Dell PowerStore Reviews

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.

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.

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.

In my role, I am both the storage engineer and administrator and architect managing Dell PowerStore. Currently, we have two 3200T models and one 3000T model, which is a Gen 1, all running Dell PowerStore version 4.0 OS. 

We use Dell PowerStore almost exclusively for high-performance workloads, mostly Oracle, Microsoft SQL, and MySQL databases.

The thing that I appreciate the most about Dell PowerStore is how easy it is to upgrade; the upgrade process is very simple, and I really appreciate how easy it is to connect my hosts to Dell PowerStore, as the environment automatically detects new fiber channel HBA ports for all the hosts that we connect to.

Dell PowerStore has simplified my workload pretty dramatically as an organization. It is very easy to manage Dell PowerStore; we have other Dell products, such as Dell Compellent and Dell PowerVault, and the PowerStore is much simpler to use. I have experienced dramatic time savings with Dell PowerStore. I estimate that I'm probably saving six to 10 hours a week in management with Dell PowerStore.

I would really appreciate the ability to implement file on Dell PowerStore after I've already provisioned the environment, as right now I have to choose between unified file and block or exclusively block when I first deploy.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for three years.

I have experienced some downtime with Dell PowerStore, particularly due to a bug with Emulex HBAs during an upgrade process.

Dell PowerStore has been able to grow with and scale with the growing needs of our organization. We started out with just the 3000T, and then we bought one 3200T, and expanded to another 3200T for our production environment, slowly expanding as we need.

I evaluate Dell support as incredibly good, as I've dealt with a lot of support companies and found their service much better than others. Dell differs positively from HPE, as HPE support tends to be extremely proactive, but not as technically skilled, making my interactions with Dell support much easier.

Positive

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Dell PowerStore was that the Dell team was very open, and their expertise makes me want to only buy Dell products, even though the university requires multiple vendors.

I do not have any AI use cases on Dell PowerStore. I'm not sure if we're planning to use Dell PowerStore for AI workloads, but we are planning to use AI in the near future. As a university, we are still trying to figure out how to implement AI in our environment. T

he feature set of Dell PowerStore is extremely robust in comparison to other storage arrays that I manage, and I would appreciate feedback that makes the Dell ME storage arrays as good as the old Dell Compellents. 

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Dell PowerStore a 9.

Dell PowerStore is used in my company for storage for virtual machines and backups, and we are growing into working on doing stuff with large language models and AI. At the moment, we do not use Dell PowerStore for AI, but we're expanding into that business case. 

The business case for us when we actually do expand with Dell PowerStore involves real-time analysis of phone calls, providing solutions to our customer base when they connect in with problems related to X, Y, and Z. Here are some solutions you can try to reporting code review, and all the things.

The overall solution of Dell PowerStore benefits our organization by offering affordable and expandable products that meet the needs we have as we grow since we are a three-year-old company and our growth pattern has just been skyrocketing.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is its expandability and reliability. The user interface is really simple to get behind and makes it really easy to expand and utilize the tools. 

Regarding Dell PowerStore, the storage gateways and the tools that Dell has to monitor the storage arrays and the servers provide real-time issues and open up support cases that are very beneficial. 

The ability to just slap in another tray of disks and expand that storage as needed without a huge array rebuild is very beneficial for keeping the business running and expanding as needed.

Dell PowerStore supports growth or operational success for my business through the ease of transition for data growth as we continue to grow our product lines and storage requirements, having the onsite storage with PowerStore to grow into versus the rather salty premiums that one pays for additional storage through cloud providers such as SharePoint Online and OneDrive, which offers a more cost-effective path of growth.

If I could improve Dell PowerStore, I would suggest that integrations into backup platforms be a little more streamlined. We are a VMShop, so just a little more intuitive connections between those systems for advanced functionality such as storage level snapshots versus just the basic VML or VMware level snapshots when doing those backups would be beneficial.

At this company, I have been using Dell PowerStore for a little over a year, and in total, with all Dell products, it is closer to 12.

When it comes to stability and reliability of Dell PowerStore, I can affirm its reliability.

My experience with Dell's customer service and technical support has always been that they've been very helpful and gotten me to the solution I needed every time I've needed to use them. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Dell's customer service as a solid nine. There could be times when I need an answer quicker than I can generally allow, however, that's just more of my impatience and my emergencies not being everyone else's emergencies.

Positive

Before Dell PowerStore, we were using the built-in storage in the VMware server, which provided zero redundancy and expandability; we needed more storage than what the server could offer, leading us to look at on-site storage in the PowerStore.

My experience deploying Dell PowerStore was simple. I worked with a Dell Solutions Architect to help get the deployment in place, however, I have some familiarity with the Dell products, so I found it very simple to do the rack and stack, get the configuration going, and then build out my different storage pools and everything from there.

I worked with a Dell Solutions Architect to help get the deployment in place.

As for a return on investment with Dell PowerStore, I haven't calculated it to see if we've hit return on investment. It was a necessary physical need for onsite storage for running our virtual machines to avoid single points of failure in our phone system or other critical systems. 

From that standpoint, we've hit our return on investment because we don't have a single point of failure for critical business systems. The success metric I use regarding Dell PowerStore is that I no longer have that single point of failure.

With regard to the pricing and licensing of Dell PowerStore, it seems affordable compared to some of the other storage platforms; outside of doing something such as data domain, the expandability and scalability of what you need make the PowerStore a very palatable price point. 

You get what you need and expand as you grow. If you need to add another tray later down the line, the fact that they can support up to six trays of disks to meet your needs, and you can put in spindle disks or high-speed SSD disks to accomplish your tasks just makes it very palatable on the budget.

We did consider other solutions besides Dell PowerStore; we looked at a few other solutions provided by the vendor we were working with, a Dell partner, CDW, and my familiarity with the Dell product line and the price point made it the easy choice.

For organizations considering Dell PowerStore, my advice is to ask questions, even the ones that you don't think are relevant because what you don't know is often a decision factor that pushes your decision one way or the other. 

I see Dell products, including Dell PowerStore, growing with our future needs, as we continue to grow; we're primarily a Dell shop, with the exception of a handful of Mac devices needed for marketing. Dell is our primary source of compute and storage. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell PowerStore a ten out of ten.