Dell ECS vs SwiftStack [EOL] comparison

Dell Technologies and NVIDIA are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NVIDIA users who would recommend it.

Dell ECS

Read 28 Dell ECS reviews

5,641 Views
4,963 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

SwiftStack [EOL]

Read 8 SwiftStack [EOL] reviews

100% willing to recommend

Dell ECS

SwiftStack [EOL]

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell ECS and SwiftStack [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about MinIO, Red Hat, Dell Technologies and others in File and Object Storage.

To learn more, read our detailed File and Object Storage Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

File and Object Storage

January 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Dell ECS

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

File and Object Storage (5th)

SwiftStack [EOL]

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Alihyder Bhuiyan

Head of IT Operations at NCC Bank PLC

Enables multiple protocol support, but its IOPS functionality needs improvement in terms of performance

Dell ECS enables multiple protocol support, and we recommend it to other users. Anyone can purchase it depending on specific storage quantity requirements. There are certain IOPS limitations in terms of performance. A loss in IOPS can lead to decreased performance across various aspects, including general system performance, production, and overall functionality. In comparison, IBM has no IOPS limitations and relies on web controllers. I rate the product a seven out of ten. IBM and NetApp also provide good storage and a lot of features.

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Scientif48eb

Scientific Information Officer at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

It has helped us with the ability to distribute data to different data centers

* You can bring your own drives, which don't have to be certified. This usually means that they cost significantly more to insert a certified drive with the manufacturer who is selling you your solution. * It is platform independent, so you bring your own hardware. It doesn't matter if you get a Dell EMC, HPE, IBM, etc. Its hardware agnostic capabilities are great. Dell EMC, HPE, and Lenovo are obviously big players, but sometimes they don't have the best prices. You are not tied to any one particular vendor, and it gives you great flexibility as far as pricing is concerned. You can go out, and say, "Give me the most capacity in the smallest number of use spaces." Sometimes that's not the big vendors, it's the small vendors who provide this. * The forward thinking in their cloud solution creates a global namespace across the major public clouds. It allows you to go from on-premise to the cloud seamlessly. They have made it easier to move data between the different cloud vendors and move those flows from on-premise to the cloud, then from the cloud back to on-premise. That freedom that they facilitate is hard to put a price on, because it gives you flexibility. * The metadata search capabilities are something that we look forward to being able to use, though we haven't fully had a chance to get into them. However, in the life sciences area, it could be tremendously beneficial. * Ease of operation: We got it up and running, and it's been solid. We can upgrade the capacity of our drives at any point in time. * The flexibility that the solution provides, both for hardware and on-premise, then to the cloud. That flexibility is great.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The performance is good."

"Dell's technical support team is good."

"We face very few hardware failures."

"This solution is very easy to use, and is very reliable."

"I have been satisfied with the stability."

"The most valuable feature for me is off-site storage."

"The setup was straightforward."

"This product is very competitive."

More Dell ECS pros

"The biggest feature, the biggest reason we went with SwiftStack, rather than deploying our own model with OpenStack Swift, was their deployment model. That was really the primary point in our purchase decision, back when we initially deployed. It took my installation time from days to hours, for deployment in our environment, versus deploying OpenStack Swift ourselves, manually."

"The general consensus on what we've done is that the restores coming back from it have been faster than they were from our prior vendor. Ingest speeds are fine. The restore speeds have improved."

"It has helped us with the ability to distribute data to different data centers. As part of our DR strategy, we have nodes automatically replicating data from one data center to the other. This makes it easier for us to not have to shift tapes around."

"The most valuable feature is its versatility. We use 1space and we can use it for almost anything: for our cloud service, for backups of VMs."

"In terms of the hardware flexibility, with SwiftStack not being a hardware company, I literally buy any hardware that's the least expensive, from any vendor... from a flexibility standpoint, I think it's fantastic. I can go to anybody, anywhere - any vendor - and get my hardware."

"The SwiftStack Controller, which is the web UI, provides out of band management. This has been one of the best features of it. It allows us to be able to do upgrades and look at performance metrics. It is a top feature and reason to choose the product."

"The scalability is phenomenal. It seems infinite, as long as you put enough storage in place, add enough nodes."

"SwiftStack is also quite flexible when it comes to hardware. It depends, of course, on the use case and the kind of hardware you want to buy. But you have quite a bit of choice in hardware. The SwiftStack software itself does not impose anything on you."

More SwiftStack [EOL] pros

Cons

"We have had issues when the ECS is expiring or the NetBackup is expiring images."

"In Taiwan, they don't have professional technical support."

"You should be able to calculate so that when it's full it's 100% full, not just 90%."

"The solution’s stability could be improved."

"The troubleshooting feature of this solution needs to be improved, to allow organizations to fix issues without having to contact the support team."

"The solution needs to provide better integration between this solution and all other kinds of systems."

"Dell EMC ECS should support segregation of duty, particularly for role-based access controls. Having a single pane of glass for smarter observation and better control mechanism would also make this solution better."

"They do not have complete documentation, which is very weak and could be improved."

More Dell ECS cons

"The file access needs improvement. The NFS was rolled out as a single service. It needs to be fully integrated into the proxy in a highly available fashion, like the regular proxy access is. I know it's on the roadmap."

"They should provide a more concise hardware calculator when you're putting your capacity together."

"The biggest room for improvement is the maturity of the proxyFS solution. That piece of code is relatively new, so most of our issues have been around the proxyFS."

"I would like to see better client integrations, support for a broader client library. SwiftStack could be a little bit more involved in the client side: Python, Java, C, etc."

"It's very well done for what it's supposed to do, and I don't have anything to add, but I would like them to keep it available to the public. SwiftStack is going out of the market. NVIDIA purchased SwiftStack a couple of years ago, and they won't be making it available to the public anymore. Our license is up to March 31st."

"At the moment we are using Erasure coding in an 8+4 setting. What would be nice is if, for some standard configurations like 15+4 and 8+4, there were more versatility so we could, for example, select 8+6, or the like."

"On the controller features, there needs to be a bit more clean up of the user interface. There are a lot of options available on the GUI which might be better organized or compartmentalized. There are times when you are going through the user interface and you have to look around for where the setting may be. A little bit more attention to the organization of the user interface would be helpful."

"[One] thing that I've been looking for, for years as an end user and customer, for any object store, including SwiftStack, is some type of automated method for data archiving. Something where you would have a metadata tagging policy engine and a data mover all built into a single system that would automatically be able to take your data off your primary and put it into an object store in a non-proprietary way - which is key."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an inexpensive product."

"The solution could be cheaper."

"Dell EMC ECS is too expensive."

"Dell ECS is a cost-effective solution."

"It's a lease-based model, so it's capacity-based. We already negotiated the price a lot, but we're still doing that with Dell because somehow the product was not installed successfully, so there was a lot of struggle in the distributor territory between Dell and the environment itself. I would give the solution a 6 out of 10 for the pricing. There's a little room for improvement."

"If I remember correctly, Dell ECS is an appliance, so if you buy Dell ECS, you also have to buy the hardware, while IBM is standalone software, so you can buy IBM as software only without needing to buy the hardware. On a scale of one to five, I'm rating the pricing for Dell ECS a four."

"We initially purchased all of the licenses at the same time."

"We are not paying for the license at this stage."

More Dell ECS pricing and cost advice

"The pricing and licensing are capacity-based, so it's hard to put my finger on them, because so many different vendors charge in different ways. We are still saving significantly over any of the other options that we evaluated because we can choose the best hardware at the best price, then put SwiftStack software on it. So, it's hard to complain, even though a part of me goes, "It would be nicer if it were less expensive.""

"We are able to dynamically grow storage at a lower cost. We can repurpose hardware and buy commodity hardware. There is a huge cost savings, on average $100,000 a year compared to traditional storage for what we have at our size."

"All in, with hardware and everything else - and I hate to say a dollar amount because it's been awhile since I computed it - I know I'm under the $300 to $500 per terabyte mark. I call that my "all in" price, which has replications built in and protections built in."

"One of their advantages of being a commercial open source platform is, for the scale that they offer, the pricing is pretty competitive."

"The annual support and maintenance costs compared to our old solution for backups had about a two-thirds savings, so about a 60% annual savings on our support and maintenance contract. That savings funded additional expansion for what it was costing us for the support and maintenance contracts on old solution."

"The pricing model is great and makes sense. We have talked about how to get into more of a frequent billing cycle than once a year. That would be an interesting concept to add into the product, having the ability to have monthly billing instead of having to do a one-year licensing renewal. However, the way the license works by charging for storage consumed is definitely what makes them the most competitive."

"We find the pricing rather steep. Of course, you get quality for your money, that's absolutely true... [But] when you look at the prices of the licensing and the prices of your hardware, it's quite substantial."

"It's pricey for us because we're a nonprofit. I'm not privy to any amount or cost, but I have been told that it is pricey. There are no costs in addition to the licensing fees, and it seems to come with the support."

More SwiftStack [EOL] pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

Manufacturing Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell EMC ECS?

The tool is easy to use.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC ECS?

The pricing model is on the higher side compared to other vendors, indicating a need for more flexibility.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell EMC ECS?

The graphical user interface should offer more options, and the documentation with respect to administration could be improved, as it is quite weak in this product. Additionally, the log viewer sho...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Dell ECS

Compared 21% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Dell ECS

Compared 14% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Dell ECS

Compared 13% of the time

MinIO vs Dell ECS

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Dell ECS

Compared 8% of the time

More Dell ECS Competitors

MinIO vs SwiftStack [EOL]

Compared 59% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs SwiftStack [EOL]

Compared 19% of the time

More SwiftStack [EOL] Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell ECS

January 2025

Download Dell ECS product report

Buyer's Guide

SwiftStack [EOL]

December 2024

Download SwiftStack [EOL] product report

Also Known As

EMC ECS, Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, EMC Elastic Cloud Storage

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Dell Technologies

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NVIDIA

Overview

Enterprise-ready. Future-proof. Data-first.

Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) is a file and object storage solution from Dell EMC. ECS has been created to support both traditional and next-generation ecosystems equally. ECS boasts unrivaled economics, manageability, resilience, and scalability to satisfy the demands of today's next-gen, robust business enterprise ecosystems. ECS can easily be deployed in a software-defined model or as a turn-key appliance. ECS is software-defined and multi-layered for unlimited scalability. Every layer is abstracted and scalable with no single point of failure.

Data service layer: Provides S3 access along with access to SWIFT, CAZ, NFS, HDFS.
Storage service layer: Stores, retrieves and protects data.
Fabric layer: Provides clustering, configuration management, health monitoring.

Everything is done within the software, which is containerized, using docker.

ECS is currently deployed using basic commodity hardware, which can easily be federated across as many as eight different locations and managed as a single resource. Additionally, ECS can also protect data at the site level, locally, disk, node, and rack levels. The federation enables a single global namespace with everywhere access to content. Applications can quickly rewrite in an active/active or everywhere active manner.

ECS is also able to be used as secondary storage or archival storage. This will free up valuable primary storage of data that is stale, redundant, or used infrequently, and the data will remain easily accessible. ECS uses policy-based tiering such as Data Domain, Cloud tiering, Isilon using cloud polls, and Geodrive, which give Windows systems direct access to ECS. Windows users can still use server message block (SMB) while leveraging the more expansive ECS storage.

ECS is enterprise-grade and offers valuable features such as retention, multi-tenancy, metering, monitoring, quotas, and more. ECS builds in robust security from the ground up and encrypts data. ECS is compliant with STIG guidelines and adheres to SEC rule 17A-4F.

ECS is an enterprise-ready solution that allows organizations to easily simplify object storage management and visualize information in intuitive new ways, and empowers your business to do even more with data. With ECS, enterprise organizations can deliver cloud-scale economics in-house that will lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and scale, creating greater levels of productivity and profitability.

Reviews from Real Users

One user, who is a deputy director at a tech service company, says ECS offers “good performance, reliability, and technical support”.

Dell EMC ECS is “a stable solution which is easy to scale, install and manage”, relates another user, who is a senior buyer at a tech service company.

"What I like best about this product is that it is a complete solution, both hardware, and software, by the same vendor," summarizes a system engineer at a tech services company.

SwiftStack focuses on handling large-scale unstructured data, providing software-defined storage, and boosting data scalability and durability.

SwiftStack is known for its proficiency in object storage, seamless workflow integration, and robust support for multi-cloud environments. Its architecture ensures high-performance data access, making it ideal for big data analytics, media asset management, and backup tasks. Users value its flexibility, ease of integration, and strong performance. The solution's high availability and efficient storage capabilities contribute to its strengths. However, areas needing improvement include customer support response time, initial setup guidance, and enhanced scalability during high-demand periods.

What are SwiftStack's Most Important Features?

Robust Scalability: Easily manages growing data volumes
Multi-cloud Support: Seamless integration across cloud environments
Seamless Data Management: Efficiently handles large datasets
High Availability: Ensures data is accessible whenever needed
Open-Source: Customizable and flexible with extensive API support

What Benefits Should Users Look For?

Enhanced Performance: Handles demanding workloads efficiently
Easy Integration: Adapts well with existing systems and workflows
High Durability: Ensures long-term data storage and protection
Cost-Effectiveness: Reduces overall storage costs
Scalability: Grows with organizational needs

In industries like media management and big data analytics, SwiftStack’s capabilities in high-performance data access and multi-cloud support facilitate efficient data handling. Backup and archival solutions also benefit from its robust storage and high availability features.

Sample Customers

Atos

Pac-12 Networks, Georgia Institute of Technology, Budd Van Lines

Buyer's Guide

File and Object Storage

January 2025

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