Dell PowerStore Reviews

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.

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.

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.

The use case for purchasing is that I am doing a hyper-converged infrastructure on Hyper-V. My main goal has been to really have redundancy and reliability in the system based on our production schedule. We cannot afford to have much downtime. Therefore, I needed a setup. We purchased Dell PowerStore at the same time. I needed a setup that would give me the reliability to run my operations pretty much all the time.

Our production runs from about 3:00 AM until about 5:00 PM, which is a very long production run. During that time, we have PLCs and data collection equipment on the production floor. If they were offline, that means the production is not running. Therefore, having that reliability with Dell PowerStore, with the PowerEdge, with the setup that I have, enables us to keep the production running.

For small medium-sized businesses, Dell PowerStore has supported growth and organizational success because our company has been growing for several years, and we expect it to keep growing over the next several years. Having that infrastructure behind the systems is going to definitely allow us to keep operating with our production schedule, which is very demanding as per our customers' needs, and then also improving our production efficiency and quantity through efficiencies. I see all the Dell products growing with our future needs. We have been a Dell customer for a long time, and as far as I can see, we will continue to be.

The most valuable thing for me is that what we do is not really resource-intensive. Most of our work is regular office tasks. We do not do a lot of high bandwidth tasks or tasks that require a lot of storage amount or compute power. What I am looking for is reliability and redundancy. That is built in at every level of the system. It is built in at the component level, and it is built in at the whole system level too.

I have seen a reduction in downtime. Unfortunately with the PowerEdge and the new setup, I cannot really answer that because it is so new. We have not had any downtime yet with it. Hopefully, we will not, however, so far we have not had any downtime.

I like having products from the same vendor. It reduces a lot of headaches. When you have multiple vendors, there can be finger-pointing. With one vendor, you can get a turnkey solution.

The big problem that we had with Dell PowerStore comes to pricing. There seems to be a lack of a price range in the small company, small medium company segment. There is a bit of a blind spot.

Regarding additional features, it is so new that I cannot really give a comprehensive answer. I think feature-wise, it is very feature-rich. Maybe some of those features could be paired down in order to give lower price range options for companies such as us that are not IT companies, but manufacturing companies, where IT is not at the forefront of things.

I have been using Dell PowerStore since January when we bought our first one very recently. That is our first Dell PowerStore product.

It is scalable with those needs. Our growth in that sense is not very intensive as far as storage or compute goes, but it has been scalable when we have needed it.

I assess customer service and technical support as very good. I have found them to be very knowledgeable and very responsive. I do not really have any problems there. They have been very great to deal with. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the customer service as a nine.

Positive

Before purchasing Dell PowerStore, we were using a Hyper-V cluster with the Hyper-V purpose-built servers from Dell. That product line has been discontinued now, so we had to go with Dell PowerStore instead.

I have seen some return on investment. Since we were refreshing our infrastructure, the return on investment has been that I am able to concentrate my time on high-level items rather than small-level items that come from the aging infrastructure that we had before.

There is a big pricing increase once you get to our level, and for our size company, it was almost too large when we went from previous generation products to current models. It was a sticker shock, I have to admit.

I did not consider other solutions before purchasing Dell PowerStore.

The advice I would give to other organizations who are considering Dell PowerStore is because of the price, make sure that you right-size the equipment so you are not paying more for capacity that you are not going to use. That is probably my best advice.

To assess that before purchasing, you basically have to look at a couple of things. First of all, what is your current use of storage? Then, of course, you have to figure out how this is going to grow over the lifetime of the next product. From there, as an IT manager, director, or CIO, you have to be tuned into the company's C-level perspective on what they think the growth is going to be over the next four or five years of the product lifecycle.

We don't currently have any AI initiatives; we may in the future. Right now, our business is manufacturing and very traditional. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell PowerStore a nine overall.

My customers usually use Dell PowerStore for their infrastructure workloads and for their business needs.

Customers mainly use it for infrastructure workloads.

Improving operational efficiency is one of the default use cases, and it is paramount.

The main positive impact of Dell PowerStore on organizations is the total cost of ownership, which is one main advantage.

Moving and optimizing workloads within the cluster is quite easy based on my experience with Dell PowerStore.

The clustering feature, the Metro Cluster, deduplication capability, and compression are all important and valuable based on customer requirements.

Dell PowerStore's compression and deduplication technologies are very important for customers. These features increase operational efficiency and reduce their hardware footprint.

Operational efficiency is improved based on the customer industry and how their day-to-day operations and overheads are reduced. The management capabilities of Dell PowerStore are extremely easy to use and user-friendly. The benefits include ease of management and time savings.

Customers have been able to consolidate data using Dell PowerStore by 25% to 30% at least.

The data resiliency and cybersecurity features of Dell PowerStore are just normal and would be considered medium; we need additional components such as cybersecurity vault for increased resilience.

If the data resiliency and cybersecurity features are optimized, it would be very beneficial, as it's something we look forward to.

While the workload performance of Dell PowerStore is above average compared to other storage solutions, there's always room for improvement.

Staying updated with the industry is important, though no specific improvements come to mind for Dell PowerStore's next releases.

I have been working with Dell PowerStore for about three to four years now.

I have not heard of any outages or power decreases with Dell PowerStore.

My impression of Dell PowerStore's stability is that it's quite stable.

About 10% to 15% of the time we might come across a bug and we reach out to Dell support to get it resolved. 

I'd rate stability nine out of ten. This level of stability is very important for our customers. If it wasn't highly stable, they likely wouldn't buy the product. 

Expanding Dell PowerStore, in terms of scaling up and scaling out, is extremely easy; it's all online.

Ease of expansion is extremely important for customers. This avoids any unnecessary maintenance windows and outages. There's also better visibility.

Dell's technical support is always available for us. Technical support helps in resolving issues in a timely manner, which is why we open cases.

I would rate the technical support of Dell PowerStore between nine and ten out of ten.

Positive

The compression and deduplication are quite good compared to other vendors. It helps customers increase operational efficiency. There will be less hardware to manage. 

My experience with the deployment of Dell PowerStore is that it's quite easy and straightforward, typically completed within one to three days maximum.

The initial setup of Dell PowerStore is straightforward and uncomplicated.

Operations in the government sector, hospitality, and medical data storage are all examples of implementation.

Performing upgrades is quite easy, and I didn't face any challenges in this process.

Customers manage to see ROI thanks to these features, as they reduce their hardware footprint. The reduction of capital expenditures is about 30%.

Licensing for Dell PowerStore is all-inclusive, which is a good point, though from a price perspective, it is higher priced and could be more competitive.

The pricing is based on opportunities, so it varies widely.

We're a consultant. We work with small to medium-sized businesses.

Focusing on data resiliency and cybersecurity features is crucial.

Customers are satisfied but would like to see it improved in the future.

I would rate Dell PowerStore at nine out of ten. It's a very good product.

We use Dell PowerStore for the data centers and mostly for virtualization to provide storage capacity to hypervisors, using it for different use cases such as SQL databases, Exchange servers, and custom-based applications that serve different purposes.

Use cases that are mostly used involve some clients in the banks hosting main applications on Dell PowerStore, and sometimes it is used to replace previous generations of Dell products, such as Unity or VNX, where the customer base primarily consists of traditional Dell customers, along with some government institutions.

Some use cases with Dell PowerStore that can impact involve a client hosting an application for a public service that people use, and they provided feedback that the application performance has improved, and they are happy with this product.

The best features of Dell PowerStore are that it is really easy to use and really easy to set up, and a great feature is also the performance, which is really good, and it is very easy to integrate with VMware, for example; it has great integration.

Apart from the pricing, the key differentiator for Dell PowerStore in comparison to competitors such as IBM and Hitachi is its performance and data reduction, which is a really great feature since the data reduction ratio is much better on Dell PowerStore.

From a technical perspective regarding Dell PowerStore, I am not certain what improvements or enhancements should be made because it is a really good product; however, from the price perspective, I think it should be less expensive to better position it against vendors such as IBM or Hitachi, since sometimes it is hard to sell it due to higher pricing.

Disadvantages of Dell PowerStore, apart from the price, from a technical perspective, do not exist.

For growing needs, Dell PowerStore is easy to scale, but I had an issue where if a client wants to buy additional drives after the initial purchase, the price is quite expensive because they do not get the discount from the initial purchase; thus, they should plan to buy more capacity up front.

We have been working with Dell PowerStore for approximately two or three years.

I have not experienced any downtimes or crashes with Dell PowerStore, as it has been really stable, and we have not replaced any part except perhaps some hard drives.

For growing needs, Dell PowerStore is easy to scale, but I had an issue where if a client wants to buy additional drives after the initial purchase, the price is quite expensive because they do not get the discount from the initial purchase; thus, they should plan to buy more capacity up front.

We had cases when we needed support from the Dell technical support team, which is quite good for consultancy and firmware issues; however, in our region, it is a bit more challenging to get hardware parts since everything goes through partners, which can create a bottleneck.

I would rate the tech support an eight on a scale of one to ten.

Positive

Deployment of Dell PowerStore is quite easy, and compared to previous generations of Dell or other vendors, I think it is really easy for us as system integrators, although sometimes it is not great for us as it limits the services we sell since clients can even do the deployment themselves.

We are a partner and a system integrator with Dell, and also we are an authorized deployment and support provider.

Apart from the pricing, the key differentiator for Dell PowerStore in comparison to competitors such as IBM and Hitachi is its performance and data reduction, which is a really great feature since the data reduction ratio is much better on Dell PowerStore.

We work with Dell PowerStore and with Unity.

Performance metrics with Dell PowerStore actually depend on the case, but for some clients, the most important is the latency and write latency, and they use various tools to measure, mostly with VMware's vCenter that has some metrics they can monitor; however, to be honest, the clients or institutions using it are not utilizing the maximum performance or capacity that it can provide.

Most of our clients are small to medium businesses, but Dell PowerStore is not really a fit for small businesses since they tend to go with lower models such as PowerVault or less expensive products.

I do not have specific analysis on how Dell PowerStore has supported the growth of operational success for medium businesses, but since it is easy and has no issues, I think the IT teams do not have to worry and are happy with it.

I can recommend to other organizations considering Dell PowerStore that if they want an on-premises solution, they can count on it for performance and reliability, making it a really good product. This review has an overall rating of nine out of ten.

Multiple Dell PowerStore appliances can be clustered, with the capability to connect four nodes to a single cluster. Dell PowerStore solution is used on Linux, and a customer connecting storage space from Dell PowerStore to their server can use Linux as well. We are mostly using Red Hat Linux, Oracle Linux, and SUSE.

I have implemented many boxes recently and have been working for Dell as an IMAC deploying and implementing Dell PowerStore products in Pakistan. The solution is very easy to use. Moving and optimizing workloads within the cluster is straightforward on Dell PowerStore. The workload performance delivered by Dell PowerStore is very good.

The compression and deduplication technologies of Dell PowerStore are satisfactory, with a 2.1 ratio being sufficient and meeting customer requirements. Expanding and scaling Dell PowerStore is simple. When scaling up, you add the DAEs, and when scaling out, you add the next node on the right side. After initializing the next node and connecting it to the TOR switch, you can add it to your cluster, and the new node will join the cluster automatically.

For connectivity, we can use 10G primarily because it uses IP for cluster connections. Dell PowerStore has different ports used for the cluster, management, and other activities for interconnectivity. Lifecycle control for Dell PowerStore is also better, though we normally use the baseline to upgrade by manually uploading files through IDRAC rather than through the Lifecycle feature.

Some features are not easy on Dell PowerStore. For example, changing the IP is not straightforward like on Unity or other storage solutions. You must run a command in the CLI to replace the IPs, remove the existing IP, and add the new IP. A user cannot change the IP easily and will require technical support and expertise from a partner or from Dell.

There should be an easy way to change the IP from the GUI in Dell PowerStore. In the manageable settings, anything can be changed from the GUI after installation and initialization. The other features are satisfactory and very advanced but easy to manage, with nothing difficult about them.

The IP change issue is important in Dell PowerStore as there are four IPs to consider: a cluster IP, a management IP, and two nodes' IPs. These cannot be changed easily, and the subnet mask is also involved. You need to write everything in a two or three-line command, starting from the IP, removing the existing IP, and adding new IPs one through three, all in sequence separated by a comma. There is a very small tab in the management IP modify section. When clicking on modify, it shows delete, but the delete function is not working as it is not highlighted because it can only be done with the service password.

The service password is not able to log in with the GUI and is only used to log in with the CLI. In the previous Unity, you could log in with both the service account and the GUI, where you could use either the admin or service user. In Dell PowerStore, the service user is only used with the CLI and cannot log into the GUI, which is not a good feature because you cannot perform any maintenance from the GUI.

I have not used Dell PowerStore's built-in integrations for VMware, Kubernetes, containers, or other ecosystems. However, if you are using a different model, not the T model of Dell PowerStore but the S model, which has all VMware products built-in, it would be suitable.

There should be direct connectivity between the nodes in Dell PowerStore. An additional add-on card in Dell PowerStore would allow you to add four nodes in a cluster that can connect directly to each other without utilizing switching in between. We are using two switches as VLT with RedStack, using a direct cable between the switches to become a VLT, making it a single logical switch, though the management is separate. If the nodes in Dell PowerStore could communicate directly with each other through a direct, dedicated media, like a stack cable to form a cluster, that would be a better feature.

For the last three years, I have been working on Dell PowerStore and have implemented several boxes.

I do not have a good experience with the technical support for Dell PowerStore. The technical support by Dell for Dell PowerStore is a seven or an eight, which is better. The engineers and their team were very good.

Positive

The IP change issue is important in Dell PowerStore as there are four IPs to consider: a cluster IP, a management IP, and two nodes' IPs. These cannot be changed easily, and the subnet mask is also involved. You need to write everything in a two or three-line command, starting from the IP, removing the existing IP, and adding new IPs one through three, all in sequence separated by a comma.

The service password cannot log in with the GUI and is only used to log in with the CLI. In the previous Unity, you could log in with both the service account and the GUI, where you could use either the admin or service user. In Dell PowerStore, the service user is only used with the CLI and cannot log into the GUI, which is not a good feature because you cannot perform any maintenance from the GUI.

We are not using CloudIQ in Dell PowerStore and have not utilized it at any time in Unity either. We call and open a case on support@dell.com instead of using CloudIQ. Most customers do not connect their systems to the internet or allow such connectivity. Therefore, CloudIQ is not beneficial for them.

Regarding the ability to add capacity in single drive increments, a single drive can be larger, but it depends on the rebuilding rate. When rebuilding capacity in case of a disk failure, a larger drive will take a longer time. There should be concern if these are slow NL-SAS drives with 4-8TB capacity, as you cannot configure them to RAID 5 and must configure them to RAID 6 instead. The rebuild will take a longer time, and in case of a disk failure in RAID 5, you will lose data. Where the pool is involved, it is easy to use the entire disk. Dell PowerStore mostly uses NVMe disk, ACM disk, and SAS disk, SSD disk, and does not use NL-SAS in the base chassis. My overall review rating for Dell PowerStore is eight out of ten.

In my role, I am both the storage engineer and administrator and architect managing Dell PowerStore. Currently, we have two 3200T models and one 3000T model, which is a Gen 1, all running Dell PowerStore version 4.0 OS. 

We use Dell PowerStore almost exclusively for high-performance workloads, mostly Oracle, Microsoft SQL, and MySQL databases.

The thing that I appreciate the most about Dell PowerStore is how easy it is to upgrade; the upgrade process is very simple, and I really appreciate how easy it is to connect my hosts to Dell PowerStore, as the environment automatically detects new fiber channel HBA ports for all the hosts that we connect to.

Dell PowerStore has simplified my workload pretty dramatically as an organization. It is very easy to manage Dell PowerStore; we have other Dell products, such as Dell Compellent and Dell PowerVault, and the PowerStore is much simpler to use. I have experienced dramatic time savings with Dell PowerStore. I estimate that I'm probably saving six to 10 hours a week in management with Dell PowerStore.

I would really appreciate the ability to implement file on Dell PowerStore after I've already provisioned the environment, as right now I have to choose between unified file and block or exclusively block when I first deploy.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for three years.

I have experienced some downtime with Dell PowerStore, particularly due to a bug with Emulex HBAs during an upgrade process.

Dell PowerStore has been able to grow with and scale with the growing needs of our organization. We started out with just the 3000T, and then we bought one 3200T, and expanded to another 3200T for our production environment, slowly expanding as we need.

I evaluate Dell support as incredibly good, as I've dealt with a lot of support companies and found their service much better than others. Dell differs positively from HPE, as HPE support tends to be extremely proactive, but not as technically skilled, making my interactions with Dell support much easier.

Positive

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Dell PowerStore was that the Dell team was very open, and their expertise makes me want to only buy Dell products, even though the university requires multiple vendors.

I do not have any AI use cases on Dell PowerStore. I'm not sure if we're planning to use Dell PowerStore for AI workloads, but we are planning to use AI in the near future. As a university, we are still trying to figure out how to implement AI in our environment. T

he feature set of Dell PowerStore is extremely robust in comparison to other storage arrays that I manage, and I would appreciate feedback that makes the Dell ME storage arrays as good as the old Dell Compellents. 

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Dell PowerStore a 9.

Our company is a partner of Dell Technologies, and we primarily use Dell PowerStore as our main tool deployed across our portfolio of customers according to their requests. Dell PowerStore is one of our main components in the market that we sell to our portfolio of customers.

We have approximately 10 to 15 implementations because we do not use Dell PowerStore in-house for our purposes. We do have a lab Dell PowerStore, though I have forgotten the model. However, we sell Dell PowerStore to our clients where we provide the service of procuring it, configuring it, starting it up, and leading the roadmap for our client until the point of usage. We are not using it ourselves; we are selling it to further clients.

If the customer requests those capabilities, we do deploy metro clusters and stretched clustering. The deployment depends on the configuration and the use case requested from the client.

We had one deployment of Dell PowerStore within a Linux environment.

Dell PowerStore has fairly easy clustering setup. The general rules of clustering involve preferred nodes, preferred LUNs, and available LUNs across the cluster. Dell made clustering quite easy in that the setup and management of a cluster are straightforward.

The easy configuration of metro clustering, super easy startup services, and the GUI are extremely easy and user-friendly to navigate and operate. Dell PowerStore as a device is easy to operate since as a hardware device, the maintenance and administration are very easy to perform, even regular maintenance such as disk changes and cabling.

Cybersecurity features are fairly good and at the level of what the competition is providing. Cybersecurity will always have grounds and bases on which it can be improved. Regarding data resiliency, it is quite resilient, especially if you know what you are doing with the RAID levels and properly set it up.

In my area of the market where we operate in Malta, most of our clients are SMBs because Malta being a very small country does not operate with multinational companies that have terabytes and petabytes of data. I believe Dell PowerStore meets the market needs at this point in time.

The champion feature for me is metro cluster.

Regarding compression and deduplication, coming from the HP world where I was a systems engineer for nearly four years, Dell has a much stronger and much more powerful compression and deduplication engine than the competition on the market. We are fairly happy with the deduplication ratio and the compression ratio that Dell PowerStore provides.

Dell PowerStore is an enterprise-graded device that is easily scalable and easily integrated into your ecosystem and provides metro cluster as one of the key features I would consider in any storage system. The main advantage is the general support of Dell, which is quite efficient. I would choose Dell over any other brand, and the deduplication and compression ratio is very powerful and very strong, effectively saving space and giving the overhead needed to store data. The cons of Dell PowerStore include that it has not been advertised at least in the Maltese market the way it should be. The advertising campaign that originates from Dell is much weaker than the competition, effectively making people skeptical and sometimes making the product hard to sell even though the product itself is a great one.

In the future, it would be great to have Dell PowerStore that can be a peer on the market for Alletra MP from HP where you have a main Dell PowerStore node that is easily expandable across the network using just a simple LAN switch, for example, the main concept that Alletra MP uses. Additionally, it would be great to have support from Dell for other hypervisors, not just natively on VMware, but also Proxmox and any other open source virtualization hypervisors that need access to a storage system using Fiber Channel protocols because at this point in time, Fiber Channel protocol is not supported on Dell PowerStore, for example, using Proxmox.

I have been working with Dell Technologies products for almost six months, but I have been working in IT for the past eight years or more.

I am not aware of any stability issues. However, I am still fairly new when it comes to Dell technologies. I have been with them for just six months. During that particular amount of time, we have not had any crash or anything disastrous happening.

Dell PowerStore is very easy to scale. I found it easier to be scaled than certain HP Enterprise devices like Alletra, perhaps not as seamless as Alletra MP, the latest one available from the competition, but similar to some other devices, it is fairly easy to scale it up and even sideways if needed.

I believe there is improved performance, but that is about it as far as I know.

I have not used Dell tech support as we have never had cases that required it. However, from the other devices we have been using across the Dell ecosystem, I found their support pretty straightforward and quite efficient.

Negative

Regarding compression and deduplication, coming from the HP world where I was a systems engineer for nearly four years, Dell has a much stronger and much more powerful compression and deduplication engine than the competition on the market. We are fairly happy with the deduplication ratio and the compression ratio that Dell PowerStore provides.

From my perspective, there are no challenges with initial setup. I do have quite a lot of experience even from times before when deploying storage was quite complex. However, nowadays, it is fairly simple. In general, when it comes to the simplicity of initial deployment of any Dell products, it is fairly simple to get it started up and running in literally a few clicks if you do not have any special requests that need to be catered or adjusted especially for that use case. If you need just a storage system to have it in your local domain, Dell PowerStore is fairly simple to start up.

Officially, I have implemented with a team. However, since I am at the company for only six months, I have not had any projects on that side yet.

I know that Dell PowerStore is cheaper than the competition, and that is about it because I am more on the technical side rather than on the sales side.

In the future, it would be great to have Dell PowerStore that can be a peer on the market for Alletra MP from HP where you have a main Dell PowerStore node that is easily expandable across the network using just a simple LAN switch, for example, the main concept that Alletra MP uses. Additionally, it would be great to have support from Dell for other hypervisors, not just natively on VMware, but also Proxmox and any other open source virtualization hypervisors that need access to a storage system using Fiber Channel protocols because at this point in time, Fiber Channel protocol is not supported on Dell PowerStore, for example, using Proxmox.

While it might be intimidating to have mixed and matched infrastructure in a view of having HP and Dell operating within the same system, everything is fairly acceptable. The partners are there to help and will be more than happy if they put Dell PowerStore along with any other storage system. As a matter of fact, they might have even better results within their internal networks and internal environment.

One of my key roles as a senior enterprise systems engineer is implementation and configuration of various devices either from Dell or previously from HP since I worked closely with HP. I do have hands-on experience.

I assume I could comment on certain aspects. However, I am not on that side of things because my job ends the second the storage system is presented to the virtualization hypervisors. I am not the best one to answer that question.

In the future, it would be great to have Dell PowerStore that can be a peer on the market for Alletra MP from HP where you have a main Dell PowerStore node that is easily expandable across the network using just a simple LAN switch, for example, the main concept that Alletra MP uses. Additionally, it would be great to have support from Dell for other hypervisors, not just natively on VMware, but also Proxmox and any other open source virtualization hypervisors that need access to a storage system using Fiber Channel protocols because at this point in time, Fiber Channel protocol is not supported on Dell PowerStore, for example, using Proxmox.

Performance is acceptable and is in the range of any other storage system during the workloads, obviously within the range of the model.

The GUI is fairly user-friendly. There are no finicky words or complex wording used, and I believe it is quite oriented toward systems administrators and enterprise administrators. I believe their life is fairly eased up on that side, making it fairly easy to use.

I believe we have clients that are using CloudIQ. I do believe this, but I am not 100 percent sure.

Since our users are mainly on VMware, we are using integration with VMware.

For us, I would not say it is super important because if you do not have one way to integrate it, there is another way to do it for me as somebody working on the partner side. However, I do believe that for the end-user, it is fairly important because most of those systems are not mainly used by one compute system, one server, or one hypervisor. However, if you have more than one, then the ease of integration within your current infrastructure and the current system that is running on site is very important.

I do believe that scalability is a very important part because, for example, I have had cases even when I was working with HP where you have customers who want to be able to expand slowly and keeping only a certain percentage of the overhead of the storage system because not all customers have the financial means to go and buy 5 terabytes of hard drives due to the cost of the hard drives and everything. I believe that is a very important part from the client perspective.

In general, there is nothing simple when it comes to working with Linux. However, I think the presentation of the LUNs and everything else is more or less the same as any other storage system that is operating over Fiber Channel protocols for the Linux side. I do not think in that aspect there are any easier scenarios or something that is much more different from the competitors.

Metro cluster will provide you with a copy of the data. First of all, you will have two systems that are joined by the metro cluster that can operate on the main site and on the disaster recovery site where you will have preferred LUNs on both sides, so you are not going to have a lot of latency when it comes to the data sets that need to be read and written. Basically, what you need on site A can be stored on site A and what you need on site B can be stored on site B, effectively making the quality of life for users that are spread on two sites nearly seamless. Additionally, you have that particular metro that is providing a kind of backup that in case something goes sideways with one of the systems, you will still have data available and there will still be a path for another system. You will have users continue to work seamlessly even though your storage system on one end is completely gone, for example.

My overall rating for this review is 9.