Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs MinIO comparison

Dell Technologies and MinIO are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.6, while MinIO is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.0. Dell Technologies holds a 8.8% mindshare in FaOS, compared to MinIO’s 20.4% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of MinIO users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Dell PowerScale and MinIO compete in the large-scale storage solutions category. Dell PowerScale seems to have the upper hand in scalability and enterprise-level features, while MinIO excels in simplicity and cost-effectiveness for specific object storage needs.

Features: Dell PowerScale is renowned for scalability at a petabyte level, S3 protocol support, and advanced cybersecurity measures. It also offers efficient storage utilization and flexible tiering options. MinIO is appreciated for its high throughput, AWS S3 compatibility, and open-source availability. It provides strong support for object storage and is known for its ease of use.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerScale could enhance its pricing structure, smaller environment deployment, and cloud integration. Users seek improvements in load distribution, the InsightIQ interface, and small file handling. MinIO could improve its monitoring capabilities, enterprise environment deployment processes, and performance for extensive data operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerScale often deploys on-premises, offering dedicated infrastructure and structured customer support, though with mixed feedback on response times. MinIO provides flexible deployment across on-premises and cloud environments, emphasizing community support, which may lack in dedicated enterprise support.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerScale's extensive features and scalability justify its high cost, offering a strong return on investment through management ease. Its pricing includes potential extra charges for extended features. MinIO stands out with a free open-source version, allowing significant cost savings and aligning with cost-effective strategies, especially in smaller implementations.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. MinIO Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. MinIO

April 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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.8%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 8.8%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MinIO is 20.4%, down from 24.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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Eric Burgueño

High-Performance Computing Services Manager at The New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Limited

Simplified data management, tremendously reducing our users’ cognitive overhead

The only thing that I think PowerScale could do better is improving the HTTP data access protocol. At the present, you cannot protect access to data via HTTP or HTTPS the same way that you can secure data access through other protocols like NFS or SMB. You can either access a file because it can be access by anyone in the organization, or you cannot at all. There is no in-between. HTTP is not considered a first-class data access protocol, so the Unified Permission Model that would allow a user to authenticate before being able to access a private file, does not apply. However, with the recent introduction of S3 starting from OneFS 9, I believe the necessary plumbing is already there for HTTPS to also be elevated to a first-class protocol in the future because both protocols sit behind a web server under the hood. It does not sound like it would be too complicated to implement, but it would be a valuable feature and it is currently missing.

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Abdelrahim-Ahmad

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.

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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 main feature I have found to be product replication."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."

"It has absolutely simplified our storage because the dashboards on the consoles show a clear understanding of where you are, and it is also very easy to provision. This been a big help for our teams."

"It's very easy-to-use."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"Features like ransomware protection, file lock retention, and third-party integrations (e.g., Superna for ransomware protection) are significant benefits."

"Dell PowerScale is a scalable solution. It allows non-disruptive upgrades and maintenance of the system."

"The most valuable feature is its single space of storage."

"Its most valuable feature is the DR capabilities replication."

"I don't have to rebuild the cluster to add a node."

"This has been a valuable solution for our business overall. It offers business continuity and replication features."

"The flexibility and the user-friendly interface are the most valuable features."

"Customer service is absolutely satisfying, rating at least nine out of ten, as they have managed previous issues well."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pros

"The most valuable feature is the ease of management and administration."

"The most valuable feature of MinIO is its ease of use, replication, and active directory. All the capabilities are in this solution."

"Very good at object retrieval."

"The most valuable features are that MinIO is open, it works on-premise, and is compatible with the Amazon industry which is great for finding compatible libraries in many languages which is very good for developers."

"MinIO is easy to install and use, especially for standalone installations."

"Nice web interface, easy to use, with a low memory footprint."

"I use the solution's basic object storage functionalities, like AWS S3 compatible APIs and creating buckets."

"The product does save time for our company."

More MinIO pros

Cons

"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

"I have not seen ROI."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The solution can be integrated with an automation system. Dell uses another framework developed in-house. They can integrate it with machines."

"Dell PowerScale's deployment is not easy."

"Dell PowerScale can improve on its multi-tenant part because as a service provider, we have bigger clusters in data centers where we can serve multiple customers and grant them dedicated management points and automation features that can be managed in a multi-tenant environment."

"We used to have a chat feature available on the support site. It's not available to us anymore."

"The legacy file system for Epsilon didn't scale into the cloud and didn't have a separate OS. It would be key if this was made possible."

"I'd like to see more Iceland products in the cloud so that we can port our data into different environments if needed. I would also like to see a virtual appliance or software-defined Iceland product."

"The tool's support team and the way the cases are handled by the product's technical support team are both areas of concern where improvements are required."

"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."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cons

"The developer support could be better."

"The solution should have high availability. Also, support should be quick."

"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 product's initial setup phase is complex."

"The solution lacks documentation."

"The tool’s pricing needs to improve. We also encountered challenges while deploying the tool in Kubernetes. The documentation also was not too great. We have currently deployed the solution in a stand-alone fashion."

"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 product's security is open by default, without any SSL."

More MinIO cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"The price could be cheaper."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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 (Isilon) is an expensive solution."

"This solution is priced slightly higher than others on the market but does offer good quality. With this solution's data reduction and compression, we were able to purchase less. Costs have dropped because of the data rate of compression and deduplication."

"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."

"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."

"The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."

"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."

"It is an expensive product with a high storage capacity suitable for large data requirements."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pricing and cost advice

"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."

"My company hasn't tried the version of the solution where we need to pay to use it."

"MinIO is a free open-source solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

32%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

20%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

The solution provides massive performance, scalability, efficiency, and ease of management.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

Every time we purchase a PowerScale solution, we buy four nodes for one data center and four for another, with five y...

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What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

Dell's customer service needs improvement. Specifically, hardware failures under warranty should be addressed within ...

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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 ...

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What do you like most about MinIO?

I like that if you have a problem, you can buy the home server. It is stable and robust.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MinIO?

We use the solution's open-source version.

See all answers

Comparisons

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

Dell ECS vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

Qumulo vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 4% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

NetApp FAS Series vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 15% of the time

Dell ECS vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 13% of the time

Qumulo vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 9% of the time

HPE StoreEasy vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 7% of the time

Huawei OceanStor 9000 vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 3% of the time

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs MinIO

Compared 58% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs MinIO

Compared 7% of the time

Dell ECS vs MinIO

Compared 6% of the time

Cloudian HyperStore vs MinIO

Compared 4% of the time

VAST Data vs MinIO

Compared 3% of the time

More MinIO Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

April 2025

Download Dell PowerScale (Isilon) product report

Buyer's Guide

MinIO

April 2025

Download MinIO product report

Also Known As

No data available

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon

No data available

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon) storage solutions are designed to help manage data for enterprises of all types. Dell PowerScale systems are simple to install, manage, and scale to virtually any size and include a choice of all-flash, hybrid, or archive nodes. Dell PowerScale solutions stay flexible and reliable no matter how much storage capacity is added, how much performance is required, or how business needs change in the future.

With Dell PowerScale, your data lake always stays simple to manage, simple to grow, simple to protect, and simple enough to handle the most demanding current and future workloads.

Ideal for companies of any size, from small enterprises to multi-national ones, Dell PowerScale storage provides secure collaboration, modular scalability, flexible consumption models, and easy cloud integrations, all with management tools spanning multiple platforms.

Key Benefits of Dell EMC PowerScale Storage

Centralized management: Manage your storage infrastructure from a single unified platform.
Data protection: Dell PowerScale offers security, data protection and replication tools. Back up and protect your data from cyber-attacks with an integrated ransomware defense system.
Artificial intelligence: PowerScale is the foundation for building an integrated and optimized IT infrastructure for AI projects, from concept to production.
Cloud support: Store and manage your data on the cloud and move data between your data center and the cloud. Dell PowerScale runs data-intensive cloud workloads with no outbound traffic costs.
Long-term storage: Dell PowerScale offers highly efficient and resilient active archive storage or long-term data retention for large-scale data archives. With the proven scalability architecture of PowerScale, you can meet your growing archiving demands. Dell PowerScale has a wide variety of enterprise-grade data protection and security options to keep your archived data safe.

Reviews from Real Users

Dell EMC PowerScale storage stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its scalability capabilities and its user-friendly centralized management system.

Rachel B., a chief operations officer & acting CFO at Like a Photon, writes, "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."

Keith B., the director of IT at NatureFresh Farms, writes, "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."

Dell Technologies

MinIO is an open-source object storage system. It is designed to efficiently store and retrieve unstructured data, such as photos, videos, and backups. MinIO can be used as a standalone object storage server or as part of a larger system, such as a data lake or a private cloud, and can be deployed on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment, making it a flexible storage solution for a variety of use cases.

MinIO’s features include erasure coding, bitrot protection, and checksum validation, which help ensure data integrity and reliability. The solution’s multi-tenancy support makes it ideal for multi-user environments. MinIO’s edge computing tools enable data storage and processing closer to users' locations, reducing latency and improving performance. MinIO can easily scale to accommodate storage and power demands, making it ideal for use in large-scale, data-intensive environments.

MinIO Benefits and Features:

MinIO offers several key benefits and features for organizations looking for a scalable and high-performing object storage solution:

Scalability: Horizontally scale to increase storage space and processing power as your needs grow.

High performance: MinIO’s edge computing and low latency provide fast data access.

Seamless integrations: MinIO is compatible with the Amazon S3 API, which enables integration with third-party systems and tools.

Data integrity: Security features, such as erasure coding, bitrot protection, and checksum validation, ensure data integrity and reliability.

Reduced costs: MinIO is an open-source solution, making it a cost-effective option for organizations looking for a scalable object storage solution.

Support: MinIO’s large open-source community of developers and users provides a wide range of resources and an active support network

Multi-tenancy: Multi-tenancy support makes MinIO suitable for use in multi-user environments.

Easy deployment: MinIO is easy to deploy and can run on a variety of platforms, including on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment.

Access control: Role-based access control, enabling you to control access to data based on users permissions.

Event notifications: Automate workflows based on changes to objects in your storage.

Cross-region replication: Duplicate data between different regions for disaster recovery and data backup.

Intuitive interface: MinIO’s user-friendly dashboard can be accessed via any browser and can be used to perform multiple object operations including object creation and management.

Reviews from Real Users

MinIO stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its flexibility, integration options, and performance.

Süleyman Fazıl Y., a senior software engineer at a tech services company, writes, “The most valuable features are that MinIO is open, it works on-premise, and is compatible with the Amazon industry which is great for finding compatible libraries in many languages which is very good for developers.”

Rebecca S., CTO at NIASE, says, “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. Our customers are using this solution to retrieve tens of thousands of objects (documents and files) per hour, and MinIO seems to be able to keep up with it.”

MinIO

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

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

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. MinIO

April 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. MinIO

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