We performed a comparison between Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and FreeNAS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two NAS solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The best thing is that it works. We don't have to maintain it too much; we usually upgrade once a year."
"I don't have to rebuild the cluster to add a node."
"The single pane of glass for both IT and for the end-user is a valuable feature. On the IT side, I can actually control where things are stored, whether something is stored on solid-state drives or spinning drives... The single pane of glass makes it very easy to use and very easy to understand. We started at 100 terabytes and we moved to 250 and it still feels like the exact same system and we're able to move data as needed."
"The solution provides massive performance, scalability, efficiency, and ease of management."
"The solution's scalability is very good."
"It assists with eliminating storage silos because it provides SMB and NFS protocols. PowerScale has also helped free up our employee's time to focus on other business priorities."
"The solution is extremely easy to manage. This is its most valuable feature."
"Its scalability has been huge for us."
"The solution has been very stable so far."
"FreeNAS is much simpler and easier to use than other solutions, but we don't have the complete range of features that come with the full version."
"It integrates well into either Windows or Linux environments."
"What I like about it is that I can work on it from any computer or any device. The initial setup is very simple. The setup wizard is really helpful."
"The ease of use of the 'jail', the management of backups, and copies to easily create test and pre-production scenarios have speeded up the development and distribution of business apps."
"It has the best storage capacity."
"Its stability is the most valuable. It is reliable, and we don't have to worry too much about it."
"It is a bit higher priced than some of the other systems."
"The legacy file system for Epsilon didn't scale into the cloud and didn't have a separate OS. It would be key if this was made possible."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve the load distribution capability. For example, in some cases, the system load is not distributed automatically on all the nodes but is concentrated only on one. You have a peak request on only one node and the others don't do anything."
"Additional metadata reporting would be great. We have to use a separate tool to report on that. We would like to view the age of data and how long it has been since someone has accessed a file."
"If they integrated some functions, as they have on Data Domain with a cyber recovery vault, it would be ideal."
"The thing that they are working on now, and we are following closely is more native cloud integrations. The way that we envision workloads in the future is around moving compute to data instead of the other way around. So, we would like to have a single pane glass to manage storage across a variety of different platforms, including native cloud. That would be awesome."
"There is room for improvement in its handling of object storage."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a bit expensive compared to other products."
"FreeNAS should be better prepared for clustering."
"The latest version of the dashboard doesn't work as good as the previous version."
"The one thing that I find difficult to do which is very time-consuming is that I like to have a backup of the important files."
"The support for S3 needs to be improved."
"If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented."
"They should include clustering for the solution."
"They can improve the integration with PSA systems. This functionality could be better."
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is ranked 1st in NAS with 40 reviews while FreeNAS is ranked 9th in NAS with 9 reviews. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is rated 9.0, while FreeNAS is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) writes "We can easily deploy, manage, and maintain systems without needing a huge amount of expertise to facilitate them". On the other hand, the top reviewer of FreeNAS writes "Open-source with great disk management and task synchronization". Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is most compared with NetApp FAS Series, Dell ECS, Pure Storage FlashBlade, Qumulo and HPE StoreEasy, whereas FreeNAS is most compared with StarWind Storage Appliance, HPE StoreEasy, Qumulo, NetApp FAS Series and HPE 3PAR StoreServ. See our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. FreeNAS report.
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