No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs MinIO comparison

Sponsored
 

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
7.4
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
NAS (2nd), 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

"You get what you pay for; it is expensive, but it really works, so I would really recommend using Pure Storage."
"Running on Pure has given us the ability to scale out our SQL environments."
"From an intangible standpoint the lack of care and feeding is notable and freed up the Storage Team to do other things."
"I like the performance. Performance-wise, it accommodates the needs of highly-critical servers. It is reliable."
"The most important feature of any storage array is its reliability, measured by its uptime."
"It helps simplify storage. When you're running Pure all-flash, you don't have to do a lot of the old Oracle best practices. You don't have to worry about putting log files on a different disk channel than the data files, and those types of issues... That has made it vastly easier to do large volumes, rapid provisioning in databases, without taking a performance hit."
"I would highly recommend this solution; it has all the features we need and tests all the software solutions that are currently available and that will be available in the future."
"On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the most comfortable pricing, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"What I appreciate about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) are its best features: it supports both file and object storage, and it is very easy to manage."
"Our users are able to easily roll back snapshots without going through IT."
"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."
"Its scalability has been huge for us."
"We would highly recommend PowerScale; we've been very happy with our overall experience."
"I rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a ten out of ten, and we continue to keep buying it."
"Isilon is flexible in supporting various data workloads while keeping them protected. Dell continues to release updates and patches which enhance the use of this solution. This includes offering ransomware protection."
"The most valuable features of the solution are flexibility and ease of implementation."
"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."
"This is an all-in-one, user-friendly data storage."
"The initial setup was straightforward as MinIO provided good support documentation and took a couple of days to complete."
"My advice for anybody who is implementing MinIO is to visit the website and view the documentation."
"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."
"The solution has good compatibility with different kinds of storage."
"Saves a lot of time in generating and managing documents."
"The most valuable feature of MinIO is its ease of use, replication, and active directory. All the capabilities are in this solution."
 

Cons

"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services."
"Having something native in the Pure Storage ecosystem would make it integrated and in one single company, and we wouldn't have to work with multiple organizations."
"Going forward, don't complicate things for the customers."
"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."
"During heavy load situations with 100K IOPS on one specific port, it requires more granularity level for distribution."
"The integration capabilities could be improved."
"I'd like to see a move towards individual VMs for what the performance of each VM is in a VD infrastructure. I can see the overall volume, but I would love to see things in a more granular level on the VM side."
"PowerScale is not suitable for virtual environments."
"The legacy file system for Epsilon didn't scale into the cloud and didn't have a separate OS."
"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."
"Version upgrades and patches take a long time to complete."
"I would want to see more AI features with Dell PowerScale (Isilon)."
"The product’s expansion capacity, pricing clarity, and ease of use need improvement."
"We lost our technical sales reps about two years ago. We haven't gotten one assigned to us and we'd love to have one."
"The solution isn't suitable for small environments or small customers."
"The monitoring capability is really bad and needs to be improved."
"The developer support could be better."
"MinIO has behaved strangely in the past. For instance, the application dropped connection to MinIO."
"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."
"I feel there is a lack of good addons to integrate without having to use third-party applications."
"The monitoring capability is really bad and needs to be improved."
"Its reverse proxy features could be better."
"The main issue we face with MinIO is performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't know the exact cost but it's around $1,000."
"Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
"Pure Storage has not helped to reduce our HANA licensing costs."
"It is light years beyond anything else with the same price point."
"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."
"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."
"You get what you pay for. It is expensive, but it really works."
"In terms of other contemporary arrays, Pure is something you need to have a use case for, as it's not priced for you to buy one off-the-shelf. If you have a use case, heavy lift Oracle Databases, any type of noticeable virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), or need low latency and high throughput, you should consider all-flash at least and probably Pure Storage."
"The pricing for this solution is reasonable."
"The price of the solution can fluctuate. The price can be competitive or other times not. The price of the solution could be better."
"Dealing with the product costs and licensing areas is getting easier since Dell is simplifying the licensing process and licensing packages offered to users."
"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."
"The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."
"Pricing for this solution is reasonable."
"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 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."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"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."
"This solution is open source so it is free."
"MinIO is a free open-source solution."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which File and Object Storage solutions are best for your needs.
885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business63
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise143
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise44
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 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.
 

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: March 2026.
885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.