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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) 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
215
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
81
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

"My advice to people who want to implement Pure Storage FlashArray is that it's a good NVMe solution, has a lower response time, and also good for entry-level storage purposes, e.g. small offices, small to medium-sized business, etc."
"It's a great return on investment, based on the mission."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are management and administration user-friendliness, provisioning, and performance."
"It has improved my organization in the way that we have high reliability and faster access to our data."
"Firstly, dedupe is the most valuable feature, hands down, and simplifying storage is also a big win overall."
"It's just very easy for general block storage."
"As soon as we introduced our first Pure Storage FlashArray, the first benefit was at least twice the performance increase. Our production databases simply ran twice as fast with no other change."
"We have perfect run through times and latency."
"Dell PowerScale is a scalable solution. It allows non-disruptive upgrades and maintenance of the system."
"PowerScale allows us to manage storage without managing RAID groups or migrating volumes between controllers. It has really simplified things. We're not having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. That takes care of itself. We just worry about the data. It's really easy for deploying and managing storage at the petabyte scale."
"Customer service has been really good."
"Prior to Isilon, we had to access data from multiple different platforms, and this solution offers unified storage and the ability to consolidate and migrate data, which was a big step forward and allowed us to cut costs by eliminating multiple platforms and putting it all on one array."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the unlimited scalability. The tool has high availability and high storage capacity."
"I can certainly recommend PowerScale for mission-critical workloads, it is a powerful but simple platform with little administration overhead."
"The solution is extremely easy to manage. This is its most valuable feature."
"The tool's most valuable features are scalability and stability."
"It performs efficiently compared to other solutions."
"I was using Amazon's S3 and nothing really seemed to work as well as this, until MinIO, the product is comparable."
"Very good at object retrieval."
"The features that I have found most valuable with MinIO is its coding bit rot protection and how it distributes the workload over all the servers."
"For starters, MinIO has a good user interface. You can access it through the browser and perform operations like creating the object."
"In the current market, when you have so many options for object storage, MinIO is completely open source and an all inclusive package offering you both stability and scalability and its most attractive feature is the S3 plugin which is very similar to AWS."
"We use MinIO for enterprise file storage."
"Object retrieval with MinIO is much improved over the prior solution, updates are simple to apply, and we anticipate that future capacity requirements will be easier to meet."
 

Cons

"We would like to see better troubleshooting aspects. It helps us if we can find out where the problem is."
"It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups."
"It is way in excess of what we need. If anything, we could see a bit more speed. I'm just comparing it with what some of my colleagues who are implementing their own systems do."
"One thing I'd like to see in a future release is integration between their main storage array and what they call their FlashBlade product; to be able to snapshot directly from the primary array into multiple different backup copies on FlashBlade."
"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current. I think it's bundled with the deduplication and other compression factors. We need more user interfaces for forecasting in this software and more interfaces need to be integrated with this array management tool."
"I would like to see support for NVMe, end-to-end."
"We would like to see better troubleshooting aspects. It helps us if we can find out where the problem is. Right now, it's difficult. Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint the issue. If they had more visibility and more troubleshooting feature built into the tool that would really help."
"I would like to see data tiering to AWS."
"The initial setup for this solution is complex."
"There is room for improvement in its handling of object storage."
"Sometimes, it takes too long to set up everything. That's something I would want them to improve."
"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."
"In the past year, it hasn't been as great. They seem to just follow KBS."
"Isilon has limitations on the number of files that can be generated."
"Improvements could be made to reduce the costs and the high level of knowledge needed to maintain and use them."
"The pricing is expensive, but I think it's a fair value because it does manage itself."
"There should be the ability to expand the size after it has already been deployed. Currently, you cannot do that. It doesn't support an increase in size. Each time we spawn a new MinIO, we need to track the particular MinIO instance or tenant that has the file. Therefore, we had to create a multi-tenant solution that tracks the MinIO that has our artifacts. It isn't in one single instance. It should have better multi-tenancy support."
"Limited storage provided in the free version."
"MinIO has behaved strangely in the past. For instance, the application dropped connection to MinIO. It's not too significant, but it loses connection. We're trying to understand exactly what is happening when this happens."
"The Distributed User Interface (DUI) needs some work. It's hard to view a large set of data on the DUI. It's an issue with the DUI's performance."
"The scalability is one of the limitations we have found. We are looking for another solution but they must provide the same characteristics, such as an affordable price and continuity."
"The documentation of the solution should improve."
"With problems, visibility is hard because everything is in containers. Difficult to get to the logs in order to figure out what the problem was."
"The MinIO dashboard is minimal as there are only a couple of features inside the dashboard for a basic user."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is light years beyond anything else with the same price point."
"You can pay extra for Evergreen support, which gives you free upgrades when new features are introduced."
"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
"The price of the solution can be a bit expensive. There is an additional fee for support."
"I'm good with the licensing. Of course, pricing can always be less... It's actually not a bad pricing model, considering I don't have to rip-and-replace."
"While more expensive than NetApp, Pure Storage FlashArray offers superior performance that often justifies the higher cost and adds value overall."
"The license for Pure Storage FlashArray includes the support and there are no additional payments that are needed. This is not an inexpensive solution, you need to understand the value of your data before you use a backup solution."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"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."
"Dell PowerScale is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo."
"The price of the solution can fluctuate. The price can be competitive or other times not. The price of the solution could be better."
"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."
"The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."
"Pricing for this solution is reasonable."
"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."
"We paid an additional fee to have Dell's ProDeploy Plus team implement it."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"This solution is open source so it is free."
"This is an open-source solution but I am using the licensed version."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"MinIO is a free open-source solution."
"My company hasn't tried the version of the solution where we need to pay to use it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing 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 Business64
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise150
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise46
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?
I don't really know much about the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray in terms of the absolute cost. Regarding Everg...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Despite liking Pure Storage FlashArray, there is room for improvement in automation. Pure Storage FlashArray needs to...
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 I mentioned before, we did not purchase Dell PowerScale (Isilon) directly. Since our organization is a government ...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
I have experienced a RAM failure in some of the nodes of Dell PowerScale (Isilon), and that required hardware replace...
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 (Isilon) vs. MinIO and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
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