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Dell ObjectScale vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 26, 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
8.5
Pure Storage FlashBlade boosts ROI by reducing costs, enhancing efficiencies, increasing VM density, and saving 20%-85% in time.
Sentiment score
6.0
Dell ObjectScale offers seamless integration, cost-effectiveness, and reliability, delivering quick returns and efficiencies in time and cost.
Sentiment score
7.1
Dell PowerScale enhances management efficiency and scalability, improving storage performance, reducing costs, and delivering strong ROI and peace of mind.
It does not require much management once you set up correctly, so it saves time, allowing an admin to focus on other work.
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.
Despite being more expensive than Huawei, it is stable and most enterprises accept the price due to its stability.
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.
The second cluster of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) gives us flexibility for small things like code upgrades, all the way to scenarios where we have lost this data center or data, allowing us to check if data is still intact on the other side.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Pure Storage FlashBlade support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge but criticized for slower responses and occasional language barriers.
Sentiment score
7.0
Dell ObjectScale customer service is well-regarded but varies in efficiency due to time zones and integration issues.
Sentiment score
8.2
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) support is praised for expertise but criticized for first-line issues and occasional communication barriers.
I would rate them an eight out of ten.
The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years.
There is a lack of SUSE Linux experts which affects the level of support.
The response time and quality of the technical support are satisfactory.
Customer support is generally good but sometimes struggles with complex issues.
Support online is definitely a ten out of ten.
Dell provides support within four hours, and they always fulfill their promises.
They have managed previous issues well.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.8
Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for scalability, ease of expansion, and support, despite some areas needing improvement.
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
7.4
Dell PowerScale offers scalable, flexible storage for growing enterprises, supporting seamless capacity expansion and stable performance with automatic tiering.
Pure Storage FlashBlade is scalable.
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 between eight or nine, as it provides a good ability to scale and expand storage.
We started on PowerScale with around about 300 terabytes and are now two and a half petabytes, still on the same file system.
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.
Dell PowerScale is highly scalable, as evidenced by the reduced physical hardware and the efficient use of rack space.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.8
Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for its impressive stability and reliability, with minimal disruptions and consistent uptime even during upgrades.
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
8.1
Dell PowerScale is reliable and easy to manage, with high availability despite occasional support and load balancing issues.
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.
We use it in very critical areas inside Saudi Arabia with critical customers.
I'd rate stability maybe 9.5 out of ten.
Since we have good protection levels, the data is secured and replicated across the disks.
I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as perfect.
I find the product to be resilient and stable. There's no downtime and no crashes.
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek better cloud integration, enhanced deduplication, improved support, protocol enhancements, simpler configuration, and a more intuitive interface.
Dell ObjectScale struggles with integration, scalability, and performance, needing better support, documentation, security, and usability enhancements.
Dell PowerScale is costly and lacks cloud integration, with usability, support, and management improvements needed for better user experience.
Technical support definitely needs significant improvement.
Its configuration should be easier.
Live logs should be viewable through the GUI like with Logstash or Elasticsearch.
The deployment is not easy, and some expertise is required to configure the virtual data center and replication groups.
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.
I would want to see more AI features with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).
If I could improve one thing on Dell PowerScale (Isilon), it would be better object storage as it recently breached into S3, and that capability could be broadened.
 

Setup Cost

Pure Storage FlashBlade offers high performance and features, justifying its cost with no extra software fees and fixed support costs.
Dell ObjectScale offers flexible pricing with cost efficiency over time, but some users find it expensive compared to competitors.
Dell PowerScale, though costly initially, provides valuable features, ease of management, and competitive pricing for business needs.
The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the past, but one benefit is that they have built-in ransomware protection.
It relies on nearline SAS drives, which are cheaper than flash or SSDs.
The pricing model is on the higher side compared to other vendors.
The price is reasonable given the abundance of features, including managing, control, host resources, dockers, and containers.
It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have.
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Dell PowerScale (Isilon) shows it's a premium platform, so it's a big amount of money.
The pricing is excellent.
 

Valuable Features

Pure Storage FlashBlade offers fast, scalable, and user-friendly storage with efficient integration, analytics, and versatility for diverse needs.
Dell ObjectScale excels in S3 protocol, integration with Dell EMC, offering scalability, stability, reliability, and enterprise-friendly features.
Dell PowerScale excels in scalability, performance, and security, offering efficient storage consolidation and resource optimization for organizations.
We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.
The best features of Pure Storage FlashBlade include better throughput and better performance.
The stability of this solution is a major advantage, as we've not experienced any outages in the last four years.
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.
The impact of Dell ECS on my organization has been positive, improving user experience, security, and reliability.
Dell PowerScale offers high scalability and stability as well, making it a valuable solution for enterprises.
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.
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.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure Storage FlashBlade
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Ranking in File and Object Storage
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (15th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th)
Dell ObjectScale
Ranking in File and Object Storage
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)
Ranking in File and Object Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
NAS (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.7%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell ObjectScale is 7.3%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 8.6%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File and Object Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)8.6%
Dell ObjectScale7.3%
Pure Storage FlashBlade5.7%
Other78.4%
File and Object Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Parul-Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
High performance and throughput enhance IT backup management
The multi-dimensional scale-out design feature of Pure Storage FlashBlade is not in use in our environment. Regarding data reduction technologies, we don't get much deduplication because the data is already deduplicated from our FlashArray before we get to backup, so there is no benefit of deduplication. Regarding the integration with cloud-native ecosystem tools, we are not on cloud; we are strictly an on-premises solution. Pure Storage FlashBlade is not used by any end-user; it's used only for IT backup, with only about four people in our group managing it. I cannot recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other users depending upon their financial situation because it's an expensive solution, and the cost is very high, including licensing and renewal every year. I rate Pure Storage FlashBlade an eight out of ten.
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.…
Scott Taylor - PeerSpot reviewer
Manages large data sets efficiently with hybrid cloud integration
My organization is quite large, with about 30,000 employees. The growth has been substantial in areas such as radiology and genomics. One of the best features we've utilized recently is offload to cloud pools due to capacity constraints on-premise. We didn't want to expand Dell PowerScale (Isilon) straight away, so we utilized cloud pools to offload some data to Azure. 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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise36
 

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 of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...
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?
There are some limitations with integration with certain cloud providers, particularly with Google Cloud Platform in ...
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)?
The cost is competitive with other vendors such as HP. I always compare prices between two vendors, and they are good...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Sometimes, it takes too long to set up everything. That's something I would want them to improve. The main challenge ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS)
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 ObjectScale vs. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,832 professionals have used our research since 2012.