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Dell PowerScale vs IBM Cloud Object Storage comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
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)
IBM Cloud Object Storage
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (15th)
 

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.
RahulSharma8 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Platform Engineer at Expedia Group
Unified file sharing has simplified multi-tenant access and has delivered seamless data replication
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) includes its replication features; when we decommissioned our old Isilon cluster, we migrated all of the data to a new cluster, and it was pretty seamless. All you have to do is create the certificates and make those certificates available to the target cluster, then initiate a few jobs. The inter-cluster replication feature, called SyncIQ, allows you to set up all of the jobs and move your data entirely, either timely or all at once. Another suitable feature is the ability to back up your directories; you can take snapshots for all of your directories, and in fact, I believe you can take around a thousand snapshots for a single directory. The inter-replication, geo-replication is one feature. Dell provides a variety class of hardware suitable for your workloads, meaning if your data is just lab and not critical, you don't have to spend much on the hardware; conversely, if your data is mission-critical, you can buy a high-performance node from Dell. Additionally, you can span Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cluster to a large number of nodes, and code upgrades are pretty smooth because all protocols will be upgraded under a single piece of code. Since it provides a single file system that spans across the nodes, you don't have to worry about that directory structure being separately created on individual nodes, making it a fitting solution for a data lake solution because you can access the same data from multiple protocols.
reviewer2384904 - PeerSpot reviewer
Account Technology Specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Enables seamless data replication and supports comprehensive data analytics workflows
The capability to replicate data in different locations is valuable since it enables customers to have a cluster over various sites. Also, important is the capability to provide RESTful APIs for custom connectors. In terms of security, I advise customers to rotate access keys to enhance protection. Additionally, scalability is effortless as you can add nodes or expand the license.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Most of the problems that we had in the past with the performance in IOPS have disappeared. It has been a great improvement for our customers' services."
"This storage has to be the most well thought out and effective storage that I have had the privilege to work with."
"Has also helped simplify storage for us. The other person we put in there, took about a week to implement. And we had both arrays set up within around four hours with a thirty minute drive time between the two locations."
"All use cases for Everpure FlashArray are anything that requires a SAN should use it because it is the easiest thing on the market."
"It simplifies storage."
"We experience fast demos and zero downtime; we do not experience any downtime with Pure Storage, thanks to resilience with Safe Mode, integration with backup software, and everything related to cyber resilience."
"The pricing of Pure Storage is all-inclusive; it is very fair, very easy, and the solution is a lot easier to install than the Dell EMC product."
"It has improved the way our organization functions by improving the resilience of our infrastructure by quite a bit."
"It's easy to manage. The web UI is very intuitive, and there's CLI also that you can use to manage it."
"I rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a ten out of ten, and we continue to keep buying it."
"The reliability and stability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is good, with no downtime."
"Dell PowerScale overall is easy to use."
"The single pane of glass for both IT and for the end-user is a valuable feature. On the IT side, I can actually control where things are stored, whether something is stored on solid-state drives or spinning drives... The single pane of glass makes it very easy to use and very easy to understand. We started at 100 terabytes and we moved to 250 and it still feels like the exact same system and we're able to move data as needed."
"It assists with eliminating storage silos because it provides SMB and NFS protocols. PowerScale has also helped free up our employee's time to focus on other business priorities."
"Certainly, we have seen return on investment and peace of mind, especially with our two clusters that are linked together, where one is a disaster recovery solution for the other."
"The guaranteed performance, combined with the scalability through its scale-out capability, makes it an excellent choice."
"IBM has the most number of additional services, this is the main advantage."
"The capability to replicate data in different locations is valuable since it enables customers to have a cluster over various sites."
"Overall, I rate IBM Cloud Object Storage a ten out of ten."
"The integration itself is pretty easy. The access appliances create the connection between both environments."
"One of Cloud Object Storage's best features is infinite capacity."
"One of Cloud Object Storage's best features is infinite capacity. This is one of the main advantages if you don't want to use your own storage. You also have the ability to write only, write once, and read many. It's like tape storage but software-based. This feature is essential for financial institutions that require that kind of protection if you write backup or data there."
"The standout feature of IBM Cloud Object Storage is its top-notch security, making it ideal for sensitive applications like mobile financial transactions."
"The most valuable feature I like is when you connect it via CLI plug-in...It is a stable solution."
 

Cons

"I would like to have an easy way to determine the cost per VM so that I can present a solution to our customers."
"I think replication is one area that still needs improvement."
"It was not proactive communication."
"Organizations with security concerns that prevent cloud utilization would benefit from a wider range of instruments available for offline operation. Currently, the limited selection of on-premise instruments hinders Pure Storage FlashArray's ability to compete effectively with other vendors."
"We have not seen a reduction in our TCO nor have we seen ROI."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"During heavy load situations with 100K IOPS on one specific port, it requires more granularity level for distribution."
"The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality."
"We have issues in Brazil with the procurement of solutions because we have to check the entire market and justify the pricing to our audit institutions, making it difficult to keep with the same vendor."
"The solution is expensive. It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have."
"I would want to see more AI features with Dell PowerScale (Isilon)."
"The solution isn't suitable for small environments or small customers."
"I am uncertain if Dell PowerScale meets the growing needs of my organization."
"I would appreciate seeing improvements in Dell PowerScale, particularly because it has been weak with small file writes."
"Its configuration needs to be more straightforward."
"We're struggling with the UID mapping and how to configure mapping-related things."
"If I had to choose one area, it would be making the consoles more intuitive would be helpful. Sometimes, they can be a little complicated if you're not familiar with them."
"IBM Cloud storage is not cheap, but it could be."
"The performance could improve in IBM Cloud Object Storage. The throughput or objects per second can have degradation."
"One improvement could be incorporating a feature similar to Dropbox's version history. This would allow users to track modifications made to files over time, which is particularly important for maintaining a record of changes. While the free version might not include this feature, it could be included in the paid version to provide added value to clients. Additionally, having a version history feature that allows users to access modifications made to files over the past three months could be beneficial."
"One area where IBM Cloud Object Storage could potentially improve is in modernizing its underlying codebase."
"The performance could be better. It isn't bad, but everything is network-based, so you have a performance penalty on the network. You can never achieve the same performance as hardware. That's the disadvantage of cloud storage solutions in general. Cloud performance is one of the main issues clients have."
"IBM has limited cloud storage."
"Sometimes technical support lacks a comprehensive understanding of the entire solution, only focusing on the product they support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of ten. It is expensive but not too much."
"For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
"The price-to-performance is good. I looked at Pure about three to four years back, but the price-to-performance wasn't right for us. Now, it's right."
"In the beginning, we saw that the price is not very good. When we made some compilations about the deduplication and the compression and what the equipment does, including the differentiation of upper management of the storage, the price was not so bad. However, in the beginning, the price was very difficult to justify."
"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."
"We consume it as a service, and that's actually something we really like, or at least I really like from the technical perspective. That's because it means there is no hassle when we need to upgrade arrays to add capacity. We just interact directly with technical counterparts, and we say, "Hey, we're filling up," and they say, "All right, here's another data pack." They ship it in, and we install it. So, the as-a-service model has worked very well. Given the outstanding data reduction rates, it has improved our profitability because we're selling allocated volumes as part of the cloud service or recovering those costs from our tenants. It is very efficient, but that has offset the premium price. It started out that way, but over time, as we've added capacity, the price per gig has gone down a lot because we have a lot of it."
"When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
"Price was also a significant factor in our decision to go with PowerScale. The team at EMC, now Dell EMC, came through with a highly competitive offer that tipped the scales towards their solution. There was only one other solution around the same price point, but it could not match PowerScale on features. That other solution is no longer on the market."
"It is a really expensive solution."
"Dealing with the product costs and licensing areas is getting easier since Dell is simplifying the licensing process and licensing packages offered to users."
"Dell PowerScale is expensive on the start-up side but we can recoup those costs quickly by not having to reapply the savings to other equipment."
"The general cost for a system like this is expensive. The total cost depends on your use case. You need to pay for every additional feature that you use."
"It's a high-cost offering amounting to three or four million Swedish kronor, or about $400,000 or euros, for approximately 480 terabytes of storage."
"The pricing is excellent."
"The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."
"Like most cloud providers, IBM likely charges based on storage capacity, typically per gigabyte or terabyte. Their pricing is competitive when compared to AWS or Microsoft."
"Pricing is not cheap."
"IBM Cloud is cheaper than AWS. If you want to scale your cloud infrastructure, it can be bought at almost the same price."
"You have the option of a monthly or yearly license. Most customers choose the monthly option. I understand what you would like to say. IBM also lets you choose among four types of Cloud Object Storage. The difference is usage, performance, etc. Of course, high-performance storage is more expensive, while low-performance storage is for cold data, and it's really cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
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)?
For improvements, we can focus on enhancing performance, upgrading the nodes, and accessing data through Isilon for m...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Dell PowerScale is our main NAS environment storage where we create CIFS and NFS file shares for users.When users req...
What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Object Storage?
The interface can feel clunky and outdated compared to AWS S3 or Azure Blob Storage. While scalable, latency can be...
What is your primary use case for IBM Cloud Object Storage?
I do not use IBM Cloud Object Storage directly, but I was part of a consultancy company that managed it. During my pr...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
Cleversafe
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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,
Bitly, Dreamstime, Prime Research
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale vs. IBM Cloud Object Storage and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
907,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.