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Dell ObjectScale vs Dell PowerScale comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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
4.3
Everpure FlashArray reduces costs and staffing needs, enhancing performance and value over time despite mixed cost-effectiveness opinions.
Sentiment score
6.0
Dell ObjectScale offers seamless integration, cost-effectiveness, and reliability, delivering quick returns and efficiencies in time and cost.
Sentiment score
6.3
Dell PowerScale offers cost savings, enhanced productivity, and simplified management with scalability, reliability, and efficient data handling capabilities.
Operational tasks such as provisioning storage and monitoring performance happen faster, and less downtime risk and hardware consolidation mean we support more workloads with fewer resources and less data center overhead.
System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
We have never had an outage in my four and a half years, but in our company's ten or eleven years, there has never been any planned upgrades that required downtime.
System Engineer at Data Sciences Corporation
In the long term, spanning three to five years, the total cost of ownership becomes cheaper, considering power consumption, data center footprint, and NVMe technology usage.
Works at a consultancy with self employed
I have seen both time savings and cost savings, so there is definitely a return on investment with Dell ECS, along with peace of mind.
IT Infrastructure Manager at Companhia de Saneamento Ambiental do Distrito Federal
Something such as Dell PowerScale puts us ahead of all of our competitors because of the speed at which we can iterate while we are on set.
Chief Executive Officer at Orbital Virtual Studios
Despite being more expensive than Huawei, it is stable and most enterprises accept the price due to its stability.
Senior System Engineer at Atlas Security
In terms of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) specifically, we have seen a return on investment due to faster performance than our last few storage arrays, and the general usability is a lot better.
Storage & Data Protection Specialist at General Dynamics Land Systems
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.4
Everpure FlashArray's support is praised for responsiveness, expertise, proactive resolution, and high satisfaction among users rating it 8-10.
Sentiment score
7.0
Dell ObjectScale customer service is well-regarded but varies in efficiency due to time zones and integration issues.
Sentiment score
7.4
Dell PowerScale support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though experiences vary with occasional delays and escalations needed.
Pure's support organization is responsive with minimal bureaucracy, making support a key factor in customer retention.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would rate the technical support an 11 out of 10.
Cyber Security Consultant at Jonkoping Energi AB
Everpure FlashArray is probably not cheap storage, but it provides great performance, scalability, and everything a customer needs.
Sr. Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
There is a lack of SUSE Linux experts which affects the level of support.
Consultant at Key Information Technology L.L.C.
The response time and quality of the technical support are satisfactory.
Deputy director at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Customer support is generally good but sometimes struggles with complex issues.
Manager, Technical Services at AXS
Support online is definitely a ten out of ten.
Associate Business Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
When we face issues, we raise a ticket through the valid portal, and they respond immediately and assign a local engineer to coordinate the support process.
Senior System Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Dell's technical support a ten.
System Support at City of North Las Vegas
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
Everpure FlashArray offers scalable, modular expansion, allowing seamless upgrades and substantial growth, supported by the Evergreen program.
Sentiment score
7.5
Dell ObjectScale is praised for its scalability, supporting many users and data without extra costs, fitting various enterprise sizes.
Sentiment score
6.9
Dell PowerScale excels in scalability, enabling seamless storage growth and adaptability with minimal management, ensuring efficient future data handling.
A big banking client had around 300 petabytes of data on Pure Storage.
Works at a consultancy with self employed
Our customers can scale up or scale out, raise the performance, and expand the storage spaces by investing every year.
Senior Ai Architect at Logicalis
We have successfully upgraded the controllers, scaled capacity, and scaled arrays without much impact on the system and with seamless planning.
Platform Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Through the fabrics, it provides the clustering, allowing us to add nodes easily.
Consultant at Key Information Technology L.L.C.
It allows scale-out processes by adding extra nodes, providing flexibility for customers to increase capacity on demand.
Manager, Technical Services at AXS
I would rate scalability between eight or nine, as it provides a good ability to scale and expand storage.
Deputy director at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
We started on PowerScale with around about 300 terabytes and are now two and a half petabytes, still on the same file system.
Storage Architect at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
That's really saved us in certain areas as we didn't have funding to expand Dell PowerScale (Isilon) until next year, which is why we utilized the cloud pools functionality to offload.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
As an unstructured data storage solution, writing into it and accessing it from the other nodes is highly scalable with no issues.
Senior Technical Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Users highly praise Everpure FlashArray for stability, 100% uptime, quick issue resolution, strong support, and efficient performance.
Sentiment score
8.0
Dell ObjectScale is praised for its stability and reliability, consistently performing well in large-scale deployments despite minor issues.
Sentiment score
8.0
Dell PowerScale offers reliable stability, effective hardware management, and seamless scalability, ensuring high uptime and data integrity.
For stability, I rate it a ten out of ten.
Senior Storage Administrator at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
We have continuous 99.9% uptime and do not experience any users reporting performance issues due to latency.
Senior Storage Engineer at Ensono
The vision Pure Storage FlashArray offers through the GUI is clearer; we can discern the status, what is cabled, and how direct flash is enabled.
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
We have not experienced any outages in the last four years.
Associate Vice President at Yotta Infrastructure Solutions LLP
We use it in very critical areas inside Saudi Arabia with critical customers.
Solution arhitect at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
I'd rate stability maybe 9.5 out of ten.
Senior Datacenter Consultant at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Since we have good protection levels, the data is secured and replicated across the disks.
Associate Business Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Even if a node goes down, other nodes can respond and provide data back to the user without issues.
Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group
I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as perfect.
Storage & Data Protection Specialist at General Dynamics Land Systems
 

Room For Improvement

Everpure FlashArray users desire improved settings control, NAS support, better UI, integration, performance, and documentation enhancements.
Dell ObjectScale struggles with integration, scalability, and performance, needing better support, documentation, security, and usability enhancements.
Dell PowerScale needs improvements in deployment, integration, pricing, UI, technical support, AI features, replication, and security.
Integrating object storage into the FlashArray would benefit entry-level and SMB customers by offering a more unified solution.
Lead Technical Architect at ePlus Technology, inc.
Storing cold data on expensive arrays doesn't make financial sense, and tiering to any of the big three cloud providers would be advantageous.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
As a technical professional, I lack visibility into the system logs.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Live logs should be viewable through the GUI like with Logstash or Elasticsearch.
Deputy director at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The deployment is not easy, and some expertise is required to configure the virtual data center and replication groups.
Consultant at Key Information Technology L.L.C.
Incorporating extra integrations beyond S3, like Hadoop file systems, and being well aligned with trends like AI solutions would be beneficial.
Manager, Technical Services at AXS
Firmware or software updates become effortless with Pure, but with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we must evaluate or conduct trial runs to ensure that these operations will not harm our customer's system; their software is not adequate.
Senior Ai Architect at Logicalis
It should be made more user-friendly in the sense that if I manage it, I should be able to deploy it without having to have a lot of interaction from support.
Manager, Information Technology at a transportation company with 11-50 employees
Hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline.
Senior Engineer at Continental Tire
 

Setup Cost

Buyers find Everpure FlashArray's cost justified by its features and inclusive pricing, competitive against leaders like Dell and IBM.
Dell ObjectScale offers flexible pricing with cost efficiency over time, but some users find it expensive compared to competitors.
Dell PowerScale is seen as premium, costly but justified by features, offering flexible licensing and competitive pricing strategies.
They're expensive.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
While they say it's free, we actually pay for support upfront.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Some smaller organizations may find it slightly expensive, but for enterprises, when considering performance, future hardware investments, and overall benefits, it is a very cost-effective solution for mid and enterprise organizations.
Senior Storage Engineer at Ensono
It relies on nearline SAS drives, which are cheaper than flash or SSDs.
Manager, Technical Services at AXS
The pricing model is on the higher side compared to other vendors.
Deputy director at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The price is reasonable given the abundance of features, including managing, control, host resources, dockers, and containers.
Consultant at Key Information Technology L.L.C.
It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Cheaper nodes will cost less, while higher performance nodes will be pricier.
Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group
Costs align well with what it delivers, making it a fair price for a powerful tool that meets all our needs.
Tv Systems Technical Supervisor at a media company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Everpure FlashArray excels with fast performance, reliability, scalability, ease of use, and efficient data management, earning user praise.
Dell ObjectScale excels in S3 protocol, integration with Dell EMC, offering scalability, stability, reliability, and enterprise-friendly features.
Dell PowerScale offers scalable, high-performance storage with easy management, supporting hybrid strategies and efficient data workload handling.
FlashArray's integration with the Pure One instrument provides a centralized platform for efficient management of all arrays.
Presales Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Another noteworthy aspect is their platform, Pure One, a cloud-based analytics platform that automatically creates a case and sends out a part if a disk or controller fails.
Lead Technical Architect at ePlus Technology, inc.
It handles internal data migration seamlessly in the background without going offline, achieving a hundred percent uptime.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The stability of this solution is a major advantage, as we've not experienced any outages in the last four years.
Associate Vice President at Yotta Infrastructure Solutions LLP
Dell ECS helps with managing storage requirements since it's S3 kind of object storage with all needed enterprise features such as immutability, snapshotting, and application management, which are nice sets of features usually required.
IT Architect at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The impact of Dell ECS on my organization has been positive, improving user experience, security, and reliability.
IT Infrastructure Manager at Companhia de Saneamento Ambiental do Distrito Federal
Dell PowerScale offers high scalability and stability as well, making it a valuable solution for enterprises.
Senior System Engineer at Atlas Security
In our AI initiatives, Dell PowerScale (Isilon) plays a significant role in data analysis, data fusion; principally, it is involved in data analysis, data extraction, and statistical analysis.
Senior Technologist at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Single files are limited to four terabytes in our configuration, however, the system can support up to 16 terabytes, so we can scale based on that too.
Systems Engineer at Unisity LLC
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
227
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
Dell ObjectScale
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (7th)
Dell PowerScale
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
NAS (1st), File and Object Storage (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
RM
Solution arhitect at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Extends data management capabilities while offering robust options for further enhancement
Dell ECS provides features such as active-active and geo-replication, which offers a good approach for disaster recovery. As a Dell platinum partner, we appreciate that most Dell portfolio products are integrated together. For example, Dell ECS can be integrated with other file share systems or PowerScale without requiring third-party tools. The integration between Dell products is particularly noteworthy because Dell provides the full cycle of storage solutions, from NAS, SAN, hybrid, to object storage. All these solutions are fully integrated together. The pricing is competitive when compared to other vendors. While comparing with HP's offerings, Dell ECS as object storage is one of the best. Pure Storage might offer better pricing, but you won't find the same level of integration across products if you source the full cycle from one vendor. The complete integration of Dell solutions is one of the main features I appreciate, and I often advise my customers to consider this ecosystem. This integration helps with having a single point of contact and support.
SK
Solutions Architect at a university with 10,001+ employees
Operates seamlessly and minimizes downtime while meeting enterprise file share demands
The features of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) that I appreciate the most include the scale of architecture and the way it is designed. These features benefit my company by providing less downtime and less overhead. While I have not calculated an exact number regarding the reduction in downtime, we have always been using the product, so we have no baseline to compare it to. However, it is a very good product. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) scales very well with the growing needs of my company.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which File and Object Storage solutions are best for your needs.
899,645 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business69
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise157
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise53
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC ECS?
The pricing is moderate and at par with the market. As a service provider, we receive good margins, indicating a favo...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC ECS?
I cannot think of anything as an area for improvement with Dell ECS. I do not see any pricing or usability concerns.
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC ECS?
Some valuable features with Dell ECS include its support for various use cases, but I would say the best features her...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Dell PowerScale has been expensive. Setup costs or provisio...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
I believe the support engineers need to improve their skills. In our case, the engineer provides adequate hardware su...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Dell PowerScale's primary use case for our organization is server virtualization.
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS)
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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 ObjectScale vs. Dell PowerScale and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
899,645 professionals have used our research since 2012.