Dell PowerStore Reviews

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.

We have a lot of Dell systems and backup repositories. We are now migrating to Dell PowerStore.

We are implementing Dell PowerStore to migrate from older systems and improve performance and security.

Dell PowerStore has helped our organizations by improving performance and reducing data and data center space. Our overall data footprint has been reduced by 40 percent.

CloudIQ allows us to manage all of the storage appliances from a single pane of glass and also magic dashboarding for better insights.

Dell PowerStore's cyber-resilient data approach is great because security is a key driver in our organization. One of our top issues is managing security and all the things that are intricate in the equipment are key to our organization.

Integrating Dell PowerStore with VMware allows us to manage storage allocation more efficiently and with greater resilience.   

The most valuable feature is the encryption in the loop because we can manage data center data from a different perspective, reducing the space used while growing data using the same equipment.

AI will be a challenge and we must manage different kinds of data with more performance and security. It's a key driver.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for one year.

We are in the process of migrating and as of now the stability of Dell PowerStore has been incredible.

Dell PowerStore has features to reduce occupancy and we can manage the use of that space differently.

We have used Dell for 20 years and one of their top priorities is to guarantee if we have an issue, we can solve it and their support has been great.

We previously used Dell EMC VMAX but switched to Dell PowerStore for increased security performance and reduced footprint.

We have a script that syncs with the things we want to achieve and typically the partners use that script to implement and it works perfectly.

For high performance, we evaluated HPE and two others.

I would rate Dell PowerStore eight out of ten. We are still in the migration phase.

We use Dell PowerStore for developing applications.

The solution has improved our organization by providing data availability and data protection.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is the metro cluster because we have two data centers and high availability. The solution provides good performance and stability.

Our organization uses CloudIQ to manage and analyze our Dell storage. It helps us see all the information together and understand more about the technology.

The solution has helped us achieve 5:1 data reduction.

We are utilizing Dell PowerStore’s integration with VMware.

We have been able to reduce our organizational footprint using Dell PowerStore.

My experience with Dell’s reseller was very good because they helped us a lot.

The solution’s security and technical support could be improved.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for four years.

The solution provides very good stability.

Dell PowerStore is a scalable solution.

The solution's technical support used to be much better some years ago, but now it is a little worse. Normally, Dell has an SLA of four hours, but the support is never on time. When we have a problem, the support team takes a long time to resolve it.

We previously used Unity and EqualLogic. We switched to Dell PowerStore because of its performance.

The solution's initial setup is very easy, and we don't have to spend a lot of time implementing it.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We have customers in the United States Army across the continental U.S. and overseas. All the data centers in the army are heavily powered by Dell.

We deploy PowerStore based on our customer's requirements. Some are on-prem, others in the Cloud, and some use a hybrid model.

PowerStore has helped our customers manage their missions and support all of their employees with data.

Dell PowerStore's energy consumption is on par with the competition.

We have integrated PowerStore with VMware and Nutanix. The integration has helped consolidate resources and downsize data centers.

PowerStore is easy to use, powerful, reliable, and highly customizable to customers' needs.

Dell PowerStore needs to continue evolving and incorporating new cutting-edge technology.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for two years.

The scalability of Dell PowerStores depends on the environment. Some are more complex than others, especially if we are using VDI infrastructure. Having all the services consolidated makes it hard to scale.

The technical support is outstanding.

Positive

On-prem deployments are easy but hybrid ones can be more complex.

We also evaluated HPE but decided on Dell PowerStore because our customers are more knowledgeable about Dell which is more predominant in the market.

I would rate Dell PowerStore ten out of ten.

PowerStore's ability to help reduce our customer's environmental footprints is a mixed bag because of the power consumption that has increased due to servers becoming more powerful. So even though the consolidation reduces the power consumption in some areas, it increases in others.

We have implemented Dell PowerStore for small sites needing mirrored storage. To ensure high availability, the storage is set up in two different locations, possibly in the same building but far apart.

For example, when you have a large warehouse that could have almost 800 meters between the server rooms, we put one in one server room and one in the other. If something happens to the one on one side of the building, you still have the other one.

There have been no significant benefits to the organization because Dell PowerStore is expensive, and we have found that it offers the same functionality as other storage solutions.

Powerstore's cyber-resilient approach protects our data well. We haven't had any problems. 

Dell PowerStore is too expensive, and it could be less complicated. It isn't as user-friendly as other options, especially regarding the user interface.

We have been using Dell PowerStore for about one year.

It is hard to know how stable PowerStore servers are since we've only used it for a year, but they have worked so far. 

We contacted them once about to test a VxRail solution. That was quick, and it was working, so it's hard to gauge their support. 

Neutral

We also use Nimble Storage for other sites. They likely decided to use Dell based on server pricing and simplifying purchases by choosing the same vendor for storage. However, we are considering returning to Nimble Storage.

Dell PowerStore is too expensive for what it does.

Currently, we are exploring Huawei solutions because they offer the same thing for a third of the price. 

I rate Dell PowerStore Rack Servers seven out of 10. 

We mainly use the solution for virtual server infrastructure and block storage (not file storage use).

The main challenge we addressed was having some kind of mid-range all-flash array. It's one of the best use cases. 

The budget is good. It's really good, price-wise. It's cost-effective.

We have some VMware use cases for VMware infrastructure and it is good for that. We can use it for its data reduction capabilities. We have moved from 1.48 to 1.27. 

It offers good snapshots.

We use Cloud IQ for analysis. It's simple to quickly check and you don't have to be near the array to do so. 

The cyber-resilient data approach is good. It has all the features we need as a security company. The read-only snapshots are great.

There could be better reporting. We should be able to do some better metrics and they should be stored for longer so we can do better investigations. 

I've been using the solution for about four years. 

The stability is good. However, the sizer is not quite right. From my experience, the same number with the same read/write ratio and the same log size is off compared to my own notes. It's stable, yet the CPU utilization is higher. Sometimes, we need to move stuff off of it since we can see it's being over-utilized. 

The scalability is good for our use case. Sometimes I wish the cluster capabilities were more like XtremIO.

In the last year, we've noticed that there has been a drop-off in Dell support. In the past, I've had a better experience. The merge didn't benefit the support.

Neutral

We used to use XtremIO. We didn't fully switch. We decide which to use depending on the use case and budget. Other companies offer discounts from time to time. We'll compare and have an auction to see who wins. Price is just one factor. We also evaluate the support experience, for example. 

The deployment is very easy.

We install the solution ourselves. We did not use an integrator or consultant. 

We've witnessed an ROI after switching from some other infrastructure. It identified some areas in which we could get some good reductions and could decrease the data center footprint. 

We're constantly evaluating other solutions and comparing the options for price, support, and other metrics.

We aren't really using any integrations. We also don't use it for AI-driven workloads. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's a great product. It's improving over time. When it was first released, I'd rate it four or five out of ten. However, it keeps getting better. The only problem I see is the support. 

We use Dell PowerStore with the VMware platform for block storage.

Our customers implement Dell PowerStore for the performance and deduplication compression ratio. For all the PowerStores that Dell deployed, I am around three dot eight or three dot six compression. It depends on the VMs and the customer's infrastructure, but it's quite good.

Our deployments are always on-premises for organizations in multiple industries, including medical and production. The environments are small, with around 20 terabytes of data or less.

We integrate PowerStore with VMware. We can't use PowerStore if we don't have a virtual platform like VMware or Hyper-V. We use VMware-certified professionals.

CloudIQ is a good tool for monitoring all our systems. It creates alerts that notify us if something is wrong and it also creates tickets automatically to Dell.

The most valuable aspects of Dell PowerStore are integration with VMware and reliability.

Dell PowerStore is an unfinished product compared to the HPE systems because it is relatively new. The synchronous replication was only added recently.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for four years.

PowerStore is stable. We install it and forget it for four years until it is time to replace it. 

We only sell one PowerStore to our clients, so there has been no need to scale but if needed more disks can be added.

The Dell support is good. The response time is good and the people are reliable. I am happy with the support.

Positive

We have worked with HPE, Huawei, and Pure Storage. Dell PowerStore is a young product compared to HPE. HPE has a lot of experience. Huawei is aggressive with pricing and has good products in Europe. Pure Storage is good but heavy and costly compared to Dell PowerStore.

For me, the deployment is easy because I'm very experienced. We had a lot of issues passing from version two to version three. I had to call Dell support each time we upgraded from version two to version three but once we're on version three, it is good.

I would rate Dell PowerStore eight out of ten.

We use this solution for storage. I'm an enterprise architect. 

It's a versatile box that has different kinds of protocols that can be switched off and on. They have their own encryption which is good. It also has its own file formatting protocol, which saves us a lot of space.

A downside of Powerstore is that it can only do thin provisioning. I had trouble finding articles on the internet about it. When I was looking for information on switching features on and off there was not a lot available. 

I've been using this solution for several years. 

The solution is stable. 

The scalability is good. 

We have a bit of a challenge with technical support. We didn't purchase any support but it would have been really appreciated if Bell would have provided some minimal support for us. 

The initial setup is quite straightforward although we had to make quite a few adjustments. There was some trial and error but we got there in the end. Some additional documentation around that would have been good.

I believe the ROI is good although I haven't checked it. 

I believe the price point is quite good. 

I like this solution, it has everything you need for enterprise-grade storage. It supports all the protocols. It is much more reliable and efficient than the normal HPD.

I rate this solution seven out of 10.