Dell PowerStore Reviews

We have a large Citrix environment and a large VMware environment, virtualized server infrastructure, and we use Dell PowerStore for our medical organization, so our imaging for x-rays and all those are stored on there, along with some backups. 

We're just exploring AI use cases for Dell PowerStore currently, as we're in the early stages of it. We definitely can see the potential of helping our medical staff come to conclusions quicker, also our financial team, which can get very complex with insurance and billing, and we're looking for opportunities there. We're also looking at opportunities in my field in IT to support staff more quickly, so there's a lot of potential across the board with supply chain issues and all that kind of infrastructure.

I don't have many features to highlight for Dell PowerStore. I do appreciate the warranty support side of it. When we've had issues, it's been easy to get them rectified. 

I have realized nothing exemplary from using Dell PowerStore, except hat the user interface is clunky, and we've had issues with that. 

The interface of Dell PowerStore reminds me of the Cisco mentality where it's just boxes moving around as you're clicking; it's not easy to understand what you're trying to do, and you have to have solid documentation to navigate the system and make changes to ensure you're not jeopardizing your system as you present and remove storage and expand LUNs. 

Some other vendors in that space are innovating in that area, making lives easier for engineers, however, it seems the Dell PowerStore solution doesn't cater to that need, and I'm seeing more and more that my colleagues in other organizations are experiencing the same problem and turning to other more user-friendly solutions.

The organization has been using Dell PowerStore for 15-plus years, maybe longer.

They're very stable; our infrastructure stays up, and we very rarely have any outage, occurring approximately once every three years.

Dell PowerStore grows with our needs and scales effectively. In the past, we've expanded our usage of Dell PowerStore substantially; in healthcare, we have to keep our data indefinitely, so we're always increasing our storage.

The support for Dell PowerStore is exceptional; I would rate it at probably an eight or nine out of ten.

Dell PowerStore is slightly more expensive than some other competitors when it comes to pricing, setup costs, and licensing.

In some cases, we haven't decided to purchase Dell PowerStore; we've been going with other competitors as in some cases it's easier and slightly cheaper. 

I'm not aware of other competitors at this level, so when asked about other competitors and their AI use cases, it's early in this world for many organizations, but Dell is leading it currently. If they're going to be using AI, this changes everything regarding Dell PowerStore. If it has built-in AI at the storage layer, at least the compute for it, that's only going to enhance that situation, and if your data's on-premises, that's a game changer.

We covered the cons of Dell PowerStore; as for the pros, we have a strong relationship with Dell and that partnership, and some of the innovations we're talking about today sound interesting to me. There's a good reputation there, and we've had great success with support.

I would rate Dell PowerStore as a solution overall at a seven out of ten.

The use case for companies to buy Dell PowerStore is that it's an all-flash storage, which is needed to save their data or applications that demand faster responses. They brought it because the read and write operations of Dell PowerStore are extremely high, and the IOPS are very good compared to the other Hitachi level storage.

Dell PowerStore helps the organizations that I sell to by allowing them to buy less storage and store more capacity, which helps them save costs. Additionally, it's very durable and priced appropriately, which helps the organization to save money.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is the data compression, which is extremely good, having a data compression ratio of 5:1 that rarely other storages have in the market. This feature is very good compared to others.

What makes the data compression feature of Dell PowerStore so good is that if you need to store, for example, 100 TB of storage, you just have to buy 1/5 of it, the capacity, and then you can store that data. The compression features in the storage make it very special compared to others, apart from the day-to-day, normal data retrieving capabilities such as data deduplication, which this has something more that no other storages offer.

I would suggest that Dell PowerStore could come with various other features, such as a hybrid model apart from only all-flash, which would really help the customers.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for the past four years.

Dell PowerStore has rarely had any downtime; I have never come across it having any downtime, and the technical support is extremely good, which makes it a good product.

Dell PowerStore does not meet the needs of a small organization; Dell has Unity which meets the entry-level or SMB segment. Dell PowerStore is for mid and high enterprise segments, catering to bigger customers. Dell PowerStore can grow with a small company or if the company has less than 2,000 employees; it can grow to meet their needs.

Customer service and support for Dell PowerStore are very good, so once customers buy Dell PowerStore, they always choose to buy it again since the performance is extremely nice.

Positive

Besides Dell PowerStore, we offer other solutions such as HP solutions, Lenovo solutions, and NetApp solutions. Someone might pick Dell PowerStore versus HP or NetApp because PowerStore has the unique compression feature that other products lack, allowing them to buy less storage and save more capacity.

All Dell products are quite easy to deploy and maintain.

The success metrics that companies use to determine their ROI for Dell PowerStore are based on the kind of performance they get or the returns they see once Dell PowerStore is deployed, which are quite substantial since they always look at expanding it in the near future. They don't only buy it for a specific application; once they see the performance, they try to utilize it for all other applications as well.

The pricing of Dell PowerStore is a bit high, as it is not an entry-level storage, so it is priced higher than it should be.

The companies I sell Dell PowerStore to are extremely happy, as they keep expanding it and keep buying more shelves to expand the storage. 

A con for Dell PowerStore would be if somebody has standardized on certain products, such as only buying Dell or HP products, which might lead them to choose HP instead. HP is losing a lot of market share because of Dell PowerStore, as they do not have a product that can match it. 

I rate Dell PowerStore nine out of ten.

The main use case for Dell PowerStore is that it hosts our production base and the virtualization infrastructure.

The best features of Dell PowerStore are the cluster and the synchronization, which is far better than the technology we were using. It was VPLEX, and it was quite complex with a bunch of more equipment, SAN switches, and the link between the sites, the bandwidth, and the time to converge both systems to the same state whenever we had a network problem. It used to take 6 to 10 hours to synchronize the storage. Now it's much more reliable and faster.

Dell PowerStore has positively impacted our organization by improving the user experience. We were having issues with the hybrid storage we had in the past, so we decided to go to an all-flash solution, and it made it possible to give a better experience because we were having heavy delays on the applications. We had to make some tuning on SQL Server as well, but we got into a limit that it was necessary to move to another technology or to a faster technology.

I have two years of experience with Dell PowerStore.

We are clustering multiple Dell PowerStore appliances with two active-active clusters.

I would rate Dell's technical support or customer service a 10.

Moving and optimizing workloads within the cluster became easier with Dell PowerStore. It became easier because we had a VNX, and it was quite tricky to set up. It's much easier now.

The initial setup of Dell PowerStore is complex, but it's not as complex as the previous version.

I think the pricing or setup cost or licensing of Dell is fair.

We have two storages; we have an object storage that stores all the objects such as PDFs and other kinds of documents, which is a Dell storage, a DCS. All other storage is supported by Dell PowerStore, approximately 70-80%.

Dell PowerStore definitely meets our company's needs. We are a public company, a state company, so we are very regulated in privacy and other requirements. It helps significantly.

I have been able to consolidate our data using Dell PowerStore. As far as non-technical improvements, there's a niche market in Brazil for Dell PowerStore, so more players would be nice. They are good because of the response time, the knowledge, the attention, and the supply chain.

I don't have any issues with storage, so if it doesn't give me any problems to resolve and doesn't bring me issues to solve, it's excellent. I assess the management capabilities of Dell PowerStore as pretty easy. The initial setup with SAN storage is always complex, requiring setting up ISL and all the back-end equipment, but once you've done that, the setup to provide storage and manage everyday activities is pretty easy.

Regarding the insights offered by APEX AIOps, CloudIQ, I've been receiving some reports. Every week I have a report in my email, so it's good.

Overall, I would rate Dell PowerStore a 10.

My overall use case for Dell PowerStore is amazing, and the most valuable feature is yet to be determined.

Having one go-to array is helpful. Management likes simplicity. Management likes knowing that we made a good valuable decision long term that we can grow with. For the accounting team or the purchasing team's perspective, seeing the exact same array name helps them. Knowing that through our providers, our e-resellers, we're using the same platform helps to expedite our process.

Dell PowerStore is amazing. That said, the most valuable feature is yet to be determined. 

Dell PowerStore has benefited my organization overall, and I would assess the timeframes to deploy it as efficient.

If I could improve the product in any way, I would add features that make it look nicer compared to the DisplayPort.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for an amazing amount of time.

I haven't experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues, which is amazing.

I find the solution to be scalable. It gives the impression that it can grow with my company. 

Working with Customer Success, or technical support, has been a positive experience for me, and I would evaluate them overall as amazing. On a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, I would rate this support as a ten.

Positive

I have evaluated other solutions both inside the Dell portfolio and outside.

The deployment is expedient. The time frame to deploy maybe takes weeks. 

In terms of AI, I have done some AI initiatives that I find amazing. My organization is large, and we have a significant number of employees. My impression of the stability and reliability has been positive. 

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

I use it in the financial sector for banking, specifically for core banking applications, to serve our applications. We served different types of customers, ranging from oil and gas to the financial sector, education, and healthcare. We deployed Dell PowerStore in different industry segments, such as manufacturing and retail, for example.

The most impactful benefit is the data reduction and the deduplication.

Replication is easy to implement, and you don't need higher bandwidth to do replication across sites. It's quite useful.

The most impactful feature is the data reduction. Data reduction significantly saves costs. If I purchase, for example, twenty terabytes of storage, the effective capacity gives me somewhere around eighty terabytes. I pay for ten terabytes but gain eighty terabytes or fifty terabytes, for example. It depends on the type of data I am storing on Dell PowerStore, but usually, the reduction ratio is very good. It's a fantastic feature.

I have read about the new ability to cluster multiple PowerStore appliances and it sounds like a very good feature.

Its management capabilities are very strong. It is easy to implement and very easy to manage. The interface is very user-friendly.

Dell AIOPS is quite useful. It sends helpful notifications. It tells you what bottleneck is in your storage environment. It gives you detailed orientation of why you are getting a bottleneck and where the problem is. 

We have been able to consolidate data using PowerStore.

PowerStore's compression and duplication technologies are very important and useful. It's a good feature.

The data resiliency and cybersecurity are good. It covers all the aspects that modern storage should have. 

The PowerStore cybersecurity and resiliency features meet our organizational needs.

PowerStore's built-in integrations for VMware are beneficial. It has all the features that need to be integrated into the environment. It's well aligned and tightly integrated.

One challenge in clustering is that when I create a cluster, the overall pool doesn't increase. Separate pools must be created for each controller node in the cluster. For instance, if I am creating a four-node or four-controller node cluster, I will have four different pools. If I want to enhance a pool beyond the maximum capacity of one controller node, I cannot increase it and must create a separate pool. This is a drawback in Dell PowerStore clustering. 

Synchronous replication covers the entire replication process, but there are scenarios where implementing synchronous replication is necessary, and that feature is missing. Pricing must also be considered, as Dell PowerStore is quite expensive compared to competitors in the market like HPE Alletra, Huawei Dorado, or Hitachi storage, for example. It is quite expensive price-wise.

Feature-set wise, PowerStore is very rich. I think all of the necessary features are there. Price-wise, PowerStore is quite expensive compared to the competition in the market like HP Alletra, Huawei, or Hitachi storage. Dell is more expensive. 

Competitors come in with better pricing and a similar feature set. Customers who already have PowerStore are very satisfied but when it comes to new storage requirements or a tech refresh, customers consider other options as well because of the price.

I have used the solution for roughly five to seven years.

It's very stable.

Scaling up is quite easy, whereas scaling out my storage requires deployment in a clustered manner from day one. If it's not deployed in a clustered manner and I want to scale out, I cannot do so. Careful planning is required at the start of implementation to determine if scaling out will be needed in the future. If this is not addressed in time, I will have to start from scratch, which is a daunting task. There are challenges with scaling out if the environment is not prepared at the initial deployment. Otherwise, it is straightforward. It is very useful, as I can add drive storage incrementally instead of a large batch of disks each time. It is both very useful and cost-effective.

Dell technical support is very good. They reach out to me promptly, deliver replacement parts quickly, and have local depots in three different cities across the country. Overall support is good.

Positive

There are two major aspects when it comes to the setup. One is the migration from existing storage, and the other is how fast I can complete the initial setup of Dell PowerStore. From a migration perspective, Dell PowerStore has the capability to migrate data from existing storage, even from other brands. The second phase is the initial setup, which is very straightforward. In a few steps, I am ready to set it up. Then, in the third phase, configuring replication, it is very straightforward and can be done in a few clicks. In all three phases—from migration to initial setup and to replication of the DR side, or the secondary side, or a third site—Dell PowerStore is easy to install and implement.

When I plan a tech refresh, other competitors offer better pricing with similar feature sets. This is a challenge for customers who are already satisfied with Dell PowerStore. However, when it comes to new storage requirements or a tech refresh, I consider other options as well.

Normally, Dell PowerStore is an NVMe storage, but it does not offer all NVMe protocol support like NVMe over RoCE, NVMe over fiber channel, and NVMe over TCP while other competitors do offer various connectivity options that Dell PowerStore lacks. For example, it lacks F5 and NVMe over RoCE and NVMe over fiber channel. Although it's NVMe-ready storage, it is not end-to-end NVMe ready from a technical angle.

My advice to anybody considering PowerStore is that if you need a scale-out feature in the future, you should consider it from day one. If Dell PowerStore is set up as a single appliance, scaling out will not be possible. This is the main point that needs consideration. 

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use Dell PowerStore for VM storage.

The solution is resilient and reliable. The support is very good. It performs fast with excellent IOPS. Their deduplication and compression ratio features are excellent.

The pricing is really good.

The enterprise support is brilliant and cannot get any better. As technology and data rates increase, they are also going to increase. More IOPS will increase.

Artificial intelligence will likely be incorporated in later, newer versions.

The current Dell PowerStore has been in use for three years. Prior to that, Dell EqualLogic was used.

The support is very good. The enterprise support is brilliant and cannot get any better.

We used Huawei before implementing Dell PowerStore.

The installation was performed with three technicians and was very straightforward.

The implementation was done by three technicians.

There has been a definite return on investment with Dell PowerStore, approximately 60 to 70% ROI.

The pricing is really good. There is an additional fee to extend the warranty, but it is not excessive.

We evaluated Huawei before choosing Dell PowerStore.

A reliable storage solution was needed for datastores. The reviewer prefers to remain anonymous along with their company name.

Overall rating: 10 out of 10.

We are resellers and Dell partners, so we install Dell PowerStore for our customers.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is its easy-to-use feature, specifically the simplicity. What makes Dell PowerStore simple is that users don't have to worry about the storage group; they just set up the storage and are ready to go without worrying about which kind of RAID group to set up or the protection of this group, as everything is managed by the storage itself.

The first benefit of Dell PowerStore for my company is the speed and low latency with low latency working workload of the storage. The second feature is the security, because it has Secure Snapshot and other security features, ensuring the data is fast and protected in a good way.

I would improve Dell PowerStore by enhancing the replication feature because currently, users are limited to one applier, from one cluster, a Dell PowerStore cluster, to another Dell PowerStore cluster, but are not able to configure a three-site scenario. 

The second improvement would be to enable quantification of the snapshot footprint. 

The replication feature mentioned is what I find missing in Dell PowerStore.

I have been using the product for about four years.

The overall stability and reliability of Dell PowerStore is very good because I perform many upgrades without any downtime.

The solution is scalable. Dell PowerStore has features that specifically cater to the needs of small or medium business organizations because users can choose small size disks that are scalable to the smaller size of some companies.

I would evaluate customer service and tech support as fair. Nine out of ten times when I open a case, it's solved in the right time and in the right way, but there could be one out of ten times when it takes longer than expected.

Positive

Before using Dell PowerStore, I used Compellent, which is the generation before Dell PowerStore. It still has some features that are not included in Dell PowerStore, but I hope that the gap will disappear in time.

For lower budget needs, I have considered other solutions that aren't Dell, such as ME products, which are the main two products we use, choosing the right one with the right budget.

Dell PowerStore has grown with my company. We already have some customers who buy upgrades to their storage, in terms of expanding the size or buying new models. 

Dell PowerStore has supported our growth and operational success by providing a deeper discount, which is great from a selling point of view. We also received a demo unit, which is a storage we can use in a customer environment without any strings attached, so the customer can try the product before buying.

My advice to organizations considering Dell PowerStore is to start small because from both the perspective of speed and space, you probably don't need to buy a bigger Dell PowerStore because the performance is already there, even in the lower products. 

For space, you can always expand the one you have, so don't buy too much space, but the right amount for you at that time, and then expand if you need.

I would rate the overall Dell PowerStore product an eight out of ten.

Some of the primary use cases that we deploy Dell PowerStore for is for fairly normal infrastructure things. We have one offer at the moment where we have a customer considering a replacement of Oracle database appliances with Dell PowerEdge servers and Dell PowerStore. 

It's for a utility company which requires strict governance standards. Furthermore, they are implementing Cyber Vault, which complements their end-to-end Dell infrastructure.

It is hard for me to quantify how Dell PowerStore has supported growth or operational successes for those companies because I'm not directly involved with the clients. 

We have had some successful projects in the last year from small to medium-sized projects. The notable aspect is not just from the customer's point of view. Internally, our project teams have confidence when they're working with that technology.

The biggest trust element is people are very happy to depend on a Dell infrastructure. When we talk to them about infrastructure, we will say, 'We need an infrastructure for a certain project.' 

We work with our Dell partner team to see which experts we need to get involved. When that brings Dell PowerStore into it, the features users appreciate include ease of use, security, dependability, and scalability. 

The natural progression of the Dell PowerStore family into bigger offerings and the integration between them is something that clients appreciate.

The initial setup was a bit cumbersome. 

We have been using the solution since shortly after product launch, with a range of clients having different levels of demand, and we tend to move with the technology as it advances.

Based on our experience with different customers, there has been uniform success rather than any issues. We are prepared to address any issues that might arise.

While I cannot comment extensively on the technical aspects, what's appealing to customers about Dell PowerStore is the scalability. They can start small, invest for what they need now, and have the confidence that when it grows, they will be able to scale with what they need.

I own the partnership and interface into the company, focusing more on that aspect than the specific technical details.

When we took over the clients, they had a real mismatch of solutions. They had a lot of HPE, some Oracle, and some generic equipment that they had acquired.

The initial setup was a little bit cumbersome. We had a bit of an adoption process internally. It wasn't immediately straightforward on day one.

We frequently engage the Dell account team or our own alliance team in the deal to ensure we get an SE who understands the specific business area and can adjust the offer accordingly.

I am not sufficiently involved with the projects to provide information about the ROI they actually see from implementing Dell PowerStore.

The pricing of Dell PowerStore is quite on point and very competitive overall. We are very in sync and in step, with our own account team and also with the account teams of our customers, which works out favorably commercially.

We have a focus on HPE or NetApp storage because that's their corporate requirement. We don't lead with these in discussions but have them available due to some client demands.

Make sure that you validate that Dell PowerStore is the right part of the Dell family. If it is, don't hesitate. 

Validate that with your Dell representatives. An SE can assess the exact requirements, or there might be a subject matter expert if it's a particular vertical implementation. Ensure you're on the right path before you proceed. 

Overall, I rate Dell PowerStore eight out of ten.

I am always hesitant to say something is a ten out of ten. There is always room for improvement. We see how they continue to evolve the product sets to match the evolving demands. In certain use cases, it's a ten out of ten, however, with the use cases changing every day, it presents different challenges.

Our use case specifically for Dell PowerStore is for our e-commerce and data saving purposes. For our partners, we are helping to build Dell PowerStore solutions because it's very easy to reduce the size of the data. It's possible to reduce the size of data five to one compared to other competitors, which is a huge advantage. It saves space in the rack and provides other benefits.

Dell PowerStore caters to the needs of small and medium organizations. From the technical perspective, it's a perfect product for SMB and enterprise customers because of its simplicity to deploy and run. It is easily manageable.

The five to one data compression with Dell PowerStore is valuable. This compression ratio is a huge advantage in the market. We are positioning this as the first valuable feature advancing beyond our other competitors, such as HPE and Lenovo.

From our region perspective, it would be beneficial to have support with local languages for Dell PowerStore. However, English is acceptable for us as it serves our needs.

We have been using Dell PowerStore for two years, and we are satisfied with the storage because it's possible to manage all parts of the storage and align it to our needs fully.

Dell PowerStore supports growth and operational success at our company and our clients' companies. We can operate fully and be ready at any time because of Dell services and support. The RMA rate is perfect for this product.

The benefit of using Dell PowerStore is that we have comprehensive and excellent support from Dell. While we haven't experienced any issues with Dell PowerStore, when we have technical questions, we receive prompt and efficient support from Dell services. This is the main advantage for us in choosing Dell PowerStore. We could have solved our internal problems with cheaper versions from other vendors, but we chose Dell PowerStore because of the additional services we receive.

Positive

Before Dell PowerStore, we used PowerVault ME5, but we only used it for half a year because we realized we needed a more advanced solution.

Dell PowerStore is a price performance product positioned as mid-range, making it the best fit for our needs.

We have not calculated the return on investment from implementing Dell PowerStore because we only have two Dell PowerStore units, making it difficult to count with such a small amount. However, since we can run our business fully online, I believe we have seen a return on investment, though I don't have specific numbers.

We are not currently considering any other solution besides Dell PowerStore. In the near future, we might implement an SCI solution, but what we have now is sufficient. For our partners, we sell and resell all Dell technology solutions, including VxRail, Dell PowerStore, PowerFlex, and PowerScale. We have competence in all these products.

Customer service for Dell PowerStore deserves a rating of nine out of ten, leaving room for improvement. Before Dell PowerStore, we used PowerVault from Dell, but we needed more efficient and advanced storage. Dell PowerStore as a mid-range solution, fits our needs very well. As a distributor, Dell PowerStore is the main storage and driver for our partners. Internally, we are building AI cases on PowerEdge servers currently. While we are not including Dell PowerStore today, we plan to do so in the future. Our partners are already using Dell PowerStore for AI purposes, with one recent case involving hospital image storage. 

I would rate Dell PowerStore 10 out of 10.

Dell PowerStore is our Tier 2 storage used for general-purpose servers and applications.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore, compared to previous products, is probably the ease of installation and upgrades. 

The benefits our organization has received from installing Dell PowerStore include a smooth transition from previous storage, Unity and previous Dell storage, making for an easy migration.

One of the big differences when we were looking at Pure is that they had more of an in-place upgrade option going forward, kind of future-proofing things. We hear Dell is working towards that, but they weren't quite there, especially three years ago.

We acquired our first Dell PowerStore three years ago.

In terms of reliability and stability, everything has been stable with Dell PowerStore, so I cannot complain.

Dell PowerStore has had no problem scaling to our needs. We have expanded a couple of times in the last few years and had no issues.

If I were giving advice to another company looking at Dell PowerStore, I would say that you cannot go wrong with Dell, as the sales and support teams are always top notch.

Positive

As a long-time Dell EMC customer, we did look at Pure Storage as well, but we ended up sticking with Dell.

We had a Professional Services engagement that helped with the installing and configuration of Dell PowerStore. My experience with Professional Services for Dell PowerStore was good, smooth, and without problems.

The return on investment from Dell PowerStore has been as expected.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate Dell PowerStore an eight overall.