Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 6, 2024

We compared NetApp FAS Series and Dell PowerScale (Isilon) based on our user's reviews in several parameters.

In summary, the NetApp FAS Series is praised for its advanced data management and storage capabilities, seamless integration, exceptional customer service, positive ROI, but may need enhancements in performance and user interface. On the other hand, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is lauded for its scalability, efficient storage management, exceptional customer service, positive ROI, but could benefit from improvements in interface, performance speed, scalability, compatibility, and technical support.

Features: NetApp FAS Series stands out for its efficient data management and storage, seamless integration with third-party software, advanced data protection and backup capabilities, as well as its high performance and reliability. In contrast, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is praised for its exceptional data scalability, efficient storage management, and reliable performance.

Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for NetApp FAS Series is considered reasonable and affordable according to user feedback. Users appreciate the transparency and ease of understanding in terms of pricing, setup, and licensing. On the other hand, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) also offers a straightforward setup cost without any hidden charges or complexities. The pricing of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is seen as competitive in the market, and the licensing process is described as seamless and efficient., The NetApp FAS Series product has been highly praised for its cost-effectiveness, efficiency, performance, reliability, and seamless integration capabilities. Users have experienced increased productivity and reduced downtime. On the other hand, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has been commended for its performance, scalability, efficiency, and ability to handle large data workloads. Users have also reported cost savings and improved productivity. Overall, both products have delivered significant value and proved to be worthwhile investments.

Room for Improvement: The differences between NetApp FAS Series and Dell PowerScale (Isilon) products lie in various areas. NetApp FAS Series would benefit from improvements in performance, networking capabilities, and user interface. On the other hand, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) requires enhancements in its interface, performance speed, scalability, compatibility with other systems, and technical support.

Deployment and customer support: The reviews comparing NetApp FAS Series and Dell PowerScale (Isilon) suggest that users reported varying timeframes for establishing the tech solutions. Some users mentioned spending three months on deployment for NetApp FAS Series, while others reported a week for setup for Dell PowerScale. It is important to consider these differences when evaluating the overall duration of implementation., The customer service for NetApp FAS Series is highly praised for its reliability, responsiveness, and efficiency. Users appreciate the prompt resolution of queries and professionalism exhibited by the support staff. On the other hand, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is commended for its exceptional customer service, particularly in terms of promptness, effectiveness, and willingness to address issues. Users are impressed with the level of expertise and professionalism demonstrated by Dell's support team.

The summary above is based on 44 interviews we conducted recently with NetApp FAS Series and Dell PowerScale (Isilon) users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. NetApp FAS Series Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: What is the biggest difference between EMC Isilon and NetApp FAS Series?
Answer: My recommendation is to take a close look at our CS Concerto Scale-Out Cluster system.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Since it can scale so easily, as long as I have money to buy more nodes, I can grow it as big as I need to. That is important in our business. As sequencing technologies continue to evolve, and as those technologies evolve, the amount of data generation never gets smaller. It just always seems to get bigger. This is one of the absolute key aspects: We can grow on demand without having to forklift stuff.""The guaranteed performance, combined with the scalability through its scale-out capability, makes it an excellent choice.""Ability to scale the number of nodes without having to build additional clusters.""Dell PowerScale's performance is 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.""This is the best platform that we could have for storage utilization. It is affordable and scalable. At the end of the day, it's something that we find very easy to use.""Our users are able to easily roll back snapshots without going through IT.""Dell PowerScale is a scalable solution. It allows non-disruptive upgrades and maintenance of the system."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Pros →

"Other products lose performance over time, but NetApp OS is speed-optimized.""Fast Snapshots""One of the most valuable features offered is double-parity RAID, which guarantees that your data will stay intact. We're also able to provision storage and monitor which ones are really consuming storage.""The most valuable feature of the NetApp FAS Series is the snapshot and the FlexClone for Oracle and Microsoft SQL environments. Additionally, the integration can be done with most all on-premise and cloud providers.""NetApp FAS is highly stable and reliable, especially under a heavy load. That is what I like most about the NetApp.""Ability to use mirroring and SnapVault have made backup no longer necessary.""It is very easy to expand disks and manage CIFS.""Has rock solid reliability and is easy to use."

More NetApp FAS Series Pros →

Cons
"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.""The solution’s interface and pricing could be improved.""The replication could lend itself to some improvement around encryption in transit and managing the racing of large volumes of data. The process of file over and file back can be tedious. Hopefully, you never end up going into a DR. If you do go into a DR, you know the data is there on the remote site. However, in terms of the process of setting up the replicates and filing them back, that is just very tedious and could definitely do with some improvement.""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.""The product needs to improve CLI since commands are complex. The search option is also difficult since you must give the full path.""The price of the solution could be reduced.""The product’s expansion capacity, pricing clarity, and ease of use need improvement.""It is a bit higher priced than some of the other systems."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Cons →

"I would like to see less latency and higher IOPS.""There are some technical limitations, but it would be great to have in-line deduplication and in-line compression for the FAS series as well.""The solution can improve on the replication features.""Dedicated storage efficiency accelerators could improve the overall performance of the system.""The high cost of the product is an area of concern, so from an improvement perspective, the tool needs to be made cheaper.""Technical support needs to be improved, as there are no longer partners in our country.""The NetApp FAS Series is not as high-performing and is not as fast. Its speed needs improvement, but this could only be done if it's an all-flash solution.""It's not a cheap system. It is very expensive. The pricing has been ridiculous every time that we had to renew the support."

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 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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    Answers from the Community
    Anil Vasudeva
    Shawn Kim - PeerSpot reviewerShawn Kim
    User

    Isilon is Scale-out storage, while NetApp is Active-Standby storage.

    Regarding the performance issue based on the field engineer’s experience, Isilon is better than NetApp in case of a huge amount of io, while NetApp is better than Isilon in case of a medium amount of IO.

    it_user1243737 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user1243737 (Ingeniero de preventa at a tech company with 10,001+ employees)
    Real User

    I think you need rewiew more than only performance or capacity, I have installed both machines, Netapp FASS have many options Hibrid or only objects, in Netapp Objects is StorageGrid where can obtain 720 TB in SG5760 but you can select SG6060 or SG5712 and Isilon is similar you have many options where could be ALL FLASH or SATA but Isilon is only NAS, and Isilon have many reference too, 8 reference F810 have 924 TB and up 250.000 I/Ops.

    Actually I recommend one arquitecture where no focus only in one purpose, Scale up or Scale out all vendors have different alternatives and deppend the machine offer more I/O or Capacity, Midrange and High end, I don´t like Isilon because is only for NAS I dont like Hibrid or Unified Machines as FAS or VNX, I need to know which is the prupose for have a NAS because actually I can have a Storage for all protocols no only to CIFS and NFS and with prices cheaper than NAS, in conclusion I don´t like one Storage for NAS other for SAN other for Virtualization... Is better only one Storage where I can do it all, It reduce TCO.

    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: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 pricing part. The tool is expensive.
    Ranking
    1st
    out of 27 in NAS
    Views
    10,538
    Comparisons
    4,897
    Reviews
    24
    Average Words per Review
    649
    Rating
    8.9
    2nd
    out of 27 in NAS
    Views
    5,302
    Comparisons
    3,510
    Reviews
    18
    Average Words per Review
    460
    Rating
    8.9
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
    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."

    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,
    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%
    Government8%
    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 Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise64%
    Large Enterprise27%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. NetApp FAS Series
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is ranked 1st in NAS with 26 reviews while NetApp FAS Series is ranked 2nd in NAS with 19 reviews. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is rated 9.0, while NetApp FAS Series 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 NetApp FAS Series writes "Offers fast data transfer between NetApp systems and highly scalable, accommodating clusters with significant storage capacity". Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is most compared with Dell ECS, Pure Storage FlashBlade, Qumulo, HPE StoreEasy and Red Hat Ceph Storage, whereas NetApp FAS Series is most compared with NetApp AFF, HPE StorageWorks MSA, Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain), IBM FlashSystem and HPE StoreEasy. See our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. NetApp FAS Series report.

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    We monitor all NAS 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.