Dell PowerStore Reviews

We're addressing performance issues in our data center as well as the data duplication features to make sure we can be efficient in how we're storing data.

The main improvement has been storage efficiency. The price per gig of what we're able to store has been the biggest aspect the business has seen.

Some of the new features that are coming out, like vVols support are valuable. We're very excited about it. Currently, the features of replication and deduplication have been very important to us.

We've just heard that in the second half of this year, they will come out with support for vVols and the storage replication of those, which are new features. We're very excited about those. We've been waiting for them for a while.

It was very new when we first deployed it a year ago. Even just the upgrade processes and knowing what to expect, as well as documentation, could be more robust. We had folks that helped us through, however, we did have some bumps and bruises along the way.

I've been using a solution for just over a year. 

The stability has been solid for us since we deployed it. We haven't had any issues to speak of. A part failed somewhere, but it didn't cause any user impact, however, that's been the extent of it.

We tend to think of the users being our applications that are in there. However, in terms of the total global footprint of users, we've probably got 40,000 end-users, and probably 500 applications that run on top of it.

We are considering increasing usage. We have two other global data centers where it'll be deployed and then about 120 remote sites that we're just looking at now, whether we should make PowerStore our standard there or stay with the current unity.

My team was involved in the deployment. I know we had the pro deploy services that did a lot of the work for us. It took a little while to get updates done. It sat for a few months before our data center was ready to put it in. Other than that, the deployment went pretty seamlessly.

Once we actually had all the prereqs done, it was deployed within a week, it was probably just a few days even between the two sites. There were a couple of months of waiting, however, that was more on our side.

These were two new Greenfield data center builds. It was like starting from scratch with a partner and now we're migrating workloads into them. It wasn't integrating with anything that existed.

There was one person on my team who was coordinating with outside organizations to do some implementation work for us. He was a cloud/storage engineer.

In terms of maintenance requirements, there's one person who looks after things. We've got it integrated with CloudIQ from a management standpoint. It largely tells us when things need to happen, however, one person keeps up with updates, new firmware, and those kinds of things.

We did have outside assistance. We had Presidio as part of that deployment and we also had Dell's ProDeploy services. Both were very positive. They helped us understand both the prerequisites and what we needed to get started and then got us up and running effectively.

In terms of ROI, I don't have a good measure of it, however, I do know that we've seen definite improvements when we just compare what we've done in the past to what we're doing now. We've definitely seen improvements in terms of price per gig.

The great thing was the guarantee that came with it of the four-to-one deduplication ratio. That really helped with the pricing as well as the anytime upgrades. From a TCO standpoint, we were really able to see some benefits.

We did a bake-off between NetApp, Pure, and Dell. We've used EMC and then Dell storage solutions in our environment for years and have a proven relationship with the organization, as well as the product's capability.

We have a private cloud within our two new North American global data centers. We've looked at connectivity to both AWS and Azure, however, we really don't have any storage replication heading there at this point.

I'd rate the product nine out of ten. With the new features that'll be out in a few months, it just continues to get better.

I like this solution. This was built more from the ground up with new features in mind. In particular, some of the capabilities that are coming out in the near future are really going to set it in a class above what the others have to offer.

We use it to host all the VMware workloads in production. It has all the types of workloads that any data center would have, from AD to file servers as well as SQL, Exchange, and BI. It holds all our high-tier VMs.

PowerStore helps to simplify IT operations. At the site where it is installed, we have consolidated two tiers with the high-IOPS and lower tiers. We have enough capacity with lower power consumption and enough performance to handle the required overload.

It gives us the capacity and the performance we need. Before, things were on 10K disks, while this is flash. There is a very big difference. Previously, we were connected directly, with a back-to-back connection between servers and storage. Now, we have multiple servers connected to SAN switches and those switches are connected to the storage. For sure, the performance of the system is sky-high. In terms of IOPS we are fully satisfied by the PowerStore.

We use the solution’s built-in VMware hypervisor to run VMs and virtualized applications, directly on the storage appliance. We manage multiple sites and we don't have enough teams to allocate support at all sites. So our support team handles all our sites. It's very important for us to have a consolidated infrastructure that we can manage remotely, without needing someone available locally to do the patching/power-up/creation and life cycle management tasks. Having this box, along with the integration with VMware, and VMware's capabilities, gives us what we need.

I like the performance of the PowerStore. When you talk about PowerStore, it's mainly about flash systems and high-end IOPS. The 1000T is a midsize box, in terms of the way the vendor positions it, but it is more than enough for our needs. At the site where it is located, there are about eight servers connected. The high IOPS support our needs. It is very performant.

We have an issue with the integration of this box and VMware. I have downloaded so many books from Dell EMC's website. We created the volumes as VVols. The information they gave us said we would directly see the capacity. Unfortunately, that is not true. You only see it after you put data on it. When you create the volume but there is no data, you don't see how the actual capacity grows. This is peculiar regarding this box.

We installed it at the beginning of September, about three months ago. By the end of September it was put into production with all the loads we required.

It is stable, but we have only operated it for less than six weeks, which is not that much. But performance-wise it is giving us what was promised, so far.

Because we have changed the topology of our data centers' interconnectivity and the data movement between sites—we have multiple sites in multiple locations and countries—we asked Dell EMC to give us additional expansion for the box, but with disks at the lower tier. In that way, we are insuring our investment in this box and doing a consolidation. But it also means we don't need to buy high-end disks for it. We may go with 10K disks for the lower-tier data.

I think we will go for a second box like this one in the near future, but in a different location.

When I tried to open a ticket with the Dell EMC team, during the installation phase, they kept bouncing me from one support center to another, from the United States to France to wherever. I ended up preferring to finish the installation without continuing the case. Dell EMC's support case management wasn't really set up to suit our needs. When I gave them the serial number of the box, they said, "Ah, it's a PowerStore. It's not this department, you need a different department." The support is not very well structured.

In addition to the licensing issue I mentioned, we also opened a ticket concerning the dedupe and the data showing on the storage interface. No one answered so we escalated it to our partner and they escalated it to a consultant.

Overall, support is not smooth when it comes to the portal and the standard support system. I had to go to our reseller to ask him to get us the information we needed.

To be fair, I spent a huge amount of time working with IBM, versus only the two to three months on Dell EMC. But knowing Dell EMC as a brand, as a competitor to IBM, I know it can do much better in terms of support and awareness of customers' needs.

Neutral

We were not searching for a particular brand. We were searching for storage that would be delivered ASAP with a certain IOPS capacity. And, of course, pricing was part of it. The vendor that sold us this box said they were able to send it right away. From that point, the discussion went to Dell EMC versus ordering IBM. Our discussions about how to move forward with our storage took at least four to six weeks. If we had then put in an order with IBM, it would have taken at least another six weeks. So we would have had a 10 to 12-week process. We didn't have this luxury. We couldn't wait that long, so the decision was based on the time of delivery.

We will move everything off our old Lenovo storage that is now four or five years old, and that will be used for backup only. All our production VMs will be on the flash and all the less important pieces, like the file servers, will be on the 10K disks.

During the installation phase, the licensing part was not straightforward. It was very difficult for the technicians, who are not trained Dell EMC technicians, to do the licensing because the information on their website is not straightforward. You can't find your way easily. You spend some time getting the information. So the licensing activation was a little bit tricky for us. Maybe the installation issue was due to our lack of knowledge, but the licensing part and the escalation need to be smoother. Eventually, I had to pass this task to our business partner and they did it for us.

There is a web interface for LAN creation, host mapping, and digital capacity. We created it as a VVol, mapped it to the box, and started moving data from the old Lenovo to this box.

Because my background is not Dell EMC, it took us about two to three days to finish not only the boxes but the installation of the SAN switches as well. We had to migrate all the data from the old Lenovo to it, and we had to do work related to the ESX servers.

We only used internal resources.

I was a technical manager for about 20 years in a company that is a business partner for IBM. My "DNA" is in IBM. However, when I shifted to my current company, they have multiple types of hardware vendors, both IBM and non-IBM. Before the acquisition of the Dell EMC PowerStore 1000T, I did a comparison with information from IBM sources, from Dell EMC sources, and from neutral sources. At that time I downloaded information from IT Central Station. After that, we acquired the box.

I would like to wait another few months before giving any advice about the product, to see if there are any other hassles or any issues. But if someone is considering going with PowerStore, I would say yes. It's a good box.

Ultimately, it's about performance, capacity, and price, as opposed to AI learning et cetera, the same as it has always been.

I was not concerned about the fact that it is a relatively new platform because the Dell EMC brand is number-one in the market.

We use it for machines from VMware vCenter which we keep separate from the PowerStore. It is only the storage. They are connected with iSCSI and NFS. We have no virtual machines directly on the PowerStore.

We are very impressed by the power of the system. We have gained performance for all our virtual machines and our system is running very fast.

Another benefit, for us, is the dedupe rate.

For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance.

Also, the live dedupe application is very good.

In the first weeks, we had some problems with the dedupe. According to the warranty, we should have had a dedupe rate of at least two and we had not reached this value. We got an additional hard disk to match the planned capacity of the system and this helped a lot. We got to a dedupe rate of 1.9, and this was very good.

What we are missing is the monitoring. We cannot implement the health check of the system in our monitoring system. We have to open the PowerStore GUI every day.

Also, we have tried to install a separate virtual machine to integrate PowerStore to vCenter. VMware then provides a virtual machine with Photon OS. We have done this integration two times and it has run for some weeks. Then it stops working and I don't know why. We have not used it again. It has nice features and has saved a lot of time and creates a good integration, but it needs to be more stable.

Overall, they need to make the system stable. Again and again, we have problems with upgrades. The upgrades themselves are running fine, but after the upgrade is when we have a problem. With the update to 1.4, we had a head crash. They told us, "This is a known issue. Please upgrade to 2." We upgraded to 2 and, one week later they told us, "Yeah, there are some issues in 2.0.0. You can lose data. Please upgrade to 2.0.1." Overall, they need to make the system stable.

I try to avoid updates for such important, central systems. They require downtime for the whole company, as this is our only storage. It's not good to do so many upgrades. I have used other storage systems and, with them, it was never necessary to do so many upgrades in one year. Last year, I did four upgrades for the PowerStore but I have never done four upgrades over the lifetime of other storage systems. They have run four, five, or six years, sometimes more. I have never patched so often as I have with PowerStore.

We have been using Dell EMC PowerStore since December of last year, so almost a year.

The problem is the stability. We have a single system and on three occasions we have had unplanned head reboots because of a software failure. The positive side is that there was no impact as a result because there are two heads. It's not good to reboot a head, and we have submitted tickets about it, but the performance and the failover have been good.

We only have a single machine and we are currently using half of the hard disk slots. We have asked for an upgrade for the rest of the hard disks but, from my point of view, it costs too much. We have 12 to 15 hard disks inside and if we try to upgrade only the hard disks, it costs the same as the complete system. This is something I don't understand. It makes no sense. Buying 16 hard disks with storage costs about €40,000 and buying only 16 hard disks costs the same.

Dell EMC's first-level technical support is very fast and they communicate well. Sometimes they explain things so I can understand why something is working the way it is. But currently, we have a ticket at the second level and for two weeks I have had no answer. 

The issue is that each day we get a message from the storage, every three hours, telling us the network connectivity is lost. I don't know if this is true or not, and whether it is a failure. That is the ticket at level two but I have had no information about its status.

Neutral

I have used NetApp as well as HPE in the past. In this company, they replaced NetApp with PowerStore because the NetApp system was slow. The dedupe needed much improvement. If they stopped the dedupe, then the system power would go down. And the backup procedure took a lot of time. With PowerStore we have reduced the time for the backup by half or more.

In terms of the decision process to go with PowerStore, I was not working here at the time. After I started the company said, "Okay, in two weeks we are getting new storage. Please integrate it into our infrastructure." I know they needed a more powerful storage system and they wanted an upgrade option for the system.

The integration of PowerStore into our existing environment was very straightforward. We had an external partner that helped us, but we had prepared the system in a test environment. We took that system and put it into the production system in about eight hours and the system was running. We then started to migrate the machines. It was a good implementation process and very fast.

We have two administrators of the solution. They are working with the system full-time handling requests to change hard disks or volumes, and they create new volumes. Across the company we have about 300 users using virtual machines and virtual desktops that are stored on the PowerStore.

The performance of PowerStore is good, but I don't feel the software is completely ready. We have upgraded the system and have had failures on the system. I have never seen as many head crashes on other systems as we have had on the PowerStore in the last year. The system is fast but not stable enough.

I would not buy the system again. You should wait some years until the software is ready and doesn't have a new software release every two months.

We use the solution for visualization and protection of the environment.

The solution's most valuable features are the quick data compression process and ease of scalability for all types of support contracts.

The solution's pricing could be better.

We have been using the solution for half a year.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. We have more than 300 end users and two administrators using it. We also plan to increase the usage.

The solution's customer service is excellent.

Positive

The solution's initial setup was straightforward. It took one or two days to complete it.

Our in-house team of two executives implemented the solution.

The price of the solution is high compared to IBM. There are additional costs for storage and support apart from the standard license.

We evaluated IBM and Fujitsu storage before. In comparison with Dell, IBM has stable software. But Dell is perfect for technical support and training, helping us make the right decisions. Also, we can choose between different strategies or configurations. It is more intuitive and complex as well.

I advise others to prefer more disks for the solution than standard ones. Also, wait to install updates after release. Overall, it is a great product. I rate it as a ten.

Dell PowerStore is primarily used for high-performance applications, such as databases, but it is also suitable for virtualization and other applications.

Dell PowerStore has helped in resolving latency issues in our applications. Our customers mostly use it to improve performance.

The most valuable features of Dell PowerStore are the support for NVMe and SCM, which provides end-to-end performance and high IOPS, minimizing latency. It is a full-fledged storage solution.

Dell PowerStore is a good solution overall, but some models could support hypervisors better by allowing for more customization and flexibility for customer needs.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for approximately three years.

I rate the stability of Dell PowerStore a nine out of ten.

We have five to six customers using this solution and we plan on increasing our customers.

I rate the scalability of Dell PowerStore a nine out of ten.

The technical support from Dell PowerStore has always been good, they respond quickly and you can reach them 24 hours a day seven days a week.

The initial setup of Dell PowerStore requires expertise, but for someone trained in the solution, it's not too complicated.

One person is needed for configuration, and two people are needed for installation and cabling.

By using Dell PowerStore's best deduplication and compression features, its ROI is very good.

I rate the price of Dell PowerStore a seven out of ten.

We evaluated options like HPE Primera and Huawei Dorado.

Dell PowerStore provides the best performance, deduplication, and compression, although other storage is also supporting these features. However, the Dell PowerStore guarantees 4:1 compression and deduplication, which goes up to 20:1.

If anyone wants to implement Dell PowerStore, I would advise that they seek help from an expert rather than deploying it by themselves.

I rate the scalability of Dell PowerStore a nine out of ten.

Our clients mainly use it for additional workloads in databases and EDI.

Typically, high-performance and high-availability features, such as application snapshots and remote and local replication, are highly valued.

There is room for improvement in the support. 

I have been using Dell PowerStore for over a year.

For stability, I would rate Dell PowerStore as a seven out of ten. 

The scalability varies depending on the model. The smaller models are not very scalable, while the larger ones offer better scalability. So it really depends on the specific model. For example, the 400 series models are less scalable.

Our customers are a mix of small, medium, or enterprise businesses. 

The customer service and support are bad. The response time from the support team was not very satisfactory. They also struggled with handling cases from different time zones.

Neutral

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy. 

I would rate it as a six out of ten, one being cheap and ten being expensive, because pricing depends on the model and negotiation. Sometimes we manage to get good discounts, sometimes not.

It's an all-inclusive license, so there are no additional charges. It's a one-time license fee for the device.

Overall, Dell PowerStore is a good platform, but it's not the best, in my opinion, due to the support issues and stability concerns. 

Additionally, the shift from a storage controller to Dell servers as the controller is not ideal for a storage operating environment. Ultimately, it's a Dell Server working on the software for PowerStore.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We utilize Dell PowerStore for VMware and to establish an OpenShift environment for deploying applications on the customer's end.

The solution is easy to use and has good performance.

Horizontal scaling has room for improvement.

The price has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for around five years.

I give the stability a nine out of ten.

I give the scalability a seven out of ten. While the solution can be vertically scaled without issues, horizontal scaling presents challenges.

The technical support is usually good but they are not very robust.

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward. I give the setup a seven out of ten. To ensure successful deployment, a certain level of technical knowledge is necessary. Typically, a team of one to two engineers can complete the deployment within a few hours. However, the duration may vary and take up to two days depending on the specific configuration requirements.

We implement the solution for our customers.

The solution is expensive. I give the cost a two out of ten.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

The solution requires hardware maintenance. Depending on the customer's contract agreement, we can maintain the solution and provide replacement parts by the next business day.

Our clients are enterprise-level.

I recommend Dell PowerStore because it is a highly stable solution.

PowerStore is joined to four application servers in a cluster. We're running an application that we use to monitor our activity in the financial markets. We collect all the data from the market—books, trades, orders—that we send to the market. In terms of volume, we are collecting about 100 million rows a day for the books, 10 million a day for the orders, and about 500 rows for public trades.

It is a mission-critical application because of compliance and the regulators. We have to maintain this kind of monitoring because it's a direct link to our activity in the regulated market.

An interesting feature is the guaranteed reduction when it comes to the physical capacity of the disk. We have 30 terabytes of SSD and that is equivalent to 100 terabytes of effective capacity. It allows us to reduce the costs of capacity.

Our previous solution was Dell EMC Compellent. What we have seen immediately is how easy it is to use PowerStore compared to Compellent. PowerStore is much simpler to manage.

The most valuable features include 

• easy of use 
• performance in terms of read-write capacity.

It is also important that you can add compute and capacity independently. We have sized the solution based on our current needs, but in the future we can choose to increase capacity if we grow our activity in the market. And if we have more business in our monetary system, we can increase compute. The ability to choose what we increase is a good feature.

The only area I can highlight for improvement is that the 4:1 data reduction target has not been reached. This may be due to an issue with Dell EMC's initial analysis of data compression. As a result, we have had to add new physical disks to reach our goal of total available disk space. Dell EMC has met us partway on this DRR issue by providing some of the additional disks free of charge, but we have had to purchase the remaining quantity of the disks we need.

We have been using PowerStore in our production environment for a few months, after using it in pre-production for about two months.

The stability has been very good so far.

We have not tested the scalability yet. All our data is well supported in the current solution, but we sized the new solution with more capacity than the previous one had.

The initial setup of PowerStore is a straightforward process. Setting up the Compellent was much more complex.

Overall, the setup took us about three weeks.

We ran it in a pre-production environment initially. We loaded all the data that was in production into the new environment and ran our application in both the pre-production and the production environments, just to test the stability and the availability of the application.

There are four people involved with the solution in our IT operations, and there are about 50 people who use the application that runs on it. Our application is a specific, department-level application, that is used for monitoring the activity in financial markets, so its use is limited to our business area. That is why the number of users is limited.

Dell EMC's support was very efficient during the setup of the entire solution. They handled the complete setup in terms of connections and also helped us with the software configuration and moving data from our old solution into the new solution.

We haven't seen ROI yet, but the return for us will be in the efficiency of monitoring our activities.

The pricing is in line with other vendors' pricing, more or less. There are no costs in addition to the standard fees.

We did not evaluate other solutions because Dell EMC is a partner for us and we're satisfied with them. We have evolved with their solutions and PowerStore is the best. Dell EMC is our vendor and provides us with all our other client-server solutions.

At the moment, I am satisfied by the simplicity and ease of use of the PowerStore.