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Amazon Web Services (AWS) Logo
25,942 views|22,179 comparisons
Dell Technologies Logo
6,715 views|5,730 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jul 31, 2022

We performed a comparison between Amazon AWS and Dell ECS based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: For the most part, users of both Amazon AWS and Dell ECS feel that they are pretty easy to deploy. However, some users felt that their deployments could be somewhat complex.
  • Features: Users of both Amazon AWS and Dell ECS agree that they are both highly stable and scalable solutions.

    Reviewers say that Amazon AWS is very user-friendly and has good supporting documentation. However, they feel that it trades off its user-friendliness by not having the best security.

    Dell ECS allows users to balance their workloads. However, users feel that the documentation that would make it easier to use is incomplete. This results in the solution being more difficult for users to deploy.
  • Pricing: Users of both products mainly feel that their pricing could be more competitive. That said, there are also some users of both solutions who feel that the pricing is competitive.
  • Service and Support: Users of both solutions note that, for the most part, their technical support teams are excellent.

Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Amazon AWS seems to be the marginally superior solution. Our reviewers found Dell ECS’s supporting documentation to be incomplete.

To learn more, read our detailed Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Report (Updated: February 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable features of Amazon AWS are ease of use, deployment, and short lead time. If you are using an on-premise solution, you need to wait for the hardware, and nowadays it is very difficult, the lead time becomes very long. We propose to our customers to use Amazon AWS because it is very easy, no need to wait for hardware delivery.""There are a lot of features that I really like including ease of deployment, ease of build and release, and also that it is heavily focused on a PaaS or SaaS model.""Cloud Trail API log storage.""It is flexible. It is quite comfortable to use for organizations.""Amazon AWS has improved a lot on security and is very good. Additionally, You can integrate your own security into their AWS platform.""Serverless computing: This can be more cost-efficient just regarding computing resources than renting or purchasing a fixed quantity of servers, which involves periods of underutilization or nonuse.""The cloud storage based on S3 is one the most valuable services we have deployed since it allows us infinite scale in storage and extremely high durability.""The product is easy to use."

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"We face very few hardware failures.""The performance is good.""Competitive object storage platform that's stable and scalable.""Dell's technical support team is good.""I have found Dell ECS to be scalable.""It is a stable platform.""It's my understanding that the initial setup is straightforward.""What I like best about Dell ECS is its stability. I also like that you can use it for large-scale data purposes. The solution works fine for me, and I haven't encountered any issues with it."

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Cons
"We have had several issues with the products and services but as of now, there are no good alternatives.""I generally don't like the user experience of Amazon. It's not the best.""In the next release, I would like to see better pricing.""When I try to enter the multi-cloud, they provide very poor support. Support is a concern with Amazon.""Support response times can be improved, especially in areas where faster assistance is crucial.""If you have not had previous training or studied guides it will be a little difficult to use the solution. However, the difficulty also depends on what you are using the solution for. They can improve by providing more documentation, such as tutorials and videos.""AWS has room for improvement on the Kubernetes side. I would like to go a little deeper into the Kubernetes target, Elastic, inner system, and all that. The EKS, target, and all these areas need to be improved, but that is not my key area because I am mostly working on the application side.""There should be improvement in terms of creating databases of varying sizes which would provide flexibility."

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"Dell EMC ECS could improve by having Relational Database Services(RDS) to review progress. Additionally, if the training was provided it would be a benefit, it would be good for our engineers.""They need to ensure that the system will work if a site goes down.""Dell ECS could improve the price of the solution. It is expensive.""The solution needs to provide better integration between this solution and all other kinds of systems.""You should be able to calculate so that when it's full it's 100% full, not just 90%.""The troubleshooting feature of this solution needs to be improved, to allow organizations to fix issues without having to contact the support team.""The solution could be more cost-effective and secure.""The solution’s stability could be improved."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Be careful with your consumption, especially when you are testing things. Costs can creep up on you relatively fast, without even noticing."
  • "AWS is scalable depending on your needs so pricing is dependant on what you use."
  • "It is decently priced. The competition is also bringing its own cloud offerings, such as from Oracle."
  • "When we shifted the load to AWS we paid a high cost as the mail stores were hosted on EBS. The storage cost drastically reduced after moving to S3."
  • "If you can plan capacity for one or three years, you can use the upfront payment option which allows you to save up to 50%."
  • "One of the best thing in Amazon AWS is you are billed for the service you use."
  • "We are reducing costs year-over-year."
  • "Much faster than other solutions at a super low cost."
  • More Amazon AWS Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Dell EMC ECS is too expensive."
  • "We are not paying for the license at this stage."
  • "The solution could be cheaper."
  • "It's a lease-based model, so it's capacity-based. We already negotiated the price a lot, but we're still doing that with Dell because somehow the product was not installed successfully, so there was a lot of struggle in the distributor territory between Dell and the environment itself. I would give the solution a 6 out of 10 for the pricing. There's a little room for improvement."
  • "We initially purchased all of the licenses at the same time."
  • "The price of Dell ECS should be reduced."
  • "The price of Dell ECS should be reduced."
  • "The charges for this solution are made in blocks of models, which are purchased depending on what features an organization requires."
  • More Dell ECS Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
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    Top Answer:More features for remote management and administration could be included in the product. They could provide centralized reports.
    Ranking
    Views
    25,942
    Comparisons
    22,179
    Reviews
    25
    Average Words per Review
    528
    Rating
    7.8
    5th
    Views
    6,715
    Comparisons
    5,730
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    368
    Rating
    8.1
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Amazon Web Services, AWS
    EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, EMC Elastic Cloud Storage
    Learn More
    Overview

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) is an adopted cloud platform that offers more than 200 fully featured services from data centers located across the globe. This is a scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that is utilized by thousands of businesses of different sizes around the world. The product offers a wide variety of solutions for its customers, which allows them to launch applications regardless of their industry.

    The most common use cases for AWS are:

    • Application hosting: Clients can take advantage of on-demand infrastructure to power their applications. The product supports multiple types of apps, varying from hosted internal applications to software as a service (SaaS) offerings.

    • Websites: With AWS, clients can satisfy their web hosting needs through a scalable platform for their websites.

    • Backup and storage: AWS offers reliable data storage services, which allow clients to store their data and build dependable backups for all of their valuable information.

    • Enterprise IT: The product allows companies to host internal- or external-facing IT applications in a highly secure environment.

    • Content delivery: Users who want to distribute content to end users worldwide can do so quickly and easily through the high data transfer speeds of this solution.

    • Databases: AWS offers a variety of database solutions, which include hosted enterprise database software as well as non-relational database solutions.

    Amazon AWS supports a global cloud infrastructure with AWS Region and Availability Zone models, which contribute to the high availability of enterprise applications running on the solution. Amazon AWS has an extensive array of products that serve different purposes, including:

    • Analytics
    • Application integration
    • Blockchain
    • Business applications
    • Cloud financial management
    • Compute
    • Contact center
    • Containers
    • Database
    • Developer tools
    • End-user computing
    • Front-end web and mobile
    • Games
    • Internet of Things (IoT)
    • Machine learning
    • Management and governance
    • Quantum technologies
    • Robotics
    • Satellite
    • Security, identity and compliance, and others

    The products and services that Amazon AWS delivers to these sectors provide a large computing capacity which is quicker and cheaper compared to building a physical server farm. Among the most popular services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, also known as "EC2," and Amazon Simple Storage Service, also known as "S3."

    Amazon AWS Features

    The wide array of products that Amazon AWS offers consist of different functions that utilize cloud computing across different sectors. The features of this solution can be categorized in the following ways:

    • Data and relationship management: With Amazon AWS, companies can manage multiple hierarchies of directory data, they can define attributes for objects and relationships, set custom inheritance rules for directories, and create multiple schemas.

    • Schema management: This group of features allows users to extend their directory schema according to their needs. They can extend it through multiple applications that share a single directory while avoiding duplication of data.

    • Fully managed infrastructure: This feature decreases time and costs for administrative tasks for companies regarding scaling infrastructure and managing servers.

    • Searching feature: The Cloud Directory feature of AWS offers built-in search capabilities which can cover sets of highly connected data and eliminate the need of creating nested queries.

    • Built-in data encryption: Users can benefit from high levels of protection of their data with AWS's products. The data in the cloud is automatically encrypted at rest and in transit through 256-bit encryption keys, managed by AWS Key Management Service (KMS).

    • Object policies: This feature allows Amazon AWS users to organize objects in different hierarchies by providing a framework for applications to evaluate policy assignments.

    Amazon AWS Benefits

    This product delivers various benefits across all industries that utilize its services. The greatest advantages of using Amazon AWS include:

    • High product functionality is supported by machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), IoT, data lakes, and analytics.

    • The solution has a high level of security, which is backed by a deep set ofmore than 100 cloud security tools.

    • Amazon AWS has an easy-to-use interface that makes it possible for clients to host applications.

    • The product is very flexible in terms of which operating system, programming language, web app platform, and database clients can use.

    • AWS is a scalable and highly secure global computing infrastructure, supported by the reliability of Amazon.com.

    • Clients can utilize the Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing tools to personally scale up or down applications, depending on their demand.

    • Users can choose from an array of payment options, including paying for only the services they need, as well as a free trial to select the ones most useful for them.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Greg G., a chief executive officer at a tech services company, ranks Amazon AWS highly, as he states that the solution is flexible, scales well, and offers good stability.

    A technology manager technology at a computer software company values Amazon AWS because it is extremely cost-efficient, easy to upgrade and expand storage with greatly improved interfaces.

    Enterprise-ready. Future-proof. Data-first.

    Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) is a file and object storage solution from Dell EMC. ECS has been created to support both traditional and next-generation ecosystems equally. ECS boasts unrivaled economics, manageability, resilience, and scalability to satisfy the demands of today's next-gen, robust business enterprise ecosystems. ECS can easily be deployed in a software-defined model or as a turn-key appliance. ECS is software-defined and multi-layered for unlimited scalability. Every layer is abstracted and scalable with no single point of failure.

    • Data service layer: Provides S3 access along with access to SWIFT, CAZ, NFS, HDFS.
    • Storage service layer: Stores, retrieves and protects data.
    • Fabric layer: Provides clustering, configuration management, health monitoring.

    Everything is done within the software, which is containerized, using docker.

    ECS is currently deployed using basic commodity hardware, which can easily be federated across as many as eight different locations and managed as a single resource. Additionally, ECS can also protect data at the site level, locally, disk, node, and rack levels. The federation enables a single global namespace with everywhere access to content. Applications can quickly rewrite in an active/active or everywhere active manner.

    ECS is also able to be used as secondary storage or archival storage. This will free up valuable primary storage of data that is stale, redundant, or used infrequently, and the data will remain easily accessible. ECS uses policy-based tiering such as Data Domain, Cloud tiering, Isilon using cloud polls, and Geodrive, which give Windows systems direct access to ECS. Windows users can still use server message block (SMB) while leveraging the more expansive ECS storage.

    ECS is enterprise-grade and offers valuable features such as retention, multi-tenancy, metering, monitoring, quotas, and more. ECS builds in robust security from the ground up and encrypts data. ECS is compliant with STIG guidelines and adheres to SEC rule 17A-4F.

    ECS is an enterprise-ready solution that allows organizations to easily simplify object storage management and visualize information in intuitive new ways, and empowers your business to do even more with data. With ECS, enterprise organizations can deliver cloud-scale economics in-house that will lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and scale, creating greater levels of productivity and profitability.

    Reviews from Real Users

    One user, who is a deputy director at a tech service company, says ECS offers “good performance, reliability, and technical support”.

    Dell EMC ECS is “a stable solution which is easy to scale, install and manage”, relates another user, who is a senior buyer at a tech service company.

    "What I like best about this product is that it is a complete solution, both hardware, and software, by the same vendor," summarizes a system engineer at a tech services company. 














    Sample Customers
    Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
    Atos
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company31%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Educational Organization6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization22%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company30%
    Financial Services Firm30%
    Mining And Metals Company10%
    Government10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company12%
    Government8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business44%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise56%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise40%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise70%
    Buyer's Guide
    Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
    February 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon, Microsoft, Google and others in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS). Updated: February 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Amazon AWS is ranked 1st in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 26 reviews while Dell ECS is ranked 5th in File and Object Storage with 12 reviews. Amazon AWS is rated 8.4, while Dell ECS is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Amazon AWS writes "Offers integrated services and quickly spin up and shut down applications using EC2". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Dell ECS writes "Though tool also offers stability, it needs to offer better pricing plans". Amazon AWS is most compared with Linode, OpenShift, Microsoft Azure, SAP Cloud Platform and IBM Public Cloud, whereas Dell ECS is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), NetApp StorageGRID, MinIO, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Scality RING.

    We monitor all Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) 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.