Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell PowerScale (Isilon), HPE 3PAR StoreServ, and NetApp FAS Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"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 stable.""This has been a valuable solution for our business overall. It offers business continuity and replication features.""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.""It has allowed us to have more consistent quality controls. It has also allowed us to expand the number of servers in clients processing and accessing data, allowing us to get a lot bigger projects out the door.""You plug in a new node and data starts migrating over to it, and IT spreads out the load. We've added multiple nodes to the system since deploying it. The process is pretty seamless, and we are able to do it with no downtime. It's a very easy process to do.""The tool's most valuable features are scalability and stability.""Dell PowerScale is a scalable solution. It allows non-disruptive upgrades and maintenance of the system."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Pros →

"The solution is easy to install.""It has helped with more than just serving data, but also with recovery.""It is easy to set up, easy to use, and user-friendly. It is easier to work with HPE 3PAR than with Hitachi. Its technical support is also good.""The intelligence around the solution is good.""It is easy to scale, easy to manage, and easy to configure.""Good performance because it's an all-flash system. Basically, our applications run faster.""I am a system integrator, so we sell a lot of 3PAR storage to our customers. Our business has increased compared to previous days.""The all-flash positions our organization for growth. If somebody comes to us who needs an application with performance, we have that already formulated."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ Pros →

"The most valuable feature of the NetApp FAS Series is its stability.""It is a scalable solution.""The solution is stable.""It's a stable product. No issues there.""You can use different protocols at the same time. Monitoring is also very easy in NetApp FAS Series. There is a free tool for monitoring.""We can manage our applications from a single dashboard.""The most important features are SnapVault, Snapshots, and SnapMirror.""Data consolidation and visualization."

More NetApp FAS Series Pros →

Cons
"I would like to see increased reporting and statistics functionalities.""The only thing that I think PowerScale could do better is improving the HTTP data access protocol. At the present, you cannot protect access to data via HTTP or HTTPS the same way that you can secure data access through other protocols like NFS or SMB[...]the Unified Permission Model that would allow a user to authenticate before being able to access a private file, does not apply.""There is room for improvement in its handling of object storage.""The product needs to improve CLI since commands are complex. The search option is also difficult since you must give the full path.""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.""It is a bit higher priced than some of the other systems.""The UID mapping and how to configure mapping-related things is a struggle.""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."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Cons →

"3PAR has StoreOnce and replication. I would like it if they worked together. Or, if I had Nimble and put that either in DR or a primary cohesive management, but still use the cool features of 3PAR, that would be awesome.""I would like them to improve it so I can do firmware upgrades without downtime.""File Persona can be better. I don't use File Persona because it has many problems with my environment. The antivirus that it has is not compatible with File Persona, and that's a big issue with File Persona. 3PAR is not as good as Dell when making a file in the storage. 3PAR for a block is very good, but when comparing row capacity, I get 14% capacity with 3PAR, but with Dell, I get 60% capacity.""We are seeing that there are some enhancements which are required in the SSMC console. There are some features that we do not see in the dashboard.""Extending is not a problem, scalability is okay. But once you buy additional box of disks, you have to wait for HPE to contact you with their plan for implementation, for connecting, and it can take several weeks. So, you have the box and you have to wait for several weeks to actually implement it.""The cloud-based monitoring Infosight would be better if users are automatically enrolled in the cloud/group based on the configuration or information gathered or uploaded on the internet.""This solution is becoming dated.""The management interface is not intuitive."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ Cons →

"NetApp needs to put its OS on a microchip rather than on disks.""Cluster mode needs to be more ubiquitous.""The user interface could be improved to have better graphics and the performance analyzer could be better.""The solution can improve on the replication features.""Dedicated storage efficiency accelerators could improve the overall performance of the system.""The solution could do more than just data.""The high cost of the product is an area of concern, so from an improvement perspective, the tool needs to be made cheaper.""Currently, the newest release is not HCI friendly."

More NetApp FAS Series Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The solution is expensive; it is not the cheapest solution out there. If you look at it from a total cost of ownership perspective, then it is a very compelling solution. However, if you're looking at just dollar per terabyte and not looking at the big picture, then you could be distracted by the price. It is not an amazing price, but it's pretty good. It is also very good when you consider the total cost of ownership and ease of management."
  • "The pricing is expensive, but I think it's a fair value because it does manage itself. It definitely is much simpler than any of the other scale-out storage platforms that we've looked at in the past."
  • "The platform is not cheap. However, on the software side, you can choose what you want license. So, you can start your licensing with the features that you need, then after buying the platform add some other features."
  • "The only drawback for us is that it's a large upfront investment. This was a huge decision for a startup company to make. It took a bit for us to get over the line on it, but we have not regretted it."
  • "We paid an additional fee to have Dell's ProDeploy Plus team implement it."
  • "Price was also a significant factor in our decision to go with PowerScale. The team at EMC, now Dell EMC, came through with a highly competitive offer that tipped the scales towards their solution. There was only one other solution around the same price point, but it could not match PowerScale on features. That other solution is no longer on the market."
  • "Pricing for this solution is reasonable."
  • "This solution is priced slightly higher than others on the market but does offer good quality. With this solution's data reduction and compression, we were able to purchase less. Costs have dropped because of the data rate of compression and deduplication."
  • More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It's very reliable and it was cost competitive with other arrays at the time that we purchased it."
  • "The main issue with 3PAR right now is its cost problem. Right now, there are some other storage cabinets that can do what 3PAR can do. Now, they can do it as well with a more revised budget."
  • "To be more competitive, as customer, we need a more aggressive price that includes all the licenses available."
  • "Nowadays, from a storage point of view, there are so many vendors in the market. So cost is one of the factors that pushed us to go with HPE 3PAR. Cost-wise they're pretty competitive."
  • "As a school, we always have​ low budgets. We are a nonprofit organization. We do not have too much budget, so we care about prices, discounts, and especially about the product quality. The last 16 years, we have been an HPE customer. We are very much happy with HPE products."
  • "It is fairly inexpensive to scale."
  • "Budget wise, 3PAR is a lot of money compared to other solutions, but what is in the 3PAR integration that customers are getting now from the Nimble and InfoSight acquisitions, it is worthwhile."
  • "For the price that we were able to acquire it, we have seen it give us the performance and stability that we require to run our enterprise."
  • More HPE 3PAR StoreServ Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It’s difficult for us to get money, so make sure you get everything in order, because there’s no going back and saying “oh, I missed this or that”, so make sure you plan well and well in advance."
  • "it’s not an inexpensive solution and it may not be for the cost-sensitive customer."
  • "The process for going to cluster mode is expensive."
  • "Most storage vendors also have software, or licensing bundles, which may offer the required licenses considerably cheaper, but do also maybe offer licenses, which are not needed."
  • "There are products available in market with comparatively lower costs."
  • "Cost effective storage for all performance levels (including all-flash)."
  • "The only area that could be improved is to lower prices for their All Flash FAS."
  • "The price it not low, but comparing features to other vendors, the price can be balanced."
  • More NetApp FAS Series Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a few posts already. In 2015, though, the HP giant began to rouse and challenge the mainstream status quo with its 3PAR offering. Quantifying 3PAR's platform is different from XtremIO and Pure, though, as it can seem amorphous given the many ways it can be quoted. Are you asking for all flash? 3PAR will give you that and lay claim to the best-of-breed title. Oh, but you want some mass storage akin to archival or virtual tape, too? 3PAR changes jerseys and shouts, "I'm it!" Is it, though? Let's put 3PAR against XtremIO and see how they measure up! Define the Conversation  The hard part about these comparisons and competitive analyses is that we aren't talking about products of the same species or specialization. I struggle to put it properly, but consider it this way. In pre-AFA days (the age of traditional spinners like NetApp FAS3040, EMC CLARiiON or VNX, and even last-gen 3PAR), the contest was like pitting a Toyota Camry against a Nissan Altima. They did most of the same things with minor strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. Talking about XtremIO versus 3PAR 74xx is more of a discussion about construction-grade, heavy-duty cranes versus massive earth movers. They are in the… Read more →
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of the solution is its performance.
    Top Answer:Dell PowerScale is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo.
    Top Answer:The solution’s interface and pricing could be improved.
    Top Answer:HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspective… more »
    Top Answer:HPE 3PAR StoreServ is an enterprise storage that is mainly deployed in enterprise scenarios like banking and insurance.
    Top Answer:The solution has two parts: software and hardware, and you need to buy licenses for some features.
    Top Answer:Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.
    Top Answer:The price of NetApp FAS Series is the same as Dell's cost, so I don't think there are any comparable elements in the… more »
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    Also Known As
    PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
    HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage
    Learn More
    Overview

    Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon) storage solutions are designed to help manage data for enterprises of all types. Dell PowerScale systems are simple to install, manage, and scale to virtually any size and include a choice of all-flash, hybrid, or archive nodes. Dell PowerScale solutions stay flexible and reliable no matter how much storage capacity is added, how much performance is required, or how business needs change in the future.

    With Dell PowerScale, your data lake always stays simple to manage, simple to grow, simple to protect, and simple enough to handle the most demanding current and future workloads.

    Ideal for companies of any size, from small enterprises to multi-national ones, Dell PowerScale storage provides secure collaboration, modular scalability, flexible consumption models, and easy cloud integrations, all with management tools spanning multiple platforms.

    Key Benefits of Dell EMC PowerScale Storage

    • Centralized management: Manage your storage infrastructure from a single unified platform.

    • Data protection: Dell PowerScale offers security, data protection and replication tools. Back up and protect your data from cyber-attacks with an integrated ransomware defense system.

    • Artificial intelligence: PowerScale is the foundation for building an integrated and optimized IT infrastructure for AI projects, from concept to production.

    • Cloud support: Store and manage your data on the cloud and move data between your data center and the cloud. Dell PowerScale runs data-intensive cloud workloads with no outbound traffic costs.

    • Long-term storage: Dell PowerScale offers highly efficient and resilient active archive storage or long-term data retention for large-scale data archives. With the proven scalability architecture of PowerScale, you can meet your growing archiving demands. Dell PowerScale has a wide variety of enterprise-grade data protection and security options to keep your archived data safe.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Dell EMC PowerScale storage stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its scalability capabilities and its user-friendly centralized management system.

    Rachel B., a chief operations officer & acting CFO at Like a Photon, writes, "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."

    Keith B., the director of IT at NatureFresh Farms, writes, "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."

    HPE 3PAR StoreServ is an AI-driven storage solution that prevents issues before they occur by learning and adjusting in real time. The solution offers a tier-1 all-flash foundation for mission-critical workloads. HPE 3PAR StoreServ was designed with more than 3M IOPS and consistent sub-ms latency. It aims to transform midrange and enterprise deployments with solutions that scale from a few TBs to more than 20PBs. In addition, the solution is built to modernize data centers and is made to handle unpredictable workloads effortlessly. By implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you gain automated and rapid provisioning, hardware-accelerated deduplication and compression, and a multi-tenant design.

    HPE 3PAR StoreServ Features

    HPE 3PAR StoreServ has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Flexibility: With HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you can easily deploy highly configurable, scale-out storage for multi-tenant workloads.
    • Always-on availability for your data: HPE 3PAR StoreServ includes an always-on resilient storage infrastructure for your hypervisors and applications. In addition, with Peer Persistence, your virtual machines (VMs), hosts, and data can move freely across data centers rather than being constrained by their physical boundaries.
    • Fast, scalable performance: HPE 3PAR StoreServ enables you to accelerate consistent mixed-workload performance and also provides necessary QoS levels that are optimized for your highest priority applications.
    • Performance insights: HPE 3PAR StoreServ helps you gain performance insights in real time, and anticipate as well as prevent issues across the infrastructure stack by utilizing cross-stack analytics.
    • Flash optimized data protection: With tier-1 data services, multi-tenant security, and copy data management, you can avoid downtime.
    • Seamless data mobility: HPE 3PAR StoreServ makes it possible for you to not only experience converged data protection, but also experience seamless data mobility services, at flash speed, from the edge to the cloud.

    HPE 3PAR StoreServ Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Easy to manage. The web interface to manage the units is a great asset and one that makes managing storage easy.
    • User-friendly GUI
    • Exceptionally fast and well-managed replication

    • Low latency
    • Hybrid storage gives you the ability to assign different roles to different types of storage arrays inside one enclosure
    • Both file-level and block-level replication

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the HPE 3PAR StoreServ solution.

    A SAN Consultant at a tech services company says, “One of the features that I like the most is the data replication element. The reason I like it is due to the fact that it's pretty clean on replicating data over to a second site. The product stands on its own in heavy enterprise environments. It's easy to make changes without affecting the environment. The solution is very easy to use. The product is very robust and offers very good performance.”

    A Storage Manager at a financial services firm mentions, "There are a lot of screens for easy management where you can change some settings. But after a few years, the important settings were better after an upgrade, and all the vendors have other ways to upgrade their systems."

    A Senior IT Infrastructure & Data Center Operation Engineer at Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) comments, “The adaptive optimization is the biggest feature in 3PAR. 3PAR is very usable with thin volume because it detects zeros while writing. Every time I tell the hypervisor to make the full provisioning, it makes the volume as simple provisioning in 3PAR, not full provisioning.”

    NetApp FAS series is an enterprise-level storage system that provides a wide variety of data management services, including data protection, block and file storage, and data management.

    NetApp FAS is designed to be highly scalable, allowing your organization to grow storage capacity on demand. NetApp FAS also supports multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel, as well as various storage architectures, including SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network-Attached Storage).

    The FAS series has multiple data protection and data management features, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication, to help secure your data and manage it more efficiently. The system integrates with other NetApp products and solutions, to create a unified data management platform. The system can be deployed on-premise, on multi-cloud environments, or hybrid.

    NetApp FAS Series Benefits and Features

    NetApp FAS series provides its users with several key benefits and features, including:

    • Scalability: NetApp FAS series is easy to scale, allowing organizations to rapidly grow their storage capacity according to demand.
    • Security: Protect and manage your data with various data protection and data management tools, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication.
    • Seamless integration: Integrate with other NetApp products and solutions to ensure a unified data management platform across on-premise, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
    • Reduced costs: Consolidation of multiple storage boxes greatly reduces the data center footprint. From a management point of view, with NetApp FAS you manage a single storage box instead of multiple storage boxes.

    • Compatibility: Forward and backward compatibility ensures that you don’t have to trade in existing controllers. New controllers can always integrate with previously released controllers.
    • Multi-protocol support: Support for multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel.
    • High performance and availability: The solution has high input and output per second performance and ensures that critical data remains accessible in the event of a hardware failure.

    • Intuitive interface: The FAS series has a user-friendly interface and management dashboard, making it easy to manage your storage systems. With unified management, you can quickly run a single protocol on your entire system

    • Data cloning and replication: Easily clone databases of any size. Clones occupy a very, very small footprint on the storage until they are severed from the main database. Replications carried out by the system are fast and require very little bandwidth.

    Reviews from Real Users

    NetApp FAS Series stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its speed, reliability, and a wide variety of features.

    Adriano S., IT project and infrastructure service manager, writes, “The replication feature is noteworthy because it's faster than most and it uses little bandwidth. Then there's the friendly interface that the equipment offers. With this interface, it is very easy to manage.”

    Temitope O., a NetApp product manager at Hiperdist Ltd, says, “I like the unified management feature because sometimes you end up running a single protocol on the entire system. You rather have a system for a particular protocol and another system for other protocols, especially in a big environment like mine.”

    Sample Customers
    OMRF, University of Utah, Translational Genetics Research Institute, Arcis, Geofizyka Torumn, Cyprus E&P Corporation, Colburn School, Columbia Sportswear, Harvard Medical School, University of Michigan, National Library of France,
    Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC
    Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Government14%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Educational Organization10%
    Media Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization23%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company9%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Energy/Utilities Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization80%
    Computer Software Company4%
    Manufacturing Company2%
    Government2%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Healthcare Company11%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization59%
    Computer Software Company7%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Financial Services Firm4%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise29%
    Large Enterprise53%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business5%
    Midsize Enterprise83%
    Large Enterprise12%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise64%
    Large Enterprise27%
    Buyer's Guide
    NAS
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Nasuni and others in NAS. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.