We performed a comparison between Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and Veeam Backup & Replication based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Nasuni and others in NAS."The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) integration with other solutions because of the standard file system protocol."
"It has allowed us to have more consistent quality controls. It has also allowed us to expand the number of servers in clients processing and accessing data, allowing us to get a lot bigger projects out the door."
"This has been a valuable solution for our business overall. It offers business continuity and replication features."
"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 guaranteed performance, combined with the scalability through its scale-out capability, makes it an excellent choice."
"Ability to scale the number of nodes without having to build additional clusters."
"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 best thing is that it works. We don't have to maintain it too much; we usually upgrade once a year."
"Enables us to restore the VM when the needs arises and for disaster recovery."
"One of the standout features of Veeam Backup & Replication is its exceptional restore capability, enabling users to recover their data seamlessly. Another valuable functionality is the automated verification of backup restorations, made possible through the Sure Backup feature. The software boasts numerous other noteworthy features that offer immense value, including the NAS backup feature."
"The advantage of Veeam Backup and Replication is that it is very economical. The price is affordable and the cost benefit is good."
"Veeam is the gold standard for backup and recovery. The ease of use and reliability of this solution are real assets. Also, it has an ease of use to work with a third party vendor."
"The product could be improved if they wrote more PowerShell scripts for controlling Veeam."
"The technical support is good."
"Veeam Backup Replication is easy to use and has high performance. The backups are very fast. It's a complete solution that fulfills our current needs."
"Veeam Backup has many valuable features and every feature is different. I have created backups for file-level backup, VMware or hypervisor virtual machines, physical machines, and workstations as well. Every time, I learn something new."
"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."
"The replication could lend itself to some improvement around encryption in transit and managing the racing of large volumes of data. The process of file over and file back can be tedious. Hopefully, you never end up going into a DR. If you do go into a DR, you know the data is there on the remote site. However, in terms of the process of setting up the replicates and filing them back, that is just very tedious and could definitely do with some improvement."
"The biggest weakness is small file handling. Small file compression options are not enabled out of the box. It would be good to have this enabled by default."
"The product’s expansion capacity, pricing clarity, and ease of use need improvement."
"Its configuration needs to be more straightforward."
"The solution can be a bit complex for those not well versed in the technology."
"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 price of the solution could be reduced."
"The pricing could be improved."
"The Cloud version is not ready, they need maturity and ease of deployment in terms of management."
"The web interface could be more visual."
"It would be preferable if they could introduce a complete Linux version instead of relying solely on Microsoft for management. There should be a unified integration of all their products. Currently, there are various products like cloud backup and others that exist separately. It would be better if they could create a single comprehensive platform or product, as opposed to having disparate products that lack proper communication between them."
"Immutability could be improved."
"I have issues with the licensing."
"The cost needs to be considered."
"They need full cloud integration such that an on-premises backup can be offloaded to the cloud for storage."
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is ranked 1st in NAS with 39 reviews while Veeam Backup & Replication is ranked 1st in Backup and Recovery with 329 reviews. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is rated 9.0, while Veeam Backup & Replication is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) writes "We can easily deploy, manage, and maintain systems without needing a huge amount of expertise to facilitate them". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Veeam Backup & Replication writes "Beneficial pricing model, user friendly interface, and many free features". Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is most compared with NetApp FAS Series, Dell ECS, Pure Storage FlashBlade, Qumulo and HPE StoreEasy, whereas Veeam Backup & Replication is most compared with Acronis Cyber Protect, Azure Backup, Rubrik, Zerto and Veritas NetBackup.
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Assuming you want to keep the data within the datacenter, there are a few options:
For Small deployments (~20-100TB's), you could mount share(s) on any backup (media) server and backup the data up over the network using a file-system agent - Veeam could easily support this.
For Medium deployments (~100TB - 1PB), you could use any backup system that supports NDMP. Not sure if Veeam supports NDMP for Isilon, but there are a lot of other vendors that do.
For Large deployments (~1PB+), you may want to consider snap-replicate-snap - Kind of like the NetApp approach to data protection. Take Snapshots of the local Isilon, replicate to a remote (DR) Isilon, and take a snapshot of the DR Isilon. Some may argue that this is not a true backup methodology, but it scales well and you can set up many SyncIQ jobs with different RPO settings to support complex scenarios.
There are a number of alternative cloud solutions available e.g. Druva.
However, if the price is a key factor then you may benefit from by using an Managed Service Provider (MSP). MSP's white label large, credible & established platforms. They provide the same level of speed, uptime, resilience and security as a key brand name but can be as much as half the price. The management of the backup will be optionally yours or fully outsourced to the MSP.
Another benefit of the MSP model is that they will have other skills to complement your own internal resources potentially adding further layers of security and backend IT people to support your operation.
I have no experience with Dell EMC PowerScale though I do know that it is supported by Veeam.
A Veeam Scale Out Backup Repository can distribute the load across the PowerScale cluster via multiple Backup Repository Extents each defined to use a different cluster node DNS A record and path. When backups exceed the maximum file size limitation even with Veeam deduplication and compression, other considerations should be made.
Note: Disable the write coalescer on the share directory and all sub-directories used by Veeam. PowerScale is a complex system and therefore I would advise you to contact Veeam experts on how to deploy Veeam in accordance with PowerScale. But a Scale Out Back Repository is an option, also XFS with reflink supports any Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon) configuration. MSP's are fine too if you are comfortable with having data outside your datacenter.
dsmISI VEEAM (general-storage.com)
It is possible to do it with most types of backup solutions, such as IBM Spectrum Protect.
But it requires a full scan to detect changed files.
The changed files will be the only part that will be sent to the IBM Spectrum Protect storage, using its progressive incremental forever (Always incremental backups).
It is also possible to use NDMP to protect Isilon storage, but that requires periodical full copies, and as Isilon can scale to multiple PB in size. It might not be efficient.
Regards,
Tomas
I did not have the opportunity to backup Isilon servers but, according to Veeam documentation, it is possible to backup NDMP servers data to tape. There are some limitations though: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/d...