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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Qumulo 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
214
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)
Qumulo
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
NAS (13th), File and Object Storage (21st)
 

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.
VinceVitro - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Storage Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Useful data sharing, simple cluster scaling, and excellent support
One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"This is the best all-flash storage array on the market."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has helped us decrease the storage footprint in a significant way; the dedupe and compression that they have is really good, and we're getting about four to ten in the deduplication and compression."
"We noticed a dramatic increase in application performance when moving it from NetApp to Pure Storage."
"Pure Storage has been the go-to storage array for me; it's a lot smaller, easier to set up, faster to upgrade, more reliable, and the performance is very stable."
"The most valuable features would be its performance, retrieval, recovery, and backup, and it meets the customer's expectations."
"One feature that's particularly valuable for our finance customers is Pure Storage's safe mode. It protects against ransomware attacks by taking snapshots. Our customers were very impressed with this capability. The data reduction is also impressive compared to other providers."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has helped decrease the total cost of ownership because we know what the cost is going to be every year; we don't get any hidden fees or upgrade fees, everything is included in the price."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) definitely deserves ten out of ten for scalability."
"PowerScale, in our infrastructure, is really a winning piece because today we have three times the performance on the I/O at an affordable price while greatly improving the performance and reliability of our HPC storage."
"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 ease of use of this solution has been the most valuable aspect as well as the SyncIQ and snapshot features."
"The capacity and scalability are what I appreciate the most about it; that was huge for us. We saw its benefits immediately after we started using it."
"The tool comes with cheap disks and works fast for video content."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is all the capabilities together."
"I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) as perfect, as we haven't had any hiccups with it so far."
"The feature that I like most is the analytics part of the file system."
"It is a very stable product. I never faced any issues."
"The most valuable feature is real-time analytics."
"The most valuable features of Qumulo are the ease of management and special permissions that are quick to enable. The overall performance of the solution is good."
"The most valuable feature of Qumulo is the ability to share files and reliability."
"The most valuable feature is real-time analytics."
"The data protection algorithm to protect the data between the nodes has been the most valuable feature. The integration with backup platforms such as Veeam and Veritas has also been valuable."
"The ratio of total operational cost to complexity versus feature set is very good."
 

Cons

"Pure Storage had operational challenges between 2016 to 2018, impacting perceived reliability."
"I would like to see more detailed reporting on the data. However, it would be nice to know what are the exact VMs usage after deduplication and/or what that VMs actual latency and bandwidth is, outside of VMware."
"The file functionality could be better."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better."
"The product could improve by providing the capability to support NAS storage – CIFS and NFS."
"In the next release, I would like to see file-level encryption."
"I would like to see some improvements on the FlashBlade side around the CIFS space support."
"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."
"We see room for improvement in Dell PowerScale (Isilon) because we need personnel to effectively utilize all our infrastructure; it's not easy to find skilled people to work on AI and data analysis."
"I have experienced a RAM failure in some of the nodes of Dell PowerScale (Isilon), and that required hardware replacement."
"Because of the magic that it does 'under the hood,' it is very difficult to find out within the system where all your storage is going."
"Its configuration needs to be more straightforward."
"We used to have a chat feature available on the support site. It's not available to us anymore."
"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."
"The support offered by the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Some anti-theft permissions do not transfer well to Qumulo."
"The price of the software is a bit expensive, so a reduction in cost would make it more competitive."
"In the future, I would like to see non-disruptive updates."
"Qumulo should continue to expand automation and orchestration capabilities."
"Qumulo should continue to expand automation and orchestration capabilities."
"There is plenty of room for improvement. In the future, I would like to see non-disruptive updates."
"In the next release, I would like to see the ability to have more control at a terminal level of the file system."
"The price of the software is a bit expensive, so a reduction in cost would make it more competitive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
"The price is too high."
"It was less expensive than some of the alternatives. It's not as though it was a premium price to get that kind of quality. It's a very competitive product from a price perspective..."
"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."
"Our costs are around $100,000."
"The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."
"We have seen a reduction in TCO."
"They have a standardized fee; it's been the same price for 10 years straight. I am happy with the price — I think it's good."
"The pricing is excellent."
"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."
"The price of the solution is high."
"Dealing with the product costs and licensing areas is getting easier since Dell is simplifying the licensing process and licensing packages offered to users."
"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."
"It is an expensive solution."
"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 Qumulo is reasonable."
"The price of the solution is in the middle range compared to others. We look at the price per terabyte."
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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%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise149
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise46
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
 

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...
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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,
County of Riverside Sheriff Department, Hyundai Mobis Automotive North America, University of Arizona, UCSD - San Diego Supercomputer Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, Sinclair Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Kaiser Permanente, Deluxe Creative, Vexcel Imaging, University of Florida, The Madison Square Garden Company, Arizona State University, Cinesite, San Diego Padres Baseball, Johns Hopkins University - School of Medicine, IHME, EllieMae, Washington State University.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Qumulo and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.