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."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."
"The solution's scalability is very good."
"The solution has simplified management by consolidating our workloads. Rather than managing all the different workloads on different storage arrays, Windows Servers, etc., we just have one place per data centre where we manage all their unstructured data, saving us time."
"The stability of the solution is good."
"Isilon is flexible in supporting various data workloads while keeping them protected. Dell continues to release updates and patches which enhance the use of this solution. This includes offering ransomware protection."
"The guaranteed performance, combined with the scalability through its scale-out capability, makes it an excellent choice."
"For maximizing storage utilization, PowerScale is great. When you write the data to it, it spreads it out to all the nodes, so you get all the performance from the entire pool."
"Ability to scale the number of nodes without having to build additional clusters."
"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."
"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."
"Its stability is the most valuable. It is reliable, and we don't have to worry too much about it."
"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 integrates well into either Windows or Linux environments."
"The solution has been very stable so far."
"It has the best storage capacity."
"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."
"The UID mapping and how to configure mapping-related things is a struggle."
"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."
"We lost our technical sales reps about two years ago. We haven't gotten one assigned to us and we'd love to have one."
"I would like to see increased reporting and statistics functionalities."
"Data storage performance needs to be improved."
"We had some issues with level 1 support. We had to fight with them on repeated issues. There is room for improvement in level 1 support."
"The management and monitoring tools comprise a disparate suite of products and the roadmap is very unclear. We've got four different products that look after the Isilon, management-wise, and it's a bit of a mess."
"FreeNAS should be better prepared for clustering."
"They should include clustering for the solution."
"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."
"They can improve the integration with PSA systems. This functionality could be better."
"If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented."
"The latest version of the dashboard doesn't work as good as the previous version."
"The support for S3 needs to be improved."
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is ranked 1st in NAS with 39 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, Qumulo, HPE StoreEasy, NetApp FAS Series and Buurst SoftNAS. See our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. FreeNAS report.
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