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Dell ObjectScale vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 30, 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
6.6
Pure Storage FlashBlade reduces total cost of ownership by enhancing efficiency, enabling fast restorations, and supporting diverse use cases.
Sentiment score
6.0
Dell ObjectScale offers seamless integration, cost-effectiveness, and reliability, delivering quick returns and efficiencies in time and cost.
Sentiment score
7.0
Dell PowerScale offers efficient scaling, central management, and cost-effective performance, enhancing workload handling and energy savings for businesses.
It does not require much management once you set up correctly, so it saves time, allowing an admin to focus on other work.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
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
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
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.
Senior System Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Pure Storage FlashBlade's support is generally praised for responsiveness, despite occasional delays and communication issues, maintaining a favorable reputation.
Sentiment score
7.0
Dell ObjectScale customer service is well-regarded but varies in efficiency due to time zones and integration issues.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dell PowerScale support receives mixed reviews, with notable praise for technical expertise but issues with initial interactions and language barriers.
I would rate them an eight out of ten.
IT Field Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
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.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Their technical support has been perfect lately, so I would give it a 10.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
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.
Pre-Sale Engineer at Arab Operators
Dell provides support within four hours, and they always fulfill their promises.
Senior System Engineer at Atlas Security
They have managed previous issues well.
IT Manager at Regional Health Services
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.6
Pure Storage FlashBlade excels in scalability, with seamless expansion, downtime-free growth, and praised support across various sectors.
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
7.0
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) offers scalable, efficient storage with easy expansion and integration, ideal for enterprise data needs and future growth.
Pure Storage FlashBlade is scalable.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
There are between 5 and 10,000 people using it in our organization.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
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
Dell PowerScale is highly scalable, as evidenced by the reduced physical hardware and the efficient use of rack space.
Senior Engineer at Continental Tire
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Pure Storage FlashBlade offers exceptional reliability and impressive stability, featuring 99.999% uptime, seamless upgrades, and high 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 impresses with high uptime, reliability, and adaptability, making it ideal for stable business operations and data integrity.
In case there is any issue with any blade, the data is moved to another.
IT Field Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
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.
Pre-Sale Engineer at Arab Operators
I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as perfect.
Storage & Data Protection Specialist at General Dynamics Land Systems
I find the product to be resilient and stable. There's no downtime and no crashes.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users recommend better pricing, cloud integration, support, documentation, and analytics for Pure Storage FlashBlade, improving efficiency and compatibility.
Dell ObjectScale struggles with integration, scalability, and performance, needing better support, documentation, security, and usability enhancements.
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) needs cost reduction, simpler configuration, better scalability, improved interface, and enhanced cloud integration.
Technical support definitely needs significant improvement.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Its configuration should be easier.
IT Field Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
One way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray and FlashBlade.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
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
Hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within the promised timeline.
Senior Engineer at Continental Tire
I would want to see more AI features with Dell PowerScale (Isilon).
Storage & Data Protection Specialist at General Dynamics Land Systems
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.
Senior System Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Pure Storage FlashBlade is costly but valued for performance, reliability, and reduced administrative overhead, justifying its premium price.
Dell ObjectScale offers flexible pricing with cost efficiency over time, but some users find it expensive compared to competitors.
Dell PowerScale's cost is justified by its features, scalability, and flexible licensing, catering to diverse performance 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.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making it good for us.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
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
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.
Storage Architect at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
The pricing is excellent.
Director, Information & Communication Technology & Digital Transformation at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
 

Valuable Features

Pure Storage FlashBlade excels with ease of use, fast performance, scalability, seamless integration, and efficient storage features.
Dell ObjectScale excels in S3 protocol, integration with Dell EMC, offering scalability, stability, reliability, and enterprise-friendly features.
Dell PowerScale provides scalable, efficient management, robust security, and seamless integration, enhancing data storage and protection across platforms.
We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.
IT Field Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The best features of Pure Storage FlashBlade include better throughput and better performance.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Pure Storage FlashBlade's scalability is one of the most valuable features, and importantly, it always works, allowing for seamless upgrades.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
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

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Ranking in File and Object Storage
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (12th), 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
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
NAS (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.3%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell ObjectScale is 5.9%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 7.1%, down from 8.4% 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)7.1%
Dell ObjectScale5.9%
Pure Storage FlashBlade5.3%
Other81.7%
File and Object Storage
 

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades
In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.
MA
Manager, Technical Services at AXS
Offers seamless protocol integration for diverse solutions with flexible API communication
We recommend Dell ECS to customers looking for GeoDrive, archiving, long-term retention solutions, or S3 protocol. It is proposed to sectors like government, education, and banking. Overall, I would rate Dell ECS eight out of ten, as it has shown a lot of enhancement compared to previous solutions like Centera and Atmos.
BE
Systems Engineer at Unisity LLC
Flexibility and reliability have supported seamless data growth
I cannot think of anything to improve about Dell PowerScale (Isilon). The hardest challenge we have is due to how we've bought things over time. The way that we moved to the PowerEdge platform for the newer systems creates a scale problem as I still buy the older style systems, which are more dense storage. They're different chassis, so the problem we run into in the data center is the depth of the actual equipment. The newer equipment, if we buy an FX910 or a 900, it's a lot shorter in scale than if I buy an 83,000, which is much bigger. This makes it more complicated for deployment.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
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 Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise39
 

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?
Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...
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 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)?
As for my experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing, we have had Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for a while no...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) can be improved by enhancing the ability for more native data mover technologies that offer ...
 

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: December 2025.
879,889 professionals have used our research since 2012.