Dell PowerVault Reviews

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.

Dell PowerVault is normally used for basic applications, such as web applications, exchange, and small environment virtualization. Additionally, it can be used for recording videos and data which does not require high performance.

Dell Power Vault has been extremely helpful in providing more storage capacity at an affordable price point. It's especially useful for customers who need additional storage but don't require high performance.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerVault is its ability to provide small to medium-range storage. It doesn't have any specific standout features, but it's great for applications, such as surveillance where a large number of videos need to be recorded and performance isn't a priority. It helps customers avoid the need to purchase very expensive storage. 

Dell PowerVault could improve by having a higher cache and file protocol support added.

I have been using Dell PowerVault for around eight to nine years.

The solution is priced reasonably.

I rate the stability of Dell PowerVault a seven out of ten.

We have more than 20 customers currently using the solution. We plan to continue using Dell PowerVault for all small storage needs.

I rate the scalability of Dell PowerVault a seven out of ten.

The technical support is excellent. I would rate the support from Dell PowerVault a nine out of ten.

Positive

It is basic storage so we didn't evaluate other solutions. Previous customers also use older versions of PowerVault, for example, the MD3 series, and they upgraded to newer versions.

The initial setup of Dell PowerVault is straightforward. Dell PowerVault only takes one person to deploy and configure it, with an additional helper for assisting.

The installation can be done by the customer.

If Dell PowerVault meets your performance needs, it will have a good return on investment.

I rate the price of Dell PowerVault a nine out of ten.

We chose Dell PowerVault because it provided the best cost-to-benefit ratio. It provides better costs. 

My advice to others is the solution is straightforward to implement and there's no need to pay for installation fees from the OEM, they can do it themself.

I would 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.

Dell PowerVault is used for backup, recovery, and protection and we primarily use the ML3 and TL1000.

The Dell warranty is the most valuable feature.

In most instances, clients are using Dell PowerVault with tape drives, but we want to transition them away from tape drives due to the risk of data loss. We would prefer our clients to have a more real-time backup solution, both on-site and off-site, with off-site replication. Hopefully, this is a feature that Dell PowerVault can offer in the future.

I have been using Dell PowerVault for over 12 years.

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

I rate the scalability of Dell PowerVault an eight out of ten.

The technical support is very responsive on my end, and we haven't had any issues with them. I am quite happy with their service.

Positive

We also collaborate with Nakivo and Systematic when the client requires such solutions.

The deployment is straightforward and takes a maximum of one hour to finish.

The cost, compared to other solutions, is on the higher end. Since Dell does not have a direct presence in our area of operations, it means that clients incur additional costs for equipment warranty.

I would rate Dell PowerVault an eight out of ten due to its cost and the limited availability in our operational area.

Dell PowerVault is currently deployed on-premises, but we are exploring other hybrid options that will enable us to maintain a presence both on-premises and in the cloud.

We have at least ten clients that use Dell PowerVault.

We have reduced the size of our technical team from ten to three. Whenever we need additional personnel, we will hire contractors.

Most of the clients I deal with are Dell's global customers, as they maintain a direct relationship with Dell. Thus, we simply utilize our distribution channel to provide them with the products they desire. They manage their own licensing.

I recommend Dell PowerVault to others.