Dell PowerStore Reviews

We use Dell PowerStore as a storage layer behind the virtualization layer. We have IBM SCC and we have the PowerStore behind that to serve the discs to the SCC and the SCC then presents it to the hosts in the network.

The high deduplication ratio means that we need less physical storage space. As a result, we have more virtual storage space available to assign to our servers. We have not encountered any problems with the system so far. Therefore, the system is better in terms of both performance and storage efficiency.

The compression ratio is way better with PowerStore. We were getting a ratio of 1:3 and now it is around 1:6. The compression ratio has doubled.

Dell's values around ESG are high and they have been working on those areas throughout the years.

We noticed that the PowerStore has a really high compression ratio for data. It's really good for data deduplication and also compressing the data on the drives. The PowerStore's compression ratio is even higher than the Unity system. Also, the way the PowerStore is built with special CPUs for moving data around. The systems also have lower CPU utilization compared to Unity systems.

In the past, with Unity, we could run both block storage and configure part of the system as a NAS system. This wasn't ideal, but it provided flexibility. With PowerStore, we have to choose between block storage and NAS functionality. It would be interesting to retain the option to configure PowerStore as a block storage array and try out the NAS features to see how it performs. It was an interesting way to see if we need a certain type of storage. We were able to do that from the same system, and now we have queues when we set up the system, which one it's convenient.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for one and a half years.

I would rate the stability of Dell PowerStore as ten out of ten.

Dell PowerStore is scalable but we are not using the scalability of the system.

The technical support is always quick to respond. They are always willing to help us and if necessary, they will search for a specialist within their Dell network who we can approach with our questions.

Positive

We replaced Dell VNX with Dell PowerStore.

The deployment is really easy. If we have a PowerStore and we buy another and arrange all the necessary factors that need to be available in the data center, including cabling, power, and configuration details such as IP addresses and DNS names, it's simple to roll out, and it doesn't take much effort to place it in our data center and have it up and running. It takes a few hours of work if we have done all the prep work to get it up and running.

I would rate Dell PowerStore ten out of ten.

Prior to my joining the organization, they used Hitachi and transitioned to Dell due to cost considerations.

We haven't implemented the latest code yet, but we attended a session at the beginning of the day where they mentioned that backups can now be moved directly to the data domain from the power store. This is an interesting development, as it opens up new possibilities for backup management. For instance, we could now consider placing backup clients on a machine that is specifically designed for this purpose.

Dell PowerStore is doing what it's supposed to do, and it's even doing it better than we were expecting.

We use private cloud solutions. We have 80-plus setups, and PowerStore is in all of our smaller sites for databases, backups, and VM instances.

We implemented PowerStore for its reliability. We know what we get with it and have specific requirements for uptime.

Dell PowerStore has improved our uptime. The availability is excellent. We had different Dell EMC storage solutions since the beginning of our company and with PowerStore we have had zero incidents.

PowerStore helps reduce our footprint. For example, if we compare it with Dell VNX storage, we need up to four times less space for the same if not more terabytes. The ratio for PowerStore may even be higher than four to one because the last time we compared the compression rate, it was four point six to one. 

PowerStore's compression ratio is a valuable feature for our VMs because it gives us a lot back. It is also easily configurable and we have it fully automated, so the API helps a lot.

We got our first Dell PowerStore for testing before it was listed as a product.

Dell PowerStore is stable.

Dell PowerStore is scalable but we did our analysis at the start and have not needed to scale. We replace the storage after five years. 

The technical support is good.

Positive

We previously used VNX, VNX2, Unity, and at some point EMC XtremIO. We didn't like the XtremIO because it had an incident. We replaced the VNX and Unity storage with PowerStore because it is the newer generation that offers more space and IOPS.

We are currently using Dell PowerStore for our smaller storage and there is no competition for pricing. If we needed a larger PowerStore say, a petabyte of storage, then the price would be in a different range and would increase.

I would rate Dell PowerStore nine out of ten. I have no negative feedback. PowerStore performs as expected.

We do not use CloudIQ. We use a special custom in-house tool to analyze all of our storage which gets all the statistics through an API.

We have our own small private cloud setup and each site has its own PowerStore. Nothing is shared over the network. We have one storage per physical location.

I recommend using Dell's professional services for the initial setup. We gained valuable information from them that helped with all follow-up deployments.

It's a good product, especially for companies dealing with virtualization. It's well-suited for a broad range of use cases and stands out when it comes to tasks like personalization. If you require power and flexibility in that regard, it's a reasonably priced, straightforward product that is easy to manage. It delivers on its promises without unnecessary complexity.

A particularly valuable feature is its simplicity. The reporting tools and support are good, and the solution promotes data reduction, often meeting the compression ratio. You can initially invest in less upfront capacity and expand later as needed.

Data reduction needs improvement. While the reporting is generally good for general purposes, it may lack sufficient detail for more technical analysis. If you want to delve into where your I/Os are going, the reporting might need more in-depth information to make informed decisions.

I’ve been using the solution for around three years.

The solution is scalable within regions. It allows you to scale up to four nodes in one tool for extensive storage. You can create as many tools as needed, providing scalability based on the use case. It performs well for midsized use cases, especially those involving up to a hundred servers for virtualization. However, you might consider alternative products for more complex and larger-scale operations.

The technical support is good as they continuously monitor the system remotely through a support agent. This agent provides critical alerts, and the response time is typically within an hour.

The initial setup is straightforward. Firstly, the initial step involves unboxing, followed by configuring connectivity. There are various types of connectivity setups, including straight connectivity, direct connect, and private channel connectivity, offering diverse IT capacity configurations. The setup process encompasses unboxing, provisioning power, and connecting to the necessary switches. However, it's crucial to begin with a well-thought-out plan. One person is required to set up the solution.

The pricing is good. There's no need to pay for a license; it's all-inclusive. The only cost is associated with a support contract based on the level of support you desire.

I recommend this solution, especially if you're not moving everything to the cloud and require reliable local storage. It proves to be an excellent choice.

I rate Dell PowerStore a nine out of ten.
 

Dell PowerStore is used in the BFS industry.

The main feature of Dell PowerStore is its support for NVMe as well as hybrid solutions.

We require the most up-to-date NVMe technology.

We like the performance of Dell PowerStore.

Most of the features are available, including support for NVMe and a mix-and-match of storage devices.

Dell PowerStore is quite expensive.

We would consider this solution if the pricing is competitive with other options, as it offers a very good solution. However, the current price is slightly higher than the competition.

I have been working with Dell PowerStore for five years.

Dell PowerStore is stable. I would rate the stability of Dell PowerStore a ten out of ten.

Dell PowerStore is a scalable solution.

We have more than 50 customers using Dell PowerStore.

We have a team of two or three people who deploy this solution.

We have 25 engineers.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The deployment process only took around thirty minutes.

The deployment process is being handled by my technical team. As the owner of the company, I am not involved in the actual deployment.

Dell PowerStore is a good return on investment.

There are no separate licenses required as all the basic licenses are included in the bundle.

The licenses required may vary based on the customer's specific requirements, such as for decompression, deduplication, disaster recovery data, log shipping, and so on.

I would suggest considering Dell PowerStore for various other applications, such as file storage and video storage, due to its capabilities and features.

I would rate Dell PowerStore a ten out of ten.

I use Dell PowerStore in my company primarily for virtualization through ESXi. Dell PowerStore serves as a primary system for all the storage needs within our organization.

The product's current functionalities that have improved my organization's functioning stem from the SSD caching and SSD capabilities of the product. The product's speed is also crucial for us, especially within our new modern infrastructure, which has a strong networking backbone. My company has a good experience with the product overall.

The most valuable feature of the solution for me is the deduplication part, especially since most of the servers in our organization are Windows-based servers. Due to the deduplication technology in the product, my organization needs just a little storage for many servers, meaning the new technology within Dell PowerStore is a big advantage for us.

Dell PowerStore helps to keep the software we rely on in our organization up and running. In our organization, we do firmware updates due to security breaches or vulnerabilities, and as a system administrator, it is important for me to know that the base hardware is in good condition and safe to deal with against hacker attempts while also looking out for any problems within the software itself. To avoid any concerns when it comes to Dell PowerStore, Dell needs to keep working on Dell products.

While using Dell PowerStore's interface in our organization, we sometimes miss out on some information. In our organization, we had to deal with bad firmware last year that generated fast degradation of the disks, and Dell informed us when they would replace the disks, but we couldn't see any notifications about the disks being degraded. I feel that the product's new interface with HTML5 interface is still in the development phase because it lacks the crucial information that system administrators need, like, for example, the degradation of the disk. With the product's current interface, as a system administrator, I just see that the disks are either good or bad, and that's it. As a system administrator, it would be great to use and see through CLI since getting informed at such a level within the interface will be a great improvement since more detailed information is always good.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for two to three years. Considering that the one we use in our company is for SSD caching, I believe it is Dell PowerStore 1000T.

From a stability perspective, my company has faced some problems only with the firmware part of the product, but that didn't really impact the product's performance. There were some problems with the degradation of hard disks, because of which there were more chances of failure of the solution. Dell handled issues related to the degradation of hard disks.

From a scalability perspective, my company doesn't have any problems since we get what we need and what we expect for about five years. In our organization, we are still good with the limits offered by the product, so we don't really talk about scalability. We can reduce our ESXi service, but my company does not plan to scale up.

The solution's technical support is great. In our organization, we have had several incidents related to firmware in the last couple of years. Dell's support team is good to reach out when, in our organization, we upgrade the product outside of office hours since they provide you with good information and good tech personnel to resolve an issue or a problem anywhere in the world. In my organization, we have had incidents and seen how the support personnel from Egypt, India, and China are always well aware of the cases or problems, and they always give good information to help us with our problems, making it a good experience for us.

I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

I have experience with HPE products that have the same capabilities as Dell PowerStore. I would say that Dell is on the same level as HPE.

My company has a good relationship and history with Dell, so things are good for us in the department concerning supplies from Dell.

The product's initial setup phase was quite smooth. The product's setup phase was done parallel to the old storage in our organization, so we had to make the correct connections and migrate everything to run it on a new storage. There is a need to dismantle the old system and reconfigure the network part.

The solution can be deployed in under a month.

In my organization, we were involved with the implementation phase of the product and during the upgrade from the old storage to the new storage with a specialist from one of our suppliers of Dell products.

I am not aware of any return on investment my company has experienced from the use of the product.

In the pricing and licensing department, the product is always too expensive.

My organization does not use CloudIQ to manage and analyze Dell PowerStore.

My organization does not get involved in any power management or monitoring to assess Dell PowerStore's overall energy consumption.

I have seen a significant data consolidation and footprint reduction with the use of Dell PowerStore since we need to use way less storage in our organization, which is around a 50 to 60 percent reduction if we consider it from a TB perspective due to its deduplication technology.

Within our organization, the area revolving around the assessment of Dell Technologies for its values around environment, social, and governance is a hot topic. Our organization has used Dell for a lot of years, and it is great to see that Dell has become innovative in terms of recyclability and reduction of carbon footprint, because of which we don't need to change to another supplier or vendor to help us attain our green goals.

Dell PowerStore is a good product since we don't face any more problems with it in our company. Dell's support team's contracts with our company are very good. I hope the product fulfills its duty in a couple of years, after which our organization can replace it with another next-gen product.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

We are in the process of replacing our current SANs, FTP servers, and NAS servers, and have already implemented the new SAN solution.

This solution is highly flexible and offers efficient online compression capabilities. 

The equipment is standardized and can be easily upgraded by replacing the controllers. 

The disk sizes are also quite adequate, and the solution is user-friendly. Additionally, it offers extremely fast performance.

One of the benefits of their continuous improvement approach is that each update comes with additional features, without any extra charges for previously missing functionalities.

The cost of technical support is high.

I have been working with Dell PowerStore for two and a half years.

Dell PowerStore is extremely stable.

I haven't had any issues.

The scalability of the technology is excellent. 

One of the enhancements made since last year is the inclusion of NVMe in each shell. By continually extending NVMe, the drives can now reach up to 15 terabytes, which may differ from previous specifications. 

Although the claimed four-to-one compression ratio may actually be closer to two point eight, or three, it is marketed as four, and it comes with a compact footprint.

Technical Support is pretty good.

We've received an email or a phone call.

The higher the scale, the more expensive it is.

When you buy it, it comes with a three-year service agreement, but it is quite pricey. However, it includes everything for our response and everything.

The initial setup process for Dell PowerStore is straightforward and easy to follow. Even when using a fiber channel, which supports speeds of 10 and 25 gigabits per second, the setup is relatively simple.

Dell PowerStore has been priced aggressively, especially when compared to other NVMe storage options. It is likely one of the most cost-effective options for organizations seeking a pure NVMe play in terms of pricing.

I would rate Dell PowerStore a ten out of ten.

It's an aggressive box. It's a real departure. From everybody else.

We are a partner with Dell.

We're evaluating the product. We're evaluating various storage platforms. We're looking for ACI, block, and file storage. 

One of the biggest factors for us is security. We want to make sure we're as secure as possible.

We're a Dell shop to begin with, in our architecture. There are benefits to keeping Dell as the main brand and staying consistent. Dell is the product of choice in our shop.

The simplicity and performance are great. It meets a lot of our objectives.

We're still trying to figure out the cyber-resilient data approach to security. We're checking all the boxes from a performance perspective; security is a big factor and we're looking into it. It's very interesting.

We do use Cloud IQ. It's still new to us. We use it a lot for lifecycle management for our PowerEdge cache management. It's good for firmware and patch management. We're hoping we will be able to automate a lot of those activities (versus doing everything manually).

The overall energy consumption is good. We're saving on our consumption. It's more economical compared to other products and technologies. It has a slight edge; however, it may not be overly significant. It does make sense if you have multiple PowerStores. It would have multiple savings, depending on the amount you use. 

We've condensed our footprint and become more efficient. We've reduced our footprint by 50% at least.

The integration with VMware is great. That's our biggest play on-prem. 

From an air gap perspective and data protection, I'd like to see more immutable backups. We'd like to see some improvements on the security side. 

I'm currently in the evaluation period. It's been six to 12 months.

I haven't seen any issues with stability. From the performance we've experienced, we haven't had any problems.

I did deal with support at the outset. We're a big Dell company, and we love the support and account managers that help facilitate things.

Positive

We're currently evaluating Dell and Pure Storage. We're more of a Dell shop and are leaning towards Dell. I see the benefit and value of Dell.

The initial setup was user-friendly. The product is simplistic. The UI makes it easy to navigate.

It's cost-effective.

We are not using the solution for any AI-driven workloads. However, we know it's coming. It'll position us better in the future.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We do a lot of cloning of databases for either troubleshooting or to stage and prepare implementation. We are a SaaS provider in the real estate industry and we're either using the PowerStore to help expedite things in our development environment, or we're using it to help troubleshoot any problems that we have.

We have north of 13 petabytes of storage in our environment.

PowerStore has enabled us to add additional storage to that we hadn't planned on, which allows us to defer the purchase of some additional storage.

We've really improved the amount of storage that we're able to effectively utilize because of its better deduping. It has about a 50 percent better dedupe rate, with its intelligence, than we had been previously getting. Overall, we've benefited from the dedupe, compression, and replication, the advanced technology, of this frame. It's all better than what we had in the previous generation of XtremIO appliances, and above what we were getting in the Dell EMC Unitys.

My guys have told me that the administration tools take advantage of machine learning and make recommendations to the admins, and that makes the administration easier.

We've been using Dell EMC PowerStore for about six months.

We've had no issues with the machines since turning them on.

The machine supports "six nines" of availability. Anything they could do to push it closer to "seven nines" of availability would be extremely beneficial.

It scales both horizontally and vertically.

The support has been phenomenal.

We replaced an older, high-performance storage device that was very expensive. With PowerStore, we were able to achieve the IOPS, and we were also able to get a data compression rate significantly above what we had expected. We were able to retire that older, very expensive piece of storage by bringing in the PowerStore. It's been faster and cheaper than we had expected, per terabyte.

Another reason that we were after this machine was PowerStore's VMware integration. We're a very large VMware customer. Some 98 percent  of our workload runs on VMware.

The setup was very straightforward. We bought it with the setup from Dell EMC support. We bought it, they shipped it, and a Dell EMC engineer coordinated with my storage engineer. We set it up and then did the data migration. On these particular frames, we needed very little help. It all went very seamlessly.

We had a couple of data center engineers involved, as well as a couple of storage admins, and a storage architect.

Our storage administrators took very limited training to get up to speed on the machines.

Dell EMC was involved and the experience was very good. They showed up when they were supposed to, all the pre-work was done. They did the post-work, and there were no concerns from our team.

We exceeded the business case of the device that we had. We were able to add more workloads to the environment than the business case allowed, and we are still migrating more. So our cost per IOP and our cost per gigabyte have been substantially lower than our business case.

We did a very competitive analysis on the pricing and compared it against the tradeoffs of the other storage products that we had previously bought, and we found PowerStore to be favorable on a cost-per-compute basis.

There's still a cap on the upgrade path, where you can consume all the engines within the frame before you have to go to another frame. I would like more flexibility to increase the number of engines on the frames. Normally, we exceed the IOPS on the frames before we can ever exhaust the storage, so anything they can do to help us avoid stranded storage capacity, capacity that we couldn't get to, would be beneficial.

We've looked at several other solution environments, including Pure, HPE, as well as Violin and a couple of the other vendors that rate high in industry reviews. For us, with our large dependence on VMware, if we can get a cost-competitive solution from Dell EMC, with their ability to support VMware, we end up with a whole lot less finger-pointing in the mix.

You can add compute or capacity independently, meaning it has greater capabilities than the Unitys that we had been targeting for our non-SaaS environment, and it has performed admirably.

Clearly test out the workloads and don't necessarily be afraid because it's a new device. Work with Dell EMC to get a great contractual solution that will protect you with the new technology. This new technology does perform. It's a great performance machine.

Although it's a relatively new platform, I was fairly confident in Dell EMC technology's support for the environment and in the performance that we had had with other machines. I felt there was very little risk in the migration to this solution, and we were really excited about the improved capabilities.

In terms of PowerStore's built-in VMware hypervisor, we really haven't used it at the edge, although I can see its capabilities there. As a SaaS provider, we generally provide in the center. For the targeted workload that we have, it's performing substantially better than we had expected within our business case.

We're very happy with the machine. It has multiple CPUs per storage frame, which is better than the predecessor machine, and there is a RAM increase as well. We got what was advertised and even a little bit better than what was advertised.

We've been very excited by the capabilities of the appliance, to the point that the person who runs the infrastructure for me is now looking for a proposal to consolidate all of our non-VMAX work on PowerStores. The performance and the administration of the machine have been great and we're looking at how we can get additional returns on this targeted workload.