Dell PowerStore Reviews

I use Dell PowerStore for an application. In my last work at B3, we bought Dell PowerStore for a specific corporate back-end, back-office solution for one application to solve problems with the service desk. We created some LUNs for a SQL Server and presented them to some Microsoft Windows Clusters using Dell PowerStore, but we don't use remote replication for Dell PowerStore; it's in a single, specific solution for an application attending a SQL Server.

The solution is implemented in finance. B3 is the Brazilian stock exchange, and all the solutions I worked on there for the last 15 years were in finance.

It reduces the time and complexity of the deployment process. It’s quite simple and can be done quickly. I believe it has significantly reduced the time required to deploy. Overall, the deployment process is very straightforward.

I really appreciate the management and the management console of Dell PowerStore along with features such as deduplication. It's good and sufficient.

Additionally, it's very easy and simple to use Dell PowerStore for moving and optimizing workloads within the cluster. It's just to provision the LUNs for the cluster. If we have a virtual environment like VMware, we can easily perform storage migration from a source disk to a target disk. This process allows us to transfer data seamlessly. In my previous jobs, we typically utilized tools such as Open Replicator, which is provided by Dell EMC, to move data between Dell EMC storage systems.

Furthermore, Dell's post-sales support is strong and very good.

If Dell PowerStore had more controllers, making it more reliable and resilient, it would be better. The most important thing for the customer is resilience and business continuity. When we have a failure in one controller and only two controllers, that's not good enough. If we could scale Dell PowerStore to four controllers, it would be better than what we have today.

I have worked with Dell EMC for more than 15 years, and also HPE, including 3PAR.

Dell's post-sales support is very strong and good. I trust in Dell's post-sales support. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

I have experience with NetApp storage solutions, hybrid NetApp, all-flash storage systems, and Hitachi models such as USPV and VSP, but my strong knowledge is with Dell EMC, PowerMax solutions, PowerFlex, VXRail, and hyper-converged infrastructure solutions.

I have deployed Dell PowerStore just once, but I have deployed many other products such as PowerMax 200, PowerMax 8000, and others. I have deployed a lot of high-end storage platforms from EMC and Dell EMC including DMX series.

I deployed it on-premises; the model is 500T. It was very simple and easy to do. I particularly really appreciate using the Apex AIOps or the CloudIQ solution from Dell EMC as it allows me to observe all the metrics and telemetrics from the performance through the SAS portal, which I think is very good for knowing about the workloads and how the equipment is working.

When it comes to Dell solutions, I find PowerMax to be the most comprehensive option. It offers a range of features such as remote replication, security snapshots, immutable security snapshots, and SRDF capabilities—both synchronous and asynchronous. It also includes features like chip copy disk mode, deduplication, peak provisioning, and effective data reduction. There are some similarities between the two, but PowerMax has several advantages. It comes with more controllers and greater resiliency, making it better suited for critical mission environments.

I would rate Dell PowerStore an eight out of ten.

I am still dealing with Dell PowerStore storages, as it is still under my job scope. I have been able to consolidate data using Dell PowerStore through migration. This consolidation is a business-as-usual job for me.

Since using Dell PowerStore, I have found features like scalability and replication most valuable, as they are very solid for their product.

It is easy to use Dell PowerStore for moving and optimizing workloads within the cluster, based on monitoring performance; I normally use migration or add more paths for load balancing to optimize the storage.

The importance of Dell PowerStore's compression and deduplication technologies lies in achieving cost savings, and I find that the ratio is very good; it ranks at the top in terms of storage compression and deduplication rates.

I see room for improvement for Dell PowerStore, especially since the market is moving towards AI, cloud, and virtualization; I believe AI can greatly help with troubleshooting, data analysis, performance monitoring, and reporting, and I think Dell will invest a lot to enhance these features.

I assess Dell PowerStore's data resiliency and cybersecurity features as very secure, from my point of view, because it is not like an open system; however, I believe there is still room to improve, as I need to raise requests for vulnerability fixes to Dell on a monthly basis.

While I consider the product to already be complicated, I believe it still has room for simplification, such as enhancing the centralized GUI features and allowing for batch jobs instead of having to click through tasks one by one.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for many years, more than ten years.

Regarding its management capabilities, I think if it comes to new users, they may not be familiar with the command line; however, from my point of view with many years of experience, I find it very stable and manageable.

It is easy to scale Dell PowerStore, whether to expand, scale up, or scale out, as it is straightforward with just a few commands.

I would rate their technical support as an eight, noting that personally, I feel the support was better ten years ago; back then, I received more help from storage support, especially regarding non-storage issues. My current assessment of their support would be about seven or eight.

Positive

I have experience with other products with Dell, as I already left Dell for a couple of years and I'm currently in an end-user company doing maintenance for storage, where I also support IBM and Hitachi products.

In evaluating other solutions, I see that the competition to Dell PowerStore is not much, with the majority being Hitachi, Huawei, and Pure Storage, which is also quite good.

Besides Dell PowerStore, I am using other storages such as IBM, Hitachi, and Huawei from multiple vendors.

My experience with the deployment of Dell PowerStore has been substantial, as I was a so-called delivery engineer in Dell for more than six years, being the person to deploy.

I find that deployment can be quite difficult for non-experienced people, as new team members coming to Dell might not pick up the concepts quickly without proper training and many years of real physical experience.

As for Lifecycle Extension, also formerly branded Anytime Upgrade, I manage scheduling and coordination as an end-user; most work is still done by Dell support representatives, so I do not have much to comment on in this area.

Personally, I feel that Dell PowerStore is a little bit costly in the market compared to other products, but this is just my personal perspective.

I do not have experience with IBM Maximo; I primarily worked with IBM SAN storage products like V Storage and S Storage. I have only a little experience with Nutanix Unified Storage, not being really hands-on with it.

I would recommend Dell PowerStore to others and I think it is the best option on the market at the moment, especially for enterprise storage where Dell PowerMax is still the top storage solution.

I assess the workload performance offered by Dell PowerStore as very good, and I am very satisfied with the performance from Dell PowerStore, as it is a high-end storage solution.

I do not really use APEX AIOps, also known as CloudIQ in Dell PowerStore, but I have seen some demos and find it to be a very impressive product that consolidates everything together; I really hope we can have this in the future.

While I work with Dell servers, including Dell PowerEdge, there are not many because I am from the storage team and servers are managed by a different team. I purchase products directly from vendors rather than through the AWS marketplace.

I have been working in this field overall for about six years. I am definitely planning to use other all-flash storages in the future, as I need to see different angles and requirements; storage requests come from application owners, and I strive to fulfill those needs.

I would rate this review an eight overall.

Dell PowerStore is used for SAN in our organization.

I prefer Dell PowerStore because the user interaction is excellent and the GUI is also outstanding. Previously, Dell produced Unity devices for SAN along with VNX, but VNX is so complicated. The GUI is not suitable for a basic or beginner user, and beginners need to learn extensively about VNX. In contrast, when you log in to Dell PowerStore's GUI, the user interface is so intuitive that you can easily find your use case.

I appreciate that Dell PowerStore is a scale-out solution where we can add multiple clusters and nodes. With Unity, we could add only certain clusters or nodes, but in Dell PowerStore, we can add multiple enclosures as well.

We are using five clusters in Dell PowerStore across different regions, with three for production and two for data protection, binding the production to disaster recovery. For disaster recovery, it performs well compared to others. I believe Dell PowerStore is the best compared to PowerVault, which I find less efficient and not recommended for big enterprises.

Dell PowerStore does not require any downtime for upgrades because we have redundancy with clusters. If controller A goes for an upgrade, controller B takes all the processes without impacting any users. The deduplication process in Dell PowerStore is superior compared to VNX and Unity.

I don't have any ideas for improvements regarding Dell PowerStore as everything seems good and they continuously implement bug fixes and upcoming patches.

I have 2.4 years of experience using Dell PowerStore, and before that, the product was used for around 3.5 years in the project.

I rate the stability of Dell PowerStore as a 10 out of 10. I have not experienced any downtime, bugs, or glitches, and it's much better than previous technologies.

I rate the scalability of Dell PowerStore as a 9 out of 10 because occasionally some bugs occur, but they are usually fixed quickly.

I would rate Dell's technical support as a 10 out of 10 because they respond quickly, especially when we have Dell PowerStore in multiple regions. If we cannot connect with one region, we try another, and the available engineer will assist us.

Compared to other solutions in the market, Dell performs very well. If we face any hardware issue and raise a ticket, they respond as quickly as possible compared to other technologies.

Positive

Previously, we were using Unity devices and VNX for SAN. Dell PowerStore offers superior deduplication compared to both VNX and Unity.

The deployment of Dell PowerStore is easy. The ports are easily configured within four to six hours, and the whole deployment process takes about six to seven hours, including port configuration and LDAP setup.

The solution could be a perfect 10, but sometimes the cost is high when we need to add more enclosures to Dell PowerStore. Although I do not know the current cost, I believe the cost can be improved.

I would recommend Dell PowerStore because it's cost-efficient compared to PowerMax. For big enterprises, instead of using PowerMax, we can utilize a couple more clusters in Dell PowerStore.

We are deploying Dell PowerStore on-premises using an auto-cloud through the network.

I don't have any information about how Dell PowerStore was purchased. We didn't use any specific scenario like the AWS marketplace or a direct purchase.

We are unable to determine the number of users using Dell PowerStore because we are providing LUNs to multiple hosts, with multiple users accessing a single host. For instance, one VM can be accessible by a hundred users, and with 30 plus VMs, that's a large number we cannot calculate.

The environment for Dell PowerStore is essentially a global one.

Since implementing Dell PowerStore, it's very fast and very secure. Vulnerabilities are identified in upcoming patches, and Dell provides patches quickly, which is significantly more helpful than waiting three to four months for other products to release their next patch.

We cannot determine how much data we have consolidated using Dell PowerStore because multiple teams are working, and from my end, I'm just monitoring the LUNs and providing reclamation.

We are using Apex AI Ops. The insights from Apex are good as we use it to monitor the cluster health and status, and the connectivity is also good compared to PowerVault, which had some bug issues preventing proper connection with Apex IO.

Some hosts using Dell PowerStore are based on Linux and Unix. Not all hosts are dependent on Windows, as some are configured for Linux and Unix. From our end, I only provide LUN provisioning and reclamation, and I don't have extensive knowledge about Linux.

We utilize built-in integrations, but from our storage team's perspective, we just provide the LUNs to the Windows team, which uses VMware ESXi hosts. I don't think we use Kubernetes.

I have no understanding of the importance of adding capacity in single drive increments versus drive packs.

My overall rating for Dell PowerStore is 9 out of 10.

My customer typically uses block storage. They have Dell PowerStore in two different locations, with one serving as the production environment and the other as the disaster recovery site. Replication exists between these two locations. One hundred percent of these volumes are allocated to VMware hosts. Approximately ninety percent of the environment is virtual, but the physical machines do not have contact with the storage; only the virtual machines do. The storage is provided to the hosts, which create the datastores, and these datastores are distributed between the VMs.

The organization has Linux VMs, but the storage is not directly connected to any physical Linux machines. Dell PowerStore integration with VMware is implemented, though not with VASA, as the VASA provider was not installed because we did not want the Windows server administrator accessing the storage. However, I can see all the VMs and which datastores they are from the storage view.

Deduplication and compression are very important features because space is always an issue with storage. I consider space constraints to be the main concern for a system storage administrator. Deduplication and compression perform exceptionally well, especially on Dell PowerStore. The compression rate has been very good so far, and we have been able to save several terabytes.

I use Cloud IQ, and it is very important because we get lost in daily tasks and sometimes have no time to actively monitor the systems in the environment. A tool like Cloud IQ keeps sending emails if anything happens, so it provides an important overview of the systems. We also use that tool to collect capacity reports from our environment. I think it is versatile and very useful.

We had a significant incident two years ago when I was preparing one of the Dell PowerStore systems for an upgrade. While running the health check, it started to corrupt every volume inside the system. We had to recover everything from the DR site because the storage became unusable. The issue was eventually found to be a bug inside the health check package. I think Dell should do better at testing those packages before applying them to the public.

I did not have an opportunity to work with it, but I think it would be beneficial to have the ability to increment a disk one at a time.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for four years.

Apart from the issue we had in the past, the system has been quite stable and the performance is amazing. I have no complaints about that.

Scaling has been pretty easy. I did not scale out, only scaled up. When we received a bunch of disks from Dell as compensation for the issue we experienced, we added them to our DR environment because we needed to recover some machines that were not on the replication and had to be recovered from backup, which required additional space. Expanding the space on Dell PowerStore was straightforward, and we had no complaints about that.

During the upgrade I mentioned, I was scaling up with a pack of disks rather than one at a time.

I have contacted technical support multiple times. Support response is reasonable, and they usually reply in time. The team members I have worked with were versatile in their knowledge of the system and never seemed lost regarding Dell PowerStore. I was always well served.

Positive

I have prior experience with other storage solutions. Before Dell PowerStore, we also had Dell XIOs, which was a similar storage system but an older version and model. Comparing the two, Dell PowerStore is much faster and more reliable than the XIOs were. I also have experience with IBM equipment, such as the DS9000 and other IBM devices. I think Dell PowerStore can keep up with them in a middle-class or enterprise environment.

During the initial deployment of Dell PowerStore, I only participated in one deployment. I did not directly work on the deployment itself because it was not my function; the company hired someone to handle that. However, I followed the process from beginning to end and found it quite easy. If I had to do it myself, I would be capable of doing so.

The setup is straightforward and one of the easiest I have worked with. Even people joining my team who have no previous experience with storage can learn through the interface in a single day session. While some doubts naturally arise, by the end of one session, they are ready to work with it.

Dell takes care of all implementation needs. I only need to identify the issue and send it to them, and if hardware replacement is required, they will go in and complete the replacement.

I do have two new machines that were installed a couple of months ago. There are two Linux machines that are connected directly to the storage, though I do not have access to those machines.

For me, Dell PowerStore integration is neutral in that the environment would function well without it, but it proved valuable in one instance because we had discrepancies in naming conventions between the storage and VMware. Using the integration, I was able to fix all those discrepancies and keep consistent naming conventions across the environment.

I would rate this product a nine overall.

For Dell PowerStore, the major use case is for data, primarily in banks. Dell PowerStore was sold for their data, which supports their FinTrak applications. For Unity, the use case is for their VMware environment as a data store.

Dell PowerStore has helped reduce my organization's capital expenditures because once the storage is made available to the VMware environment in a clustered way, it makes it easy for the end user or VMware administrator to deploy virtual machines instantly. The protocol between the VMware environment and the storage, whether it is 16 gig, 25 gig, 32 gig, or 100 gig, makes deployment faster.

For data resiliency and cybersecurity features in Dell PowerStore, Dell has another solution called Dell PowerScale, which is what most customers we sold Dell products to leverage. That solution works with their data domain appliances along with NetWorker, which is the backup software, and then the Vault infrastructure that also backs up with the data domain for vaulting and backing up or replication to the Vault environment.

Compression and deduplication features in Dell PowerStore are important because they allow me to save data and remove duplicate data. When replicating to another site, these features reduce bandwidth, which also reduces pressure on the network. This is why enabling deduplication and compression is important.

Regarding areas for improvement in Dell PowerStore, I noticed a minor inconvenience. I would have preferred if Dell PowerStore could have a common operating system across all their products, as that would be of great advantage.

I have been working on Dell PowerStore for five years since I joined Tennessee.

I do not have significant comments regarding the stability of Dell PowerStore.

In terms of scalability for Dell PowerStore, a few months ago we completed a scale-up for one of the banks, Stanbic Bank, by adding an additional shelf to the controller. They were running out of space, so we had to scale up by adding a shelf. There is no difficulty in that process because space was allocated before the addition of the shelf.

My experience overall with technical support from Dell for Dell PowerStore is very satisfactory. Their support is good and helps you through to the point where all problems are solved. I rate technical support from Dell for Dell PowerStore as 10 out of 10. Their support has been fantastic.

Positive

The solutions I have worked with that are similar to Dell PowerStore are NetApp and Huawei.

The experience with deployment for Dell PowerStore is not complex. It is simple and straightforward.

Because we are a partner, we purchase Dell PowerStore directly from Dell through our distributor.

I feel the end user will be able to speak much about return on investment with Dell PowerStore and should be able to provide detailed feedback on that.

Dell PowerStore is expensive, but those that can afford it can purchase it.

When I compare Dell with other vendors regarding technical features and pricing, I think both are better, but there will always be one ahead of the others. Even though they are good, there is always one ahead.

The best features in Dell PowerStore that I find most beneficial are generally those that are most important. If they were not important, I do not think the OEM or the product owner would include those features there, as they are based on the benefits they render to the customer or to the end user.

The workload performance in Dell PowerStore is great. As I mentioned earlier, none of the customers have complained that they had any issues with workload or writing to the storage.

I work with management capabilities in Dell PowerStore mostly with the implementation and then administration, focusing on how to administer it and how to implement it.

I do not work with CloudIQ in Dell PowerStore, which is also called APEX AIOps.

I have not enrolled in the Lifecycle Extension, formerly branded as Anytime Upgrade.

The decision to choose Dell PowerStore is the customer's choice. I can present two or three solutions to the customer, and because of the features and the customer's needs, their experience, or what they have read about the solution, it depends on the customer to choose the one that suits their demands.

I only integrate Dell PowerStore with VMware.

The integration of Dell PowerStore with VMware is seamless.

I have given this review an overall rating of 10 out of 10.

Our use case for Dell PowerStore is virtualization.

We find that Dell PowerStore scales efficiently, as we've had good success with performance, availability, and deduplication. The benefits we see when we put Dell PowerStore in include a smaller footprint; we consolidated 10 racks into two racks, going from all Cisco UCS, Pure, and Dell Compellent into one Dell PowerStore. It was a two Dell PowerStore cluster with about 26 Dell servers, so we went from 10 racks down to two, leading to major consolidation.

Dell PowerStore has provided us with great success; the overall management ease, throughput, and dedupe have been excellent, and since we've only had it for two years, I don't really have much negative feedback or things to improve upon. It's a newer technology for us, so we're still evaluating it thoroughly.

If I could add any feature to Dell PowerStore, I would say we're looking to test, but I'm not ready to answer that question because we are looking to move away from VMware and are testing out OpenStack and Zen, so we don't know how that integration would work.

The only room for improvement I would mention is that, comparing it against a legacy product we had, we were a Pure shop, and some of the data metrics we get out of Pure from a support perspective online are a little bit more robust than the Dell PowerStore metrics, but it's not a negative against Dell. I see them getting there. As they continue to upgrade Dell PowerStore, I would assume that having more analytics would be the most important piece on any platform, but Dell's done a great job with it, so that's why it wasn't a heavy concern for us.

We have been using Dell PowerStore for two years.

Overall, since we've had Dell PowerStore, we've had no issues; we've had easy code upgrades, and being a single active-passive cluster, we've had no problems. Since implementation two years ago, reliability has been good, and we have not had a need to call Dell for support. With my experience of using Dell technology products for the better part of my career, support is usually the reason you go with Dell.

Dell support on the storage side for Dell PowerStore is unmatched.

Positive

We were a Pure shop, and now we're a Dell shop on that front, and we are satisfied with it.

It was remarkably easy to deploy Dell PowerStore; it was plug and play, with no need for any kind of material, as they've done a really good job making the deployment model user-friendly.

We've seen ROI with Dell PowerStore at every level, including financial benefits and reduced power consumption, which makes it easier to manage on a single platform. The financial metrics around Dell PowerStore are significant, but I can't disclose those; however, we saw significant financial savings. Doing back-of-the-napkin math, I'd say we saw about 40% cost reduction in our overall footprints with Dell PowerStore.

The pricing for Dell PowerStore has been excellent; it's a great price per capacity.

As we move into more virtualization aspects with Dell PowerStore, I think we don't need more documentation than what they currently have available, as it's a straightforward platform that is not complex. 

Regarding success stories about Dell PowerStore, there's a lot of data out there, and the Dell teams have done a phenomenal job answering questions, so I feel they have a significant amount of resources available.

I rate Dell PowerStore a 10 out of 10.

My main use cases for Dell PowerStore are running mission-critical production workloads where low latency, high IOPS, and predictable performance matter. Most deployments are for virtualization platforms (e.g., VMware vSphere) hosting mixed workloads such as application servers, databases, and general VM farms.

I also use it for storage modernization and consolidation projects, replacing legacy arrays, improving performance, and simplifying operations, while keeping room for easy scale-out/scale-up capacity growth as demand increases.

Dell PowerStore has had a positive impact mainly in performance, stability, and operational efficiency.

Better performance and consistency: we’ve seen lower latency and more predictable behavior for mixed workloads, especially in virtualized environments, which improves overall application responsiveness.

Reduced operational friction: provisioning and day-to-day management are straightforward, and scaling capacity is typically an online, low-risk process—so it’s easier to evolve the environment without disrupting production.

Improved consolidation/modernization: in modernization projects, PowerStore helped simplify the storage footprint while delivering a more modern all-flash platform and a cleaner operational model.

Support and reliability: when issues arise, having responsive enterprise support and a solid platform reduces downtime risk and increases confidence for critical workloads.

Overall, it helps teams spend less time “babysitting storage” and more time focusing on delivering services to the business.

Consistent performance with low latency (all-flash NVMe architecture): it handles demanding mixed workloads very well, especially in virtualized environments where “noisy neighbors” can be a problem.

Simple, online scalability: expanding capacity is typically straightforward and doesn’t require disruptive operational steps, which is critical for production.

Modern, easy-to-manage platform: the management experience is clean and the overall day-to-day operations (provisioning, monitoring, maintenance routines) are efficient for infrastructure teams.

Strong support experience: when something needs attention, Dell support tends to be responsive and effective, which matters a lot in critical environments.

PowerStore is already a strong platform, but I’d like to see improvements mainly in operational maturity and automation, especially for large or mission-critical environments:

CloudIQ / APEX: more actionable insights
Fewer generic alerts and more “what to do next” guidance, better root-cause correlation, smarter prioritization, and clearer remediation steps.

Upgrade experience: stronger guardrails and pre-checks
More robust pre-upgrade validation, clearer impact analysis, and safer/cleaner workflows to increase confidence, particularly in conservative environments (e.g., healthcare).

Proactive lifecycle and certificate management
Better built-in visibility and notifications for certificate/lifecycle items, with clearer guided actions to prevent surprises.

Deeper automation and API-driven operations
More ready-to-use automation examples/integrations (Terraform/Ansible style patterns), and richer API coverage for day-2 operations beyond basic provisioning.

If the next release pushes harder on these areas, it will reduce operational overhead and make the platform even more compelling for critical workloads.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for approximately five years.

I have contacted Dell’s technical support and customer support multiple times, and my experience has been very positive.

I can’t speak for every region, but in Brazil the local Dell support team is responsive and knowledgeable. When something is urgent, you can reach the right people quickly and get practical guidance without unnecessary back-and-forth.

That said, in rare complex or high-impact cases, resolution can take longer because the issue may need escalation to specialized teams outside the country. This is expected with enterprise products, and communication throughout the escalation process has generally been clear.

On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rate Dell support a 10 based on my overall experience.

Positive

Overall, the initial setup is straightforward for an experienced infrastructure team. The deployment flow is guided and clear, and if you follow Dell’s documentation and best practices, it’s usually a smooth “step-by-step” process.

The part that can feel more complex is the upfront planning, mainly networking and host connectivity (iSCSI, NVME/FC, NVMe/TCP), multipathing, and getting the environment aligned with the customer’s standards. Once those pieces are validated, the rest of the deployment tends to be quick and predictable.

PowerStore vs Unity XT (Dell)

PowerStore – Pros: more modern all-flash NVMe platform, strong performance/latency, and a forward-looking feature direction.
PowerStore – Cons: typically positioned at a higher tier, so it may not be the best fit for simpler workloads or tighter budgets.

Unity XT – Pros: very solid and mature array, often a great fit for “general purpose” enterprise workloads, usually with a more budget-friendly positioning.
Unity XT – Cons: may not match PowerStore’s performance ceiling and modern architecture for more demanding scenarios.

I’d rate Dell PowerStore 9 out of 10 overall.

Advice to other organizations considering PowerStore:

Validate the use case and sizing up front: be clear about performance needs, growth expectations, and workload profile (especially in virtualized environments).

Plan the connectivity properly: iSCSI/FC/NVMe-TCP design, multipathing, and networking standards make a big difference in having a smooth deployment and stable day-2 operations.

Adopt a solid upgrade/change process: in critical environments, treat firmware upgrades with proper pre-checks, a maintenance window, and, when needed, Dell support involvement.

Get value from monitoring and best practices: use CloudIQ, health checks, and recommended configurations to stay ahead of issues.

If performance, scalability, and enterprise reliability are priorities, PowerStore is a strong choice, just make sure the environment is well designed and managed with good operational discipline.

Dell PowerStore is mainly used for shared storage platforms in small to medium-sized environments where performance is needed, but not necessarily extreme performance, and where a robust and easy-to-use platform is required.

Dell PowerStore could cover use cases in large enterprises for specific domains where organizations want to work in silo mode and avoid high-end platforms that require substantial investments. However, it is clearly built more for small and medium-sized businesses. We use it both internally and for projects we carry out with our clients.

The features I find most valuable in Dell PowerStore are the simplicity of use and the variety of configuration choices available, which are more important to us than performance alone. We wanted integrated environments that include the server, switch, and storage components in relatively small form factors, with controlled power consumption and the ability to scale in a flexible and linear way.

Compared to previous solutions, Dell PowerStore mainly improved scalability. We realized we could make smaller upgrade steps and better support the growth of our different sites. Previously, with each storage upgrade project, we questioned whether we should replace the entire infrastructure because the costs were disproportionate. We wanted to move towards something more compatible with an OPEX model for internal re-invoicing rather than major investment projects.

Dell PowerStore helps with growth because we operate in an economic context that remains relatively tight, with a market that has shown uncertainty for at least the last eighteen months. This scalability and predictability allow us to make the right decisions when launching a project. We can determine exactly how much a project will cost in terms of infrastructure needs. We can also make it easier to launch new projects because we have scalability with relatively small steps, unlike before when major investments meant new projects might not consume all the hardware we provisioned. We had to amortize the volume, CPU capacity, and memory, which were not necessarily consumed right away, resulting in wastage relative to our investments. This situation eventually led us to favor the public cloud, and now we are returning more to what we control: on-premises and sovereign cloud.

Dell PowerStore could be improved on the recommendation and dashboard side. I would also mention overall visibility, having a single ecosystem in which we can find all of our hardware, whether it is Dell PowerStore or other Dell equipment, and ideally, third-party integrations to have complete visibility into what is happening on the different sites and to integrate it quickly into a global dashboard and single view for users and administrators. This would allow us to know where we stand in terms of capacity planning and performance. A section on corporate social responsibility and energy consumption with advice on what we could improve compared to new hardware and new disk formats that could reduce our footprint would also be beneficial.

I would rate Dell PowerStore seven or eight out of ten. There are always areas for improvement, which I mentioned earlier. However, it does meet day-to-day needs. What we would like is perhaps more visibility, especially on the corporate social responsibility aspect, which is becoming important as we are being pushed for increasingly detailed annual reports covering power consumption, CO2 emissions during operation, emissions during production, and transport costs. Software-based optimizations that help us gain efficiency on the storage side would also be valuable. These optimizations could tell us how much less we consume compared to traditional equipment and how much more storage we provide per square meter. Those are things that could be interesting.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for approximately six years.

Dell PowerStore is rather stable as a system and reliable. When there are disks to replace or cards, it is done on time. I believe we have good support from Dell. The support teams handle that part effectively.

We have not used technical support for Dell PowerStore on these environments, or if we did, it was not for major, crippling incidents. Any questions that arose were handled by the internal technical teams.

The good relationship we have with Dell today and the partnership we have developed with them, both for our internal uses and for our external customers, made us choose Dell PowerStore in the end.

Positive

We looked at other solutions that are perhaps a bit more low-cost before choosing Dell PowerStore. We evaluated solutions mainly for file use cases, such as QNAP or Synology, and for slightly more machine-hosting needs, we looked at DataCore as well.

The deployment experience with Dell PowerStore is relatively simple, consistent with all Dell products. We have teams who have been trained on these technologies since the EMC days, so we are in continuity with what we have known previously.

We have teams who have been trained on these technologies since the EMC days, so we are in continuity with what we have known previously. There was good support from the internal teams with real expertise, and the product remains fairly simple nonetheless.

With Dell PowerStore, we have achieved twenty percent savings compared to the previous solution. The savings are mainly on the upgrade thresholds. It is hard to provide a definitive ROI figure because it is more about savings and flexibility that we have gained. For us, there is a real simplification in terms of administration time and a direct saving. We would need to push the analysis further, and that is why we are waiting for those metrics on energy consumption.

We bought Dell PowerStore because it suited us, so I do not really have any comment to make on the price. After all, it is always too expensive, but that is the argument of a buyer.

Around eighty percent of our remote sites are equipped with this type of machine, which is what makes the solution successful, with a total cost of ownership that has perhaps been optimized by twenty to twenty-five percent compared to what we had before. The main gains are on the upgrade steps where we gain financial agility. The overall rating for this review is seven out of ten.