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Dell PowerScale vs MinIO 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)
MinIO
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (4th)
 

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.
Abdelrahim-Ahmad - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Scientist at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Provides good object storage functionalities
MinIO should provide an easier subscription model for companies that don't have a huge amount of data. Our company has a maximum of 100 terabytes of data. The solution should provide more bugging tools in the open-source version to encourage people to buy the support services. It's not an easy decision. If I go to the management and tell them that I need to buy a service, there should be an easier subscription model for companies that don't have huge amounts of data. For me, getting a subscription for 15,000 a year for a system already in production might be a bit hard. I think MinIO supports a minimum of one petabyte or 100 terabytes of data. Since we don't have such huge amounts of data, buying a subscription for the solution is a bit difficult. Hence, we're only using the open-source version for now. If MinIO becomes really crucial for our business, we could ask the management to get a subscription.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Their support is top-notch, and their NPS scores reflect this."
"Having fast storage allows actual servers to perform in high capacity so we don't have slowdowns on our applications."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are simplicity, ease of use, and dashboard management."
"This solution has helped my organization by cutting down on provisioning time; I used to have to provision a VM and it would take ten minutes, now, it takes thirty seconds."
"The most valuable features in Pure Storage FlashArray are deduplication and active cluster."
"The solution offers amazing performance."
"We were previously on legacy storage systems, and after moving to Pure Storage, our stability and performance both drastically improved."
"We put a fair amount of stress on it because we run sequel workloads and we run web applications where the same web files are hit over and over, and we have had almost zero stability issues with that SAN, which has been really great for us."
"Dell has the AI to protect the EMA."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) integration with other solutions because of the standard file system protocol."
"My advice to other companies considering Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is that it takes a little time to understand the product, but once you have it set up and running, it will run stable for all its lifetime."
"The most valuable features of the solution are flexibility and ease of implementation."
"The most valuable feature for me is SyncIQ."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) definitely deserves ten out of ten for scalability."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a platform that is very easy for teams to work with."
"The most valuable feature is its single space of storage."
"Very good at object retrieval."
"We use MinIO for enterprise file storage."
"MinIO is easy to understand, simple to implement and provides a good feature set."
"The container installation features are good. The S3 feature provisions the storage buckets making it easy. It allows me to spin up the public buckets with open-source technology."
"I recommend the solution, it's quite simple to implement and is very powerful because if you need to run the storage in your computer it's as simple as having a container of MinIO."
"The solution has good compatibility with different kinds of storage."
"Reliable erasure coding."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of management and administration."
 

Cons

"The price of this solution is high and should be lowered."
"The pricing and licensing of Everpure FlashArray is a problem because Everpure is considered more expensive than competitors."
"There are many features which need to be added, particularly on the replication side."
"Currently, the solution fails to support file screening."
"If they could make it cheaper, that would be something."
"They have a product, FlashBlade, which is their object storage integration, and that's something that we haven't integrated with yet."
"It took us a year to get it to stabilize and to get the best out of Pure."
"There was some complexity in the initial setup."
"There are some missing features in the product, especially when our company needs to do some tape backup, and we see that the tool doesn't have integration capabilities."
"We have had issues with internal load balancing between some of the shelves. That is an ongoing issue that support is trying to address."
"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."
"Dell PowerScale's deployment is not easy."
"The replication could lend itself to some improvement around encryption in transit and managing the racing of large volumes of data. The process of file over and file back can be tedious. Hopefully, you never end up going into a DR. If you do go into a DR, you know the data is there on the remote site. However, in terms of the process of setting up the replicates and filing them back, that is just very tedious and could definitely do with some improvement."
"Improvements could be made to reduce the costs and the high level of knowledge needed to maintain and use them. We had old hard drives with moving parts in Dell PowerScale, and due to this, we must switch to a more efficient environment with all-flash."
"I believe the support engineers need to improve their skills."
"PowerScale is not suitable for virtual environments."
"I feel there is a lack of good addons to integrate without having to use third-party applications."
"The developer support could be better."
"The product's security is open by default, without any SSL."
"The monitoring capability is really bad and needs to be improved."
"We had minor bugs occasionally."
"While using some of the advance features of MinIO we encountered the minor bugs but they generally get fixed in version upgrades."
"An area that could be improved is the limited storage provided in the free version of this tool."
"MinIO has behaved strangely in the past. For instance, the application dropped connection to MinIO."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray is reasonable."
"The licensing is $100,000."
"It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
"It is a cheaper solution."
"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. So, every year, we renew. We could do a three-year contract, but right now, we only do a one-year."
"I have had a couple of customers who have complained about the cost. It can be a little more expensive than some of the other platforms. After it has been installed, I have never had a customer say, "I wish we wouldn't have spent all that extra money." They have always been happy with the product after it has been installed. They might be on the fence about it because of the price, but everybody who I have ever seen install it, they are always happy with it."
"All storage is expensive so any price improvement would help."
"We have an Evergreen Storage subscription, which I think is a great feature."
"The pricing is expensive, but I think it's a fair value because it does manage itself. It definitely is much simpler than any of the other scale-out storage platforms that we've looked at in the past."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is an expensive solution."
"The platform is not cheap. However, on the software side, you can choose what you want license. So, you can start your licensing with the features that you need, then after buying the platform add some other features."
"It is a really expensive solution."
"The price of the solution is high."
"Our company finds the pricing high, but it decreases over time."
"We paid an additional fee to have Dell's ProDeploy Plus team implement it."
"We use the TNA approach which is a great opportunity for us to better manage the licenses based on how much consumption is available for the different customers so we can use that approach and scalability."
"MinIO is a free open-source solution."
"This solution is open source so it is free."
"My company hasn't tried the version of the solution where we need to pay to use it."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"This is an open-source solution but I am using the licensed version."
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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
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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 Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise9
 

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?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
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.
How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?
Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...
What needs improvement with MinIO?
* Rolling upgrades, vs. upgrading and restarting all daemons at the same time, which is risky and impactful. * Remov...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
No data available
 

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,
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale vs. MinIO and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
895,891 professionals have used our research since 2012.