Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Stability
JL
James Lowey
CIO at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
We have run this product for so many years now. I can count on one hand the number of times where we have had any kind of issue that impacted availability. Usually, it turned out not to be the cluster but something else. It is extremely robust and continues to function.
We are not super aggressive in patching or anything. We believe that stability is number one. Availability is just of the most critical importance so that is really where we focus.
View full review »The solution is stable. If it's being used for the NAS protocol, it's very stable.
View full review »PowerScale has never failed us. Since it was first installed, it has been running with almost 100% uptime since we started using it. We have only had to shut down the entire cluster once because we were moving data-centres. In earlier versions, sometimes you had to reboot the entire cluster for significant OS upgrades. Today, rolling upgrades are the norm, where only a single node is ever down at a time.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Dell PowerScale (Isilon). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,740 professionals have used our research since 2012.
GU
Gene Uhl
Network Manager at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
We've had some bumps and bruises when buying new nodes and adding them to the cluster, but I don't think it was the technology that we really had the problems with. It was, unfortunately, Dell EMC support, where we got a couple of Dell EMC engineers who weren't as familiar with the system as we'd like. Once we kicked it up the chain, and we had an engineer that was more versed, they fixed the problem relatively fast.
When we had the first iteration of PowerScale seven years ago, we added nodes to that. This was how that process went: The node came in, it was already populated with drives, you slapped it in, put it into the rack, cabled it up to the networking, and put the networking on the same VLAN, the network backend configuration. Then, you went into the configuration manager, the OneFS file system and you told it about the node. You said, "I have a node that I want to join to the cluster." It brought the cluster in and, for lack of a better term, formatted it, added it to the array, and it was there. The amount of time it took to cable up and join that node was about two hours. Once it's there, the storage just expands.
In theory, and what we expected with the newer systems when adding nodes—and this is the way it does work, once they figured out the problem that they were having—was that it would be the same scenario. You rack the system. If you get the networking done right, which is really easy—you just drop it on—it handles a lot of the internal networking within the cluster itself, but you need to put it on the same external VLAN. If you do that right, the OneFS file system just finds it. You add it, and it just assimilates it into the cluster. Once the networking is done, it should take under an hour for it to get assimilated into the node and for the storage to become available.
Most of the problems we had were when we were adding on. We really haven't had any problems after it was up and running. When it's up and running, it's rock-solid. We never really get failures other than drives failing, because all SATA drives fail. But you just pull out a drive and you slap another one in.
I rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a seven out of ten for stability. The solution's stability should be improved, especially for more than ten nodes.
View full review »DD
David Devlin
Works at Government of Nova Scotia
This is a stable solution.
View full review »JG
Jace Gregg
Information Systems Manager at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We have had a few issues here lately, as far as power and kind of unusual things in the building. We've been really surprised that PowerScale was able to work around those issues without any sort of data loss, when we have had multiple nodes go offline. After we got everything back online and running again, PowerScale worked without any issues. As far as resiliency and availability go, I am happy with the solution.
View full review »I rate Dell PowerScale a nine out of ten for stability.
View full review »Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a reliable solution.
View full review »The product is stable.
View full review »RP
Ryan Parker-Hill
System Team Leader at Deakin University
The stability has been exceptional. I've been very happy with the stability of it. In the last six years, we have pretty much been disruption free. Prior to that, we have had one or two issues, which we worked with their support to fix.
We had a major refresh at the start of the year when we replaced one petabyte at one site and a half a petabyte at another site. This completely replaced everything and took us about a month. It was finished with one staff member overseeing the process, moving the data and roping in one or two other staff at different times to help with the physical backing.
They are quite heavy, so you always want to have two or three people involved. It has very minimal staff management required. For example, once the hardware is racked, it needs just one operator who joins the nodes, waiting for the data to move over. Internally, this is non-disruptive to the user.
Firing up the old nodes, that is more of a management thing.
This is a stable solution.
Dell PowerScale is stable.
View full review »JP
Jin Park
Manager at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
This is a stable solution.
View full review »KB
Keith Bradley
Director of IT at NatureFresh™ Farms
It's very stable. It's one of the first solutions that I feel comfortable working with during the business day, while people are using it, knowing that I can change things and it's not going to take the system down.
View full review »MD
Maurizio Davini
CTO at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The stability of PowerScale is incredible. It's not so different from Isilon. PowerScale is a sort of Isilon on steroids. It has the same scalability and reliability of the Isilon platform, but now you have a lot of performance, so it is a sort of super Isilon from a customer usage point of view.
In the year that we have had it in production, the solution has demonstrated stability and performance. It is something that we rely on for our simulation infrastructure.
There is a team of three who maintain all the infrastructure for PoweScale. It is easy to manage as soon as you have it setup.
View full review »JB
reviewer1061193
Lead Infrastructure Architect at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
We have had issues with internal load balancing between some of the shelves. That is an ongoing issue that support is trying to address. We're still waiting on a resolution for that, but that's really been our only issue with the stack that we have.
AS
reviewer1852575
Project Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees
It's been very stable.
View full review »This is a very stable solution and we have not experienced any outages.
Based on the last three years, I rate the solution's stability a nine out of ten. The stability has been very good.
BS
Bill Sharp
Senior Vice President, Product Development & Strategy at EarthCam, Inc.
We have five nines of uptime, 99.999. We have almost no downtime with the system.
View full review »RB
Rachel Bauer
Chief Operations Officer & Acting CFO at Like a Photon
We haven't had any issues at all. In fact, every day we say, "Oh my God, this is so amazing."
View full review »I give Dell PowerScale a ten out of ten for stability.
View full review »KW
reviewer1852437
Technical Project Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
The stability is awesome. There are a few drives every now and again, however, with the product itself, we haven't had any issues with it.
View full review »DS
reviewer1852440
Senior Systems Administrator at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
The solution is stable.
View full review »AH
Anthony Hallett
Geo-computing Manager at a energy/utilities company with 201-500 employees
The stability has been rock solid. We've had two incidents; one of those was its fault and that was in the very beginning. It was resolved within a reasonable timeframe. The other incident was external switching.
So, it's not been without some problems, but in the time we've had it, that's nothing significant.
View full review »NL
reviewer1852572
Sr. Storage Engineer at a legal firm with 201-500 employees
OneFS seems very stable. I just wish support would get a little better. I realize with COVID 19 it's been hard to keep people.
View full review »NN
reviewer1851960
Manager Infrastructure at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
This is a stable solution.
View full review »BL
reviewer1851951
Works
This is a stable solution.
The solution is stable.
View full review »The solution is stable.
View full review »OI
OlegIvanov
General Director at miromix unitedMiroMIX United
I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten.
View full review »MW
Mac Wang
Project Manager at Realnux
The solution is stable.
View full review »SL
reviewer1267071
Senior Consultant at a tech company with 11-50 employees
The solution, so far, has been very stable for us. We don't have issues with Isilon itself, however, every once in a while we do face a few stability issues.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Dell PowerScale (Isilon). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,740 professionals have used our research since 2012.