Dell PowerStore Reviews

Dell PowerStore serves as the heart of our VDI environment. All of our servers, virtual servers, and client VMs live on Dell PowerStore. Dell PowerStore is responsible for the daily operations of our VMware environment.

The features that I appreciate most about Dell PowerStore are the ease of expansion. If you want to grow Dell PowerStore, you simply tell it how big you want it, and if the data reduction makes sense, then it will grow as you need it on demand. The high availability of Dell PowerStore is another aspect I really value. It is built to stay available under many abnormal conditions. If you have equipment failures, it will still stay up and running. This is very important to us as we have to maintain availability for our engineers.

Dell PowerStore is greatly expandable and easily expandable. We have had to expand during our use of Dell PowerStore from inception until today, and it is super easy. You simply go into the size of the volume and tell it what you want it to be, click okay, and it is right there. It is very, very fast and very simple.

I have seen some benefits in the use of Dell PowerStore when compared to our legacy systems. The legacy systems were about 25% slower, maybe up to 40% slower as far as response time and performance. With Dell PowerStore, it is much quicker and near real-time, and it keeps our engineers productive without any delays. The legacy system had some downtime, and that downtime equated to production billable hours lost. The investment that our company made in Dell PowerStore has more than paid for itself with its continued uptime, reducing any downtime, and keeping those billable hours flowing.

Thankfully, we have not experienced any downtime or performance issues through the entire use of Dell PowerStore.

I do not have any input for improvements for Dell PowerStore because it is expandable and scalable. I cannot think of a newer feature that I would suggest for a next release. It meets all of our needs, and I honestly cannot think of how to improve it. In my particular use case, I cannot come up with anything that I would wish they would improve on. The UI is great, the expandability is great, the physicality of it is great, and the high availability is great. I am not even maximizing my use of it. It is well more than enough for us, and I really genuinely love to use the product. I do not have any suggestions for improvement.

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

When working with the customer service people at Dell, it was always a good experience. They were very knowledgeable about the product and they knew exactly where to point me to help me. I had a licensing issue where a particular OS level conflicted with a license, and they were able to sort it out real quick. They knew the product, and that was very comforting and a good experience.

Dell PowerStore's customer service receives perfect scores. They get perfect scores across the board.

Our legacy system prior to adopting Dell PowerStore used a completely different architecture. It was a vSAN type architecture where the storage was spread across the user nodes or the compute nodes. That solution was not going to be viable for us. We needed a highly available, single, isolated storage solution, which we found in Dell PowerStore 500T. All the compute is separated in the PowerEdge. These two systems work seamlessly together, and I do not run into the same problems of storage availability when I am using Dell PowerStore that I did with the legacy system.

The setup cost was next to zero because we actually did it internally ourselves according to the books and the diagrams that were provided. When we had an audit come in and look at it, they said we did it all 100 percent correctly. I feel good about that.

I definitely have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerStore because when we have downtime, we lose billable hours, and that equates to revenue lost. By putting Dell PowerStore in place, we have maintained uptime and billable hours, equating to much more than the cost of Dell PowerStore solution in total. It has paid for itself by being up and available.

The pricing for Dell PowerStore is comparable. The licensing is pretty direct and simplified. The licensing and the price were comparable and nominal compared to other equivalent solutions.

I looked at Unity and other systems and looked at the specs primarily to see which had the highest IOPS and which supported the highest networking bandwidth, because we have to connect it to our switching infrastructure. Dell PowerStore stood out because it was upgradeable to go beyond our switching infrastructure, but at least meet our switching infrastructure speed. I went with Dell PowerStore because the same equivalent space took up much more rack space with other systems. Dell PowerStore condenses rack space down and reduces the need to a fraction of what I needed with another system such as Unity, by a factor of 75 percent, which is significant. This results in less power, less cooling, more performance, and equivalent space with Dell PowerStore.

I do use Dell AIOps to manage all of my PowerEdge servers and Dell PowerStore. Dell AIOps definitely helps me manage my PowerEdge servers and Dell PowerStore appliance. It keeps them up to date, lets me know if something is out of compliance, and it is a single pane of glass for my entire environment.

Dell AIOps tells me when I need firmware. Firmware is important to keep up to date. Additional downloads that keep the system running and optimized for optimal performance are very important, and Dell AIOps keeps us and our team well-informed.

I do not use Dell PowerStore's built-in integrations for VMware, Kubernetes, containers, or other ecosystems presently. I may look into them later, but I would use the VMware integration if anything. However, we have a separate VMware system in place and that currently suffices.

I rate Dell PowerStore with a 10 because it does everything that it said and more. For instance, we got a guarantee of 5-to-1 data reduction, and we are getting 13-to-1. That is incredible and more than twice the guarantee. We are getting ease of use, and it is very intuitive. I can change the storage within 60 seconds and grow and expand the storage. It is scalable and just meets all the needs that we had in looking for a storage solution. I recommend Dell PowerStore because it is highly available. It is something you can rely on and count on to stay running. Even when some of the components fail, it will still be up and running. A lot has to go wrong for it to fail, and that is one of the reasons I would recommend Dell PowerStore.

I am aware of this product, and your intention is to sell this product to my company. I am selling these types of products in Bangladesh, especially in the BFSI segment. I can give you the contact person number so that you can communicate with him.

I'm dealing with products such as PowerStore, PowerEdge, and PowerProtect. For servers, I use PowerEdge, and for storage, I use Dell PowerStore.

Since the launch of Dell PowerStore three or four years ago, I have sold more than around 25 Dell PowerStore storages to different accounts in Bangladesh.

The 1200T and 500 models are used mostly by my customers, and in most cases, it's the 1200 and 500.

My customers are not clustering multiple Dell PowerStore appliances, but I recently got a purchase order from a bank whose name I prefer not to mention. They are purchasing two units of Dell PowerStore storage.

In Bangladesh, Dell PowerStore users are very familiar with the product, which makes it easy to use for moving and optimizing workloads within the cluster. It is easy to manage for the end-user. I have been providing training to the respective clients accordingly, so they know how to manage and control it, and they are fully aware of it.

Dell PowerStore has definitely helped my customers improve their operational efficiency, as they can use their operations more efficiently with it.

Cybersecurity features are a point I wanted to mention. For the NetApp storage partner, we are also a partner of NetApp, but we face competition. NetApp storage has built-in ransomware protection, but as far as I know, Dell PowerStore still has not launched this type of security feature built-in with it. If Dell PowerStore comes with this type of security feature, it would be easier for me to sell those products to the end-users.

Ransomware protection is a built-in feature that NetApp has. NetApp already has this type of feature in their storage, but as far as I know, Dell PowerStore does not have this type of feature in the storage box.

Compression and deduplication technologies are very important for my customers because of the data size they are using. If these two technologies—deduplication and compression—are available, then it is a very reliable technology for storage.

The scale-up and scale-out technology is familiar to the end-user or customer in Bangladesh, and they know how to scale out or scale up the storage. It is also an important feature for storage expansion, so the client or end-user is very much familiar with this technology.

Response times have room for improvement. Basically, for after-sales support service in Bangladesh, it takes two or three working days to replace faulty parts. If this could be expedited, it would be more convenient for the end-user.

Stability could still be improved.

I have already faced competition due to the ransomware feature that Dell does not have as a built-in feature in the storage. My only challenge so far has been this. All other features and benefits are already there with Dell PowerStore, but ransomware protection is missing. My advice is to add ransomware protection first, as this is the primary concern. I have already faced competition with the NetApp brand for this type of built-in solution, and I did not get the deal because NetApp won it.

I have been using this solution for three or four years.

Out of 10, I would rate it 7.5 or 8.

I am satisfied so far.

Workload performance is assessed by the number or size of data customers are using. When I propose a storage solution, I usually ask the customer to share their usable capacity, and I think it is quite good or convenient for them since they are sharing their usable capacity at the time of purchase.

I am just taking over as a CAM, that is, Key Account Manager, and for the implementation of Dell PowerStore, my post-sales department is doing the implementation part. It would be convenient for you to get feedback from them.

I am providing training to our end-user or customer on how to manage or run this type of storage. They are fully aware of it. If they face any problem, they usually contact me and I help them accordingly.

Buying Dell PowerStore instead of buying too many servers with too many hard disks definitely reduces the capital expenditure for the particular end-user or customer. They already know that.

Pricing nowadays has been increasing tremendously, which is affecting my business as well. The previous price was good, and Dell PowerStore was priced well to sell, but nowadays, I am facing huge competition from NetApp, which is sharing the best price compared to Dell PowerStore.

If I were to give examples, I would have to mention the client name, which I do not want to share. In this case, we can skip this question. The clients usually do not want to share this type of data with me, but perhaps this type of data is available to my pre-sales or post-sales person, not to me.

I have been working in this sector since 2007. I started my career as an internee to learn how to sell ICT products in Bangladesh. I started my journey in 2007 and am continuing till now. I would rate this product and service experience an 8 out of 10.

My main use case for Dell PowerStore is a unique all-flash, all-NVMe, unified storage predominantly that can scale both workloads, file as well as block. The majority of our workloads that we've seen Dell PowerStore on is block and a little bit on file as well. The use case is between file and block workloads, both.

A quick specific example of how I use Dell PowerStore for file or block workloads includes tech refresh cases, replacing existing storages that we have. Customers have storages that have run out of warranties. We can go and refresh them with Dell PowerStore which makes a lot of difference because great compression or dedupe ratio, or as we call DDR, in Dell PowerStore is about 4:1 or with the new code, it's almost 5:1. We can go ahead and look at consolidating more workloads, achieving better consolidation, and better ROI.

My main use cases for Dell PowerStore include hypervisor migrations and consolidations, as well as existing tech refreshes, which are the major use cases that we are seeing at this point in time.

My main use cases for Dell PowerStore are to consolidate workloads. I have been able to consolidate data using Dell PowerStore, achieving a data reduction rate of about 2.5 to 3:1 that we've been achieving right now on the latest code that got released for Dell PowerStore. We've seen upwards of 30 to 40% betterment when it comes to production of workloads or reduction of storage footprint on different workloads, at least 40%.

The best features Dell PowerStore offers include unmatched compression ratios or DDR, unified capability with both scale-up as well as scale-out options available, as these three are top of my mind at this point in time that represent the best feature set that Dell PowerStore offers.

The unified capability and scaling options in Dell PowerStore have helped my customers by allowing block workload and file workload to run on the same storage instead of managing that data in silos. When that connected to the AI engine, it becomes so much easier for customers to have the entire data at one place rather than having to pull it from different sources of storages, which actually causes decision delays. It makes a lot of sense to have the data at one place rather than having it in multiple places.

Dell PowerStore has positively impacted my organization. As we are partners with Dell, we do have revenue accelerators that, in general, storage gives us. However, customer experience is something that we have great respect towards. It helps us to get a good customer experience, and hence the customer tends to be a repeat buyer. It makes a lot of sense to maintain that customer and then have them come and buy again from us.

I can share specific outcomes I've seen as a result of using Dell PowerStore, such as roughly 25 to 30% of the customers coming back for an upgrade or repeat purchases. From a scale-out standpoint or adding additional nodes, but upgrades are upwards of 50%, ranging from 50 to 60%.

The features of Dell PowerStore that I've found most impactful for my organization include DRR, which makes it impactful if the value is conveyed to the customer, and then making it affordable so that we can go ahead and position the right product. All-NVMe performance, which is unmatched at this point in time, and the unified feature are also significant.

Dell PowerStore can be improved because the entry-level 500T is still not the most adopted entry-level box. It does not have a scale-up option, and it still has only a scale-out option. That's a showstopper because with Unity now going away, Dell PowerStore becomes the only possible entry NVMe storage that is there in the Dell portfolio. Having different models which are more cost-effective to adopt, especially in challenging industries, is a key. If we can have that, then I'm sure we can do much better.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for approximately around four years now, or four and a half to five years.

I have seen a return on investment and can share relevant metrics such as fewer employees needed, money saved, time saved, or any other measurable outcome. All three aspects have been realized. Definitely money saved, time saved, resources saved, easier to deploy, time-to-market, and faster to recover if there are any problems.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that to begin with, we felt it was expensive. However, when we understood the value after DRR, it made sense. It took some time for us to understand the value of DRR because it doesn't come in straight. It applies a lot to block workload. It doesn't get applied to file workload. Also on block, it does not get applied on databases that are already encrypted. So it takes a little bit of time up-selling. At the end of the day, it made a lot of sense.

Before selecting Dell PowerStore, I did not evaluate a lot of options as Dell was the choice.

The advice I would give to others looking into using Dell PowerStore is to understand the value of the product. Do not gauge it from the cost that has been quoted to you. Understand the DRR values. Get the solution in the first place. Do not suffer from making a wrong choice or an uninformed choice. If you're able to get the value, I'm sure you'll enjoy the product.

Dell PowerStore is deployed in my organization mostly on-premises with our customers and a few with hybrid cloud. For the hybrid deployments, customers are cloud-agnostic, so we see them using AWS and Azure mostly.

I did not purchase Dell PowerStore through the AWS marketplace.

I am using the T model of Dell PowerStore, and it is configured as standalone. That's the most widely used by our customers.

I do use Dell AIOps, also known as CloudIQ or Apex AIOps, in Dell PowerStore, but it's mostly by our customers and not by us. I wouldn't be able to give feedback myself on this.

My experience with Dell PowerStore's data resiliency, availability, and cybersecurity features is that these features definitely meet my business's needs today. In terms of data resiliency and availability, the five-nines availability on Dell PowerStore makes a lot of sense. NVMe not having a drive we'll have to maintain for RAID makes a lot of difference in terms of cost. Also, the recovery from a failed drive is much easier on Dell PowerStore. That makes Dell PowerStore more reliable than other storages.

I am not enrolled in the Lifecycle Extension Program, formerly Anytime Upgrade, and my customers are the ones that get enrolled. At this point in time, none of our customers are enrolled in this program.

I utilize Dell PowerStore's built-in integrations for containers and Kubernetes. In containers and Kubernetes, we've seen that deployment becomes so much easier with faster time-to-market. Rather than spending a lot of time customizing the CSI drivers, it's easier to get that deployed and running. Time-to-market comes down drastically when you have these integrations available on Dell PowerStore natively.

I have provided this review with an overall rating of 8.

I help install and manage Dell PowerStore. I installed the equipment with my supervisor and then manage part of the storage, redirecting files there. Currently, we are transitioning to a new domain and moving entire on-premises drives into that environment. I have multiple roles with it between networking and actual maintenance of it, managing the backup, and managing the data itself.

Currently, the models of Dell PowerStore are configured as stand-alone systems, but eventually, we are going to move into a vSAN between our two data centers and some of our on-premises resources. Right now, they are solo, but we are going to expand later.

Dell PowerStore has definitely impacted my organization positively in terms of operational efficiency. It collects our backups for our virtual machines, keeping those on cycle with no issues. This has definitely improved our efficiency.

I find it very easy to deploy Dell PowerStore. I thought it would be far more complex, but it probably took us 30 minutes. It was very straightforward. Dell made it incredibly easy.

If I could improve Dell PowerStore or have any additional features, I would want nothing because nothing is perfect in technology. We are always seeking the one piece of glass for everything. I know Dell is working on that through all their offerings, and I just have not talked to the right person yet or maybe it just has not been released. But integrating it into one big piece of glass along with servers and everything else would be great. A single pane of glass would be ideal. I am not saying they do not have it now, I just have not seen it yet, but if that were to be my one thing, because I know everybody has probably asked for the same thing, a single pane of glass for everything would make life easier, especially when I am managing on the back end trying to do updates and firmware without having to go to this iDRAC or that management site or this over here or that over there. We run a lean team for our IT department, so it just makes it easier on me for scheduling and planning. When I have to tell people that we are going to have an outage or they are not going to be able to access something, it will just go faster.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for about eight months.

I describe the stability of Dell PowerStore as high. If anything goes out, I am more worried about my Cisco switches going out before that does.

Going to the vSAN will help us consolidate data because we have to travel back and forth, and our company is spread out in oil and gas, very spread out with our data. It helps to consolidate it from one position to the other and also have that redundancy. Dell PowerStore will help us do that when we get that all set up. But right now it is set to replicate, but it will be more efficient later on once we do that.

My experience with Dell's customer support overall has been amazing. Every time I have had to call in, I always get someone who really knows their material. Even when they do not know, they are going to find out from someone else and bring it back to us later. I have yet to have a bad experience with Dell.

I would rate the customer support a 10.

Prior to using Dell PowerStore, my company was just using a few QNAP NAS drives and NAS devices. We managed to move everything into our scale environment, but we were using a setup based off of 2012 small business server like Active Directory. We have tried to rid ourselves of it, but it has all been mixed between there and our QNAPs, and it has been a nightmare to make sure someone has access to this and that.

Dell PowerStore will not need to integrate well with the QNAPs because we are getting rid of those, so we are moving it all into Dell PowerStore and then not even worrying about the integration.

I find it very easy to deploy Dell PowerStore. I thought it would be far more complex, but it probably took us 30 minutes. It was very straightforward. Dell made it incredibly easy.

We deployed it with an advisor from Dell's partner, Polara. They were great, but everything they were telling us, it was as soon as we read it, they did not really need to provide us more. They just told us their opinion, and it was a good opinion, but I do not think if they were not there, I think we could have done it just fine without them.

I do not have any measurable ROI benefits that I have seen. My boss or my VP might have it, but at the moment, I do not have it.

We have evaluated other products besides Dell, like HPE. There are just some things about their customer service model and then just a lack of response in certain situations, so I felt like they did not want people's business. We have worked with other vendors who use Dell equipment, so right now we have a couple of scale clusters, but they are using Dell PowerFlex currently in our environment. Other storage options, other than just making it on our own, did not appeal to us. We wanted the support, we wanted the redundancy, we wanted the availability, we wanted everything Dell offers with their platform. My supervisor has worked with Dell for a long time, so he does not have many bad stories, and every time he has had an issue, like drive failure, anything, they are there instantly fixing it.

I do not have the models of Dell PowerStore off the top of my head.

I have had no issues with Dell PowerStore's data resiliency, availability, and cybersecurity features. We have not had any incidents, so I cannot speak to problems with the cybersecurity resiliency. I know that is part of me on my network portion to make sure I harden it, but availability has been fine. It responds quickly. I have not had any failures of any sort yet. It has proven to be a very redundant machine overall.

I currently use the iDRAC feature with Dell PowerStore, but we know they have a GUI interface for it. We just have not gotten there to getting it fully integrated yet.

I have never had a problem with the iDRAC in general. The only weirdness is we have a 7920 that trying to get into with the password is just not the same as the other enterprise models will have it. You have to use Bluetooth, have it on Wi-Fi, and it is very complex in my environment to just do that. That is probably the only issue. But otherwise, I have never had a problem with the iDRAC. I updated it just fine, never had any issues. It is pretty accurate in resolving issues.

I do not yet use the AI Ops feature from Dell, such as CloudIQ or APEX AIOps. We are here today to try to see how we can incorporate that.

Part of the reason we have not incorporated AI Ops yet is due to a lack of true understanding. AI is cool, but it is not the end all be all of everything. I know it is supposed to make our lives easier, but at the same time, I need to make sure it is doing what it needs to do. I need to know what it is doing before I just completely commit to it. There is also the danger of it collecting data and someone exfiltrating it in a path we did not know about. So, we are trying to get all the angles from our security engineer to ensure that we are not vulnerable on that side, but also, we want to make sure we know what it needs to do so it does just what it needs to do.

I have been able to consolidate data using Dell PowerStore. We have managed to pull in a couple of different shared drives we had and pull things out of our SharePoint environments to alleviate things in the cloud that we do not need in the cloud.

My company runs about 600 employees right now, but we run lean. We are probably a medium enterprise. The best way to put us is that we have big assets, but a very lean workforce.

I give this review an overall rating of 10.

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.

We are partners and an integrator. We work very closely with Dell and Pure on both technologies. Recently, I have been working on another storage array primarily for a client-specific requirement for a VAN-level data migration. We have been evaluating Hitachi and NetApp storages as well.

We have been working with the 5600 series mostly, and there are 6000 series and 7000 series as well. We have been working and consolidating on multiple storage arrays, and recently we have been working on the 5000 series storage array.

We are looking at options to evaluate. The requirement is slightly different from the data sovereignty and long-distance migration perspective, so we are evaluating multiple options.

The deduplication and compression ratio that we get out of Dell PowerStore is really good. The immutability that comes along is coming in handy. The ease of managing the storage arrays is a standout feature. Because I have worked on medium to enterprise-grade systems, I see that provisioning, supporting, and managing Dell PowerStore is a lot easier and convenient.

Dell PowerStore provides very good clustering capabilities. You can increase your number of drives vertically and horizontally with the controller. Dell PowerStore provides good scalability.

The model which we have selected provides us with the required features that we are looking for, so I cannot complain or say there is room for improvement at this point in time. However, this is a normal trend across the industry where we are talking about cybersecurity and cyber resiliency. We can take snapshots of these LUNs and storages, which is a common feature across all storage systems now. If I want to generalize, there should be some method of intelligence put into the storage that can identify anomalies while writing data onto the blocks. This is not just for Dell PowerStore, but this is across all industry-wide storages. Pure recently has come up with some intelligence with immutability. It would be good to see across all storage systems having such a feature where any random blocks read and write can throw an alert showing that some irregular pattern has been identified and can raise a risk to operations.

It has been a couple of years now, at least two years.

Dell PowerStore is meeting my needs and requirements. It is meeting my performance, read and write performance, for my enterprise-grade applications. I am happy with the decision that we have taken and have worked with Dell PowerStore.

Dell PowerStore provides very good scalability. You can cluster Dell PowerStore instances and increase your number of drives vertically and horizontally with the controller.

There are no complaints. The same performance level is seen across even when doing multiple array consolidation into a specific cluster.

We were considering Primera Storage, Nimble Storage, and HPE. We were also looking at Pure Storage. We had multiple options to choose from. We chose Dell PowerStore because of the larger partnership that we had with Dell. Second, the kind of competitiveness that we were going to get out of the storage in terms of pricing competitiveness. Third, from a strategic partnership with Dell, apart from the technical feasibility and technical scalability options.

Because of the implementation that we have done and the ease of deployment, I would give it an 8.5 to 9. I do not know how it would perform once we start consolidating the workload. Based on the feedback and technical discussions that we had with the Dell technical team, the feedback has been really good on that front. However, I do not know at this point in time how the migration, workload consolidation, and future deduplication and compression will perform, but I would still give around 8.5 as an overall rating.

The setup cost is reasonable. What I do not like about Dell PowerStore is the software licensing, which also has to be brought in. There are two elements of components that we probably have to bring in. One is the hardware block increase or storage increase. Then, as we increase the hardware level, we are also required to buy additional licenses to augment that capacity and use that capacity. The pricing could be much lower if they can reduce the fee on the software licensing portion.

Dell PowerStore provides the required latency of a few milliseconds, which I operate with for major enterprise-grade applications, including SAP. It is delivering the required performance parameters to continue operating on Dell PowerStore.

There is a project running to evaluate AIOps. At this point in time, we are not consuming it in the production stage.

AI is taking over everything, and we are solutioning AI everywhere. There should be some level of integration. AIOps does integrate with Dell PowerStore. I do not know if there is a security that can be brought in, which could be part of the current storage portfolio, which could be an AI-enabled security. I would like to route this back to the cybersecurity that I was mentioning.

We are using Evergreen FlashArray, X90.

We have done our CAPEX with Dell PowerStore. These are brand-new storage systems that we have gotten for our project. At this point in time, we are not looking at any lifecycle extension. Probably down the lane in the next three or four years, when the project maturity comes, we will have to think about the storage lifecycle.

We will be exploring integrations in the future. At this point in time, we just commissioned Dell PowerStore, so we are exploring options for integrating with other systems. We also need to make sure that we meet our own internal security and compliance guidelines. We are looking at options for expanding the capabilities that we see with storage.

I have given Dell PowerStore an overall review rating of 8.5 out of 10.

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.

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.

I am currently using Dell PowerStore as an external storage for enterprise solutions across multiple sectors, including the public sector, oil and gas, and banking sector. Dell PowerStore is one of the most useful and highest-performing storage solutions available. It is compatible with different work routes, allowing me to store many different work routes in Dell PowerStore. Dell PowerStore can integrate and be compatible with different servers from other vendors. The operation is very high performance for storage. I can install different work routes preferred for AI data. Additionally, I can integrate with the cloud from Dell.

I am currently using Dell PowerStore as an external storage for enterprise solutions across multiple sectors, including the public sector, oil and gas, and banking sector. Dell PowerStore is one of the most useful and highest-performing storage solutions available. It is compatible with different work routes, allowing me to store many different work routes in Dell PowerStore. Dell PowerStore can integrate and be compatible with different servers from other vendors. The operation is very high performance for storage. I can install different work routes preferred for AI data. Additionally, I can integrate with the cloud from Dell.

We are working with the AWS cloud. I am already working with Marketplace, but with different needs regarding Dell technologies.

A significant advantage of Dell PowerStore is the ability to scale up and scale down. If I want to upgrade Dell PowerStore at any time, I can add more enclosures or add more hard disks in the same enclosure. I can upgrade the hard disk, so I have the flexibility to increase storage. If my system has reached maximum size, I can upgrade and add more storage without buying new storage. I can add another shelf or enclosure.

The most important feature of Dell PowerStore is data resiliency. There are many benefits for Dell PowerStore compared with other solutions, including features like data resiliency, security points, and integration with different solutions.

If I want to store many data, I need the compression feature to save size. We can consolidate data with Dell PowerStore with a data reduction of 10%.

Dell PowerStore is easy to manage. I have a big professional implementation team that can install Dell PowerStore with all the models. We are experts in this area and do not have any issues.

I think efficiency in the operation for Dell PowerStore sometimes requires opening new cases with Dell to troubleshoot some upgrades, and I need a faster response from the support team. Sometimes there is a delay from the Dell support team. I can rate them at 7%.

The price is more expensive, so I am not proposing Dell PowerStore for small customers and small organizations. I propose alternative storage solutions like Unity or entry-level storage PowerVault for these customers. However, for medium and big enterprise customers, I propose Dell PowerStore.

I do not have any issue other than the price, which is more expensive compared with other storage solutions from other vendors. If Dell could add more features and enhance existing features to be higher, it would be very beneficial.

Hypothetically, I believe Dell could add some new features in the future related to AI or automation, which would be valuable to see as additional functions.

I have been dealing with Dell PowerStore for approximately 10 years.

Up to now, I have been proposing multi-solutions for Dell PowerStore and have been migrating multiple data and upgrading Dell PowerStore like 3200T. I do not have any issues with this. It has good performance.

I am working with 80% clustered solutions in Dell PowerStore. Some clients are already working with standalone solutions. This is determined based on customer needs.

I think efficiency in the operation for Dell PowerStore sometimes requires opening new cases with Dell to troubleshoot some upgrades, and I need a faster response from the support team. Sometimes there is a delay from the Dell support team. I can rate them at 7%.

The installation and deployment of Dell PowerStore is straightforward. All my projects are now working with Dell PowerStore as on-premise. Installation with Dell PowerStore is very easy, including with Linux. I do not have any issues with this.

Dell PowerStore is easy to manage. I have a big professional implementation team that can install Dell PowerStore with all the models. We are experts in this area and do not have any issues.

Regarding ROI with Dell PowerStore, I have already achieved more. I am already working with many projects for Dell PowerStore. For me, it is already more valuable.

I do not have any issue regarding setup cost and CapEx for Dell PowerStore. I think we can reduce it by 8%, for example.

The price is more expensive, so I am not proposing Dell PowerStore for small customers and small organizations. I propose alternative storage solutions like Unity or entry-level storage PowerVault for these customers. However, for medium and big enterprise customers, I propose Dell PowerStore.

I have already compared Dell PowerStore with HPE and Lenovo. For me, Dell is the leader. Dell is more expensive compared to HPE and Lenovo.

Regarding upgrades for Dell PowerStore, I provide solutions based on customer requirements. For example, if I am working with a customer today and we propose solutions based on their requirements, after two years the current system may have reached its maximum capacity and the customer needs more storage. At this point, I work with the customer to determine what features the customer will need for the next three to five years. Based on that assessment, I propose upgrade solutions. If the customer needs more storage, I can propose that. If the current product has reached end of sale or end of support, I work to refresh the solution and propose new products with the most updated features.

Upgrading to a next generation product is not difficult. It is easy. We can consolidate data with Dell PowerStore with a data reduction of approximately 10%.

My overall rating for this review is 10.

What I like the most about Dell PowerStore is the 4-to-1 data dedupe and compression guarantee, which is a big thing. The other great feature is the import feature from other older Dell series storage, which is excellent when you run into things like raw device mappings and LUNs that can be transferred over that way. I would say that it works really well 90% of the time. You do hit those instances where it doesn't always work, depending on the version of the other SAN and things like that. But I would say that those are probably the top two things.

I describe my experience with Dell PowerStore's data resiliency, availability, and cybersecurity features as quite positive. They have their proprietary DRE rather than a standard RAID 5 or RAID 6. They offer single or double disk failure protection. Those are great. The replication is great, the snapshots and protection features are really great selling points for it and a great option for anybody if they had any sort of cyber event or ransomware.

The importance of Dell PowerStore's compression and deduplication technologies for my organization is extremely critical, and probably one of the top things that is the selling point for Dell PowerStore. It is its claim to fame, the 4-to-1 data reduction. I do know they will do an exclusion if they have certain types of data that cannot be compressed, such as video. I would say it is one of the biggest selling points of Dell PowerStore.

Regarding what I dislike about Dell PowerStore, I do not think there is anything significant. During my initial setups, when you initially deploy those, you have to choose between block-only storage or unified mode, where it has block storage and NAS storage. The only option if you choose one of those and want to change it is to reinitialize it. I wish there was some way they could make that easier to change back and forth. However, I do not think that is inherently an option. That is probably the only feature that has given me trouble in the past.

My experience with contacting the technical support or customer support for Dell PowerStore is great. Usually, the only time I have had to call was when I first started deploying them and if it failed in an initial initialization. They are pretty quick to resolve any issues and can walk me through any questions I have.

If I were to put Dell PowerStore support on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, I give it an 8.

In terms of alternatives to Dell PowerStore, I have dealt with 3PAR and HP Nimble, which are probably the closest ones I have compared to Dell PowerStore.

When talking about the ease of deployment of Dell PowerStore, they give you a few options. They have that PowerStore deployment utility that, if it is configured properly and has DHCP on it, it will work. Often, as a partner that deploys those, we have to go through the service port for initial configuration where it has the assigned IP address, and you have to set a static IP on your laptop. They have a solid initial deployment process for those.

When thinking about the pricing of Dell PowerStore, I know the pricing well. We usually deal with the 500T, or sometimes a PowerStore 1000 or 1200, as we work with medium business organizations. I would say they are comparable to the competitors in that realm, with HP products or storage being the first two that come to mind. The 500T seems to be around the 50,000 mark or something similar. They are not cheap, but they are worth the money for those.