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Dell PowerScale vs Red Hat Ceph Storage 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
7.2
Number of Reviews
222
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
Dell PowerScale
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
NAS (1st), File and Object Storage (2nd)
Red Hat Ceph Storage
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), File and Object Storage (1st)
 

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.
Rifat Rahman - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Architect & CEO at Tirzok Private Limited
Offers reliable performance and availability for large deployments
I would like to see improvements in Red Hat Ceph Storage not because I necessarily think it needs improvement, but because I generally prefer to do things manually rather than following the containerization part. Current deployments are based on containers, but I deploy manually with my scripts and controls. If there are no Kubernetes-like requirements, I often prefer to deploy a whole manual process. I don't ask for improvements in the deployment model because Red Hat has its own philosophy about making things, but it's my personal choice that I prefer things manually. Some features are available only in the containerization part, so if those are also available in manual deployment, that will help.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For me, right now, it is the best storage solution in the market, by far."
"Our storage phones home. It is smart and intelligent in that aspect, which has been huge for us. We don't have to be storage administrators."
"The best features of Pure Storage are their support and analytics."
"Pure Storage is extremely reliable — it's never failed."
"NVMe data storage platform that's easy to set up and easy to use. It's stable, with a lower response time, and quick technical support."
"Access speed and power consumption are most valuable."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is simple and easy to use. It offers protection when removing devices. It has the ability to undo deletes."
"With Pure Storage, we don't see any latency or IOPS. It has been a very seamless integration."
"Its scalability has been huge for us."
"PowerScale has made it extremely easy to scale file data across our organization. We have two implementations of Isilon. One is a replica of the other. When scaling, we add nodes to each location and expand the cluster. The process is straightforward."
"The solution provides massive performance, scalability, efficiency, and ease of management."
"The recent introduction of inline deduplication and compression has drastically improved our efficiency ratios to make it an economical product. This solution has also had a positive impact on our employees' productivity because it reduces the amount of admin that our staff needs to handle."
"The stability of the solution is good."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) definitely deserves ten out of ten for scalability."
"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."
"The solution's flexibility for supporting various data workloads while keeping them protected is great."
"I like the distributed and self-healing nature of the product."
"Most valuable features include replication and compression."
"The community support is very good."
"The scalability feature is used by all users and is critical for our operations."
"Data redundancy is a key feature, since it can survive failures (disks/servers). We didn’t lose our data or have a service interruption during server/disk failures."
"High reliability with commodity hardware There is no cost for software"
"The product spawned a new vision of storage deployment, as well as a strong interest in reusing equipment and increasing ROI."
"radosgw and librados provide a simple integration with clone, snapshots, and other functions that aid in data integrity."
 

Cons

"The price of this solution is high and should be lowered."
"The price of this solution could be improved."
"The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality."
"It is way in excess of what we need. If anything, we could see a bit more speed."
"I want to improve the overall service level of the solution."
"Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."
"I can't see where they can make anything better, unless, of course, they lower their prices even more."
"The initial setup of the product is complex."
"The product needs to improve CLI since commands are complex. The search option is also difficult since you must give the full path."
"In the past year, it hasn't been as great. They seem to just follow KBS."
"I think Dell PowerScale (Isilon) can be improved, as the cost models are quite expensive for administration."
"Isilon has limitations on the number of files that can be generated."
"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."
"I think Dell PowerScale (Isilon) can be improved, as the cost models are quite expensive for administration."
"The solution can be integrated with an automation system. Dell uses another framework developed in-house. They can integrate it with machines."
"The pricing could be reduced."
"Geo-replication needs improvement. It is a new feature, and not well supported yet."
"Ceph does not deal very well with, or takes a long time to recover from, certain kinds of network failures and individual storage node failures."
"When it comes to the capabilities of Red Hat Ceph Storage such as object, block, and file storage, I am not fully satisfied."
"The product lacks RDMA support for inter-OSD communication."
"The licensing cost is excessively high. This is a significant issue from my perspective."
"Routing around slow hardware."
"What could be improved in Red Hat Ceph Storage is its user interface or GUI."
"I've heard the integration with OpenShift is great, however, the licensing cost is excessively high."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."
"We have seen a reduction in TCO."
"All storage is expensive so any price improvement would help."
"Because of the SSD, it is cheaper because I am not purchasing so many disks."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"Because the price is a bit higher than other products, the data reduction equalizes the price with amount of the data reduction."
"There are no licensing fees aside from the support."
"The price of the solution can be a bit expensive. There is an additional fee for support."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is an expensive solution."
"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."
"Our company finds the pricing high, but it decreases over time."
"We paid an additional fee to have Dell's ProDeploy Plus team implement it."
"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."
"It is an expensive product with a high storage capacity suitable for large data requirements."
"It is an expensive solution."
"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 never used the paid support."
"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription​​ as a bundle.​"
"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."
"The price of this product isn't high."
"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."
"There is no cost for software."
"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."
"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business67
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise156
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise48
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
 

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?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
The solution provides massive performance, scalability, efficiency, and ease of management.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
I think Dell PowerScale (Isilon) could improve some functions such as Apache S3 or containerized storage support, as ...
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 Red Hat Ceph Storage?
Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about th...
What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat Ceph Storage?
I do not have experience working with solutions such as Red Hat Ceph Storage and StorPool. I have plenty of experienc...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
Ceph
 

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,
Dell, DreamHost
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerScale vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
895,151 professionals have used our research since 2012.