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Dell ECS vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.4
Pure Storage FlashBlade delivers cost savings, efficiency gains, and increased VM density, with returns seen within four years.
Sentiment score
8.7
Dell ECS delivers cost-saving benefits and quick ROI, with users valuing its stability and reliability over financial gains.
Sentiment score
7.0
Dell PowerScale enhances data management with cost-efficiency, improved performance, storage capacity, resource optimization, and workload automation benefits.
Despite being more expensive than Huawei, it is stable and most enterprises accept the price due to its stability.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.2
Pure Storage FlashBlade's customer service is praised for expertise but sometimes experiences slower responses due to growth challenges.
Sentiment score
7.6
Dell ECS customer service is efficient and highly rated despite some challenges, especially for premium service customers.
Sentiment score
8.2
Dell PowerScale support is generally responsive, with some escalation needed; users appreciate assistance with complex technical issues.
I would rate them an eight out of ten.
There is a lack of SUSE Linux experts which affects the level of support.
Dell provides high-quality technical support
Customer support is generally good but sometimes struggles with complex issues.
They have managed previous issues well.
Dell provides support within four hours, and they always fulfill their promises.
The service, particularly about hardware issues and support ticket handling, is an area that needs significant improvement.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.9
Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for its scalability and ease of expansion, satisfying various industries like banking and media.
Sentiment score
8.4
Dell ECS is highly rated for its scalability, ease of expansion, and adaptability across various business sizes and environments.
Sentiment score
8.0
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) offers strong scalability, easy integration, and minimal overhead, supporting large data and numerous connections efficiently.
Through the fabrics, it provides the clustering, allowing us to add nodes easily.
It allows scale-out processes by adding extra nodes, providing flexibility for customers to increase capacity on demand.
I would rate scalability ten out of ten since you buy what you want.
Dell PowerScale is highly scalable, as evidenced by the reduced physical hardware and the efficient use of rack space.
Due to both cost and the knowledge required to maintain and use them, there are considerations about scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.8
Pure Storage FlashBlade is highly rated for stability, reliability, and performance, with minimal downtime and swift recovery.
Sentiment score
8.2
Dell ECS is highly stable and reliable, maintaining performance even with heavy data, earning ratings around nine out of ten.
Sentiment score
8.4
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) offers exceptional stability, minimal downtime, easy management, and resilience, maintaining outstanding performance even in challenging environments.
In case there is any issue with any blade, the data is moved to another.
We have not experienced any outages in the last four years.
Dell ECS provides high stability compared to other object solutions.
I'd rate stability maybe 9.5 out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Users want better cloud integration, support, pricing, efficiency, and improvements in analytics, configuration, and backup for FlashBlade.
Dell ECS requires improved scalability, performance, cost-effectiveness, support, security, and integration, alongside a user-friendly interface and enhanced documentation.
Dell PowerScale is expensive, lacks cloud version, complicates operations, and needs improvements in encryption, interface, and object storage performance.
Its configuration should be easier.
Live logs should be viewable through the GUI like with Logstash or Elasticsearch.
Additionally, sometimes there is an issue with memory where it hangs, and they can improve garbage collection, which takes up a lot of space during cleanup.
Incorporating extra integrations beyond S3, like Hadoop file systems, and being well aligned with trends like AI solutions would be beneficial.
Hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline.
 

Setup Cost

Pure Storage FlashBlade is costlier but valued for performance, ease, and reliability, justifying its comprehensive licensing with included software.
Dell ECS pricing is seen as mixed, with some valuing its cost-effectiveness, while others desire more flexible pricing options.
Dell PowerScale is costly initially but offers value through comprehensive features, ease of management, and flexibility long-term.
It relies on nearline SAS drives, which are cheaper than flash or SSDs.
As a service provider, we receive good margins, indicating a favorable price point.
The pricing model is on the higher side compared to other vendors.
The pricing of Dell solutions is higher than that of Huawei.
 

Valuable Features

Pure Storage FlashBlade offers high performance, scalability, and ease of use with excellent data protection and seamless integration for large storage needs.
Dell ECS excels in integration, scalability, performance, and reliability, offering competitive pricing and robust features for unstructured data storage.
Dell PowerScale offers scalable management, reliable performance, data security, and efficient storage with minimal administrative effort and cost management.
We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.
The stability of this solution is a major advantage, as we've not experienced any outages in the last four years.
If we encounter any issues or need to upgrade anything, we can simply open a ticket, and the EMC team is there to assist us.
The most valuable features of Dell ECS are its capability to integrate multiple protocols seamlessly with other Dell solutions like PowerScale and data domain.
Dell PowerScale offers high scalability and stability as well, making it a valuable solution for enterprises.
Eyeglass is used to monitor for malware, which is very useful for us.
Dell PowerScale helps in saving costs related to power and rack space, reducing physical hardware from over one hundred to twenty-nine chassis.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Ranking in File and Object Storage
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (17th)
Dell ECS
Ranking in File and Object Storage
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)
Ranking in File and Object Storage
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
NAS (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.8%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell ECS is 7.9%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 8.8%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File and Object Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us
The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.
SamuelThomas - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing efficiently with user-friendly interfaces for monitoring and managing resources
We normally recommend Dell ECS to enterprise customers and government customers Dell ECS is very easy to handle, primarily because the web UI dashboard and everything is very easy to manage for every customer. They can monitor the DPS, access failures, bandwidth, failed requests, and latency.…
Eric Burgueño - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplified data management, tremendously reducing our users’ cognitive overhead
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. You can either access a file because it can be access by anyone in the organization, or you cannot at all. There is no in-between. HTTP is not considered a first-class data access protocol, so the Unified Permission Model that would allow a user to authenticate before being able to access a private file, does not apply. However, with the recent introduction of S3 starting from OneFS 9, I believe the necessary plumbing is already there for HTTPS to also be elevated to a first-class protocol in the future because both protocols sit behind a web server under the hood. It does not sound like it would be too complicated to implement, but it would be a valuable feature and it is currently missing.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
37%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
23%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC ECS?
The price is reasonable given the abundance of features, including managing, control, host resources, dockers, and co...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC ECS?
There is a need to improve the infrastructure, particularly for SUSE Linux experts. The deployment is not easy, and s...
What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
The solution provides massive performance, scalability, efficiency, and ease of management.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Every time we purchase a PowerScale solution, we buy four nodes for one data center and four for another, with five y...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Dell's customer service needs improvement. Specifically, hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, EMC Elastic Cloud Storage
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Atos
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,
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell ECS vs. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.