Dell PowerStore Reviews

I use the solution in my company for the storage of the data in our centralized IT infrastructure.

The benefits my company and I have experienced from the use of the solution revolve around the continuity in operations that the product offers.

The solution's most valuable features are deduplication and availability. The product also offers reliability and generally doesn't crash.

My company uses a local cloud and not Dell CloudIQ to manage and analyze storage.

The challenges my company was trying to address with the implementation of Dell PowerStore, were that we wanted to achieve upgrades in an app mode. A majority of the upgrades should be done in an app mode because the boxes are always in production, or else when you need to stop it for operational reasons, it becomes very difficult for our company since our business functions twenty-four hours every day. I want Dell to offer updates via app mode. 

When it comes to workload consolidation, Dell has been helpful depending on the business because now we need to put the workloads on an on-premises model and also on the cloud as our system is very complex. My company has a lot of applications on the cloud and some others in the data center and on-premises version, so we need to have the ability to put applications in both areas. 

My company already uses the 4:1 data reduction feature attached to the product, but now we want to have something more complex like a 10:1 reduction functionality, as it reduces the cost associated with an all-flash storage solution.

In terms of Dell PowerStore's Cyber-resilient data approach to security, I would say that my company believes Dell Technologies to be better than the other brands. My company has dealt with several brands, and we believe that Dell is the best in terms of the functionalities it offers.

My company uses Dell PowerStore's integration capabilities since, in the centralized infrastructure, we work with solutions like VMware, Veeam, and Dell PowerProtect. Everything is integrated together in our company's environment. My company is going to use the tool's integration capabilities to enhance our resilience. 

It is very important for my company that Dell PowerStore offers good integration capabilities, especially since it helps with backup, which is an important aspect. If there is a cyber incident, you must restart all the data from the box, and at such a time, if you don't have good integration capabilities, it can be difficult for you to store the last saved data on the storage.

I use Dell PowerStore for AI-driven workload, as it is something that is very important for our company since the AI part helps us get all the benefits attached to the product and helps store the data.

The product can improve by offering AI-based functionalities to users. AI-based functionalities can enhance the tool's performance in moments when the demand is high from the users. The AI-based features can also help users maintain data in a more reachable manner during high demand. Dell PowerStore's throughput limit of the boxes can be improved.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for seven years. I am a customer of Dell.

The product is reliable and stable.

When the partners designed the solution for our company, they knew our requirements, so in the past seven years, my company has not had the need to extend its capacity. After considering the need for the original capacity of our company, the partners added 20 or 30 percent more capacity for the future.

My company gets support from the partner who installed the product in our organization. My company uses the data center model as a service. When the partner designed the architecture for us, though our company participated in seeing it, they did the operation and maintenance.

In the past, my company has used products like Veritas, HP, and HPE. Currently, my company works with Dell to implement cyber resiliency when it comes to storage products.

My company has not deployed the product, and it was done by one of the partners of our organization's in our data center. My company did not have the detailed procedure required to deploy the tool. The product's deployment phase was very fast.

The solution is deployed using Azure Cloud. Around 85 percent of the product is deployed on Azure, and the rest 15 percent is deployed on AWS.

I have experienced a return on investment from using the product, especially in areas like maintenance and lack of outages.

Based on my assessment of Veritas, HP, Dell, and HPE, I see that Dell offers more cyber resiliency than other tools. There is a combination of factors to consider when assessing different products, including areas like benefits, features, and costs. The price of Dell PowerStore is similar to the product offered by Veritas, HP, and HPE. There are only differences when it comes to the area of features.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I use the solution for storage, databases, and visualization. It serves as a storage option for our server.

It's easy, and the GUI is user-friendly. The recommendation was proper, so we adopted the solution. 

The performance is very good, which is important for storage. Performance is important for storage, with features like compression and deduplication. Performance is crucial, and the price compared to the risk isn't the worst. High availability is achieved, and the load is divided between two nodes.

Compression of data is good. It offers good resilience against ransomware. Our data is safe from attacks. I achieve a higher ability with this solution. There are features for resilience against ransomware and cyber attacks, including security. 

It's easy to manage. I use a lot of Dell solutions and find the GUI very user-friendly. 

The APEX IOPS are good. It gives a lot of good information.

We can consolidate data using PowerStore. We have a guaranteed compression of four to one. We also received extra space from the vendor.

We've been able to consolidate data by about 100% to 240%.

We've been able to increase operational efficiency. 

The data encryption is good and available in a standard license. There are snapshot and backup capabilities. 

PowerStore has helped us reduce our Capex by 20% to 40%. 

I don't see anything I need to change. I am happy with the years of use I've gotten. Nothing more is needed to meet our requirements. We have received the necessary functions, like consistent snapshots for the application. Currently, no function is missing for our needs. As long as they keep up with the quality, I would be happy.

I have used the solution for over five years.

I performed scalability adjustments this year. It was easy and simple.

Users can add capacity in single drive increments.

I'd rate scalability ten out of ten.

I am happy with customer service. I have not faced any problems.

Positive

I am still using familiar Dell products, such as PowerStore and Unity, as they are part of the same family. I'm also using PowerVault. 

We did not use a different solution previously. We've always used Dell.

The setup is easy. I implemented an instance. It is not hard. 

I need one person with some experience in storage to help with the setup. I may then possibly need more.

We currently have three devices. We are not clustering them.

There is some maintenance needed for fixes, et cetera.

We implemented the first time via a vendor. After that, it was easy to do by ourselves. 

Cost savings are evident, and we receive storage and resilience against cyber attacks. We see it as a good investment.

The cost is average.

Users can be enrolled in lifecycle extension with pro support. The pricing for that is too high for PowerStore.

The overall product rating is ten out of ten.

We primarily use Dell PowerStore as part of our VMware infrastructure and other Dell servers.

The biggest improvement we found when moving into Dell PowerStore was the deduplication and compression. I did not believe we could get that much storage into one. However, the solution brought it down and compressed everything, which was amazing.

We went from Compellent, which was over 100 terabytes, down to Dell PowerStore, which was 30 terabytes. It significantly saved on rack space, power, and cooling.

Our organization uses CloudIQ to manage and analyze our Dell storage. It's a little confusing because we have multiple IT shops, and I can see what other groups are using. I can only see what I can see, and they can only see what they see. So, it becomes more of a viewing thing than actually doing.

We were looking to replace our old Compellent hardware by implementing Dell PowerStore. The data reduction with Dell PowerStore was much better than we had with Compellent. It was truly amazing.

We are utilizing Dell PowerStore’s integration with VMware, which makes it a lot easier to manage.

We have been able to reduce our organizational footprint using Dell PowerStore. We went from 18U of rack space down to 2U.

We have two different PowerStores in two different geographical locations, but they're separate workloads altogether. They're not replicated or anything like that.

When you purchase the solution, it comes with professional services, and our experience with them has been great.

Dell PowerStore is far superior to other Dell products we've used over the years, such as EqualLogic and Compellent. I would recommend the solution to other users because it is worthwhile.

Sometimes, you have to go back and forth with the technical support team, where they want you to do something you've already done.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for a couple of years.

We haven't had to scale out the tool because we sized it right. Based on all our research, scaling out the solution should be pretty straightforward if we ever need to.

The solution’s technical support is pretty good. Sometimes, you have to go back and forth with the technical support team, where they want you to do something you've already done.

Positive

We previously used Compellent. We switched to Dell PowerStore because Compellent was approaching end-of-life.

Before choosing the solution, we evaluated Pure Storage. We chose Dell PowerStore because Dell is a trusted partner.

Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.

We are a Dell partner and have been installing PowerStores since the beginning of their release. Austria is a small market so we usually deploy PowerStore 1200 and for smaller installations, we deploy PowerStore 500. We have a few customers that use PowerStore 3200.

The primary use case for PowerStore is typical block storage for VMware environments and for SQL and Microsoft bare metal systems.

We use CloudIQ to manage our customers. It is useful for us to predict the capacity and monitor performance.

PowerStore helps reduce energy consumption for our clients.

PowerStore helps reduce our client's footprint by up to four times.

We see a data reduction of three point five to one typically for our customers.

The most valuable feature is the unwavering performance. It is a fast system that is reliable. The entire Dell ecosystem offers good integration with powerful tech.

It would be helpful for us to have support for the S3 protocol because our main competitor has the S3 protocol in their system. We lost a few teams because of the requirements of S3, so maybe that could be added to their roadmap.

Dell's data reduction guarantee, initially straightforward for claiming additional storage, has become more complex. Their current analysis digs deeper into data composition, and some customers with encrypted data have been denied additional storage under the guarantee.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for three years.

Dell PowerStore is stable.

Dell PowerStore scalability is a big advantage because we can scale out if we install two or three appliances in the cluster using scale-up architecture and also scale up to four enclosures.

The Dell support is good. We have good experience starting with the Dell support portal.

Positive

We are a Dell partner but we also sell NetApp systems. NetApp was an early developer of QLC drives which Dell has only recently started to use with their first shipment going out in July of 2024. The pros of PowerStore are the performance, reliability, and flexibility. We can increase our storage pool by one SSD. Other vendors require a minimum of five SSDs or a bank to grow.

Dell PowerStore is affordable and the license is just a face license which is great.

I would rate Dell PowerStore eight out of ten.  

Dell PowerStore four point zero now can automatically replicate file services. This is an important feature of our customers but we have yet to upgrade to the latest version.

In Austria, we have installed one-half with about 15 to 20 times eight terabyte SSDs. So that means an effective capacity between 100 terabytes and 500 terabytes.

I am primarily using the solution in mostly virtualized environments. This includes databases and a diverse mix of virtualization.

The use of NVMe is notable, and the speed and performance it provides are commendable. Fast storage is critical to many applications. The faster the back-end storage, the quicker the entire application performs. NVMe, in particular, makes a significant difference.

I am not a fan of the user interface. My background includes working with EMC Clarion and then Dell Compellent. The Compellent user interface is better than any of their other products. PowerStore originated from EMC, while Compellent was a separate company acquisition. Unfortunately, the tools were not merged. The bottom line is the user interface is functional, but not aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes, I find it difficult to get the required information. The performance is good, but the management experience and user interface are lacking. Years ago, I would have rated it extremely high. Now, I would say it deserves a seven. I occasionally encounter individuals who cannot assist me well or quickly and provide some pushback on issues. Generally, it's acceptable, so a seven is fair. I think they could improve integration into virtualization. They have an integration feature with VMware, but it's basic and clunky. They could improve that. Also, I don't think they support other hypervisors. The product is expensive. Initially, you might get a deal, but if you need to add anything later, that's where costs increase. It's possible to buy a PowerStore array at a certain price and then pay as much for additional disks just to expand it.

I have used the solution for about three or four years.

The scalability seems straightforward. We have only added disks but have not added appliances. We have single appliance clusters. We could add appliances, but clusters with multiple appliances tend to have more upgrade issues. That's not my direct experience, just what I've heard.

Years ago, I would have rated customer service extremely high. Now, I have to say, maybe a seven. I occasionally run across a person who cannot help me well or quickly and provide some pushback on issues.

Neutral

We moved from Dell Unity. We still have Dell Unity, but we needed the next better thing without going into PowerMax.

The product is expensive. Initially, you might get a deal, but if you need to add anything later, that's where costs increase. It's possible to buy a PowerStore array at a certain price and then pay as much for additional disks just to expand it.

Overall, I would give it an eight out of ten. The user interface and the pricing model should be improved. Subsequent disk purchases should be more reasonable, in my opinion. I haven't met a Dell array yet that has achieved the promised data reduction. We don't use containers. We don't use the vCenter integration because it doesn't do much for us. It's very basic.

We use Dell PowerStore for enterprise servers and backup servers.

Our organization is resistant to migrating to the Cloud and Dell PowerStore can hopefully help us change that way of thinking.

Most of our deployment is on-premise but we have some hybrid models using AWS and Azure.  

Dell PowerStore has improved our security, efficiency, compatibility, ease of implementation, and scalability.

It is one of the best solutions for power consumption. For example, the UPS that is implemented with our PowerStore is more efficient than our other solutions.

When it comes to cybersecurity resilience, Dell PowerStore allows us to use just one solution. PowerStore is the best solution for this type of use case.

We have integrated PowerStore with Veeam. This integration has improved the scalability and our ability to monitor the facility.

Dell PowerStore has helped reduce our organizational footprint.

Dell PowerStore is more cost-efficient than other solutions.

Dell PowerStore should offer more cybersecurity and warehouse data security. 

I have been using Dell PowerStore for three years.

PowerStore is stable.

PowerStore scalability is the best because it is so easy to increase the power in our data center.

The technical support we get from Dell now is good but it all depends on the level of support. That is based on the contract we signed. 

We previously used Oracle and switched to PowerStore because of the cost and the trust we have with Dell. 

The initial deployment was straightforward.

We used an integrator for our implementation. The service that Disk provided was good.

I would rate Dell PowerStore ten out of ten. 

We are a central data center and one of our most important solutions is implemented with PowerStore. Our data center is certified in tier three. It is fitted with UPS and A/C making it the best environment for a PowerStore implementation.

We use Dell PowerStore for our SAN appliances. It holds and runs pretty much all of our infrastructure. All our network devices connect to it, and then that runs block-based storage for all our VMs.

Dell PowerStore has really expanded our storage abilities, whereas we were earlier locked up with physical space storing stuff. We used to run out of space, and getting that extra footprint helps.

The solution's most valuable features are its form factor and switching to NVMe. Dell has lowered its footprint and power consumption. Regarding functionality, the management in the box itself between the nodes and automation between the nodes are quite nice.

CloudIQ is a fantastic feature that gives us a good overview of everything we have. With the depreciation of the SRS, we have to use that quite a lot more because they're moving everything over to CloudIQ. CloudIQ has been nice on a very broad term for our multiple appliances. Even with Dell PowerStore, we have the ability to keep an eye on two because they're not clustered together.

Dell PowerStore has been amazing in its overall energy consumption. The solution's ability to not have to max out a circuit just for our storage rack is amazing. It gave us a lot more freedom to expand with the existing power that we already have without having to get electricians to redo everything.

We were looking to address the challenges of physical storage size and power consumption by implementing the solution.

The data-at-rest encryption and its encryption features allow us to get to a higher consistent level of security possible.

The ability to use Dell PowerStore for our AI-driven workloads is very important. The processing isn't done there, but the AI systems being processed are still stored on the endpoints.

We have been able to reduce our organizational footprint by one standard rack using Dell PowerStore.

We had an issue where we lost both nodes, completely lost all our caching, and had to rebuild that whole appliance from scratch. We need to find a way to ensure the cache data is safe and secure. When we're maintaining it, it takes five to ten extra minutes to confirm it so we don't run the risk of something happening. There needs to be some sort of better feedback between the two nodes.

The one was running online as a master, but somehow, the caching was lost because both the nodes were offline. No one had any references to that cached data, which completely destroyed our data. Something needs to be done with the caching to ensure that if some issue occurs, there needs to be an ability to disable caching during maintenance to make it static, safe, and good.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for two years.

The solution's stability is good.

Dell PowerStore is a super scalable solution.

The solution’s technical support is amazing.

Positive

We switched from our previous solution to Dell PowerStore because it was getting old and taking up too much space in the rack. Since we didn't have any more racks, we didn't have any more plugs.

Since Dell did the deployment for us, it was as smooth as it could be.

Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

We use the Dell PowerStore 1000, 5000, 5200, 7000, and 9200 models in our environment. We have a ten-petabyte environment and we use it for structuring storage for our SQL data basis, our search engine, and backend storage for our Kubernetes environment.

We have seen a reduction in data center space, power cooling, and the number of people required to maintain the platforms. Now that it is PowerStore Prime, it has feature parity with previous generation products when it comes to what it can do from a software perspective, which is nice as well. Also because it is a flash product with no moving parts, I can trust that it is available 99.99 percent of the time.

It depends on the workload. I'm seeing data reductions upwards of three to one. In some areas, I'm seeing data reductions of one point six to one on other workloads, but that's because it has encryption already built into it. So when they don't do compression, they're not necessarily deduplication. And so it varies by work but you do see the savings there. The easiest way to quantify it is I can get the same capacity on a high-performance all-flash model that we were getting on a much larger deployment, spinning disk of a previous generation product. Given the amount of storage we have, the cost savings are in the six if not seven figures.

CloudIQ has provided a single pane of glass. There have been some issues with CloudIQ but we have been able to work through them. The nice thing about it isn't necessarily that it just tells me the health of my storage but also gives me performance metrics. Most importantly, it allows me to see my capacity and to project capacity constraints over time within a certain confidence range.

PowerStore reduces our energy consumption. I only have so much power available in my data center and since I can now put a greater capacity footprint within a rack in a space, I can now put other things in its place because of the reduced energy consumption.

Dell is a leader in what they call ESG values. I'm familiar with a lot of things they have done when it comes to working with other countries, and conservation efforts, especially with water. It's impressive to put this much energy and effort into that because it comes at a cost to Dell, so I know it is important to them.

We are utilizing PowerStore integrations, like PowerProtect, VMware, DevOps Container Store, and others. Now that we're at a PowerStore Prime. It's taking a while to get here, but now we can see the benefits within the VMware environments, we can also see benefits on how quickly we can deploy. Especially in our Kubernetes environment, containerization makes a big difference. We can now deploy multiple times within a day as opposed to taking days for a single deployment.

The Dell data reduction guarantee is reliable. I have been supplied with extra capacity from Dell because the reduction guarantee was not met and they stand behind it.

The most valuable features of PowerStore are its density and data reduction. Combined they allow for a larger data footprint in a smaller area. It is high-performing. I get good latency and high access times for mission-critical workloads. I can scale it to meet my needs and it is reliable.

I would like a feature parity on the software side. I've been with PowerStore since version one dot zero. I've been through the growing pains of the software. The hardware has always been reliable. The software has been evolving. The biggest area in PowerStore that needs improvement is the overall visibility within the ESX environment. I haven't seen PowerStore Prime yet. I'm hoping that it'll be like it was with Unity. I am assuming it will be but I haven't seen it. That's one area if it's not done. The other area is SNMP deployment so that I can use my own observability platforms to see its performance.

One area of suggestion for the platform engineering team is that when they do introduce new features not turn them on by default, let the customer decide if they want to use those new features. It's been more than once that I have done a software upgrade and started something that's caused a negative impact on my environment.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for four years.

Dell PowerStore is stable.

The scalability has improved with the newer systems. I'm running multi-petabyte storage appliances for block workloads, which is impressive. I'd like to be able to continue adding on more, but there are always limitations to every system. There is always the processor level and we don't want to exceed that. Over time, as processing gets more powerful, the scalability will increase with it. I don't think that's different with any storage product.

I am comfortable with the Dell technical support. I work with them all the time. We've had some issues with parts availability for our mission-critical support, it could take over a day or two while waiting for parts. It's been remedied by working with some executive teams to get parts mobilized for my implementation. Every support issue that I've had has been remedied in some way, but it's taken some effort.

Positive

Our initial deployment was not good. There's a lot of learning curve for the deployment team as well. We used professional services, but the way the clustering of PowerStore, we have multiple appliances working together needs to be set up, requires certain networking services to be running that wasn't a hundred percent clear, and it took us a while to understand why we weren't getting the expected results from our deployment. I have deployed a lot of these things now in my environment. Occasionally, we still run into the problem. Every deployment team is a little bit different here and some just assume that we need to have an IPv6 network enabled in the environment for it to work. They just need to be reminded. They're not complicated. They are dense and are fitted within a rack. There's not a lot of connectivity that we have to do. I use a fiber channel on mine. So that simplifies it if I had to do more IP networking too, it would probably be more complex.

We have evaluated competitors for storage solutions. PowerStore took a while to get to par with some competitors, but I believe they're there now. The cost is better with Dell. The biggest area where I find it beneficial to stay with a single vendor for storage is that I can work with one support organization and not have to worry about finger-pointing.

I would rate Dell PowerStore eight out of ten. I like it because of its performance. I have very complex workloads that run against it in sub-millisecond latencies. I get good data reduction which has improved over time. The GUI is straightforward. The only reason I'm not giving it higher than an eight right now is that it still takes a little more effort to integrate with our VMware environment compared to Unity. The VMware environment sees the Unity, and we add it. That may not be fixed with PowerStore Prime. I'm not on that version yet. So that's to be determined. if that gap is cleared, I will rate PowerStore higher.

We are 100 percent a Dell shop for storage and computing but do not use Dell for networking.