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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
7.3
Number of Reviews
224
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
Dell PowerScale
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
NAS (1st), File and Object Storage (2nd)
IBM Cloud Object Storage
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (12th)
 

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.
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.
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

"Lone segmentation is simpler and more agile. It's improved the velocity in overall provisioning from project to operation."
"The initial setup was really straight forward."
"One could tell, the minute we switched to this program, everything ran a lot faster."
"The reliability is very good."
"The speed is one of the most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray."
"The stability is perfect, the reliability is 100%, and the latency is always lower than 1 millisecond."
"Now with Pure Storage, our developers work a lot faster and more efficiently which has definitely improved our productivity."
"For an organization, it can take storage from 40 terabytes down to five terabytes."
"I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale as top-notch, as the only issues we have ever had are just failed drives, which is to be expected."
"For maximizing storage utilization, PowerScale is great. When you write the data to it, it spreads it out to all the nodes, so you get all the performance from the entire pool."
"This solution offers flexibility in supporting various data workloads and is very easy to work with, making it our go-to solution for all data storage."
"On a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, I would rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a ten."
"I don't have to rebuild the cluster to add a node."
"The major advantages include data protection, ransomware protection, and cloud capabilities, and the primary advantage is the ability to use the entire cluster in one unified file system, which is a feature I have not observed in other products."
"The fact that the business saw a noticeable improvement in performance the day we switched over was a game-changer, not to mention the ability to seamlessly swap out the nodes to move from the older Isilon platform to Dell PowerScale, with no data migration, making everything seamless, done behind the scenes, and users only noticing the jump in performance."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is brilliant for scalability and really, really good in that regard."
"The capability to replicate data in different locations is valuable since it enables customers to have a cluster over various sites."
"The standout feature of IBM Cloud Object Storage is its top-notch security, making it ideal for sensitive applications like mobile financial transactions."
"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."
"IBM Cloud Object Storage integrates well."
"IBM Cloud Object Storage integrates well."
"The integration itself is pretty easy. The access appliances create the connection between both environments."
"IBM has the most number of additional services, this is the main advantage."
"IBM has the most number of additional services, this is the main advantage."
 

Cons

"It would be nice to have a better view of the allocated capacity on their Platform as a Service solution because we have to do some manual calculations to understand how much we are going to pay every month to use the storage that is allocated."
"Some services could be inserted directly into the SAN, so Pure Storage could complete with the HyperFlex."
"I would like the ability to swap out the network adapters into it. So, without taking out the whole controller, I would like to be able to swap adapters."
"If they could make it cheaper, that would be something."
"I would rate this solution an eight. To make it a ten it would have to be a little cheaper."
"The initial setup of the product is complex."
"I would recommend improvements in the graphical user interface, specifically a detailed hardware view that would allow us to see the individual drives and individual controllers more easily, as currently, they are presenting only a higher-level view."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"Pricing is an issue. It's quite expensive for the amount of storage we have."
"Some improvements to the NFS support would be of interest to us."
"The product needs to improve CLI since commands are complex. The search option is also difficult since you must give the full path."
"The downside of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that if we are replacing a drive, sometimes in the worst-case scenarios, some of the other drives will also go to the SmartFail state."
"There aren't many templates still coming out for it. They need to provide templates so we can copy and paste what we've done in the past to future, new things."
"We had some issues with level 1 support. We had to fight with them on repeated issues. There is room for improvement in level 1 support."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve the load distribution capability. For example, in some cases, the system load is not distributed automatically on all the nodes but is concentrated only on one. You have a peak request on only one node and the others don't do anything."
"The solution can be a bit complex for those not well versed in the technology."
"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."
"Room for improvement depends on customer needs. Some customers prefer pure Object Storage using the S3 protocol, while others use a gateway in front of the storage grid to enable CIFS or NFS."
"The performance could improve in IBM Cloud Object Storage. The throughput or objects per second can have degradation."
"IBM Cloud storage is not cheap, but it could be."
"The performance could be better. You can never achieve the same performance as hardware, and cloud performance is one of the main issues clients have."
"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."
"Sometimes technical support lacks a comprehensive understanding of the entire solution, only focusing on the product they support."
"One area where IBM Cloud Object Storage could potentially improve is in modernizing its underlying codebase."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our costs are around $100,000."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is a really cool concept. As long as we maintain our subscription, we will get new controllers every three years and really never have a forklift upgrade like we currently are doing. Just that future-proofing is an ease off of my mind to know that I won't have to do what I'm dong right now again."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is great, because then I get new controllers every three years."
"Our Evergreen Storage subscription is supposed to be good when we go to upgrade."
"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"The price of the Pure Storage Flash Array is too high and there needs to be more contact clarity. We went with the Evergreen plan and I don't have clarity on what am I supposed to pay each year or every three years. There was not much contract clarity."
"The pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray is reasonable."
"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it. A little bit better pricing would be great."
"We paid an additional fee to have Dell's ProDeploy Plus team implement it."
"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."
"I always want things to be less expensive. However, I would say the pricing is fair. Their costs are in alignment with their competitors. It is a good value for the money."
"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."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is an expensive solution."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The only drawback for us is that it's a large upfront investment. This was a huge decision for a startup company to make. It took a bit for us to get over the line on it, but we have not regretted it."
"The pricing is excellent."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business69
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise156
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise51
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 needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I do not have any improvements at the moment; I like how it is. I have nothing to add about needed improvements.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
I think Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve some functions such as Apache S3 or containerized storage support, as ...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Our primary use cases include virtualization storage and external storage via NFS.
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: April 2026.
895,990 professionals have used our research since 2012.