Dell PowerStore Reviews

Mainly, we use Dell PowerStore as the central storage for all our production workloads. It’s the backbone of our virtual environment—mostly VMware—and it handles all our critical databases. Since we can't afford any downtime in production, we rely on it to keep everything running smoothly across our data centers.

We haven't had a single production incident.

While I don't manage the day-to-day storage administration, I rely on our dedicated subject matter experts who have consistently validated Dell PowerStore as a high-performing solution. From a leadership perspective, I view it as a premium, 'upper-tier' infrastructure investment that significantly enhances our production security.

So far, our experience has been great—we haven't had a single production incident. One of the main reasons we chose PowerStore was its ability to handle active-active configurations across our data centers. That architecture is a big part of our stability strategy, and the platform has been a perfect fit for those high-availability needs.

We are currently evaluating our connectivity strategy for the new data center, as we haven't deployed a traditional Fibre Channel SAN or dedicated SAN switching yet. Instead, we are exploring more modern protocols like iSCSI and NVMe over TCP.

We are in discussions with Dell regarding official support for these over-the-fabric protocols on our specific PowerStore model. While we are still confirming the roadmap and compatibility, moving away from a traditional SAN and toward an NVMe/TCP architecture is a key point of interest for our future infrastructure.

Personally, I have over two years of experience with Dell PowerStore, but our team has been utilizing Dell PowerStore for nearly four years now.

We haven't had a single production incident.

Our relationship with Dell has evolved into a true partnership over the last two years. We have weekly touchpoints with our account team, and I feel confident that they are genuinely invested in our success. 
On the technical support side, the experience has been generally positive. However, regarding our new data center and the PowerStore integration, we’ve noticed some hesitation when exploring newer, non-traditional configurations. It seems there is a cautious approach toward supporting architectures that haven't been extensively tested in-house yet. While this caution is understandable, we look forward to Dell leaning in more as we push the boundaries of their newer solutions.

I would rate our technical support experience a 7 out of 10. Over the past two years, we have encountered a few configuration challenges on our servers. In some instances, these issues were complicated by the involvement of intermediary partners, making the resolution process less direct. While there have been minor hurdles to overcome, a score of seven reflects a generally solid service that has room to improve in terms of coordination and initial setup accuracy.

Before, we had an Isilon product from Dell.

I don't have much experience with products similar to Dell PowerStore yet, as it is a new solution for us at France Télévisions. The pricing so far has been fair, and we are satisfied with the purchase price. Support has also been fine.

However, looking at servers like ReadyNodes, we’ve noticed that anything involving AI becomes quite difficult and very expensive—actually, really expensive. We understand the market context, but we wonder if it’s only the context driving those costs. Because of this, we are starting to talk with other partners to compare. As for the PowerStore itself, it’s a good product. It may be a premium price, but it’s high-end equipment, so the investment makes sense.

My overall rating for Dell PowerStore is eight.

Dell PowerStore is typically used for virtualization projects at customers and for cloud environments, serving as pure virtualization block storage.

Before Dell PowerStore, I used a different solution for these use cases.

I use this solution on VMware.

Dell PowerStore has impacted my organization positively as it is a very easy system to use, so from an operational standpoint, I would emphasize its ease of use.

Ease of use is something that I value the most.

The deduplication and compression features of Dell PowerStore are quite amazing, and the data reduction guarantee is also very good. It is not a technical feature, but rather a commercial feature, and other vendors are quite difficult regarding that; Dell PowerStore delivered quite well on the promised deduplication and compression.

Dell PowerStore has helped my organization improve its operational efficiency.

It is quite an install-and-forget system that runs stably in the background, and we do not need to do much around it to maintain it except for an upgrade now and then.

The data resiliency and cybersecurity features of Dell PowerStore are quite good, especially the immutable option, which is very important because it helps recover quite fast from a ransomware attack.

Whenever I have any ransomware attacks, the immutable snapshots help me easily recover without needing to do complicated restore operations.

I have been able to consolidate data using Dell PowerStore, and the data reduction is quite good on it.

I would say a bit more user-friendliness and in-depth features in the monitoring interface of CloudIQ would be an improvement; sometimes it is quite difficult to find the information I want.

The insights offered by CloudIQ involve difficult parts regarding good reporting, and shared reporting is mainly the issue. You can build reports in there, but you cannot share them between colleagues, so if my colleague builds something, I need to log in with my account to see what he built.

I have been using Dell PowerStore from 2021.

Dell PowerStore is stable, so there are no issues that caused any downtime.

The stability of Dell PowerStore is very important because we run multiple customers and our own SaaS platform on it, and if it is not stable, it will cause many issues for many departments.

I have never had any outages or downtime so far.

Expanding Dell PowerStore in terms of scaling up and scaling out is super easy.

If I need to add additional drives, I just insert a drive and the system expands automatically, so there is nothing to do; it is super easy.

It is very intuitive and automatic.

I have contacted technical support for Dell PowerStore multiple times.

My experience with them was quite good; overall, the support is good, and we are satisfied with it.

Positive

Before Dell PowerStore, I used a different solution for these use cases.

I used IBM storage.

I decided to switch from IBM to Dell PowerStore due to some performance issues on the IBM system.

We deployed Dell PowerStore ourselves.

The deployment process was quite straightforward, and there were no complications to install and set up those boxes.

The initial setup process involves racking, cabling, and then doing the initial setup, but that is quite easy and straightforward.

I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerStore as there is much less performance troubleshooting than in the past, so we definitely save time and human resources due to that.

Dell PowerStore helped reduce my organization's capital expenditures, but I am not sure in what size or metric.

The data reduction guarantee is a key factor; if we do not obtain the reduction ratio, then Dell will provide additional drives to compensate. That is really good from the commercial standpoint, and we view that as a price per gigabyte standpoint, which all depends on the price we pay for the system's compression.

It has been a long time since we bought one, but in the past, it was quite satisfying; I am not sure about the prices now.

Before choosing Dell, I evaluated other options including IBM and Pure Storage.

I decided to go with Dell PowerStore mainly due to a relationship perspective, wanting to do more business with Dell from a business perspective, and I was convinced of the product and the price—those were the three main drivers.

We are both a customer of this solution and an IT partner, so we are also cloud service providers, thus we use them ourselves and do reselling.

I am currently working with Dell PowerStore version 4.2.

We are using seven appliances, and we have a mix of models including 1000, 3000, 2200, and 3200.

We are not clustering multiple Dell PowerStore appliances, but we use the Metro functionality.

We are satisfied with the workload performance offered by Dell PowerStore.

The management capabilities of Dell PowerStore are very easy to use.

It is very user-friendly and intuitive; Dell did a great job streamlining the user interface over different platforms.

I am not enrolled in Lifecycle Extension, formerly branded Anytime Upgrade.

I have rated this review an 8 out of 10.

What I like the most about Dell PowerStore is the 4-to-1 data dedupe and compression guarantee, which is a big thing. The other great feature is the import feature from other older Dell series storage, which is excellent when you run into things like raw device mappings and LUNs that can be transferred over that way. I would say that it works really well 90% of the time. You do hit those instances where it doesn't always work, depending on the version of the other SAN and things like that. But I would say that those are probably the top two things.

I describe my experience with Dell PowerStore's data resiliency, availability, and cybersecurity features as quite positive. They have their proprietary DRE rather than a standard RAID 5 or RAID 6. They offer single or double disk failure protection. Those are great. The replication is great, the snapshots and protection features are really great selling points for it and a great option for anybody if they had any sort of cyber event or ransomware.

The importance of Dell PowerStore's compression and deduplication technologies for my organization is extremely critical, and probably one of the top things that is the selling point for Dell PowerStore. It is its claim to fame, the 4-to-1 data reduction. I do know they will do an exclusion if they have certain types of data that cannot be compressed, such as video. I would say it is one of the biggest selling points of Dell PowerStore.

Regarding what I dislike about Dell PowerStore, I do not think there is anything significant. During my initial setups, when you initially deploy those, you have to choose between block-only storage or unified mode, where it has block storage and NAS storage. The only option if you choose one of those and want to change it is to reinitialize it. I wish there was some way they could make that easier to change back and forth. However, I do not think that is inherently an option. That is probably the only feature that has given me trouble in the past.

My experience with contacting the technical support or customer support for Dell PowerStore is great. Usually, the only time I have had to call was when I first started deploying them and if it failed in an initial initialization. They are pretty quick to resolve any issues and can walk me through any questions I have.

If I were to put Dell PowerStore support on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, I give it an 8.

In terms of alternatives to Dell PowerStore, I have dealt with 3PAR and HP Nimble, which are probably the closest ones I have compared to Dell PowerStore.

When talking about the ease of deployment of Dell PowerStore, they give you a few options. They have that PowerStore deployment utility that, if it is configured properly and has DHCP on it, it will work. Often, as a partner that deploys those, we have to go through the service port for initial configuration where it has the assigned IP address, and you have to set a static IP on your laptop. They have a solid initial deployment process for those.

When thinking about the pricing of Dell PowerStore, I know the pricing well. We usually deal with the 500T, or sometimes a PowerStore 1000 or 1200, as we work with medium business organizations. I would say they are comparable to the competitors in that realm, with HP products or storage being the first two that come to mind. The 500T seems to be around the 50,000 mark or something similar. They are not cheap, but they are worth the money for those.

Dell PowerStore is utilized in customer environments where they need fast resilient storage, which highlights its importance in our operations.

The main use cases for us are virtualized workloads, such as clustered server environments that are attached to Dell PowerStore. It stores all their virtualized server environments, including database servers and application servers.

The reason that we brought in Dell PowerStore for this particular use case was that the environment had a database that was performing poorly. It was not clear whether it was a software issue or hardware issue, and it turned out it was a very poorly configured hardware situation. The software vendor was not really sure about what to do. We brought in this brand new Dell PowerStore, having used it since they have been available. After talking to our Dell rep, we learned it was the perfect solution for this environment to eliminate any performance issues, and that has been the case. We installed Dell PowerStore, and the application performance has never had an issue ever again.

The biggest advantage for us as far as features on Dell PowerStore is that they have really good data deduplication and compression, which means your usable disk space is really increased. You don't have to buy as much actual physical disk, making it a good cost-saving measure.

The ability to store more data at a lower physical footprint has truly benefited our organization. If you were having to buy the amount of disk that you actually needed on a physical level, the cost would be astronomically higher, or it would be a more expensive appliance. It's already not super cheap, but it does a lot of features. The biggest draw to it is you get a lot of features for the money and it's really high performance.

If I had to give my recommendation on how Dell PowerStore could be improved, it would probably have to be the user interface. I was hoping that this new product would have a great simple user interface, similar to Dell Unity that we sold and used extensively. Instead, I found the user interface to be a step back from what was done with the other product, which could be tied to the whole architecture of the platform. My wish is to have a more user-friendly interface; the previous system had wizards and guides that facilitated configuration. I have used Dell storage since it was EMC, and back then, configuring the original VNX line required considerable knowledge of storage. The Unity platform simplified that, but with Dell PowerStore, it feels having to know a bit more about storage again to set up some features, which might confuse users transitioning from Unity to Dell PowerStore.

We have been using Dell PowerStore for maybe three or four years, somewhere in that area, showcasing our commitment to leveraging its capabilities.

Our experience with the resiliency, availability, and cybersecurity features of Dell PowerStore has been really good. We have never had any issues, we have never had any outages or downtime or anything of that nature, so it has all been rock-solid.

The stability and reliability of Dell PowerStore are excellent; we have never had any issues. I don't think we have even had a drive fail. You just plug them in, get them turned on, set them up, and they just work, so it has been fantastic.

As far as the growth of the organization and how Dell PowerStore scales, it has been great. We did have one instance where we needed to add some more hard drives, as it was a little underspecced out of the gate, but the whole process of ordering and plugging in additional drives was seamless. The system just auto-expands the file system, and you go.

The technical support and customer support for Dell PowerStore have been fantastic. I don't think we have had to call anybody for that, so I would say it is great.

As far as return on investment with Dell PowerStore, we have seen it. We have had no downtime, no issues; they have just run and worked, which has been tremendous.

The pricing, licensing, and setup costs have been fair for what the product does and what it is. Dell PowerStore is a very high-performance, high-end platform, so you are going to pay a premium, but at the same time, it performs its intended functions effectively, which has been a huge plus for us.

The only other solution we considered before selecting Dell PowerStore was Dell Unity. At the time, they had an all-flash Unity, but its deduplication, compression, and performance metrics were not on par with what Dell PowerStore was designed to deliver, which ultimately informed our decision.

The environments where they are deployed are not operating 24/7 but they are real close. We need as much uptime as possible, and never having to be down for any kind of maintenance window or anything of that nature has been tremendous.

In the environment that we are in now, we do utilize Dell PowerStore's built-in integrations for VMware, which is tied into our system.

The built-in integrations between Dell PowerStore and our virtualization platform are very important for our organization because having that communication when setting up LUNs or configurations is really helpful. It allows us to execute tasks from Dell PowerStore without needing to operate in two different systems.

I would rate this review a 10.

Dell PowerStore is a really interesting array because since it's a full NVMe array, we can consolidate all types of workloads on it, including virtualization. It's an array that can be set up in block mode or unified mode with file, so we can even put file on it and now replicate them in synchronous mode. It's really a multi-environment array. We use it a lot to implement Oracle OLVM clusters. It's really an interesting solution for doing that, in terms of its performance, and also because it supports Linux metro-cluster. We can consolidate Oracle databases with this solution under very good conditions with an excellent level of performance.

Dell PowerStore can help consolidate the data on the storage part. After that, it's clear that Dell PowerStore will be able to interface with AI solutions to provide services. That's a certainty. However, it will remain just a block on the storage side.

The feature I like the most about Dell PowerStore is the simplicity of configuration with DRE. You no longer need a storage expert to configure the array for the client. We have a lot of expertise with people doing storage who have more than 25 years of experience, so installation is no problem for us. Once the array is configured, having this intelligent engine that will organize the blocks, organize the stripes, and manage all the complexity of storage brings a lot of ease of management for the client. They just have to create a volume and present it to their servers. The simplicity is what's interesting about the array.

Dell PowerStore arrays have a range that is broken down in the sizer, where we can see the maximum IOPS we can get and the maximum bandwidth depending on the models. It's important to carefully analyze the customer environments to place the array in the range that will properly meet the expected performance. Since it's a full NVMe array, by default it's a very high-performance array with low latency and really strong performance. I've never come across a workload where the array did not meet the expected level.

The feature we'd like to have in Dell PowerStore is coming, which is metro-cluster over Fibre Channel. That's really the last solution we're waiting for. The advantage of Dell PowerStore is that it's developed as microservices and that it's very software-driven and very automatable as a solution. We can integrate it into modern environments like OpenShift. FC replication is something we didn't have yet, and there are many customers for whom that's a prerequisite.

We can get performance information because when Dell PowerStore array is connected and interconnected to CloudIQ, we send up all the performance metrics needed per volume. We can see perfectly how it behaves. The only thing we don't have is the ability to customize it. Since it's the array itself that manages the organization of the blocks, it's both an advantage and a disadvantage. It's easy to manage for the client, but for an admin looking for specific customization, Dell PowerStore is not the right choice.

We can customize it regarding workload usage. For example, I have a client who was on hyperconverged. I migrated him to Dell PowerStore. He told me it's so much better to customize the usage, put volumes into replication, and segment clusters. On Dell PowerStore storage array, I can very well have a VMware cluster and next to it an OLVM cluster, and manage my VMware part and my Oracle part independently to comply with licensing. Being able to segment environments on a traditional environment allows the client to better manage licensing compared to hyperconverged, which will put everything in the same basket and cause more problems. The array really allows customization if we want to do file system replication. However, if you want specific customization at the RAID group level, that's something you can't do with Dell PowerStore because that feature is handled by an automatic engine. There are admins who rather use Hitachi arrays for that, where they really want to customize their environments down to the core. Dell PowerStore doesn't allow you to do that because it's not its objective.

I've really been using Dell PowerStore since version 3.6 of PowerStoreOS, when we were able to build a redundant architecture with two PowerStores. Before there was replication between two arrays with the witness, it was difficult to build Dell PowerStore architectures because it lacked this feature for securing across two rooms and two sites. With customers, we always need to secure things.

Dell PowerStore is stable and reliable. The only problem is that it came out a bit early. Before version 3.6, it didn't have the features that customers expected, and it was difficult to work with because we didn't have metro-cluster. Metro-cluster in France is less put into production than in the United States because their distances are totally huge, so they tend to do asynchronous replication instead, but in France it's necessary. Before, you had to work with metronodes and virtualize the array. It wasn't integrated, so it was more complicated to put into production and it was less attractive for customers. Now we've reached the level of functionality that's good so that it's really positioned on the market.

Dell PowerStore adapts to growth because it already grows unit by unit at disk level. It has growth that can be both scale-up and scale-out. Let's say I did my sizing badly or I did sizing for a client who then integrates other entities, buys companies, and the need completely changes. I'll be able to add not just shelves to increase capacity, but new primary nodes to increase power and have a cluster that grows in power rather than capacity. When we add capacity, we ask ourselves whether we just need to add capacity, in which case we add a shelf, or to add power. Then we add a Dell PowerStore node directly into the cluster to add capacity and power at the same time.

We've already used Dell PowerStore support to fix issues. I particularly remember a case when we were on 3.6 with an array that had been installed with the wrong name. There was a bug with renaming. When we renamed the array after it had been installed, it caused problems on the file system, and we resolved it with support very quickly.

For support with Dell PowerStore, I'd rate it a 10. It's very good support.

Positive

Deploying Dell PowerStore array is done very efficiently. Once the racking is done, the racking and organization part is always very important. We take the time to do it properly, and the cabling has to be perfectly done. The interconnection to the SAN has to be very well done and well identified. Once that's done, starting up the array is completed within the next day and a half. It's really very fast.

I've tested quite a few storage systems, and I find Dell PowerStore really highly suited to modern, diverse environments. It adapts to pretty much all the cases I encounter with my clients. What I find really interesting is that we can standardize installations a bit, and then interconnect workloads and the array responds. Especially what I see with clients is more a decline in specialists in customer teams, except in very large structures. With mid-sized customers, people are very generalist and use everything. I no longer have a storage expert who can take care of the storage array. Having an array that's simplified and can be managed by someone who is less specialized is a huge asset today. That's why I referenced it and why I really appreciate this technology.

Even with the customers, they told me the other day that it's the death of hyperconverged with Dell PowerStore because it integrates so well and it's easy to use.

I would rate this product a 9 because I'm just waiting for the FC replication feature. I think that when it has that, we'll be able to give it a solid 10.

Most customers are using Dell PowerStore for their data, including metadata as well as unstructured data. Storage customers do not require much AI because they need only reports on storage uptime, downtime, and management perspective. They want to know their disk size, consumption, and how much deduplication and compression they will receive.

If I go ahead with normal storage where I cannot get any deduplication and compression, I will require the full capacity. However, when I go ahead with Dell PowerStore, I will get effective capacity. For example, hypothetically, with a 3:1 compression ratio, if my data is 100 TB, I will only require 30 TB of capacity. Whereas without deduplication and compression, I would require 100 TB.

Dell PowerStore provides deduplication and compression with availability of five nines. The customer got significant benefit from deduplication compression in terms of effective capacity. One of my customers required somewhere around 100 TB of storage, but in terms of effective capacity, I could start with only 20 TB of storage and store data up to 100 TB because of deduplication and compression.

Effective capacity is an excellent feature from Dell PowerStore which is provided by deduplication and compression. Dell PowerStore has a feature called DARE, Data at Rest Encryption. Once the data is written on the hard disk, it is automatically encrypted. Any data which is encrypted will not be encrypted again by any ransomware attack. Dell PowerStore also provides SED hard disks, meaning self-encrypted disks, and because of that, they are achieving the DARE functionality.

Dell PowerStore definitely provides both functionality in terms of NAS and block. Dell PowerStore provides CloudIQ for management. Inside they offer reporting on how much deduplication and compression I have, how much my current utilization is, and at the current rate, when my data storage is going to be full so I know when I require an upgrade. They also offer predictive analysis in terms of whether any hard disk is corrupted or going to fail. This feature and functionality is available with Dell PowerStore.

Otherwise the product is very rugged, so there is no issue at all. Once the customer deploys it in their environment, they are running successfully and there are no major challenges. Availability is the strongest part because it is a rugged product, so there is no issue. I have never faced any challenging in terms of downtime.

To date, I did not come across multiple clustering for one of the customers. However, I have sold multiple Dell PowerStore appliances to a single customer, but they did not require clustering. They are using them for individual locations.

Certain models do not provide the NAS functionality and only provide block storage. If Dell PowerStore could increase that offering from each product for NAS functionality, it would be good.

I used Dell PowerStore was used for approximately three years.

Dell PowerStore is a stable product that is very rugged, so there is no issue. I have never faced any challenging in terms of downtime. Once the customer deploys it in their environment, they are running successfully and there are no major challenges.

Dell PowerStore is easy to scale with a cluster node architecture scenario. When a customer wants to increase any type of size, the only limitation is that the customer has to add an entire appliance.

Dell PowerStore provides CloudIQ software for the management part, which is a cloud-based solution. I can easily manage my entire storage, not only single storage, but if I have multiple storages, I can manage them from a single console.

I am a system integrator currently working with both Commvault and CloudVision.

I started with Dell PowerStore 500T. The setup is easy.

Dell PowerStore provides CloudIQ for management. Dell PowerStore has already integrated a certain feature of AI, but storage customers do not require much AI because they require only reports on how much storage uptime and downtime they have and management perspective. They want to know their disk size, consumption, and how much deduplication and compression they will receive. I am working with Dell Technologies. I am a partner for the Dell entire product portfolio. I am also a partner of Arista as well as a partner of Commvault.

Whatever 70% savings I achieve, I will get it easily on return on investment.

I can say nine out of ten.

Competitor products include NetApp, Hitachi, and HPE. In some features and functionality like inbuilt NAS functionality, Dell is ahead. Dell PowerStore and NetApp can be compared with each other. However, HP does not provide the NAS functionality and Hitachi requires an additional appliance to provide NAS functionality. Otherwise, all the products provide deduplication compression ratio, management software, and technical solutions because they are enterprise products.

Effective capacity is an excellent feature from Dell PowerStore which is provided by deduplication and compression. I am working with Dell PowerStore, PowerEdge, and everything from Dell. Dell PowerStore is easy to scale with a cluster node architecture scenario. When a customer wants to increase any type of size, the only limitation is that the customer has to add an entire appliance. This review has an overall rating of nine out of ten.

My team's role in using or managing Dell PowerStore is that we run all our infrastructure for our shared infrastructure in all the data centers, and we run Dell PowerStore for our IaaS solutions and some backup DR solutions. 

Currently, we are not using Dell PowerStore for any AI initiatives in our company or for our clients; it's primarily for IaaS workloads, so Infrastructure-as-a-Service on our shared platform for customers. 

Currently, we are utilizing the 500Ts and 1200Ts models of Dell PowerStore.

We have seen the benefits of consolidation, compression, and reduction in overall storage.

I can share a specific example where Dell PowerStore made a noticeable improvement in our business operations; we were running an IaaS platform for one of our acquisitions on a different vendor, and we've moved that to a brand new platform we built based on PowerEdge and Dell PowerStore. All of our performance is now improved, and all of our customers are happy; they're not complaining anymore about performance. We've recently received feedback that there's a massive improvement—boot times are quicker, and responsiveness from their workloads is quicker.

We have realized several benefits from using Dell PowerStore; we migrated to the current Dell PowerStore models from tiered storage, and now we're using all flash. 

The dedupe and compression has been a big benefit for us versus the old storage that it was running, and we've seen the performance of all flash for our storage services. 

My company finds particular features within Dell PowerStore valuable, primarily the cost benefits for the performance that we get out of the platform. We've definitely seen the benefit on that side of it, including the cost per terabyte, and the support from Dell has been excellent as well. 

We haven't had any issues with it, so it's been very reliable as a platform for us.

The performance metrics I use to measure success with Dell PowerStore are all IOPS and throughput. We are not using it with AI workloads on Dell PowerStore, so it's primarily just customers running IaaS, however, it is important that it's reliable and performs well, and we get that from Dell PowerStore.

Dell PowerStore has supported growth and operational success for my business; a key driver at the moment is consolidation, and the dedupe and compression ratios allow us to standardize on a single platform. This has helped improve our operational metrics and overall operations, as we now have only one vendor to support and one set of storage arrays to manage. We have a very clear path into support and escalation if there is an issue, and we are not dealing with multiple vendors.

It could be improved to be cheaper for us. Cost versus performance is crucial, and it has to have the performance and capabilities that we need for that price point.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for years.

I would assess Dell PowerStore's stability and reliability as excellent; the latest generation of Dell PowerStores that we put in has had no issues and no downtime.

I see Dell PowerStore growing with our future needs; as a company, we have standardized our compute and storage now on Dell, so that's the way it's going to grow.

Our business has around 1000 employees.

I would evaluate Dell support as a nine out of ten.

Any instance that we've had to open with Dell or any support ticket we've had has been responded to very quickly, and the quality of the team we deal with is very good. 

There's not much more I can get out of support really. They are responsive, and I've very little to complain about from a Dell perspective. There are always going to be issues with a support department, and we understand that. The escalation paths are clear, and the account managers and team I work with at Dell Ireland are always proactive in reaching out if they identify an issue.

Positive

Before moving to Dell PowerStore, I considered NetApp and Pure Storage as two of our large vendors, and we've also used HP. 

We've explored a large range of them. A huge standout in my evaluation process, both positive and negative, comparing these options was realistically the performance for the price; since we use a significant amount of Dell, they are our number one vendor for compute, and it makes sense for us to standardize our compute. When we compare the performance to the cost, it's a no-brainer for us.

We have seen a return on our investment in Dell PowerStore; definitely our cost per terabyte has been very good compared to some of the other vendors that we would have been using previously, and our performance benchmarks have exceeded what we were expecting.

At the moment, I can't think of any area where Dell PowerStore could be better; my engineering teams aren't complaining about anything, and we're happy with the performance, support, dedupe, compression, and costs. 

My advice to others considering Dell PowerStore is that the more you understand about the workloads you're going to run on the storage, the more accurate you can be, and the better solution you'll end up with. I would rate Dell PowerStore as an eight or a nine out of ten.

We use Dell PowerStore for the data centers and mostly for virtualization to provide storage capacity to hypervisors, using it for different use cases such as SQL databases, Exchange servers, and custom-based applications that serve different purposes.

Use cases that are mostly used involve some clients in the banks hosting main applications on Dell PowerStore, and sometimes it is used to replace previous generations of Dell products, such as Unity or VNX, where the customer base primarily consists of traditional Dell customers, along with some government institutions.

Some use cases with Dell PowerStore that can impact involve a client hosting an application for a public service that people use, and they provided feedback that the application performance has improved, and they are happy with this product.

The best features of Dell PowerStore are that it is really easy to use and really easy to set up, and a great feature is also the performance, which is really good, and it is very easy to integrate with VMware, for example; it has great integration.

Apart from the pricing, the key differentiator for Dell PowerStore in comparison to competitors such as IBM and Hitachi is its performance and data reduction, which is a really great feature since the data reduction ratio is much better on Dell PowerStore.

From a technical perspective regarding Dell PowerStore, I am not certain what improvements or enhancements should be made because it is a really good product; however, from the price perspective, I think it should be less expensive to better position it against vendors such as IBM or Hitachi, since sometimes it is hard to sell it due to higher pricing.

Disadvantages of Dell PowerStore, apart from the price, from a technical perspective, do not exist.

For growing needs, Dell PowerStore is easy to scale, but I had an issue where if a client wants to buy additional drives after the initial purchase, the price is quite expensive because they do not get the discount from the initial purchase; thus, they should plan to buy more capacity up front.

We have been working with Dell PowerStore for approximately two or three years.

I have not experienced any downtimes or crashes with Dell PowerStore, as it has been really stable, and we have not replaced any part except perhaps some hard drives.

For growing needs, Dell PowerStore is easy to scale, but I had an issue where if a client wants to buy additional drives after the initial purchase, the price is quite expensive because they do not get the discount from the initial purchase; thus, they should plan to buy more capacity up front.

We had cases when we needed support from the Dell technical support team, which is quite good for consultancy and firmware issues; however, in our region, it is a bit more challenging to get hardware parts since everything goes through partners, which can create a bottleneck.

I would rate the tech support an eight on a scale of one to ten.

Positive

Deployment of Dell PowerStore is quite easy, and compared to previous generations of Dell or other vendors, I think it is really easy for us as system integrators, although sometimes it is not great for us as it limits the services we sell since clients can even do the deployment themselves.

We are a partner and a system integrator with Dell, and also we are an authorized deployment and support provider.

Apart from the pricing, the key differentiator for Dell PowerStore in comparison to competitors such as IBM and Hitachi is its performance and data reduction, which is a really great feature since the data reduction ratio is much better on Dell PowerStore.

We work with Dell PowerStore and with Unity.

Performance metrics with Dell PowerStore actually depend on the case, but for some clients, the most important is the latency and write latency, and they use various tools to measure, mostly with VMware's vCenter that has some metrics they can monitor; however, to be honest, the clients or institutions using it are not utilizing the maximum performance or capacity that it can provide.

Most of our clients are small to medium businesses, but Dell PowerStore is not really a fit for small businesses since they tend to go with lower models such as PowerVault or less expensive products.

I do not have specific analysis on how Dell PowerStore has supported the growth of operational success for medium businesses, but since it is easy and has no issues, I think the IT teams do not have to worry and are happy with it.

I can recommend to other organizations considering Dell PowerStore that if they want an on-premises solution, they can count on it for performance and reliability, making it a really good product. This review has an overall rating of nine out of ten.