Dell PowerScale (Isilon) Reviews

I rely on Dell PowerScale to manage and store manufacturing data from NES systems. It is great for handling big data, offers scalability, and ensures data security, simplifying the storage and retrieval of manufacturing information.

The most valuable features of Dell PowerScale for its reliable performance and stability. The guaranteed performance, combined with the scalability through its scale-out capability, makes it an excellent choice. It is a top pick for my customers due to these qualities.

There is room for improvement in its handling of object storage. While it excels in managing file systems, enhancing features for more efficient handling of objects could make it even better, ensuring faster and smoother operations.

I have been working with Dell PowerScale for ten years.

The technical support is very good. They are quite helpful.

The installation is quite simple and the deployment takes only a few hours. In my organization, we have a total of 26 system engineers, and among them, 11 are trained to handle Dell PowerScale. These engineers are responsible for installing, maintaining, and providing support for the product. We conduct maintenance regularly, typically with a focus on remote support, offering 24/7 assistance. For on-site support, our goal is to respond within four hours.

While customers often perceive it as expensive, I find that considering its functions and performance, Dell PowerScale is reasonably priced. I would rate it as a five out of ten in terms of costliness. In addition to the standard licensing fee, there are extra costs for services and additional solutions with Dell PowerScale. Services like maintenance and support may incur charges. Sub-solutions such as CloudIQ are also additional and may be charged based on usage or quota.

I would highly recommend Dell PowerScale to others. Overall, I would rate it as a nine out of ten.

The solution's scalability is very good.

The solution's rate structure or rate redundancy needs to be improved. If you have a lot of nodes, for example, 15 nodes, and when you say you lost one node on the paper, the performance is not affected. However, if you have so much file count and fifteen nodes, losing one node really affects the performance. One of our customers had this issue.

Also, when you lose a couple of drives, it's a different structure, then you can lose data. It is clearer on the NetApp side, and you can create a rate group and a pool. So you will have more redundancy on the drives. For example, in a rate set for around 100 drives, you can lose around 20 drives, which depends on the configuration.

In NetApp, we will not lose data, but if you lose 20 drives in EMC, you will also lose data. Small systems like Dell PowerScale (Isilon) work perfectly with five, six, or ten nodes. Based on my experience, if you have 15 nodes in Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and lose one node, it creates some problems.

I have been working with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for more than ten years.

I rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a seven out of ten for stability. The solution's stability should be improved, especially for more than ten nodes.

If the customer doesn't need more performance, you should be able to adjust the solution to expand just the capacity and not the performance.

We recommend Dell PowerScale (Isilon) to customers who request low capacity but high performance. Each node in Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has limited capacity, and we need to add more nodes, but we can get more performance. Adding more controllers to NetApp to expand the system and scale up reduces its price and performance.

For example, if the customer needs 200 terabytes of capacity with high performance and high throughput, we use Dell PowerScale (Isilon). If they need performance and capacity, then NetApp's price and performance are really good compared to Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is easy to implement.

NetApp's implementation, configuration, and integrations are easier than Dell PowerScale (Isilon). For Dell PowerScale (Isilon), you need to use the command prompt for some configurations and integrations; you cannot configure everything on the user interface.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is an expensive solution.

Users who want performance and have a budget can prefer Dell PowerScale (Isilon).

Overall, I rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) a nine out of ten.

I use the solution in my company for unstructured data storage.

The most valuable features of the solution are Isilon InsightIQ for reporting issues and the extra ransomware protection features.

In my company, we have lots of huge amounts of data, around several petabytes, so we needed a way to have some responsive clusters with failover. In our company, we also have to give some reports to get some upgrades for the clusters recently as it is easier for us if we can give a look out to the management about how much research is done by us and how much space is required to do research. Our company has several tech people in our research facilities in Germany at the moment, and we have lost a lot of data to ransomware. One of the key features my company expects from the product is that it reduces ransomware attacks.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) offers a sense of resilience, cyber resiliency, and security to my organization, especially with the third-party add-ons.

In terms of the benefits we experienced from the use of the product, I would say that our organization has different researchers. In our company, we have every operating system in use for different workloads. I can imagine that when our company deals with file-sharing features, the tool is way easier to use, and we can perform the procedure smoothly. The tool is also easy to deploy.

In terms of my experience with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and its licensing part, cost of implementation, and costs of ownership, I don't have much information because our company has only been using the tool for over a year. The documentation is easy, and the management is easy and fast, so my company has had a really good experience with the tool.

The cost of ownership of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is good because our company is able to save a lot of energy, especially in terms of manpower and electricity. My company has managed to get down from four racks to half a rack.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) has helped reduce and eliminate data silos, and it has helped our company shut down several single data storages. In our company, we had an old Dell PowerVault MD Storage, and through the PowerScale OneFS cluster, we could shut down a lot of network-attached storage devices. My company wants to consolidate everything into a central data storage and be able to manage our small team.

Based on the assessment of the tool's flexibility for supporting various data workloads while keeping them protected, I would say that we are in the process of migration. My company is in the process of migrating some video data and so on, but as of now, we use the product's services in the backend for containerization.

The product has helped reduce overall risk in my company since we just have one cluster to manage. Primarily, it is easier to have an overview and keep the clusters up to date.

When envisioning the future of our containerized solutions in terms of cloud integration, I see that in Germany considering a fully cloud-based approach can be hard. Mostly, Germans don't like to put any data on the cloud. I believe that users may opt for a private cloud or a hybrid strategy.

Based on a few key factors and the decision-making process, I would say that my company would choose an environment that offers the most amount of security features for our containerized applications since we have research data while sometimes, we also have data that is used for thesis, so there are areas where we can't afford anyone to get access to our data.

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. Our company has to buy another third-party software deal with tape backup. 

It is a little hard to implement Dell PowerScale CloudPools. In our company, we would like to have another storage tier for data access, but it is getting too expensive when it comes to the licensing part of the product.

Sometimes, it can be bothersome to get through from the first level of support to the second one and from the second level to the third level of support. To deal with a set of similar errors, it would be great if Dell could allow users to skip some support stages. The reason a user may be forced to go through different levels of support can be because there is no automated support available to be offered.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for over a year. My company is a customer of the tool.

My company has never had any issues with the stability of the product.

The product's scalability feature is super easy to use.

My company has used the technical support of the tool. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

My company deals with big companies that offer storage solutions. My company does not have similar products from different vendors, so we deal with different vendors and provide different solutions for different scenarios.

The product's initial setup phase was really easy because our company had technicians coming over. I feel the technicians could do better, and so now my company has a new support partner who installs the hardware. At the time our company purchased Dell PowerScale (Isilon), we had a third-party company install the product in our company. Our organization called in a third-party company to introduce us to how to install Dell PowerScale (Isilon). There were some issues after the tool's setup phase that had to be fixed, and so it got quite a little messy because of the aforementioned problems.

We received several good recommendations from partners of our organization in Germany, after which we dived into Dell PowerScale (Isilon), considering that my company is in the commercial research area, where we have to deal with contracts. My company believes that if we have contracts with Dell, then it would be easier for us to process data. The last time our company upgraded our compute, we entered into another contract with another vendor, which was not good. My company is looking into entering into more contracts with Dell.

Considering the product still needs to add a few features, I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

We use Dell PowerScale to share data between our Windows, Linux, and Azure systems.

Before Dell PowerScale, we had safe clusters for Linux systems and Windows file servers with separate item storage. Now, we have centralized storage together.

If we have an AI extension, data can be reordered from unstructured to structured. Scientists travel with a lot of data and ask to put the data in storage and forget about it. So there is a lot of unused data left in the storage.

PowerScale is flexible in supporting various data workloads while keeping them protected. It includes a lot of security snapshots so if a user accidentally deletes data, we can provide the snapshot for them to restore their lost data.

PowerScale helps reduce our organizational risk. We have additional security running on PowerScale for added protection. Before PowerScale, we had no security.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale is its scalability. If we need more storage, we can add more nodes without the need to install anything else. Also, the data compression and deduplication are valuable. The SFA recovery site sync is good.

We believed that we could share all the data between Windows RTS and Linux RTS but that is not true because we can break the RTS as a system so we must separate the data. This means we have one system but we still have two data paths.

PowerScale is not suitable for virtual environments. So we use a different solution for our hybrid environments like our VMware clusters. 

I have been using Dell PowerScale for one year.

Dell PowerScale is stable.

Dell PowerScale is easily scalable.

We are supposed to have technical support from Europe, but until now we have only received support from India.

We previously used Pure Storage. We wanted PowerStore but our other partner offered us PowerScale faster.

We ran into an issue deploying PowerScale F900 because of some bugs but with the support, it worked out. 

We used a reseller for the implementation. T-Systems from Telecom. Their engineer installed the wrong cable that was not hard enough and we had to break down the switch to replace it. 

PowerScale hardware is expensive but it consumes less energy making it more efficient. In five years we will see a return on investment compared to other solutions.

I would rate Dell PowerScale eight out of ten. We have scalability and one file system for most use cases but the GUI is terrible. If we are searching for a file we must know the full path. Also, the alerts are not clear enough. 

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) integration with other solutions because of the standard file system protocol.

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.

In an upcoming release, the solution should have security features embedded, not external software.

I have been using Dell PowerScale (Isilon) for approximately nine years.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a reliable solution.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is scalable. It is easy to expand capacity.

Most of our customers are enterprise-sized companies and the solution is suitable only for companies with a lot of data. For example, you can have a start-up company dealing with a large amount of data, but only have 10 people working on it. In this case, you will need a solution with this capability.

I am satisfied with the support.

If you have used the solution previously then the initial setup of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is easy, if not then it is difficult. If you have good planning and preparation then the implementation can take two to three days.

We do the implementation of this solution for our customers.

The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable.

My advice to others is they should work with a provider that knows the solution well and the features in order to implement it correctly.

This is a good solution but it is not always the best choice, it depends on the use case.

I rate Dell PowerScale (Isilon) an eight out of ten.

We used it originally for archiving our video storage, and then we expanded it to include user shares. All of our unstructured data has been moved to PowerScale.

We have now expanded the OneFS to start to use Local S3 Buckets, that use the same API setup as Amazon, but lets us host the data onsite.

In addition we added Power Protect Data Manager that is allowed to backup the Shares and stores, allowing us to have a backup of everything on another location.

We moved our shares over. Now, instead of taking up a large amount of space on a virtual machine, our shares take it up on one appliance. The load on that virtual machine is much less and it makes it easy to future-proof it, because now we don't have to move it again in the next migration of servers.

We have saved about 30 percent on storage with it. And as we grow, we get more space, meaning the efficiency improves each time we add a node. We went from 75 percent efficiency to 82.5 percent efficiency when we expanded.

The solution provides us with the flexibility to add the right tier of storage at the right time for data that resides at the edge, core, or cloud. That really is nice. We did one use case where we put it out at the edge, and it was nice to have the Isilon at the edge. It really helped improve things. It helped the storage of the cameras, and it helped get the data back to the core in a reasonable time. It allowed us to go from the edge to the core and then up to the cloud, instead of trying to go from the very edge to cloud.

PowerScale also allows us to manage storage without managing RAID groups or migrating volumes between controllers. It simplifies the storage. It allows us to see everything as one large volume instead of having multiple volumes all over the place.

And when it comes to the business value of our data, it allows us to see what's being used and how it's being used, and we can do so much more quickly and efficiently. As a result, we can better evaluate how we're storing the data.

It has also helped us to reduce data silos. We used to have four video servers out there, all storing data. On the home farm, now, we're down to one server storing data in one location, and that includes all the user shares. 

All our data is in one place and that has increased performance. We could never afford to say, "Let's have this information on solid-state," and allowed the OneFS to decide, based on usage, of where it would be stored: on a fast drive or on a slow drive. It automatically does that in the background for us, instead of our having to manually move it and then have the user change where they get the information from.

In addition, it has simplified management by consolidating our workloads. It's all done in the same portal now. And while it hasn't reduced our number of storage admins, it has definitely reduced the time we spend looking at it, so we can focus on other efforts. It saves me about five hours a week.

Another benefit is that it allows us to focus on the data rather than where it's stored. Now, we don't have to worry about moving it around from place to place to get efficiencies out of the data. We just have it all in one place. The single interface, the SmartPools policy, decides where it needs to reside.

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, as well as the access users get. But the end-user doesn't distinguish the difference between a file and its folder; the end-user doesn't have to see the difference.

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. There are no performance issues based on how large the storage is.

Adding a node is as simple as racking and stacking the items. It takes about two to three hours to put it into the rack. Once you have it all wired up, it takes you about an hour or 90 minutes with Dell, just to configure things and make sure it's all working. Then you just redefine your policy for where you want the items stored. We just expanded to include the solid-state, a full F200 node, and we just redefined where we wanted those files stored, whether on the super-fast solid-state or on the slow archival mode. Then, overnight, it ran that script and moved all the files around to help increase performance.

We also use the CloudIQ feature to monitor performance and other data remotely. It gives us better insight into where the data's stored and the access times involved. It gives me a better understanding of what's really being accessed and helps me decide what I can move to slower drives first, and what needs to stay in the front-end and remain very fast.

There aren't many templates still coming out for it. They need to provide templates so we can copy and paste what we've done in the past to future, new things.

The refresh of the interface with version 9.3 did help a lot of the things. They are at least improving it.

I have been using Dell EMC PowerScale for about a year and a half.

It's very stable. It's one of the first solutions that I feel comfortable working with during the business day, while people are using it, knowing that I can change things and it's not going to take the system down.

One of the things I like the most about it is the fact that we can scale out now. If we need more space, we order more nodes and it just changes the file structure; it just expands. There are no more individual drives, new arrays, moving things around. It'll just be there.

The future-proofing of what we're doing is a great thing too, because in five years when we're ready to replace that node, just due to its age, we can put the new one in and tell it to archive the old unit. It will move all the files over, in the background, and then we will just remove the old unit. There's no more having to tell users that, "Oh, this whole share is moving and all this stuff is getting done."

The technical support has been really good. It's pretty intuitive to put a ticket in, both through their email and through the calling system. It's usually pretty seamless to get to talk to somebody to actually resolve the issue.

Before PowerScale it was just MD Storage Arrays, the standard, and the LUNs that you'd have anywhere. We eliminated that with this. We originally started with PowerScale for our video system. We were looking for a better system, in the long-term, to store our archival video and process it. We looked at unstructured data solutions and picked PowerScale for that and for the future-proofing.

Also, because we are a large Dell EMC shop, it allowed us to keep it all on the same platform. In looking to do things on a larger scale, it allowed us future compatibility, much more easily. Its ability to meet unpredictable future storage needs looks great. It feels like a great solution and it was the right direction for us.

The first setup was pretty complex and a little different to do. Once we had the core system set up, the next deployment was much easier. The complexity came from changing our thought process, internally, regarding how we store files and how unstructured data really works, and then, how to efficiently use this.

Our deployment took about a week. We did a slow move-over, and we still continue to move anything we find over to it.

In terms of administration of the solution, for the most part it's just me who does a lot of the core work. All the users on the farm are using the system now, meaning about 350 people are accessing the data on the Isilon.

We used the reseller, Dell EMC, for the deployment, and it was a great experience. They were there to help us and make sure we understood where we were going and what we were doing.

The fact that, with PowerScale, we could start with a few nodes and scale very large made it very cost-efficient for us. It allowed us to start out, see what it can do, and evaluate the product before we actually did a larger investment in it. We invested into it again three months later.

I'd like to say we have seen ROI because we're feeling like we're really starting to store data better and understand what's going on, more than we did a year-and-a-half ago.

It's one of those situations where you have to find the right price for you. When we talked to the reseller, we were able to negotiate the right price for what we needed.

We looked at HPE and IBM.

I liked the interface of the PowerScale much better than the other ones. It was more intuitive. I logged on and could almost get to work with it right away. I felt like I could hop on and just start using it, whereas with the other ones I felt that there was a larger, steeper learning curve.

Dell EMC keeps adding more features to the solution's OneFS operating system. The last addition was its CloudPools and that allows us to do backups to the public cloud for the data that we want to keep but don't even need on-prem anymore. It turned the system into a never-ending resource. We can now decide what we want to keep, long-term, without having to expand our storage system.

PowerScale is one of those things that will grow in your environment. Once you start it with one thing, you'll learn that it can do much more, very quickly. That's a great thing about starting small with it, you can expand very quickly later on.

We are using Dell EMC PowerScale as a central storage for our virtual HPC infrastructure based on VMware.

We have several silos today, as our HPC infrastructure is typically divided between bare-metal and virtual configurations. The storage that we use on various infrastructures is different, as we are typically using a storage style that is different from any production facility. Until now the request from our internal users was to keep the data separated in different storage silos, and converging in central storage facility while on the virtual HPC is the new request. Therefore, we are experimenting how it works.

We have five nodes of F200s. 

This is the best platform that we could have for storage utilization. It is affordable and scalable. At the end of the day, it's something that we find very easy to use. Our administrators and people are very happy with the platform.

Now, our storage I/O performance is three times what we had before, even if we had not optimized the networking that is hosting the infrastructure. For this reason, our internal users are very happy.

We know how to deal with the OneFS system very well. 

It is easy to use and scale. It is probably the easiest, most scalable storage that we have ever used with our infrastructure. It improves the performance of our infrastructure. We have some other types of storage, but they are not as simple to use like PowerScale.

The ease of use and installation have cut the time of putting a new storage solution into production. This has been very useful for us.

Some improvements to the NFS support would be of interest to us. I think that will be available next year.

We have been using it for less than a year. We just bought the platform in May, then we did a couple of months of testing. Now, it is in production. We bought the solution as soon as it was announced, but you have to take into account the time of the delivery and testing. With the pandemic, everything is unfortunately slower.

The stability of PowerScale is incredible. It's not so different from Isilon. PowerScale is a sort of Isilon on steroids. It has the same scalability and reliability of the Isilon platform, but now you have a lot of performance, so it is a sort of super Isilon from a customer usage point of view.

In the year that we have had it in production, the solution has demonstrated stability and performance. It is something that we rely on for our simulation infrastructure.

There is a team of three who maintain all the infrastructure for PoweScale. It is easy to manage as soon as you have it setup.

It scales seamlessly. We started three nodes, then we added two and there were no problems. The impressive part: Now creating or expanding a PowerScale cluster is almost immediate. In the past, you needed more time. 

As of today, we have around 15 research groups doing work on the platform, but we have only started the production phase after weeks of testing.

The technical support is perfect. We are more than satisfied. They are responsive with good turnaround times.

We have several Dell EMC solutions. We are familiar with their support and are more than happy with it.

For NFS and CIFS services, we used Isilon and now PowerScale. We have lengthy Isilon experience in our data center. Today, we have still a Dell EMC Isilon H600 hybrid in production, but we decide to go to PowerScale to host our simulation facility. Typically, the workloads in which we are hosting on our virtual HPC environment come from engineering and chemical simulations as well as the latest AI and deep learning workloads.

We were beta testers from the first platform of Isilon before it was acquired by Dell EMC. Its scalability, ease of use, and performance were key. When PowerScale came out, we didn't try to buy another platform for this kind of work.

We have been very satisfied with our Isilon experience as a centralized system for HPC. PowerScale is much better than the Isilon that we had before.

The platform is really straightforward to install and use, so we are not losing too much time setting up the storage as is and have more time to deal with the data on it.

The initial deployment took one day to set up. You do have to do some preparation for the setup, especially on the networking side. However, on the infrastructure, the platform is easy and straightforward to set up. The preparation was to prepare the networking, where you will be connecting the machines, such as, the typical networking configuration and VLANS, then you are ready to go.

It is immediate to add a new node and put that inside your configured cluster, e.g., when we installed the new PowerScale, the installation of the operating system was very quick. It was really unbelievable. We came from the first generation of Isilon where the installation of the operating system was not so fast. The F200 skyrockets onto the OneFS. Though, if we could afforded the F600, then that would be also faster. However, what we can afford is the F200, and we are happy now with that.

We have seen an improvement of performance without losing too much time when setting up the new platform.

We did the implementation ourselves with the help of the Dell EMC support team, who set up the system. One person, myself, took a half a day to set up the infrastructure and another day to install it, then putting the platform in production.

Our infrastructure is directly managed by us.

We have improved the performance and reliability of our HPC storage. We are very happy with it. Our systems are typically used for research. The added value is in the performance. Typically, it's not a problem saving money. It is more a problem of how much research you are able to do, how many jobs you're able to afford, and so on. In this sense, PowerScale, in our infrastructure, is really a winning piece. Today, we have three times the performance on the I/O. The gain that we have with the I/O is significant.

Isilon was an incredible return on investment. I think PowerScale will be the same because it's giving us the performance that we were looking for at an affordable price. 

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. 

We went for the traditional NFS and CIFS platform. We have also licensed the HDFS platform because we want to do something with the HDFS.

There are some new features, but we are not using all the features because you need licensing for all them. However, we are seeing that the platform is growing. At the end of the day, when we will need some more features, we will license some more of those features, knowing that they will have them.

The F600 machine of PowerScale is much better than what we have. It has MDM drives and 100 GB connection with the same software.

I know that you can license also some enterprise class features on the platform, but we are not using those features today.

I have a small team who analyzed the market, but it is difficult to find some competition for PowerScale with the same performance and price. Something that was important during our decision was you have to teach a technician the new platform, and maybe that takes time. In this case, the integration of the PowerScale was almost seamless for the infrastructure and internal technicians.

Apart from Isilon, we are using DDN. We also have some parallel side systems that we are using production with our HPC. However, PowerScale is really the easiest to use.

I would recommend going for this solution.

PowerScale is already at the edge of the technology. If you give a look at what you find on the market today from the technology point of view, PowerScale hardware and software are at the top.

80 percent of our operations are brands, especially for HPC, but our organization is moving to the cloud from some services.

We have discussed with Dell EMC their roadmap of the platform and are very interested in it. We hope we will be able to afford the new features that will come up, like the NVMe nodes.

We have some projects using the S3 protocol, but not on PowerScale. They are on the old Isilon for HDFS.

We use the CloudIQ feature to monitor performance and other data remotely. We have two platforms on the CloudIQ: PowerScale and PowerStore. We haven't use the platform yet so much that it has been useful. We have typically been users of InsightIQ software to monitor infrastructure. Now, we are using the CloudIQ, but do not much experience.

We are not thinking about using it as an enterprise platform. However, we do see increasing our usage over time.

I would rate this solution as a 10 out of 10.

I've worked on multiple cases, like cache, performance, and application cases.

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

Dell is an expansive product. Everyone has a Dell product.

The improvement should be in AI. Everything is going towards AI. If they improved the AI features, it would be easier for customers to handle.

If some customers have expired products and cannot renew them, Dell should provide knowledge-based articles to help them handle issues like replication, node issues, or hardware issues. They have storage admin engineers who can handle it.

AI could also help with things like searching.  For example, if I want Anil's profile, I should be able to see everything on the screen. AI could also help with common issues like performance issues. If you type "performance issues" into their portal, it should tell you what needs to be checked, what shouldn't be checked, and where to check it, whether the issue is from the storage end, the host end, or the switch end.

Dell can improve in terms of support. Dell hires freshers who don't have much experience. They should resolve issues faster. At Accenture, we reach out to customers within 15 minutes if they have any issues.

I worked with it for five years. In 2019, Isilon was changed to PowerScale.

Scalability is very good in terms of Dell products.

The tech support is good.

Neutral

It requires more manpower for the installation. More than two people are needed for the process. 

It takes around four hours for a full deployment. It is easy to integrate with other systems.

It will require some maintenance. It depends on the hardware.

Users can save time and money with PowerScale. There is around 15% to 20% time savings.

Dell products are expensive. They are more expensive than other competitors.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. If you have a small environment, I can recommend Isilon PowerScale.

I would recommend it to others because Dell is a very good company, and we can blindly trust Dell products. It's number five, I think, or six in a global ranking.