Dell PowerVault Reviews

The solution is suited for small companies. It has a simple setup. If you want to virtualize something, then you buy two hosts.

The solution is stable. It is a simple and better vault solution than Synology.

Many features are coming up for Dell PowerVault. Most of these features are available on the Dell cloud IO platform. They include reporting and monitoring capabilities. While some customers may not need all these features, the platform performs very well for a particular region. It is a good solution with many possibilities for every type of customer. Customers who need more features than PowerVault offers can scale up to the next model, such as PowerStore, PowerScale, vPlex, or Extreme IO. The possibilities are endless.

There could be a starting model where you have a central storage solution for a pretty good price.

I have been using Dell PowerVault for one year.

The solution is a fairly good solution with built-in high availability.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

The solution’s scalability is limited.

If you are limited in sizing, you can add four nodes to one PowerVault cluster. You will get around 82 to 100 terabytes of storage. If you are a company with five users, it would be fairly enough to work with. Still, if you are a company with 5000 users, you are making the wrong decision upfront by buying PowerVault, so don't buy it because it's not scalable for the solution.

The technical support could be better. The problem with Dell support is that you have to explain your case to multiple people, which can be frustrating and time-consuming.

The initial setup is simple. You have to plug into the power, connect to the control, and get started. The deployment of Dell PowerVault depends on the communication method. Different deployment approaches are employed for private channel communication, ISKG integration, or direct-attach storage scenarios.

We have to buy the box along with the support.

Dell PowerVault has an integration tool with Veeam Backup & Application. However, you can purchase Avamar from Dell if you want a more robust integration.

There are some good things about the Dell PowerVault. It is quick and easy to use. However, if you made the wrong decision in choosing your platform and have big expansions in your company, it may not be worth the money. It is reusable for other purposes, but you can combine it.

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

We have been utilizing Dell PowerVault mainly as a backup solution, for data storage and file-sharing purposes.

Dell PowerVault is a reliable solution that offers good performance and affordability. 

I find this solution to be cost-effective in providing data storage for clients.

There have been situations when our customers requested professional support and the price of that feature is quite high. I believe that customizing the pricing or offering some sort of flexibility regarding professional support would be of great benefit.

We have been using this solution for over seven years. 

PowerVault offers scalable storage capacity for their client's needs. I would rate it very high. 

We are satisfied with the customer support system. They offer a wide range of support models for customers such as basic support that is budget-friendly, but they also provide a professional support solution that is a bit costly.  

Positive

There are many solutions that are available on the market. We have been working with NetApp, QNet, and HPE solutions. All of the mentioned solutions are similar in terms of operating and pricing, so the choice usually depends on a client's request and their preferences. 

The initial setup is really facilitated for the users. 

There is no need for licensing.

I find this product to be a good fit when serving its purpose for our company's needs. But, I believe that HPE is a slightly better solution in terms of performance.

I would rate Dell PowerVault an eight out of ten.

PowerVault is a mid-range model geared toward small and medium-sized businesses, and it's used for billing systems. 

PowerVault comes with free software that performs functions like data deduplication and replication, which is cost-effective and delivers added value to the product.

PowerVault doesn't integrate with Active Directory. Other storage solutions offer SAN and NAS unified storage in a single appliance, but PowerVault is only SAN.

I have used PowerVault for nearly five years. 

I rate PowerVault nine out of 10 for stability. It's easy to deploy and manage. However, I don't give it 10 out of 10 because it doesn't have an active-active controller. It's active-passive. You need to buy two units to deploy it as active-active, but we always deploy one. You don't experience full controller failure every day, so it's stable enough.

PowerVault is scalable. 

Dell has 24/7 support for hardware replacement. In most regions, Dell EMC uses partners to deliver support. The partner will handle the tickets and the spare parts. Of course, the partner will not be the same quality as the vendor. The response times, hardware replacement, delivery, etc. are not as good as direct support from Dell. 

If you are investing in on-premise storage, it's best to keep some spare parts on hand to keep your system running. The general support for questions, concerns, and troubleshooting bugs or firmware issues is excellent. They respond quickly. 

Deploying PowerVault is straightforward and only takes a couple of hours.

I rate PowerVault eight out of 10 for affordability. It's a cost-effective storage solution with a lot of capabilities. You need to pay additional costs for the operating system license and servers to use some of PowerVault's features. At the same time, a small business doesn't need to invest in two sites for SAN and NAS storage or purchase an additional server. 

You can only compare PowerVault to products by other vendors with a similar product line. For example, it would be fair to compare it with HP's enterprise products, but you could look at other storage for small and medium-sized businesses. 

QNAP is another cost-effective solution for SMBs, but PowerVault has more features that customers want, such as tiering, data reduction, compression, and certification. If a customer doesn't need those features, they can go for cheaper options like QNAP.  

I rate Dell PowerVault eight out of 10. It's a good solution for small and medium-sized businesses, but it has performance limitations, and it's hard to integrate. Still, it's a cost-effective solution with great features. 

This is a product we offer to our clients. We've used it in different locations for data storage. Clients use it, for example, as a place to put images. Some use it for virtualization as well.

The pricing is very good. It's relatively cheap and very competitive.

It has good snapshot capabilities.

The product is easy to use.

We can integrate with it quite well.

For us, the initial setup was easy.

It is quite stable.

The scalability is good. 

Technical support is good.

The solution has made a lot of improvements when you compare it now to ten years ago.

Sometimes integrating into a cluster can be difficult as you have to do it manually. 

I've used the solution for five or ten years. 

The stability is good. I'd mark it ten out of ten for small enterprises. Larger organizations may need a larger option. I'd mark stability for a large enterprise at an eight or nine.

The solution is quite scalable. I'd rate the ability to extend ten out of ten. We haven't had issues in that regard. 

It's more suitable for smaller enterprises, for those who want to run an ERP and have some virtualization.

The support is very good. 

I've also worked with HP and Lenovo solutions. Dell is quite competitive when you look at the three. The performance and scalability of Dell are great.

It is easy to set up and implement. It's not complex. 

The pricing is very good. It's very competitive in the market.

I'm a system integrator based out of India.

Depending on the customer requirements, I'd recommend the solution. I'd rate the overall product at an nine out of ten.

Dell PowerVault is cheap. 

The tool needs to improve its UI. 

I have been working with the solution for 10-15 years. 

I would rate the tool's stability around six to seven out of ten. 

I would rate Dell PowerVault's scalability a five out of ten. 

Dell PowerVault doesn't have much support since it is cheap and cheap. 

Dell PowerVault's setup was easy. 

We have seen ROI with the solution's use.

Dell PowerVault's price is the tool's main attraction. 

I would rate Dell PowerVault a seven out of ten. 

Dell PowerVault is user-friendly and easy to deploy.

Dell PowerVault is block-oriented storage only. It could benefit if Dell PowerVault's storage could support blocks and files.

Dell PowerVault is a simple base model storage system where you receive as much as you pay, and you cannot expect more than you paid for. It is good to have file protocols instead of a dedicated NAS device, even for small environments. It is better to have only one reliable storage than some NAS devices. It is better to have a unified storage system that supports block and file protocol for the environment. Some other functionalities should be improved. The power functionality adaptive RAID improves the functionality compared to the traditional rate.

I have been using Dell PowerVault for more than 25 years.

I rate Dell PowerVault a nine out of ten for stability.

Dell PowerVault has good scalability, but its scalability for front-end SaaS connectivity is limited. It is possible to add some more storage space with Dell PowerVault.

Dell PowerVault has good technical support. However, in Serbia (non-EU country), we have some issues with customs, and some unavailable parts take a few days to arrive.

Positive

Dell PowerVault’s initial setup is straightforward.

Dell PowerVault's deployment is very user-friendly, and anyone with some basic IT knowledge can do it by themselves.

I rate Dell PowerVault an eight out of ten for pricing.

One of the limitations of Dell PowerVault is that its RAM is small, but we can accept it since it is a solution for small businesses. Dell PowerVault is a storage system designed mostly for small business environments.

Dell PowerVault can be used for high-performance clustering and video recording.

Overall, I rate Dell PowerVault an eight out of ten.

We are using the solution for storage purposes. We're using it for our storage for VMware.

It is the first time that we are using a tool like this. It helped us improve our whole VMware infrastructure and improve functions there. It has continued to help us up until this point. It also helps to improve our hardware facilities.

The storage has been good. 

It is stable.

Support is helpful.

When it comes to improvement, I don't have much to say. We've had some control issues. Otherwise, over the last five years, it's worked well.

The implementation process takes a while. 

The UI could be better. 

I've used the solution for the last five years. 

We've had some minor stability issues with control. It's largely stable. 

We have added additional storage after around two and a half years. The solution can scale. We were able to almost double capacity and it was fine. 

We have ten to 15 people using the solution and the VMs. 

We are planning to update our complete infrastructure, so we are still thinking about another solution, and considering whether we can go for a vSAN or something like that. We are at that stage now. We're shopping around so we can move away, potentially, from this solution. 

It takes some time to implement the solution. This was the first time we implemented this kind of storage so it has been a bit challenging. Maybe it will be more simple once we have more knowledge from working with it more.  

We implemented it a while ago.

For deployment and maintenance, we have four to five people able to handle tasks. 

We had a partner that assisted us with the implementation process. 

We have seen an ROI. I'd rate it four out of five in terms of the value we've seen.

I'm not sure of the exact cost of the solution. My understanding is that it's somewhere in the middle - not too cheap or too expensive. 

At the time we purchased it, we didn't have pro support. When we have that control issue, we got to recognize the value of pro support, and we have upgraded it since then. The last time we upgraded it was for the pro support. Other than that, there is no additional cost.

We'd recommend the solution to others. 

We'd like some UI improvement, however, other than that, I would rate it seven out of ten.

Our primary use case for PowerVault is for virtualization. It's a target, it's a storage, it's a direct-attached storage for the virtualization. So the nodes are in the FX tool and the storage is the PowerVault, so it is for a virtualization use case.

The most valuable features are that it's easy to set up. I also like the provisioning of storage. It's very easy. 

I would like Dell to improve the configuration of the disk groups. Only one group is expandable. Once you configure the other disk group types, you cannot expand them. It limits scalability. If you want maybe to grow a disk group, you lose information, and then you need to build it up again, which is not a good use case for customers.

Maybe they could upgrade the firmware to allow other kinds of disk groups that are the usual disk group protection. It should let you expand without destroying the disk groups first.

I've been using PowerVault for three years.

PowerVault is a stable product.

The scalability depends on how you configure PowerVault. I can set the disk groups initially, but the scaling is tied to how you configure it. 

There's a particular configuration that you will also need that can limit you. It's a Dell custom configuration for disk grouping that gives you a limitation. It will allow you to scale and add disks so that your disk group will scale. But when you configure it in a conventional way, like configuring, a disk group of rate five, that disk group cannot be expanded.

I rate Dell support six out of 10. Contacting them can be tricky because their contact methods aren't straightforward. In the East African region, we call them by Skype to log a ticket. You can follow up to get an engineer, but it's time-consuming. You can't get something immediately if you need it. 

You contact the person in charge of registering the ticket. They put it in the queue and assign it to an engineer. It would be easier if you could log the tickets online or have support engineers online to attend to customers.

PowerVault is easy to set up. I rate PowerVault 10 out of 10 for ease of setup. It doesn't require a lot of maintenance because it's a simple solution. It can be used as disk-attached storage theoretically. You can use it as a server or connect it to the SAN, so it's a simple solution.

PowerVault starts at $15,000, but it's $25,000 on average, and you pay 10 percent annually based on the size of the area. I rate PowerVault eight out of 10 for affordability. 

I rate PowerVault eight out of 10.