Dell PowerStore Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's simple and easy to use.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On-premises

Mainly, we use Dell PowerStore as the central storage for all our production workloads. It’s the backbone of our virtual environment—mostly VMware—and it handles all our critical databases. Since we can't afford any downtime in production, we rely on it to keep everything running smoothly across our data centers.

We haven't had a single production incident.

While I don't manage the day-to-day storage administration, I rely on our dedicated subject matter experts who have consistently validated Dell PowerStore as a high-performing solution. From a leadership perspective, I view it as a premium, 'upper-tier' infrastructure investment that significantly enhances our production security.

So far, our experience has been great—we haven't had a single production incident. One of the main reasons we chose PowerStore was its ability to handle active-active configurations across our data centers. That architecture is a big part of our stability strategy, and the platform has been a perfect fit for those high-availability needs.

We are currently evaluating our connectivity strategy for the new data center, as we haven't deployed a traditional Fibre Channel SAN or dedicated SAN switching yet. Instead, we are exploring more modern protocols like iSCSI and NVMe over TCP.

We are in discussions with Dell regarding official support for these over-the-fabric protocols on our specific PowerStore model. While we are still confirming the roadmap and compatibility, moving away from a traditional SAN and toward an NVMe/TCP architecture is a key point of interest for our future infrastructure.

Personally, I have over two years of experience with Dell PowerStore, but our team has been utilizing Dell PowerStore for nearly four years now.

We haven't had a single production incident.

Our relationship with Dell has evolved into a true partnership over the last two years. We have weekly touchpoints with our account team, and I feel confident that they are genuinely invested in our success. 
On the technical support side, the experience has been generally positive. However, regarding our new data center and the PowerStore integration, we’ve noticed some hesitation when exploring newer, non-traditional configurations. It seems there is a cautious approach toward supporting architectures that haven't been extensively tested in-house yet. While this caution is understandable, we look forward to Dell leaning in more as we push the boundaries of their newer solutions.

I would rate our technical support experience a 7 out of 10. Over the past two years, we have encountered a few configuration challenges on our servers. In some instances, these issues were complicated by the involvement of intermediary partners, making the resolution process less direct. While there have been minor hurdles to overcome, a score of seven reflects a generally solid service that has room to improve in terms of coordination and initial setup accuracy.

Positive

Before, we had an Isilon product from Dell.

I don't have much experience with products similar to Dell PowerStore yet, as it is a new solution for us at France Télévisions. The pricing so far has been fair, and we are satisfied with the purchase price. Support has also been fine.

However, looking at servers like ReadyNodes, we’ve noticed that anything involving AI becomes quite difficult and very expensive—actually, really expensive. We understand the market context, but we wonder if it’s only the context driving those costs. Because of this, we are starting to talk with other partners to compare. As for the PowerStore itself, it’s a good product. It may be a premium price, but it’s high-end equipment, so the investment makes sense.

My overall rating for Dell PowerStore is eight.

On-premises

Other

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.

On-premises

Dell PowerStore is typically used for virtualization projects at customers and for cloud environments, serving as pure virtualization block storage.

Before Dell PowerStore, I used a different solution for these use cases.

I use this solution on VMware.

Dell PowerStore has impacted my organization positively as it is a very easy system to use, so from an operational standpoint, I would emphasize its ease of use.

Ease of use is something that I value the most.

The deduplication and compression features of Dell PowerStore are quite amazing, and the data reduction guarantee is also very good. It is not a technical feature, but rather a commercial feature, and other vendors are quite difficult regarding that; Dell PowerStore delivered quite well on the promised deduplication and compression.

Dell PowerStore has helped my organization improve its operational efficiency.

It is quite an install-and-forget system that runs stably in the background, and we do not need to do much around it to maintain it except for an upgrade now and then.

The data resiliency and cybersecurity features of Dell PowerStore are quite good, especially the immutable option, which is very important because it helps recover quite fast from a ransomware attack.

Whenever I have any ransomware attacks, the immutable snapshots help me easily recover without needing to do complicated restore operations.

I have been able to consolidate data using Dell PowerStore, and the data reduction is quite good on it.

I would say a bit more user-friendliness and in-depth features in the monitoring interface of CloudIQ would be an improvement; sometimes it is quite difficult to find the information I want.

The insights offered by CloudIQ involve difficult parts regarding good reporting, and shared reporting is mainly the issue. You can build reports in there, but you cannot share them between colleagues, so if my colleague builds something, I need to log in with my account to see what he built.

I have been using Dell PowerStore from 2021.

Dell PowerStore is stable, so there are no issues that caused any downtime.

The stability of Dell PowerStore is very important because we run multiple customers and our own SaaS platform on it, and if it is not stable, it will cause many issues for many departments.

I have never had any outages or downtime so far.

Expanding Dell PowerStore in terms of scaling up and scaling out is super easy.

If I need to add additional drives, I just insert a drive and the system expands automatically, so there is nothing to do; it is super easy.

It is very intuitive and automatic.

I have contacted technical support for Dell PowerStore multiple times.

My experience with them was quite good; overall, the support is good, and we are satisfied with it.

Positive

Before Dell PowerStore, I used a different solution for these use cases.

I used IBM storage.

I decided to switch from IBM to Dell PowerStore due to some performance issues on the IBM system.

We deployed Dell PowerStore ourselves.

The deployment process was quite straightforward, and there were no complications to install and set up those boxes.

The initial setup process involves racking, cabling, and then doing the initial setup, but that is quite easy and straightforward.

I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerStore as there is much less performance troubleshooting than in the past, so we definitely save time and human resources due to that.

Dell PowerStore helped reduce my organization's capital expenditures, but I am not sure in what size or metric.

The data reduction guarantee is a key factor; if we do not obtain the reduction ratio, then Dell will provide additional drives to compensate. That is really good from the commercial standpoint, and we view that as a price per gigabyte standpoint, which all depends on the price we pay for the system's compression.

It has been a long time since we bought one, but in the past, it was quite satisfying; I am not sure about the prices now.

Before choosing Dell, I evaluated other options including IBM and Pure Storage.

I decided to go with Dell PowerStore mainly due to a relationship perspective, wanting to do more business with Dell from a business perspective, and I was convinced of the product and the price—those were the three main drivers.

We are both a customer of this solution and an IT partner, so we are also cloud service providers, thus we use them ourselves and do reselling.

I am currently working with Dell PowerStore version 4.2.

We are using seven appliances, and we have a mix of models including 1000, 3000, 2200, and 3200.

We are not clustering multiple Dell PowerStore appliances, but we use the Metro functionality.

We are satisfied with the workload performance offered by Dell PowerStore.

The management capabilities of Dell PowerStore are very easy to use.

It is very user-friendly and intuitive; Dell did a great job streamlining the user interface over different platforms.

I am not enrolled in Lifecycle Extension, formerly branded Anytime Upgrade.

I have rated this review an 8 out of 10.

On-premises

Dell PowerStore is a really interesting array because since it's a full NVMe array, we can consolidate all types of workloads on it, including virtualization. It's an array that can be set up in block mode or unified mode with file, so we can even put file on it and now replicate them in synchronous mode. It's really a multi-environment array. We use it a lot to implement Oracle OLVM clusters. It's really an interesting solution for doing that, in terms of its performance, and also because it supports Linux metro-cluster. We can consolidate Oracle databases with this solution under very good conditions with an excellent level of performance.

Dell PowerStore can help consolidate the data on the storage part. After that, it's clear that Dell PowerStore will be able to interface with AI solutions to provide services. That's a certainty. However, it will remain just a block on the storage side.

The feature I like the most about Dell PowerStore is the simplicity of configuration with DRE. You no longer need a storage expert to configure the array for the client. We have a lot of expertise with people doing storage who have more than 25 years of experience, so installation is no problem for us. Once the array is configured, having this intelligent engine that will organize the blocks, organize the stripes, and manage all the complexity of storage brings a lot of ease of management for the client. They just have to create a volume and present it to their servers. The simplicity is what's interesting about the array.

Dell PowerStore arrays have a range that is broken down in the sizer, where we can see the maximum IOPS we can get and the maximum bandwidth depending on the models. It's important to carefully analyze the customer environments to place the array in the range that will properly meet the expected performance. Since it's a full NVMe array, by default it's a very high-performance array with low latency and really strong performance. I've never come across a workload where the array did not meet the expected level.

The feature we'd like to have in Dell PowerStore is coming, which is metro-cluster over Fibre Channel. That's really the last solution we're waiting for. The advantage of Dell PowerStore is that it's developed as microservices and that it's very software-driven and very automatable as a solution. We can integrate it into modern environments like OpenShift. FC replication is something we didn't have yet, and there are many customers for whom that's a prerequisite.

We can get performance information because when Dell PowerStore array is connected and interconnected to CloudIQ, we send up all the performance metrics needed per volume. We can see perfectly how it behaves. The only thing we don't have is the ability to customize it. Since it's the array itself that manages the organization of the blocks, it's both an advantage and a disadvantage. It's easy to manage for the client, but for an admin looking for specific customization, Dell PowerStore is not the right choice.

We can customize it regarding workload usage. For example, I have a client who was on hyperconverged. I migrated him to Dell PowerStore. He told me it's so much better to customize the usage, put volumes into replication, and segment clusters. On Dell PowerStore storage array, I can very well have a VMware cluster and next to it an OLVM cluster, and manage my VMware part and my Oracle part independently to comply with licensing. Being able to segment environments on a traditional environment allows the client to better manage licensing compared to hyperconverged, which will put everything in the same basket and cause more problems. The array really allows customization if we want to do file system replication. However, if you want specific customization at the RAID group level, that's something you can't do with Dell PowerStore because that feature is handled by an automatic engine. There are admins who rather use Hitachi arrays for that, where they really want to customize their environments down to the core. Dell PowerStore doesn't allow you to do that because it's not its objective.

I've really been using Dell PowerStore since version 3.6 of PowerStoreOS, when we were able to build a redundant architecture with two PowerStores. Before there was replication between two arrays with the witness, it was difficult to build Dell PowerStore architectures because it lacked this feature for securing across two rooms and two sites. With customers, we always need to secure things.

Dell PowerStore is stable and reliable. The only problem is that it came out a bit early. Before version 3.6, it didn't have the features that customers expected, and it was difficult to work with because we didn't have metro-cluster. Metro-cluster in France is less put into production than in the United States because their distances are totally huge, so they tend to do asynchronous replication instead, but in France it's necessary. Before, you had to work with metronodes and virtualize the array. It wasn't integrated, so it was more complicated to put into production and it was less attractive for customers. Now we've reached the level of functionality that's good so that it's really positioned on the market.

Dell PowerStore adapts to growth because it already grows unit by unit at disk level. It has growth that can be both scale-up and scale-out. Let's say I did my sizing badly or I did sizing for a client who then integrates other entities, buys companies, and the need completely changes. I'll be able to add not just shelves to increase capacity, but new primary nodes to increase power and have a cluster that grows in power rather than capacity. When we add capacity, we ask ourselves whether we just need to add capacity, in which case we add a shelf, or to add power. Then we add a Dell PowerStore node directly into the cluster to add capacity and power at the same time.

We've already used Dell PowerStore support to fix issues. I particularly remember a case when we were on 3.6 with an array that had been installed with the wrong name. There was a bug with renaming. When we renamed the array after it had been installed, it caused problems on the file system, and we resolved it with support very quickly.

For support with Dell PowerStore, I'd rate it a 10. It's very good support.

Positive

Deploying Dell PowerStore array is done very efficiently. Once the racking is done, the racking and organization part is always very important. We take the time to do it properly, and the cabling has to be perfectly done. The interconnection to the SAN has to be very well done and well identified. Once that's done, starting up the array is completed within the next day and a half. It's really very fast.

I've tested quite a few storage systems, and I find Dell PowerStore really highly suited to modern, diverse environments. It adapts to pretty much all the cases I encounter with my clients. What I find really interesting is that we can standardize installations a bit, and then interconnect workloads and the array responds. Especially what I see with clients is more a decline in specialists in customer teams, except in very large structures. With mid-sized customers, people are very generalist and use everything. I no longer have a storage expert who can take care of the storage array. Having an array that's simplified and can be managed by someone who is less specialized is a huge asset today. That's why I referenced it and why I really appreciate this technology.

Even with the customers, they told me the other day that it's the death of hyperconverged with Dell PowerStore because it integrates so well and it's easy to use.

I would rate this product a 9 because I'm just waiting for the FC replication feature. I think that when it has that, we'll be able to give it a solid 10.

On-premises

Other

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 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.

On-premises

Other

My team's role in using or managing Dell PowerStore is that we run all our infrastructure for our shared infrastructure in all the data centers, and we run Dell PowerStore for our IaaS solutions and some backup DR solutions. 

Currently, we are not using Dell PowerStore for any AI initiatives in our company or for our clients; it's primarily for IaaS workloads, so Infrastructure-as-a-Service on our shared platform for customers. 

Currently, we are utilizing the 500Ts and 1200Ts models of Dell PowerStore.

We have seen the benefits of consolidation, compression, and reduction in overall storage.

I can share a specific example where Dell PowerStore made a noticeable improvement in our business operations; we were running an IaaS platform for one of our acquisitions on a different vendor, and we've moved that to a brand new platform we built based on PowerEdge and Dell PowerStore. All of our performance is now improved, and all of our customers are happy; they're not complaining anymore about performance. We've recently received feedback that there's a massive improvement—boot times are quicker, and responsiveness from their workloads is quicker.

We have realized several benefits from using Dell PowerStore; we migrated to the current Dell PowerStore models from tiered storage, and now we're using all flash. 

The dedupe and compression has been a big benefit for us versus the old storage that it was running, and we've seen the performance of all flash for our storage services. 

My company finds particular features within Dell PowerStore valuable, primarily the cost benefits for the performance that we get out of the platform. We've definitely seen the benefit on that side of it, including the cost per terabyte, and the support from Dell has been excellent as well. 

We haven't had any issues with it, so it's been very reliable as a platform for us.

The performance metrics I use to measure success with Dell PowerStore are all IOPS and throughput. We are not using it with AI workloads on Dell PowerStore, so it's primarily just customers running IaaS, however, it is important that it's reliable and performs well, and we get that from Dell PowerStore.

Dell PowerStore has supported growth and operational success for my business; a key driver at the moment is consolidation, and the dedupe and compression ratios allow us to standardize on a single platform. This has helped improve our operational metrics and overall operations, as we now have only one vendor to support and one set of storage arrays to manage. We have a very clear path into support and escalation if there is an issue, and we are not dealing with multiple vendors.

It could be improved to be cheaper for us. Cost versus performance is crucial, and it has to have the performance and capabilities that we need for that price point.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for years.

I would assess Dell PowerStore's stability and reliability as excellent; the latest generation of Dell PowerStores that we put in has had no issues and no downtime.

I see Dell PowerStore growing with our future needs; as a company, we have standardized our compute and storage now on Dell, so that's the way it's going to grow.

Our business has around 1000 employees.

I would evaluate Dell support as a nine out of ten.

Any instance that we've had to open with Dell or any support ticket we've had has been responded to very quickly, and the quality of the team we deal with is very good. 

There's not much more I can get out of support really. They are responsive, and I've very little to complain about from a Dell perspective. There are always going to be issues with a support department, and we understand that. The escalation paths are clear, and the account managers and team I work with at Dell Ireland are always proactive in reaching out if they identify an issue.

Positive

Before moving to Dell PowerStore, I considered NetApp and Pure Storage as two of our large vendors, and we've also used HP. 

We've explored a large range of them. A huge standout in my evaluation process, both positive and negative, comparing these options was realistically the performance for the price; since we use a significant amount of Dell, they are our number one vendor for compute, and it makes sense for us to standardize our compute. When we compare the performance to the cost, it's a no-brainer for us.

We have seen a return on our investment in Dell PowerStore; definitely our cost per terabyte has been very good compared to some of the other vendors that we would have been using previously, and our performance benchmarks have exceeded what we were expecting.

At the moment, I can't think of any area where Dell PowerStore could be better; my engineering teams aren't complaining about anything, and we're happy with the performance, support, dedupe, compression, and costs. 

My advice to others considering Dell PowerStore is that the more you understand about the workloads you're going to run on the storage, the more accurate you can be, and the better solution you'll end up with. I would rate Dell PowerStore as an eight or a nine out of ten.