Dell PowerStore Reviews

Dell PowerStore is useful in the area of virtualization and block storage.

My company has benefited from the use of the solution since it is possible to have the monitoring functionality everywhere with the product in place.

Dell PowerStore's valuable feature stems from an area named Metro Volume, which is quite simple to implement. The feature works fast and is good.

It has high levels of deduplication and compression.

The challenge my company was trying to address with the implementation of Dell PowerStore was performance. For some applications, Dell PowerStore was not so good, but in general, it is a good product.

I have worked on all of the models offered under Dell PowerStore.

Speaking about the increase in performance of our company's applications, I would say that though in some cases, the performance was reduced, the overall performance was increased by 20 to 30 percent.

My organization uses Dell CloudIQ to manage and analyze Dell storage.

I use VMware with Dell PowerStore's integration feature. The integration of VMware with Dell PowerStore has improved our company's ability to see information about virtual machines directly from the storage console.

Sometimes, my company has been able to reduce our organizational footprint or data consolidation using Dell PowerStore by helping us reduce the number of devices and by helping us migrate from old to new storage products.

In terms of the environment where the solution is used, my organization deploys it on multiple sites. At times, my company deploys the tool at a single site, depending on the needs of our customers.

From an improvement perspective, the tool should focus on making it possible for users to configure the tool in a uniform mode with its good features.

The support team should have more people with experience in the solution's installation process, as it is one of the areas where I see certain shortcomings.

I have been using Dell PowerStore since it was launched. My company is a business partner with Dell. Our organization is also a service provider of Dell.

I think Dell PowerStore is a good product that offers stability.

The product's scalability is good because my company can group multiple Dell PowerStore boxes together, helping us increase capability and performance.

Sometimes, I have contacted the solution's technical support, and I would say they were good, but it all depends on the problem. I remember that I had called the support team once to resolve an issue associated with the product, and they resolved it quickly. I rate the support team an eight out of ten.

Positive

My company has never worked with other products that can be compared with Dell PowerStore.

The product's deployment phase has been simple.

The primary deployment model for Dell PowerStore can be described as an on-premises one.

Though I have no data, I think that our company's customers have experienced an ROI from using the product.

The licensing model offered by the product is simple for our company to look into.

I rate Dell PowerStore a nine out of ten.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We use Dell PowerStore for enterprise servers and backup servers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dell PowerStore has helped reduce our organizational footprint.

Dell PowerStore is more cost-efficient than other solutions.

Dell PowerStore should offer more cybersecurity and warehouse data security. 

I have been using Dell PowerStore for three years.

PowerStore is stable.

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

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

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

The initial deployment was straightforward.

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

I would rate Dell PowerStore ten out of ten. 

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

We primarily use the solution for storage and data reduction. 

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The architecture is very good.

It's a reliable product. 

The data reduction feature is quite useful. It has a good reduction ratio during migrations.

The solution is stable. 

The solution only supports NPE. It doesn't support SSD or Flash. We'd like the option to be more flexible. If a customer finds out SSD is not supported, they will look for another option.

I implemented the solution around two years ago. I haven't used it for very long. 

It is a reliable, stable product. We haven't had any issues with it. Of course, it is not that old. That said, there are no failures and we have not had controller issues. there are no bugs or glitches. 

It is a scalable product. However, I have not needed to go and upgrade it or add more enclosures, et cetera. It can scale up. However, it can not scale out.

I have three customers that have already implemented the tool. More are coming online soon. Most of them are enterprises. We do expect expansion in the coming years. 

Technical support is more than perfect. We are quite pleased with the level of support on offer. 

I'm also aware of HP, which is a very similar solution. Sometimes the pricing of HP can be better.

The solution is very simple to set up. It is not a complex process. I monitor the process from a design and implementation point of view. 

The deployment takes about 15 minutes if everything is correct and on-hand. Then you move on to the management and you can have the flow up and running. We do the configurations and create the volume and handle the storage of the whole system.

I've implemented the solution three times at different sites. We implement the tool and do the migration. I work with a separate partner and we deploy to the users. 

The pricing is fixed. We have received a good price overall. Users must pay for the licenses. Most of the tools are included in an out-of-the-box delivery. There are no extra fees.

We're partners.

The solution is acceptable for both small and large companies. 

I'd advise new users to be mindful during the implementation process and make sure it is done right. They need to choose the correct solution and implement either block or unified. It's a good idea to look at the documentation before setting everything up.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

The use case for this solution is based on VMware and that is why we chose PowerStore X. During the first period of the pandemic, we decided to use our VMware infrastructure for HPC workloads. We were looking for high-performance storage that could be inserted inside our VMware environment in an easy way. PowerStore, which had just been announced, seemed like the right solution and so we decided to buy. We have this storage environment inside the virtual HPC.

In our environment we are doing medical analysis related to genomic workloads. The data are acquired remotely from experiments and stored on the PowerStore. The PowerStore is exposed to the user through virtual machines, and the data are analyzed in this environment.

During the pandemic, we were looking for something that could easily increase our scientific computing capabilities. It was not for something related to our university's enterprise applications. We were looking for something that was easy to provide inside our virtual scientific computation environment. PowerStore was really the best we could buy. And it has changed things completely. Our scientific computations were traditional before, in the sense of NFS or traditional HPC. PowerStore, now, is a key factor for the virtual HPC environment that we have.

Also, the solution's Anytime Upgrade program is a key factor so that we can keep the storage upgraded without any downtime. We have experienced some software upgrades on the system over the last year, and everything has run quite smoothly and we are very happy about that. I expect the Anytime Upgrade program will save us money and it saves time, for sure. It's difficult, in our environment, to estimate how much time this program has saved us because we don't typically track the time we spend. But if you take into account the fact that the upgrade is almost automatic, almost without people intervening, that is the reason we save time. You can schedule an upgrade, so you know when you are upgrading, but you don't need people looking into it. We save the amount of time people would typically have to devote to an upgrade.

We bought the PowerStore for performance and flexibility, and we are 100 percent satisfied with both.

• Flexibility
• Performance
• Easy of use

It also has some very good compression capabilities. 

We were looking for a solution that was easy to install in our VMware environment, that was flexible. PowerStore X is a type of a VMware cluster that you install inside your environment. If you have a VMware environment, like we have in production, it's easy to install and use.

It enables us to add compute or capacity independently. We have also deployed some apps on PowerStore, even though the PowerStore we have is not the biggest one you can buy. One of the main characteristics of PowerStore is that it is like another piece of VMware, so you can run applications on top, applications that have direct access to the storage. The ability to add compute or capacity independently is great because it adds more flexibility to our environment. You are not adding only storage, but you're adding some not-so-big computing capability. You have the possibility of adding some virtual machines, running NVMe storage, and that is a real plus for this solution.

In addition, PowerStore's built-in intelligence for helping to simplify IT operations is incredible. When we approached PowerStore, we had an idea that it was a normative platform, but we were impressed by the capability of the solution. It's probably one of the best pieces of storage that we have installed here.

Where the system needs to improve is by adding more enterprise features like replication on other sites. We would also like it to be much more aligned with the VMware version. For example, today we have two different versions of VMware ESXi running to keep the PowerStore online. It would be better if the software cycling was faster.

We have been using Dell EMC PowerStore for almost a year. 

It's a stable solution.

PowerStore is the latest and the best technology available. The design for scalability of the solution is perfect. It's something that can grow vertically and horizontally, by design. Of course, it's NVMe storage, so it's not cheap. You can expand the solution using less expensive storage upgrades in the PowerStore, so it's very good. By design, it's a wonderful machine. Of course, if you want to go all-NVMe, you have to be able to afford it.

Dell EMC's customer and technical support are the best in the market, for sure. We have almost all the Dell EMC solutions here, so we know the support very well and it is absolutely the best in the market.

The installation was quite smooth and easy. After one week, everything was up and running.

The installation was done by Dell EMC people and us, together. Our experience with them was incredible, as usual. We have several types of Dell EMC storage here, so we know their abilities. Everything was smooth.

ROI was a key factor for us, for this infrastructure. We have seen ROI in that we have been able to give our researchers an environment that they didn't have before. It has been a complete success. It's a completely new environment. We didn't have anything similar before. Every cent spent has been worth it.

The price is not cheap, but it's worth it for the features you get from the storage. If you can afford it, you are probably buying the best solution that you can have for this virtual environment.

For this environment, PowerStore was almost unique when we chose it, so we did not evaluate other solutions.

We weren't concerned that PowerStore is a relatively new platform. We were not inserting it in an enterprise environment. We were inserting it in a scientific computing environment, which is where we tend to install all the latest technologies. It was not a problem.

If you have a production VMware environment, the platform is no longer new and is probably the most flexible performance storage system that you can buy today.

We are not using the solution's load balancing at the moment but it's something that we are looking into. We use PowerStore's built-in VMware hypervisor to run VMs and virtualized applications, but we are not using it at the edge. We know that is one of the capabilities of this kind of solution, but we are using it in our central computing facility.

We experienced some small issues, but the virtual machine was new. But our choice was a good one. The machine is easy to use, the performance is there, and we are happy.

We usually use Dell PowerStore in enterprise environments like banks and financial insurance companies that use it for their core banking.  

Dell PowerStore improves our customer's resilience. Working in this mission-critical infrastructure is one of the most important features.

CloudIQ is a friendly interface where we can manage and expand on different solutions from one place.

Dell Technologies' ESG values are one of the most important factors in our customer's decisions. They are more focused on a friendly environment than other aspects and Dell is a step ahead of other vendors when it comes to this.

From my position as CEO, no feature was required by our customer specifications that PowerStore does not cover. It can address all of the requirements.

The cybersecurity world is developing quickly and the integration with storage solutions is important. Dell is ahead of other competitors in basic cyber resilience.

Our last PowerStore implementation has reduced our customers' footprint by up to 80 percent by replacing other technology like IBM. This was an important feature for our customer because their space in the data center was limited and this represented a huge improvement for them.

For our customers who require the data reduction guarantee, we can offer that commitment with Dell's support. Dell backs this guarantee for our critical accounts and global accounts where these requirements are important to be reached. 

The most valuable features of Dell PowerStore are the resilience, scalability, flexibility of expansion, and ease of managing the entire solution including the servers and storage.

There is an issue with Dell PowerStore related to future expansions which are software-related. This caused some issues with my largest customer in Romania. Hopefully, the new model will increase performance making it more efficient. 

I have been using Dell PowerStore for eight years.

Dell PowerStore is stable.

Dell PowerStore is scalable.

The Dell customer support is responsive.

Positive

My team has good experience deploying PowerStore because they have been working in this area for many years. Our customers are happy with our implementation services.

We implement the solution for our customers.

It is easy to work with Dell from the licensing perspective. I hope they will keep this part as it is not moving very fast into the subscription because, in some accounts, this can generate a big disruption. Especially in the public sector. From that perspective, the licensing flexibility that Dell offers is bigger than other vendors.

From the technological perspective, PowerStore and other vendors like HP always have good technology. The biggest difference is the way we implement it. We are more confident implementing PowerStore and usually working with global customers. That means for us, it's easy, and we are very confident when we implement this type of solution compared with other vendors. But from a technical perspective, other vendors like HP also offer good technology.

I would rate Dell PowerStore nine out of ten.

In terms of power consumption, I don't see a difference in the amount of power Dell PowerStore consumes compared to other vendors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neutral

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

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

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

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

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

We only used internal resources.

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

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

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

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

We expedite the process for our clients. We use it for database processes.

It's a great product. Integrating PowerStore with the IT workflow is easy. 

The most valuable functions are those that facilitate balance and sharing. This includes storage sharing, adding servers to the service, and the wireless host connection on the network side.

Easy understanding. That is important for the user. When the client has a manual, when the user will take the PowerStore and take the PowerStore, easy installation means. If you click the volume, it will show the order valid. 

It's the network side also and the storage side as upgrading of the versions, like firmware versions.  

Everything is pretty good. Just improve the network side. When adding the address for the host on the Dell side, it is not easy.

When you evaluate deployment after purchasing the Dell storage, you have to add the ESXI host to the Dell server. That time, the IP address is not taken easily.

Please improve that side. When we are on the VM website, the storage side is also not easy when adding storage to the host on the PowerStore side.

The support team doesn't always provide adequate assistance. So, there is room for improvement in the support. 

I have been using it for four years. 

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

The scalability is good. There are no issues. 

It is suitable for medium-sized companies.

When they create the ticket, it takes time. When they reach after that, they are doing a good job. But when we raise the ticket, that is taking time.

So, it's a long and only procedure to get support from the vendor.

After Dell connect with the customer, they are doing follow-up fine. Everything is good.

Neutral

We also have HPE Nimble Storage.

The initial setup is simple. 

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I would recommend PowerStore to other users.