Dell PowerVault Reviews

I use Dell PowerVault in my company as storage for workload store.

Dell PowerVault is cost-effective as a storage solution, and I see it has competitive pricing with other vendors. I recommend Dell PowerVault all the time if the customer doesn't have enough budget.

Dell PowerVault is a small storage solution, and we can implement it in one day.

Dell PowerVault has strong features; we can work on it as a SAN storage, and if we are connecting with fiber, 16 gig or 22 gig, and as the iSCSI also.

Security as a layer is how Dell PowerVault's scalability impacts my storage capabilities. I don't face any issues with security with Dell PowerVault.

The stability of Dell PowerVault is good; I would rate it a nine.

I would like Dell PowerVault to be integrated with all other vendor hardware; it requires improvement.

I have been using Dell PowerVault for around 10 years.

For my organization, the big problems with deploying Dell PowerVault are around migration from the other vendor as an old appliance to the new solution.

Security as a layer is how Dell PowerVault's scalability impacts my storage capabilities. I don't face any issues with security with Dell PowerVault. We propose Dell PowerVault for small organizations, not big organizations.

I would recommend Dell's technical support as a nine. The follow-up is good, and supporting Dell PowerVault is very easy.

For the licensing cost of Dell PowerVault, we can recommend it as an eight. The pricing is very good, there's no issue with it, and the price is very cheap. We can take more discounts from Dell according to deal registration; it's not a big problem with Dell PowerVault.

For AI, if the customer needs a storage solution to work with the AI solution, I am already recommending PowerStore, not Dell PowerVault. Dell PowerVault is not intelligent enough with AI, it includes some features but is not intelligent like PowerStore.

I recommend Dell PowerVault for cost reduction and for small organizations, but if the customer is a medium or enterprise customer and will be integrated with the power of AI applications, I recommend another storage solution like PowerStore or PowerMax.

Dell PowerVault acts as an entry storage for a small organization; I've been using it in my organization.

Dell PowerVault functions as SAN storage and iSCSI storage.

Per workload capacity, the deployment and migration time is dependent on various factors.

Dell PowerVault has strong features; we can work on it as a SAN storage, and if we are connecting with fiber, 16 gig or 22 gig, and as the iSCSI also.

Dell PowerVault is a small SAN storage, and I recommend it for small organizations. If the customer does not have enough budget, and already has small capacity with not difficult workload, this is an entry-level storage solution, and for Dell PowerVault, I'm satisfied.

I rate Dell PowerVault a nine out of ten.

My usual use case for Dell PowerVault is as an end user. I am using the HTML5 PowerVault Manager GUI for ME5.

What I appreciate most about Dell PowerVault is its multipathing. In workflow, Dell PowerVault is effective and runs on schedule to help streamline our workflows. Dell PowerVault contributes to staying within budget for my operations.

I would like them to improve the controllers, specifically the stability of the controllers.

I have been using Dell PowerVault for around five to seven years.

The overall stability and reliability of Dell PowerVault are very good. I have experienced issues with the stability and reliability as more known features concerning controller management and controller management ports mostly stuck, and I have to reboot the management controller.

Dell PowerVault is scalable.

Technical support professionalism and skills with Dell PowerVault are something I have communicated about.

Reliability-wise, we chose Dell PowerVault after evaluating other options.

I participated in the initial setup of Dell PowerVault.

We are using Dell PowerVault, so I have seen some return on investment.

Regarding the effectiveness in allowing me to configure and begin using the system quickly, multipathing has been a key factor.

We are not using on-demand and scheduled snapshots with Dell PowerVault, but we tried it for testing purposes and they work effectively.

How I feel about managing comprehensive storage data management features concerning snapshots, replication, and provisioning with Dell PowerVault is that these features are valuable.

I have no additional remarks about my experience with Dell PowerVault. I would rate Dell PowerVault as a strong product based on my overall experience.

I use Dell PowerVault for basically all use cases.

It's a cheaper storage option that is easy to manage and provision.

The day-to-day operation is very straightforward, and once deployed, there are not many operational tasks required.

Dell PowerVault is very simple and easy to use and understand.

It is very easy to manage.

For customers who require entry-level storage, Dell PowerVault is an excellent choice.

The price point is very good compared to mid-range options.

The product offers multiple options including all-flash and hybrid storage, so both options are available to customers.

For Dell PowerVault, the deduplication and compression features need improvement.

The deduplication and compression are not very effective on this storage. If they work on this feature, it would be very beneficial.

I have been working with Dell PowerVault for approximately eight years.

Dell PowerVault has a limitation of scalability.

It can go up to only 250 drives, as far as I remember.

Customer expectations are that if they have purchased the product from the vendor, at least the startup should be completed by the vendor.

It will not take more than 30 minutes to deploy the box.

Negative

Dell PowerVault is the same product as HP MSA.

Both are OEMs from Seagate, so both storage solutions are the same with no difference.

I am still deploying Dell solutions as well as HP and Huawei products.

PowerEdge servers are the basic servers, and I am also working with Dell PowerVault.

I have not done bi-directional replication on ME5, but I have knowledge about it.

It is basically asynchronous replication, and it only supports async.

I have not configured the snapshot feature, but it has the option to schedule snapshots.

When discussing AI applications, block storage will not work in that context.

Those applications require a parallel file system, which is an altogether different kind of storage.

I work on both remote and on-premises deployments, and I usually work on-premises.

I am not 100% certain about the cloud deployment model.

I would rate this product a 10 overall.

Clients mainly use Dell PowerVault for some SMB customers or for customers that need low performance and high capacity storage, as well as for customers with budget constraints.

The biggest advantages of Dell PowerVault are its small size that can fit customer budgets, and it can be used to create high availability clusters for customers with just a limited budget. Additionally, it has availability features, supports RAID configuration with ADAPT RAID, and allows the ability to expand the pool to bigger drives and larger numbers of drives, resulting in faster rebuild times in case of failure and increased overall performance.

The bidirectional asynchronous replication capability of ME5 has a positive influence on the data protection strategy because normally customers with storage will need to replicate to a second site, so having these kinds of features is a good addition within that budget.

I would say it is quite easy to manage storage data management capabilities such as snapshots, replication, and provisioning, especially with the HTML5 interface, which makes it easy to manage the platform, intended for customers without a lot of IT administrators. Generally, a standard IT admin can manage this platform.

I am working with on-demand and scheduled snapshots with Dell PowerVault, which you can use to create a snapshot either as a scheduled part of the data protection policy to ensure multiple milestones are available to go back on time in case of a failure, or if I need to create some snapshot for testing.

Snapshots help with the data management strategy in general as they are part of the lifecycle management of the data, allowing me to create multiple points in time copies of the data to return to any point based on the requirement, such as if batches I am applying do not go well, I can roll back to the snapshot before going to production.

Dell PowerVault is capturing an area that is needed for our customers, and it can be improved if this part could include a NAS option as well since the entry-level NAS part is currently missing in the portfolio, which would be a very good offering for customers, especially for their small and medium businesses.

I have been using Dell PowerVault for six years.

Dell PowerVault is a very stable and reliable product without any observed glitches or bugs or downtime.

There are no limitations with scalability for Dell PowerVault; you can scale as needed, and I do not feel that there is any limitation regarding scalability compared to the requirements.

Regarding technical support for Dell PowerVault from Dell, I would say support is excellent and I have not had problems with them.

While I have not directly sold or worked with anything similar to Dell PowerVault, there are other platforms in the Dell portfolio such as Unity and PowerStore, which serve unified SAN and NAS use cases, but it ultimately depends on the customer's budget and requirements, where Dell PowerVault can provide a benefit compared to other platforms.

The implementation team and deployment procedure should be straightforward and very easy to manage, as it is designed to be customer-installable.

I usually deploy Dell PowerVault on-premises.

Dell PowerVault is budget-friendly and the pricing is quite affordable. When we speak about return on investment, I do observe ROI as the platform allows customers to consolidate multiple workloads in a compact design, making it very cost-effective and budget-friendly.

Normally these kinds of IT spending come under cost rather than an ROI, but in general, when you spend on IT, you see ROI in the whole IT infrastructure or an application that enhances the business operation.

I have experience working with the HTML5 Dell PowerVault GUI for ME5, which offers a better user interface that is simpler to manage and easier to navigate. I would rate this review an 8.

Because of reliability and consistency of the product, the typical use case for Dell PowerVault is very strong.

The solution is easy to configure and reliable. The performance is very good.

Storage consolidation is quite easy to configure on it.

Dell PowerVault's interface is user-friendly.

I think expandability could be improved for Dell PowerVault. It should be easier to expand and get expansion on it.

I have worked on Dell PowerVault for more than seven to eight years.

It is a stable solution in my opinion.

It is a scalable solution, but there are few limitations. The scalability is present but it is a bit complex to scale to the desired level. When we needed to increase the performance, we faced some issues.

I would rate my experience with technical support as nine out of ten.

Positive

We had a partner, not an integrator, reseller, or consultant for the deployment.

The first time was a bit complicated as we were having difficulties adapting it within our system for the initial setup of Dell PowerVault. Once it was adapted, it has been performing quite well.

We had a partner, not an integrator, reseller, or consultant for the deployment.

Regarding the return on investment with Dell PowerVault, we have definitely seen cost savings.

The pricing is quite competitive in the market for the solution. When compared with HP and IBM, the price is quite competitive, though it could be better. We were getting other products at a cheaper price but we preferred Dell PowerVault as a partner because of the brand name.

The experience has been good with Dell PowerVault.

I am a customer and end user of Dell solutions.

I do not use Dell PowerVault's data protection mechanisms.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

We have been using Dell PowerVault for multiple users for VMRS virtualization storage, for backup storage, as well as for raw storage for the Windows servers, mapping it as a LAN.

It is easy for L1 engineers to assign the LUN and then easy for handling, taking a snapshot, and assigning the volumes. Everything is easy in Dell PowerVault instead of a NetApp.

It is easy and user-friendly, and it is mostly user-friendly for me when managing comprehensive storage data management features such as snapshots, replication, and provisioning with Dell PowerVault.

It is easy to take a snapshot with a single click on the volume, and we can also automate the snapshot on a daily schedule at a specific time. This is useful, and it is also very useful for me to recover the snapshots from the storage. If I have any data loss, it is useful for me to take the snapshot and then restore my data.

I am using scheduled snapshots with Dell PowerVault. In one of my customers' locations, we are working with the scheduled snapshots. It is easy for me to give a schedule, whether monthly, daily, or weekly, anytime I can schedule it.

It is very easy to align the storage across the platforms with Dell PowerVault, and moreover, it is useful for me to assign the data and the volumes will be easy for aligning it.

From the user point of view, it is easy to access the console. Anyone can easily access this with minimum knowledge of the storage.

I need a dedupe ratio to be improved.

I have been using Dell PowerVault for the past two years. For the past two years, I have worked in multiple customer locations with Dell PowerVault.

I did not face any crashes, downtime, or performance issues with it. It is smoother only.

I think it is easy to scale it up and out with the growing needs of the organization. I have not done any scalability testing because as I am a growing engineer, I need some time.

Based on my experience, the engineers are aligning equally for us and responding as fast as possible for P1 cases and all. It is easy for this.

I would rate the tech support between eight to nine.

NetApp has vast adoption; most of my customers are using NetApp and it produces replications with a higher dedupe ratio than Dell PowerVault. I do not know about the costing, but most of the customers go with dedupe. Hitachi storage also is being adopted by most of the customers due to cost efficiency, I believe, because Hitachi storage is cost-efficient.

It is easy to set up Dell PowerVault. I did not face any challenges. The first thing is we need to align a management IP, and then I need to give the controller IPs and then LAN IPs and all.

For me, it is easy to access and their support is very good. I did not face any disk failures often in Dell PowerVault. I think the build quality is good, so I give it a rating of eight.

The cost-saving aspects I cannot comment on because it is purely on the sales side, and then for technical terms, I can say that it has faster movement than storage I have in my own storage. It can be useful for me to store larger data. Even in the backup, it allows me to store a number of data and then for the retentions and all, it can be useful.

It is good overall. I do not have anything negative to say. My overall review rating for this product is eight.

Dell PowerVault is our primary solution for providing out-of-band and out-of-reach backup capabilities. We utilize it to create a secure cyber vault backup where we maintain a mirror of our system. In the event of a critical incident such as ransomware or other compromise, we can spin up the system in a location that is not connected to the main network and cannot be infected or compromised in any other way. This air-tight environment allows us to spin up our hypervisor and then select restore points to effectively restore and move them to production.

We have established a certain window during the day when we open the connection between our cyber vault environment and the production environment. During this time, the entire set of data covering the last 24 hours is replicated within Dell PowerVault. As soon as the replication is completed, the connection is shut down. We only use single direction replication from production to Dell PowerVault, and until now, there has been no need to use bi-directional replication.

The security of the backup and the overall system that Dell PowerVault brings to the table is definitely the most valuable feature. We have a system running in the background as a mirror of our production system, yet that system is completely cut off. This mainly gives us time to react and provides us with peace of mind that if something happens, we can be up and running within a span of approximately 30 minutes.

Provisioning with Dell PowerVault is very easy, and replication can also be straightforward. Snapshots, when using Veeam, have a tendency to go haywire and we have had to go on site to clean up some snapshots that went stuck or jammed and start over.

Beyond that one issue where Veeam went haywire and we had to clear up a certain amount of snapshots and restart the replication job, nothing else has happened until today, and I hope it will remain that way.

I have only had one deployment of Dell PowerVault, which is bank-related, so I am not certain how much data I am allowed to share. This was a customer-related deployment with Dell PowerVault. However, I have played quite extensively with Dell PowerVault in our lab environment.

Until today, we have experienced no stability issues. Dell PowerVault is running on VMware, which is the underlying OS on the Dell PowerEdge servers. Everything has been smooth sailing until today.

We have not experienced any scalability issues. Until today, we did not have any need for the scalability of Dell PowerVault. I am not certain that we will in the future because Dell PowerVault is fairly simple software to maintain.

Dell PowerVault is very easy to set up as an environment. With either VMware or Linux operating on SUSE, you are ready to go within an hour or two. You can either utilize the OVA or deploy it in a containerized environment. At our client location, we are running Linux with Dell PowerVault and a Data Domain connected to it. On certain periods of the day, it establishes the connection with the on-production Data Domain, performs the replication, and then cuts the connection off. This effectively gives us backed up data that is out of the reach of the main network, which from our perspective is an extremely safe way to move forward.

The setup process is very straightforward. The only difference between Dell PowerVault and setting up the Data Domain within the production environment is that you have one extra OVA and one extra network connection.

From what I know, Dell PowerVault is fairly within the budget for our operations and for our client's operations.

I have never encountered a similar product to Dell PowerVault. There are products that provide a certain extent of secure backups or secure backup repositories, but not the type that Dell PowerVault offers.

I can discuss the user experience and the technology itself, as long as it is not related to any customer data.

We only worked with the in-built GUI of Dell PowerVault, so I am not certain which version it was. If you are using the in-built GUI of Dell PowerVault for the first time, there will be some learning curve, though any software has a steeper or less steep learning curve when used for the first time. For me as somebody with experience, the learning curve was not tremendous. It is easy to navigate around. However, if you are at a junior level, you might need certain adjustments.

For my use at this time, there is literally nothing missing in Dell PowerVault. The product, as it stands, is as perfect as it can get. I rate Dell PowerVault as a ten on a scale of one to ten.

We mostly provide the PowerEdge 760 series server along with implementing VXRail, and sometimes we offer backup solutions with Dell PowerVault and others.

Last year we set up a Dell server together with Dell PowerVault, and there is also a higher model that I forget the name of, but we provide Dell PowerVault for the backup solution.

We also use it for the production SAN storage at some other data centers, which makes managing comprehensive storage data management features such as snapshots, replication, and provisioning effective.

As for now, I don't work with Dell products much since we focus on Oracle products. We have another team that addresses networking products such as Dell and other solutions.

Dell PowerVault has two controllers, and I find that feature most valuable.

It is easy to configure.

Dell PowerVault is easy to integrate, especially with third-party solutions, as we use it inside Oracle VM and Oracle Linux virtualization along with a backup solution.

Dell PowerVault has contributed to staying within budget since it's an entry-level product that allows customers to decrease their budget.

As for now, I have no idea about any additional features I would like to see for Dell PowerVault in the future.

For the IT field, I have been working for over six years.

As far as I have been working with the product, I don't face many issues with Dell PowerVault's hardware, indicating good stability and reliability.

Mostly, at our customer sites, they are small-medium business networks, so I think they don't scale much with Dell PowerVault.

I would rate the technical support of Dell at a seven.

The technical support from Dell could be better.

Positive

I worked with something similar before Dell PowerVault.

It's easy to deploy and configure.

They can contact me if they have any questions about my review.

I believe Dell PowerVault is the best option on the market at the moment, especially for entry-level and budget solutions.

Dell PowerVault is an entry-level backup solution and storage. Dell PowerVault does provide an all-flash model.

It's well-known in our region. There are two partners of Dell that mostly do events, twice a month or so, and they demonstrate their hardware. If we ask them, they provide training, demonstrations, and good documentation.

We choose Power Vault when we need some basic storage, which would be deployed just behind the data call, for example, or just directly attached to a server. So it's regularly, it's not for a functional library. It's all basis needed process rate.

We like the simplicity of the environment and the stability of the platform.

The room for improvement lies in the responsiveness and real-time feedback of the web server setup. We could set up the installation through a web server, but it's not very reactive on the web server. For example, when you launch a task, and you don't know exactly if the task has begun or if the task is in progress, or if it's finished. You have to wait for three to five to ten minutes to be sure that the task is running or in progress or finished. So at that point, it's not very good. For the rest, we have a good organization for the platform. And it's working everywhere.

Another area of improvement is duplication. 

I have been working with this solution for 20 years.

The stability is quite good. Once you deploy all the equipment, it's very stable.

The stability also depends on the type of disk that is installed. But in general, this type of equipment is quite stable, and we have not had any problems with it.

You can extend your library. You can add some disks. But you have to rebuild your environment, so it's not very easy. And you can add some other libraries. You can add some cables to extend it, but it's not very easy to do. So it isn't very easy because the technique used to do that is not very easy. You have to work strictly to rebuild all the alignment. So, maybe this is an area of improvement.

There are around 10 to 15 customers using this solution.

The customer service and support are good.

The initial setup is quite easy. It is very intuitive. It is good.

The time taken for the deployment depends on the size of the storage. For a small storage, it could take half a day. For a large storage, the time to format and initialize the disks could take a while. So it could take one or two days.

We have a team of five engineers for the deployment and maintenance of the solution. 

The customers pay for the equipment, and it's not very expensive. There are no additional costs. 

You have to pay at the beginning for the equipment unless the equipment is not the right one. You have not chosen a good one, so you have to change, but you cannot improve some function of that equipment. You can improve the storage and the capacity, but you cannot improve the zone environment, the functional environment.

I would rate the pricing model a nine out of ten, with one being expensive and ten being cheap.

I would advise you to be sure that this type of equipment is the right one because if you want some advanced function, it's not a good one. So, to be sure that it's a good device for their environment. If not, you will not be very happy.

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

We use Dell PowerVault for the storage consolidation of SMBs. 

Dell PowerVault offers valuable full flash storage. 

The product is generally stable, but there have been instances, to my knowledge, where we faced issues in the controller during software upgrades. The availability is not at the desired level during these upgrade processes, as we sometimes need to shut down both controllers. This could be an area for improvement.

I have been working with the product for 15 years. 

The product is sufficient for the SMB market. In terms of size, it caters well to SMB needs, providing full flash for production and backup storage with nearline SAS disk.

I haven't contacted technical support yet. However, my customers are less satisfied than before with support. 

I rate the solution's pricing a seven to eight out of ten. 

The product is mostly for small and medium businesses. I rate it an eight out of ten.