We performed a comparison between Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and Pure Storage FlashBlade based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two File and Object Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"PowerScale allows us to manage storage without managing RAID groups or migrating volumes between controllers. It has really simplified things. We're not having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. That takes care of itself. We just worry about the data. It's really easy for deploying and managing storage at the petabyte scale."
"There are also the policies that you set up on replication and purging files, and policies for something called WORM. That's a "write once, read many," where you can't overwrite certain files or certain data. It puts them in a "protected mode" where it becomes very difficult for someone to accidentally delete. We use that for certain files or certain directories, because we're dealing with video and some video has to be protected for chain-of-custody purposes. The WORM feature works great."
"It's easy to manage. The web UI is very intuitive, and there's CLI also that you can use to manage it."
"This has been a valuable solution for our business overall. It offers business continuity and replication features."
"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 tool's most valuable features are scalability and stability."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its performance."
"PowerScale has made it extremely easy to scale file data across our organization. We have two implementations of Isilon. One is a replica of the other. When scaling, we add nodes to each location and expand the cluster. The process is straightforward."
"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."
"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."
"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."
"The main feature I have found to be product replication."
"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."
"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."
"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."
"Dell PowerScale's deployment is not easy."
"The biggest weakness is small file handling. Small file compression options are not enabled out of the box. It would be good to have this enabled by default."
"Data storage performance needs to be improved."
"The solution can be a bit complex for those not well versed in the technology."
"There is room for improvement with the updates. It can take a significant amount of time to do a major OS update. However, even though it takes multiple reboots, the cluster stays up. If we want to apply a newer version of the OS, we have to roll back some of the patches so that we can upgrade. It requires a few reboots just to do that. The cluster doesn't come down, everything is still running, but it's time-consuming, at times."
"Its configuration needs to be more straightforward."
"Because of the magic that it does 'under the hood,' it is very difficult to find out within the system where all your storage is going. That's a little bit of a ding that we have on it. It does so much magic in order to protect itself from drive failures or multiple drive failures, that it automatically handles the provisioning and storage of your data. But by doing that, finding out why a file of a certain size, or a directory of a certain size, is using more storage than is being reported in InsightIQ, is very difficult to discern."
"If they integrated some functions, as they have on Data Domain with a cyber recovery vault, it would be ideal."
"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."
"I would like to see better integration."
"I would like to see more deduplication."
"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."
"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."
"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."
"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."
"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is ranked 2nd in File and Object Storage with 39 reviews while Pure Storage FlashBlade is ranked 6th in File and Object Storage with 31 reviews. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is rated 9.0, while Pure Storage FlashBlade is rated 8.8. 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 Pure Storage FlashBlade writes "A high-performing and scalable solution that improves data performance for S3 workloads". Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is most compared with Dell ECS, NetApp FAS Series, Qumulo, HPE StoreEasy and Red Hat Ceph Storage, whereas Pure Storage FlashBlade is most compared with VAST Data, MinIO, Pure Storage FlashArray, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Dell ECS. See our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade report.
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We monitor all File and Object Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
