Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs MinIO comparison

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Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

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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: December 2024).

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. MinIO

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Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Ranking in File and Object Storage

3rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

NAS (1st)

MinIO

Ranking in File and Object Storage

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is 8.5%, up from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MinIO is 22.7%, down from 24.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

Jack Vo

Senior IT Manager at ams OSRAM

Ensures that data is safely stored and easily accessible, providing peace of mind with robust security measures

The solution can be integrated with an automation system. Dell uses another framework developed in-house. They can integrate it with machines. Sometimes, Dell PowerScale can have issues with ID, window, or mapping errors. For example, a shareholder or user might not fully understand what they're doing, which can cause problems. Occasionally, we experience connection issues, requiring us to remap the folder. Dell PowerScale might need to remap or update the credentials in such cases. For instance, if you have many shared folders already mapped, it might take time to remap or redo the credentials.

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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 most valuable feature is its single space of storage."

"The fact that we were able to set it up, use it, and, for the most part, didn't have to worry about it after we had it set up has been valuable."

"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is all the capabilities together."

"Its scalability has been huge for us."

"The solution has simplified management by consolidating our workloads. Rather than managing all the different workloads on different storage arrays, Windows Servers, etc., we just have one place per data centre where we manage all their unstructured data, saving us time."

"Dell PowerScale has the SmartConnect and SmartConnect Pro features. That's why I like the product."

"Our main goal is to do disaster recovery with whatever solution we use and Isilon makes it pretty simple to replicate those workloads over to our secondary data center."

"Dell PowerScale includes a wealth of features that are important from a security and recovery perspective."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pros

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

"MinIO can work with attributes and folders, and it has the ability to use a stream approach for files. I have moments that should work exclusively. It also has some management features you can use, like exclusive locks that you can perform on one record or a collection."

"It performs efficiently compared to other solutions."

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

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

"Saves a lot of time in generating and managing documents."

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

"Good interface and a good approach to development and testing environments."

More MinIO pros

Cons

"The solution's rate structure or rate redundancy needs to be improved."

"Improvements could be made on the object storage side."

"The thing that they are working on now, and we are following closely is more native cloud integrations. The way that we envision workloads in the future is around moving compute to data instead of the other way around. So, we would like to have a single pane glass to manage storage across a variety of different platforms, including native cloud. That would be awesome."

"The analytics could be improved."

"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[...]the Unified Permission Model that would allow a user to authenticate before being able to access a private file, does not apply."

"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 needs to reduce its price."

"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."

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) cons

"The main issue we face with MinIO is performance."

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

"The monitoring capability is really bad and needs to be improved."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"The only downside I see is that you do not have a complete picture of an object."

More MinIO cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for this solution is reasonable."

"The solution is expensive; it is not the cheapest solution out there. If you look at it from a total cost of ownership perspective, then it is a very compelling solution. However, if you're looking at just dollar per terabyte and not looking at the big picture, then you could be distracted by the price. It is not an amazing price, but it's pretty good. It is also very good when you consider the total cost of ownership and ease of management."

"The price of the solution is high."

"Price was also a significant factor in our decision to go with PowerScale. The team at EMC, now Dell EMC, came through with a highly competitive offer that tipped the scales towards their solution. There was only one other solution around the same price point, but it could not match PowerScale on features. That other solution is no longer on the market."

"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."

"Dell PowerScale is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo."

"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."

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

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) pricing and cost advice

"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."

"This is an open-source solution but I am using the licensed version."

"We use the solution's open-source version."

"This solution is open source so it is free."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

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 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)?

The pricing of Dell solutions is higher than that of Huawei.

What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?

Always, there is room for improvement in terms of cybersecurity, as new challenges are continually emerging in the market. However, in our current usage, we find it satisfactory.

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 solution allows for multiple copies of replicated and coded pools to be kept, ea...

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.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MinIO?

We use the solution's open-source version.

NetApp FAS Series vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Comparisons

Compared 16% of the time

Dell ECS vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 15% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 11% of the time

Qumulo vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 8% of the time

Huawei OceanStor 9000 vs Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs MinIO

Compared 64% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs MinIO

Compared 6% of the time

Dell ECS vs MinIO

Compared 5% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs MinIO

Compared 4% of the time

Hitachi Content Platform vs MinIO

Compared 2% of the time

More MinIO Competitors

Product Reports

Dell PowerScale (Isilon)

Download Dell PowerScale (Isilon) product report

Download MinIO product report

Also Known As

PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon

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Overview

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."

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.”

Sample Customers

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,

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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. MinIO