We performed a comparison between Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and Panasas ActiveStor based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Nasuni and others in NAS."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."
"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."
"Dell PowerScale is a scalable solution. It allows non-disruptive upgrades and maintenance of the system."
"Its scalability has been huge for us."
"The most valuable feature we started using, beyond the initial scope for the solution, is the multi-protocol system that allows you to access the same set of files using different network protocols like NFS or SMB. PowerScale’s Unified Permission Model ensures that data security and access permissions are honoured regardless of whether the client is a Windows desktop or a Linux server"
"The stability of the solution is good."
"The solution is stable."
"We've found the product to be quite flexible."
"I am impressed with the tool's performance and bandwidth."
"That said, for the other security features, it would be helpful if Tenable - and I know it's outside the scope of this question itself - had Isilon-specific plugins."
"It would be nice to see tools like Superna Eyeglass built into PowerScale."
"Isilon has limitations on the number of files that can be generated."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve the load distribution capability. For example, in some cases, the system load is not distributed automatically on all the nodes but is concentrated only on one. You have a peak request on only one node and the others don't do anything."
"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 If we want to apply a newer version of the OS, we have to roll back some of the patches so that we can upgrade.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 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."
"We have received complaints from customers that the tool is not easy to use. The tool's local technical service is slow. The solution is good for Linux customers and not for customers with other operating systems like Windows. The solution should provide storage without client software integration."
"The solution is quite expensive."
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is ranked 1st in NAS with 37 reviews while Panasas ActiveStor is ranked 14th in NAS with 2 reviews. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is rated 9.0, while Panasas ActiveStor 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 Panasas ActiveStor writes "A stable solution with good performance and bandwidth". Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is most compared with Dell ECS, NetApp FAS Series, Pure Storage FlashBlade, Qumulo and HPE StoreEasy, whereas Panasas ActiveStor is most compared with NetApp FAS Series.
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