getting full or if there's a faulty battery before the client even reports the issue to the support desk. I would say it's a helpful feature.

Dell PowerStore is more of a simplified Dell Unity. For now, I could say it is workable, where it is very easy for me, who supports different clients having these storage boxes, to operate on. I don't see much improvement, though if you look at Unity, we used to have the ability to upgrade the storage even with slight degradation, but looking at Dell PowerStore, it has improved with more detailed health checks than Unity. However, it refuses to carry out upgrades unless it's bypassed by the Dell support team.

Dell PowerStore is more simplified compared to Unity, and the first training I did was under Dell PowerStore. If I haven't forgotten, here in Uganda, I was among the first team to deploy Dell PowerStore, which is why I did the first version of Dell PowerStore certification.

I like the thin clones of Dell PowerStore because what happens with the clones in Unity is that they come much more as snapshots at the VMware level, whereas with Dell PowerStore, I can easily make it an independent volume from the base volume.

Compression and deduplication technologies are features that end users will not feel that much unless there's a very big difference. I once had a client who was using Nimble, HP Nimble, and when we moved them to VFlex, which is something that came end of life at Dell, there was small storage usage in Nimble, but when it went to the other side, there was very big usage due to the uncompression. These types of compression do apply in storage, but end users only feel the effect when they migrate from the platform.

Dell PowerStore has better performance considering it first came as an all-flash solution, unlike other products like Unity, which came with HDDs. In Dell PowerStore, most of the models I've worked with have come with NVMe disks, although initially they did have different interfaces that were not NVMe.

I work for a service provider company where I do support, and I have been supporting Dell PowerStore for almost four years, covering two different sites like between primary and secondary sites and also for some independent sites.

In terms of stability, I haven't seen any lagging or crashing. Dell PowerStore products are stable and I have not experienced crashing with these kinds of products.

I would say scaling up is still as easy as these other Dell storage boxes. I have not scaled out.

Technical support under Dell PowerStore, apart from the back-end Dell PowerStore node troubleshooting for partition being full, is just normal, easy tasks. I don't need to contact support unless a disk fails. I have some orders for failed batteries which I am still waiting on because I was told they are shipped via water.

Negative

I have used Dell Unity, Dell PowerStore, and Dell ME. I have experience with Enterprise Storage.

My initial deployment of Dell PowerStore was not difficult at all because I had prior knowledge of Unity, specifically Unity 380 if I haven't forgotten, so it was a very easy deployment. That client had only two servers connected directly to Dell PowerStore, making it very easy for me.

The last time I deployed Dell PowerStore was for a company called Ithuba from South Africa, and it took us about two days because we first rack-mounted on the first day on site. On the third day, I had to go back to do an upgrade on Dell PowerStore.

Regarding maintenance, we do blow out the dust from the front of the disks and also perform firmware upgrades in Uganda. Sometimes Dell calls us as service providers to inform us that a particular client has very old code that needs upgrading.

Dell PowerStore has a more simplified, user-friendly interface compared to the different storage products I have from Dell.

I am not familiar with Lifecycle Extension, formerly branded as Anytime Upgrade.

I rate it a ten out of ten due to its simplified interface, where even a new beginner can easily navigate. I simply click to access compute storage and volumes. My overall review rating for this product is ten out of ten.

My role in managing and using Dell PowerStore is that we have not yet adopted it, but I am exploring the possibility. I have not been using it at all.

I am not currently using Dell PowerStore models and am still in the evaluation phase, but we want to implement it and I have been exploring the systems.

I can provide examples of how this can benefit our company, especially for our unstructured AR data sources. Regarding how much I think it will affect our operations, we are really early in our AI factory steps, so I am not certain yet. However, we know where our bottlenecks are occurring, so I estimate Dell PowerStore could potentially improve performance by 30 to 40 percent in the future.

The feature I value most is the additional speed.

I would describe my experience so far with Dell PowerStore's data resiliency and availability as positive based on what I have observed. It looks good and represents an improvement over other solutions. The benefits my organization has realized from the life cycle extension program are positive, and I have used it to upgrade to the next generation version.

Dell PowerStore has not yet impacted my organization's performance and operational efficiency.

I have not seen any ROI yet.

I have not been able to consolidate data using Dell PowerStore yet.

I have been in my field for 15 years.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate customer service and technical support as a 10.

Prior to considering Dell PowerStore, we were using a mixture of NetApp and Cohesity to address similar needs.

I am not yet certain about pricing, setup costs, and licensing as I am not aware of those details.

The other solutions I considered before selecting Dell PowerStore included a mixture of various products. During the evaluation process, what stood out to me were the positives, which are the additional speed and the storage space. I have not seen any downfalls yet.

Dell PowerStore is used for storage purposes. Storage for SAP is provided by Dell PowerStore. Dell PowerStore supports our SAP environment for backups.

Dell PowerStore offers features that are easy to deploy and work very well. Dell PowerStore has positively impacted my organization by working effectively and saving a lot of time and money.

Scalability is one area where Dell PowerStore can be improved. Scalability can be enhanced as it meets our requirements currently, but in the longer run, scalability might be a concern.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for five years.

Dell PowerStore is stable.

Scalability can be improved as it meets our requirements currently, but in the longer run, scalability might be a concern.

The customer support for Dell PowerStore is excellent.

Positive

I did not previously use a different solution.

I had a good experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing.

The implementation definitely needs fewer employees.

I do not have specific numbers or examples that come to mind regarding the time and money saved.

I had a good experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing Dell PowerStore.

If others are evaluating Dell PowerStore, I would definitely advise them to consider it and highly recommend the solution. I rated this review a 9.

The primary use case that my clients need for Dell PowerStore is block storage for VMware and Hyper-V.

The most valuable features of Dell PowerStore are, in Germany, especially the Metro Volume, which allows for synchronous replication. Metro Volume is the most commonly used case in Dell PowerStore.

Having Dell PowerStore installed benefits these organizations because they have a fast solution. Dell PowerStore makes it fast; I believe it is the combination of the products from Unity and SC Series, the old Dell storage. It is a good combination and it has good software code. Everything is on NVMe, which is excellent.

It impacts their organization in terms of performance and operational efficiency by making it faster and more resilient.

If I could improve the product, better pricing would help, but it is not the easiest situation at the moment.

I have been using Dell PowerStore or working with clients using Dell PowerStore for six years.

Dell PowerStore is a stable product with no downtime.

My clients choose standalone because one system is enough.

I would rate the customer support a nine on a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best.

The problem with pricing is the competition; sometimes the price is too high.

My customers consider other solutions besides Dell PowerStore when they are looking at products. From the competition, they consider HP or IBM.

People mostly configure it as standalone.

My clients do not use Dell AIOps.

They go with Dell mostly because of the combination of PowerEdge and the complete portfolio, along with the support. I would rate this review a nine on a scale of one to ten.

My main use case for Dell PowerStore is for the storage of the Dell automated platform to let us navigate away from the hyperconverged infrastructure. I use it for our regular workloads and VMs and for large language model storage.

A specific example of how I'm using Dell PowerStore with my workloads and VMs is that we used it for the VSAN on the Dell automated platform, the vSphere, and we have also used it for a couple of large language models allowing them to connect to a larger storage array from a remote location.

The best features Dell PowerStore offers include scalability, redundancy, and a single pane of glass for updates.

The single pane of glass for updates makes my work easier as it allows us to find an easy way to maintain updates. It is not a large process and it requires a lot less work on my IT team.

Dell PowerStore has positively impacted my organization as it has allowed us to more clearly define the storage needs of each individual process or VM. Where before we had a hyperconverged infrastructure, now we are able to control the storage and data needs more effectively.

We have significantly fewer issues with unknown data space usage where now we can define individual use spaces for our VMs and for different scaled projects, which illustrates how that control has benefited our team.

Dell PowerStore could be improved by integration into the Dell automated platform, which would allow us to see it and perform the upgrades right from there.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for about six months.

Dell PowerStore is stable.

The scalability of Dell PowerStore is very easy to scale and very easy to add redundancy.

Customer support through ProSupport Plus is an easy resource to call when needed.

Positive

I previously used VXRAIL as a hyperconverged infrastructure and switched to Dell PowerStore.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been positive as it is a very easy model to follow and allows us to expand the nodes as needed.

I have seen a return on investment as we have been able to define storage areas, which allows us to prevent large language models and different workloads from taking up too much space and affecting the larger hyperconverged infrastructure. Now it is limited to only that area affecting a single area.

My advice to others looking into using Dell PowerStore is that it is a simple product that gives you a large return on feature sets. I give this product a rating of 10.

Dell PowerStore is mainly used as a core storage platform for scale-out and file storage with NVMe storage. 

Clustering multiple Dell PowerStore appliances is straightforward from a presales perspective, with everything managed from a single dashboard. 

The data resiliency features include single or double drive resiliency for quick recovery from drive failures. The NVMe SSD drives enable fast data rebuilding, replacing traditional RAID systems.

It provides efficiency. The solution uses NVMe platforms and NVMe drives, making it very fast when writing data. While NVMe can be costly, Dell enables always-on data reduction, which means data will be deduplicated with thin provisioning and compression to ensure efficient use of the platform.

With deduplication and compression always on, it offers data efficiency and saves space, which can lead to fewer rack requirements. It can be easily consolidated into half of the space, in turn reducing the power and cooling needs. It reduces the overall footprint by reducing the amount of data that we are managing.

Regarding security, Dell PowerStore includes integrated features such as encryption and anomaly detection to reduce attack surfaces. 

The performance has been good. I haven't had any complaints from customers.

The solution offers tight integration with VMware, Kubernetes, and containers through numerous APIs and tools. Tasks can be performed from vCenter or PowerStore Manager.

The beauty is the simplicity - customers can manage multiple workloads from a single dashboard with scale-out architecture. The new binaries for Dell PowerStore are built on microservices, so updates can be easily deployed on the appliance without hardware changes. In summary, it offers scalability, simplicity, and performance as its magic triangles.

The solution has a very efficient data reduction guarantee of 5:1 based on the workload, which is supported by Dell. The Dell support and services make it easy to sell and easy for customers to use.

It is also very easy to use. The solution is easy to maintain and scale.

Dell PowerStore has minimal areas needing improvement, as it is one of the best products in Dell's portfolio. However, migration services could be included, especially for Oracle migration. Additionally, more documentation specific to Dell PowerStore is needed.

My experience with Dell PowerStore spans five years, starting from its launch.

The solution's scalability is a ten out of ten. When needed, the appliance head can be changed for higher implementation. For example, when starting with 1200 and requiring more IOPS, the head can be upgraded through an in-place upgrade. The scale-out architecture and scale-up architecture give customers options to easily scale performance or capacity. Scale out adds additional appliances to increase performance for more workloads, while scale up adds drives to increase performance for certain workloads.

We have clients from small, medium, and enterprise segments. We have all kinds of clients. The models that we are selling depend on the segments. For example, SMBs mainly go with PowerStore 500T, which is a single appliance. Government or higher sectors take multiple appliances. They have recently launched a new appliance, 200Q, which is very popular because it has a QLC drive. For higher capacities, it is more convenient for the customer, with almost the same performance as well.

We have about five people working with this solution in our organization.

Technical support rates at a seven out of ten, primarily due to response time rather than knowledge. Issues arise when customers try to reduce costs by not purchasing the appropriate support contract or SLAs. This leads to customer satisfaction problems when they expect immediate fixes, but their contract specifies next business day resolution.

Neutral

Comparing Dell PowerStore with other vendors such as Pure, IBM Storage, and Unity, Dell PowerStore stands out for its performance and simplicity. Partners report that customers feel the difference with Dell PowerStore, experiencing higher performance and fewer administration tasks.

It's easy to deploy. The deployment process is straightforward and takes approximately half a day if pre-configured. The process is automatic and requires minimal cabling.

The pricing rates at seven out of ten as it is considered overpriced. Entry-level models are reasonably priced, starting around $30,000 for a base model with 6 drives. However, upgrades become costly - adding 6 additional drives can cost another $30,000.

While Apex AIOps is promoted for health insights and recommendations, I have not personally used this feature.

Overall, I would rate Dell PowerStore a nine out of ten, leaving room for further development.

My main use case for Dell PowerStore is block storage for VMware and virtual desktop infrastructure.

I use Dell PowerStore for my entire environment: production, QA, development, and virtual desktop. I also use it for disaster recovery.

My main uses for Dell PowerStore involve using it across my entire environment, and the data reduction is a useful function.

The best features Dell PowerStore offers are ease of management, setup and configuration, and also the monitoring with AIOps integration, which stand out to me the most.

The ease of management for Dell PowerStore makes setup and configuration straightforward because it has been one of the easiest storage systems I have ever had to set up and configure. It was very quick to get configured with a lot of it being automated.

AIOps has helped me when I have had to look for any performance issues across the stack from application to storage. It has helped me to efficiently get in and look at storage and rule that out as a bottleneck or a performance issue.

Dell PowerStore has positively impacted my organization because in four years of use now, I have had zero outages on my PowerStores, and that is the only system I have had that has had zero outages in a four-year period.

The reliability of Dell PowerStore has greatly reduced any downtime costs for my team, and the replication has increased my disaster recovery functionality as well.

I cannot think of anything that I wish was different or better about Dell PowerStore at this time.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for four years.

Dell PowerStore is stable.

Dell PowerStore's scalability has scaled very well for me so far. I have not had to increase very much; I have added a few drives, but that has been it, and it is as easy as adding a single drive.

Customer support has been fantastic so far.

I previously used the Dell SC series, and I switched because the SC series was end-of-sale.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was all a good experience.

I believe I have seen a good return on investment with Dell PowerStore, but I do not have any metrics to share.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was all a good experience.

Before selecting Dell PowerStore, I evaluated Pure Storage and NetApp. Performance and cost-wise, Dell PowerStore ended up being the leader.

My advice to others looking into using Dell PowerStore is that if you are looking for a great block-level storage solution, this would definitely be one to consider. I give this product a rating of ten out of ten.

Our specific use cases for Dell PowerStore at my company include all of our VMware virtualization, six clusters of five or six hosts each, Oracle clustered databases, and SAP hosts, totaling about 60 physical hosts hooked up to each unit, with performance being very good, and we are very happy. 

Currently, I do not have any AI use cases for Dell PowerStore yet. We might plan to implement AI use cases for Dell PowerStore, as I've been learning about it, and would say that most likely in the next six months, we're going to do a pilot using Dell PowerStore with some other hardware as well.

The most valuable features of Dell PowerStore for us are the top performance, which is very fast and efficient, and the user interface, which is very intuitive and easy to use for maintaining or creating LUNs or whatever else we might need to do. 

The benefits I have seen from using Dell PowerStore so far include taking advantage of Dell's Anytime Upgrade. It is now renamed but remains the same thing. Last November, I upgraded both units to the 9200s with no outage, and it was really amazing, along with the full Fiber Channel support, as our previous storage used to be FCoE, an older Fiber Channel technology. Now it's Fiber Channel 32, making Dell PowerStore instrumental in that.

I am very eagerly anticipating the next generation of drives, specifically the 30 terabyte drives, but beyond that, it's really been great, and I have no complaints or pain points at all.

I have been using Dell PowerStore since we implemented it in the summertime of 2021.

I assess the reliability and stability of Dell PowerStore to be very stable and reliable, as we have not gone down at all, and every maintenance window has gone without a hitch and been very successful.

Dell PowerStore scales very with the growing needs of my company, offering a four-to-one or five-to-one DRR promise, and while we're not getting quite that level of deduplication, we are very happy with its efficiency in compressing data and making better use of our SSD storage.

My experience with technical support from Dell has been pretty good, although I have occasionally encountered situations where the person I spoke to did not fully understand my issue, but I've learned to simply hang up and call again to usually get a better response. 

On a scale of one to 10, I would rate Dell PowerStore support as maybe an eight or nine, as there have been a few instances that were less than stellar, but overall, I am very happy with the support.

Before using Dell PowerStore, I had extensive storage experience with Compellents and Unity SANs, along with some others EqualLogic and PowerVault, and I found that transitioning to Dell PowerStore has been a very good upgrade, combining the best points from those solutions into one platform.

I have seen a return on my investment with Dell PowerStore. The cost savings come from being much happier with the faster processors that I installed with that Anytime Upgrade, and it's been trouble-free the entire time, with very high performance, as it has been designed and built properly, and we're very happy with that.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Dell PowerStore was that pricing was very competitive, as Dell went head to head with Pure, which is normally known to be a lot more expensive, and Dell won our bake-off between the two vendors because of price, value, and comparable performance to Pure.

In my evaluation process, I considered Pure and found the main differences are that Pure has an active-passive design with their controllers, while Dell PowerStore load balances amongst both controllers actively, allowing for better performance benefits. Pure's integration with their monitoring app was a little more polished than Dell's CloudIQ or AIOps, but overall, we're super happy with Dell PowerStore, especially given its more flexible lifecycle policy compared to Pure's more rigid three-year renewal requirement, which allowed me to take advantage of the Anytime Upgrade.

My role in managing Dell PowerStore is as the storage engineer for my company, where I did the proof of concept before purchase with Dell, and I also designed, implemented, specked, and deployed it myself. We are using a pair of Dell PowerStore 9200Ts in production, which is the top-of-the-line model, and the software version is 3.6.1.2, with plans to upgrade to the 4.X code soon.

The performance metrics I use to measure success with Dell PowerStore include IOPS, latency, and raw throughput for performance aspects, as well as the soft skills, the human interaction of having to create or change things, which has been a very smooth operation all the way through, with everything coming out perfect.

My advice for someone considering Dell PowerStore is to have a bake-off or proof of concept, as Dell is very good at putting their product into your data center for a try and buy, which helped us decide that it was the right product for us, and we really liked the equipment. I rate Dell PowerStore a perfect 10 out of 10.

Dell PowerStore is used for any storage of files and blocks where performance, scalability, and manageability are needed.

Dell PowerStore is used for any storage of files and blocks where performance, scalability, and manageability are needed. It is easy to use Dell PowerStore for optimizing workloads. Dell PowerStore is a scalable product, which is why three features are very important: scalability, manageability, and security. We have been able to consolidate different data using Dell PowerStore.

We are getting good data deduplication using Dell PowerStore's compression and deduplication technologies for our organization and our customers.

I do not think there are any weak points of Dell PowerStore; however, I believe more AI features are needed, and Dell is already working on it.

In future updates, I do not think any configuration is required for Dell PowerStore, but it might include cross-platform uses or less power usage. There is a high demand for storage and AI workloads, so saving power as much as possible would be beneficial.

I have been working with Dell PowerStore for almost two years.

The deployment of Dell PowerStore is simple if you have technical expertise and know the product well, making it very easy to use and deploy.

For installation of Dell PowerStore, it might take a couple of days. If you only consider installation, it is a couple of jobs, but if you consider end-to-end configuration and use, it might take a couple of days to complete the entire installation and configuration.

I do not participate in the deployment process for Dell PowerStore as it is done by a separate team, and we have a technical team who is responsible for those implementations.

One or two people are sufficient for deployment of Dell PowerStore; it depends on the size of the project. If it is a single or two boxes, even one person can do it, but if there are more boxes and more locations, then you need a bigger team.

There are other products which complement the data resiliency or cybersecurity features for Dell PowerStore, such as the Dell CRS solution, which helps us create a cyber-resilient solution for the data center use.

We are still working with Dell products in our organization.

We are working with multiple Dell PowerStore options in our projects, and some are standalone while some are on a cluster based on the project.

We are clustering multiple Dell PowerStore appliances. In some projects, we need just a couple of boxes and in other projects, we need a higher number of boxes based on the specific requirements.

I gave this review a rating of 10.