Dell PowerStore Reviews

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.

We are using Dell PowerStore for block storage to run Oracle databases, and we are using it for file servers with replication, and a lot of VMware data. By VMware, I mean it is all Windows-based applications we are using it for. 

We are currently using two models of Dell PowerStore: 3200 and 5200.

Benefits of Dell PowerStore compared to Unity 400 and 650F, which we were previously using, are significant. Firstly, we benefit from extensive deduplication for non-database applications, which saves us a considerable amount of costs. Secondly, the performance has improved dramatically due to advancements in technology, such as TLC disks and NVMe technologies. These two factors, cost savings from deduplication and enhanced performance across applications, are the primary benefits we are experiencing.

Dell PowerStore has not helped our company improve operational efficiency to a great extent, because that depends on administrator tasks; operational efficiency is mostly from provisioning and using it through block, but then the benefits are mostly with TCO and performance.

The most valuable functionality we find in Dell PowerStore is deduplication, which saves us a lot of cost with a dedupe ratio of 4:1, good when compared to Unity of 1.6 or 1.7, allowing for almost 2x or 3x cost savings for us. 

Replication is also more simplified, so we are happy with the replication feature, which is easy to configure and manage. 

It's simple and easy to use.

There should be improvements in Dell PowerStore regarding scaling up and scaling out. When it's a cluster, provisioning is basically not automatic, and it doesn't do LUN balancing, so that automatic feature of LUN balancing between the cluster should be looked into.

I would like to see more user-friendly reporting on provisioning, LUNs, and more extensive reporting usages in the next version of Dell PowerStore, as that would help us.

Another area that should be looked into for Dell PowerStore include our current use of TLC disks; we cannot expand our cluster with a QLC disk, leading to some problems.

We primarily use Dell PowerStore for mid-range applications, and we are satisfied with its performance in that context. However, we have tested it with high-end applications that have significant performance requirements. In one instance, a single PowerStore array provided only 3 to 4 GBPS, which was not satisfactory. For applications requiring 15 or 20 thousand IOPS, PowerStore performs well. However, when an application needs around 50 thousand IOPS or 3 GBPS transfer rates, there tends to be noticeable lag.

I have been working with Dell PowerStore for close to two years.

I would rate the stability of Dell PowerStore as a seven out of ten. When it's clustering, it's not straightforward rebalancing, and there's a lot of tasks that need to be done to keep the array more performance-oriented.

Technical support is good, and I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Positive

We have worked with HPE, and compared to HPE, we believe that Dell PowerStore is good. We have also worked with Nutanix, which is also very good, and we feel Nutanix performs better than Dell PowerStore, while HPE is a little lagging in this area.

Single-node deployment is a little easy. Multi-node clustering takes a lot of understanding. It should be simplified.

We purchased Dell PowerStore through a partner. We do in-house deployment for Dell PowerStore, and Dell Technologies is always the implementer for us.

In terms of lifecycle management, we are connected through ESRS for Dell PowerStore, and all those reports get back to us from Dell EMC. We have our account manager who periodically schedules these upgrades.

The price of Dell PowerStore is decent. It provides good value, and it is a fair value product.

We have a two-node cluster. We are not directly using Dell PowerStore for optimizing workloads; basically, it is more of Oracle and SAP applications, only these things we are using it for.

We use Dell PowerStore for both Linux and Windows. They have an equal footprint. We have integration with Kubernetes. 

Overall, I would rate Dell PowerStore a seven out of ten.

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.

My main use cases for Dell PowerStore include VMware loads, VMware workloads, and virtual servers.

The features of Dell PowerStore that I appreciate most are simplicity in the management area, performance, and the user interface for management, which is intuitive and straightforward.

Dell PowerStore's simplicity has benefited my organization because I have worked with several SAN products before, and they have been complex to configure and add, for example, LUNs and connect them to different data centers. I experienced challenges in training new administrative users to use the SAN in the past, but with Dell PowerStore, the process is more straightforward.

Dell PowerStore has impacted my organization in terms of performance and operational efficiency because I spend less time managing Dell PowerStore than I did with my previous experience with other SAN vendors and SAN models.

I have been able to consolidate data using Dell PowerStore, and the data reduction rate is as Dell has informed us, so it is according to the plan, though there is no other consolidation.

I cannot identify specific areas for improvement in Dell PowerStore. However, there is one feature I think they could have enhanced earlier—the ability to run file and block storage at the same time, which is already implemented in the later PowerStore models.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for five years.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the customer service a ten. I have had numerous support cases during my years in the IT field, and Dell is one of the top providers when it comes to customer support.

I do see a return on investment from having Dell PowerStore because it requires much less time and effort with storage management today, whereas it has been a struggle historically with all my other vendors.

The main factor for giving Dell PowerStore a nine instead of a ten is the price, but the value provided is strong.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerStore, we considered a couple of options, but we selected Dell because we use Dell servers and Dell clients, so we trust Dell.

The Dell PowerStore model I use is a 1200T.

Dell PowerStore in my environment is standalone.

Dell PowerStore meets my needs, security-wise and otherwise.

I do not use Dell AIOps at the moment, but we are exploring it.

I am not enrolled in the Lifecycle Extension, which was called Anytime Upgrade before, but we are considering that as well.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Dell PowerStore overall as a solution a nine.

Dell PowerStore is used primarily for SQL Server storage, providing high throughput IO for databases.

I cannot answer what features my team and I like most about Dell PowerStore, as I receive suggestions from the sysadmin teams regarding the technology they prefer to use.

Dell PowerStore has benefited our organization through reliability, scalability, and trustworthiness, as it has been year after year the product that the teams constantly recommend.

Dell PowerStore has impacted our organization in terms of performance and operational efficiency, and I have had no complaints. I have been able to consolidate data using Dell PowerStore. The interoperability of Dell PowerStore receives no complaints from our team.

I do not think Dell PowerStore could be more reliable and more resilient, so I have no significant areas for improvement.

If Dell could improve the forecasting to help with budgets, that would be beneficial.

I have been using Dell PowerStore in our department for over ten years.

I have not talked to Dell's customer support about Dell PowerStore, only the sales teams.

I have seen no return on investment from Dell PowerStore, as we have no comparison, since Dell PowerStore has always been the channel we have been in.

Dell PowerStore gives me peace of mind. That in and of itself is a significant benefit, which is why we sometimes do not pursue extended support, as Dell PowerStore has always treated us well.

Regarding pricing for Dell PowerStore right now, because we are in the middle of budgets, it is impossible to predict where we will go in the first two, three, or four quarters next year; it is a nightmare, and nobody at Dell or any of the partners can really forecast accurately. In the past, it has been on par with what we have always wanted in our budget scenario.

I have considered other solutions besides Dell PowerStore, specifically an HP product that was brought to the table a few years ago; it simply did not pass muster when we compared it to the technical specs.

Everybody who researched it thought the reliability aspect of the HP product would have brought the cost down by twenty or thirty percent at the time, at the models being compared. However, through research and technical papers we reviewed, the point of failure was going to be too concerning, so we scrapped that idea. I want to sleep at night and not worry that I will receive a call in the middle of the night about something failing.

My role in using and managing Dell PowerStore is to approve the budgets. I do not know for certain what models we are using, the T or the Q, regarding Dell PowerStore.

I know that they are clustered in the context of Dell PowerStore. I have no experience with the data resilience, availability, or cybersecurity features of Dell PowerStore, as that is a different department.

We do not use AIOps in connection with Dell PowerStore. I am not enrolled in Lifecycle Extension with Dell PowerStore. I do not know the ratio or the rate of compression regarding Dell PowerStore.

On a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, I would rate Dell PowerStore a ten at this point.

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.

Our primary use case is high-performance Block Storage. Currently, our Dell PowerStore arrays operate as standalone units supporting our traditional infrastructure, specifically for VMware datastores.

Looking ahead, we plan to integrate these arrays into more advanced DAP environments. While our current footprint is focused on virtual machines, our roadmap includes leveraging the PowerStore’s block storage capabilities for containerized workloads, ensuring a seamless transition from legacy to modern data architectures.

The primary improvement to our organization lies in the solution’s reliability and invisibility. For us, the greatest measure of success is a component that performs its job so consistently that we simply don't hear about it. Aside from proactive disk replacements, the PowerStore requires minimal attention; we scale capacity and present datastores as needed, and it just works.

Regarding future improvements or upcoming versions, I cannot provide a definitive answer today. As we do not yet have a full A-to-Z view of the product roadmap or the specific implementation constraints, we are awaiting the next vendor presentation to evaluate how future features will fit our requirements.

I have been working in architecture and storage for seven to eight years, with a year and a half at my client, I've known these products for a number of years, now actually using them for a year and a half.

Where I am, we face the challenge of having arrays that are already in place; I didn't choose to put in Dell PowerStore specifically at the start, but in the solutions that are going to be presented to us, Dell PowerStore arrays are apparently included. We're waiting to see the feedback, knowing that, although I was doubtful at the beginning when Dell PowerStore came out because there were many problems, things have stabilized over time, so there's no reason for concern, and in the plants where we have them or where they're active, we have zero problems with them.

In terms of scalability, we haven't yet reached the critical size to scale up. 

Regarding deployment and my experience with the installation, we didn't do it; all I know is that at our place, we are very late on quite a few points, and in terms of deployment, that's a topic if we install some—part of the topics related to DRP and automated deployment, we want to bring that forward, and I understood that Dell PowerStore arrays allow automated deployment.

In my view, if a storage array requires constant monitoring or 'whispers in your ear' every five minutes with issues, it isn't doing its job. Because the sites currently running PowerStore are silent and stable, I consider the Return on Investment to be excellent. It provides exactly the peace of mind we are looking for.

Today, I don't yet have a use case where I've put a price on it, and it's true that for us, it's somewhat special; we have negotiated rates because we are a large group, so right now, I can't answer.

We consistently evaluate various solutions within the Dell portfolio. Our selection depends on the specific use case, our infrastructure history, and future requirements. We maintain an active watch on technology and remain open to evolving our stack as needed.

We have an extensive array of systems for storage. The size of my company is very big, with more than tens thousands employees.

In my opinion, this hardware does not play a role in the AI initiative in our organization. We have a project in progress and the hardware is not defined, but perhaps in the future it will be.

I give this product a rating of ten out of ten.