We performed a comparison between Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and Nutanix Unified Storage 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."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."
"Its most valuable feature is the DR capabilities replication."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) integration with other solutions because of the standard file system protocol."
"The solution is extremely easy to manage. This is its most valuable feature."
"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."
"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."
"This has been a valuable solution for our business overall. It offers business continuity and replication features."
"I don't have to rebuild the cluster to add a node."
"The solution is easy to use, share, and manage."
"The solution is very easy to manage."
"Nutanix Volumes is a perfectly stable product."
"The reliability and availability are the most valuable features. Reliability is important because it can run my workloads. I need to be able to take advantage of the VMs that are executing on the storage. It has to be reliable. It's also important to have the storage available for scaling VMs on demand."
"Unified Storage's centralized management features enable us to accomplish whatever we want in terms of operations and migrations."
"Currently, the most valuable aspect of our Nutanix implementation is its file storage functionality."
"What I like most about Nutanix Files Storage is the way it makes copies of the data. The solution also has high availability, which is excellent. Another valuable feature of Nutanix Files Storage is self-service, so users won't have to depend on the IT team much."
"The most valuable feature is that it is highly available, solving the pain-point of delaying updates to Windows-based file servers during production hours. And then the second one would be ransomware protection and analytics. It gives you great visibility and protection on your file shares that are otherwise the most common sources of vulnerabilities."
"The product needs to improve CLI since commands are complex. The search option is also difficult since you must give the full path."
"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."
"Some improvements to the NFS support would be of interest to us."
"The solution isn't suitable for small environments or small customers."
"The legacy file system for Epsilon didn't scale into the cloud and didn't have a separate OS. It would be key if this was made possible."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The interface is not logical. It should be a little simpler."
"What's missing in Nutanix Files Storage is the support for multiple intranets or VLANs on the same file from different networks and network devices."
"Nutanix should improve the one-click upgrade. There are a lot of dependencies on third-party licenses and HP hardware we use internally. The one-click upgrade fails sometimes."
"With all of the Nutanix equipment, the licensing is expensive. We operate in the enterprise space, but we're a midsized company. At times, the price tag is a little bit shocking for a company with only 35 employees."
"Another aspect that needs improvement is continuous protection against security threats such as ransomware and potential data leakage."
"While they are good and they do work, some of the snapshotting and tiering features are not as simple to set up as they could be."
"Nutanix needs to improve their cybersecurity options at the storage level."
"It is challenging to configure access control settings."
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is ranked 2nd in File and Object Storage with 37 reviews while Nutanix Unified Storage is ranked 4th in File and Object Storage with 39 reviews. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is rated 9.0, while Nutanix Unified Storage is rated 9.0. 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 Nutanix Unified Storage writes "Provides good performance, longer uptime, and an easy way to manage our data". Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is most compared with Dell ECS, NetApp FAS Series, Pure Storage FlashBlade, Qumulo and VAST Data, whereas Nutanix Unified Storage is most compared with Red Hat Ceph Storage, MinIO, Dell ECS, Qumulo and VAST Data. See our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Nutanix Unified Storage report.
See our list of best File and Object Storage vendors.
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.