Dell PowerStore Reviews

I have been both a user and a consultant and integrator, using Dell products for our local infrastructure, internal infrastructure, and reselling Dell PowerStore to our clients.

I usually recommend Dell PowerStore for medium firms, as I work with the industry sector and believe it is totally appropriate for that sector.

Dell PowerStore has impacted my customers' organizations in terms of performance and operational efficiency, as it is quite well known for the products, and they enjoy the use of the equipment and the stability of the equipment.

I see no room for improvement in Dell PowerStore; I think it is quite good, and I have nothing more to tell about the features and the hardware of Dell equipment.

I recommend Dell PowerStore to medium-sized companies and not for larger ones as well because I think for the bigger ones, it is missing some features and there is a bit of a lack in terms of performance for big volumetry.

Dell PowerStore lacks some features to cover bigger companies as well; perhaps there is Nutanix, I think, and there are better, bigger storage options from Dell.

Additionally, there is Huawei storage stack which is quite good.

I have been working with Dell products for many years, approximately twenty years.

I have not faced any issues with the integrations with third-party solutions; not exactly with the material, but with the environment, with SFP for example, with switches and commutators, and things of that nature.

However, never with the hardware directly; all the time with the peripherals.

The built-in integrations with VMware are very important for my customers, as they are very easy to do, native, and quite stable.

I think the technical support by Dell is quite good because when we call them, immediately there are people who are taking the case and working on it, and then they redirect the call to the right person in the infrastructure.

Each time, the people are quite good. I would rate their technical support a five out of five; they are very good.

The initial setup of Dell PowerStore is quite easy, as the interface is very user-friendly and it is straightforward to complete.

I do not know exactly what my customers are thinking about their ROI with Dell PowerStore; we do not have regular feedback regarding that, and perhaps we should improve that to know exactly what they are thinking about the materials, the finance, and the services.

I find the pricing of Dell products very competitive.

I do not know if Dell PowerStore is the best option on the market at the moment; it is one of the best, for sure, but I do not know if it is the best.

Dell PowerStore models being used are T. They are configured both standalone and clustered.

I have nothing to tell about the cybersecurity features of Dell PowerStore, but regarding the functionality, the features, and the performance, it is quite good; I have nothing to tell about that, as it is responding well to the attempts.

I have been able to consolidate data with Dell PowerStore; I have nothing to tell about that. An approximate amount of data consolidation is ninety percent.

My data reduction rate is not exactly known, but it is approximately thirty-five to forty percent. My customers utilize VMware from Dell PowerStore's built-in integrations, but not containers or Kubernetes.

Dell PowerStore is very popular in my region; when you speak about this type of product, everybody knows it and is confident in that type of product.

The documentation for Dell PowerStore is very good; it is very high quality, and I have nothing to tell about that, as it is perfect.

For all the time I have used Dell, I think the documentation is quite good. I think the licensing model is fine, with no need for improvement; it is quite good.

I give this review a rating of nine out of ten.

In Egypt, we typically deploy one appliance consisting of two controllers. In one specific case, I was able to scale out with another chassis that included two nodes to meet the compliance requirements of a banking sector client who needed specific latency performance.

We normally work with Dell PowerStore as a unified box for both SAN and NAS. I did not deploy advanced features on Dell PowerStore, and in Egypt, we generally do not implement advanced configurations unless a specific scenario requires it. Typically, we deploy Dell PowerStore as a storage box.

I find many features in Dell PowerStore to be most valuable, including active-active nodes and scalability with both scale-up and scale-out capabilities. The ability to scale up by adding disks and scale out by adding not only disks but also controller nodes is one of the most important features because you can add disks with the performance of additional controllers. Dell PowerStore can support up to eight controllers working on the same cluster, and I have personally deployed four controllers connected to the same cluster. Other valuable features include replication and standard capabilities found in most Dell products, such as thin provisioning.

One of the main features of Dell PowerStore is its support for NVMe. The main chassis must be NVMe, and when considering scalability, you can scale up with SSD or NVMe, with the main chassis being NVMe. From a performance perspective, Dell PowerStore is a strong choice.

Dell PowerStore delivers exceptional performance for our customers, not only in performance metrics but also in effective capacity. Sometimes we sell Dell PowerStore with usable capacity around 20 TB, but we can see excellent data reduction ratios reaching one to four and one to five in specific workloads such as virtual infrastructure and database environments. This capability is one of the main points that attracts customers to Dell PowerStore and allows us, as architects, to sell Dell PowerStore with confidence, providing a good cost product with excellent effective capacity. This is one of the primary reasons we recommend Dell PowerStore. Second, we see excellent performance due to dual controllers, good processors per controller, good RAM, and good cache per processor. NVMe latency is excellent, and the overall performance we receive from Dell PowerStore is outstanding.

Regarding Dell PowerStore, one consideration is whether we could support hybrid disks. As you know, Dell PowerStore supports all-flash with either SSD or NVMe. If we consider features that could be added to match some RFPs we have received, some RFPs request hybrid storage. We cannot propose Dell PowerStore because it supports all-flash or NVMe only. In some cases, we could add a tier of SAS or near-line SAS to increase capacity. This is one potential feature, but I already understand that maintaining all-flash for Dell PowerStore is necessary to preserve specific performance characteristics. Generally, Dell PowerStore is an accepted product from our customers.

I have been working with Dell PowerStore for approximately five years or four years.

Expansion is straightforward and simple. When we add disks, we can expand the volumes, or when we add nodes, they are discovered within seconds in the cluster.

For technical support, I can give a rating of 10 because we normally receive excellent responses from the technical support team, including fast response times and high-quality engineers.

My experience with the deployment of Dell PowerStore is straightforward because before Dell PowerStore, I deployed Unity many times and also deployed the old VNX. I have good experience with storage deployment. Currently, I work not only as a deployment or technical engineer but also in a pre-sales role at my company, presenting not only Dell PowerStore but many products that make up the solution I design for our customers.

The pricing of Dell PowerStore is fair enough and depends on the data reduction ratio that can be achieved through compression and deduplication.

The importance of Dell PowerStore's compression and deduplication is the foundation of the data reduction ratio (DRR). It depends on the workload. By the book, I can say one to four, for example, but normally it is very dependent on the specific workload. With virtual machines, the data reduction ratio will differ from file servers or photo storage. It depends on the workload type, but the minimum we can typically achieve is one to two.

I would give Dell PowerStore a rating of 10 out of 10, and I would like to see hybrid storage as an additional feature in the future.

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.

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.

We store all our critical business databases and applications on Dell PowerStore, and we use it as the storage for our virtualization environment, so pretty much all our workloads from virtualization to database, it's the main primary storage for everything.

Dell PowerStore has supported the growth and operational success of our organization by reducing the footprint, rack space, power consumption, and the resources needed to run the backend storage, which has been consolidated into just 2U, thereby enhancing efficiency. We now know everything is there, as there's one GUI, and that's where it is.

The features of Dell PowerStore that I like the most include the simplified web GUI, and setting up replication to protection groups on the other site was pretty straightforward. I have presented straight-up Linux NFS shares off it as well to certain systems, which we weren't able to do on our old storage, so that was very useful.

Nothing comes to mind at the moment on how Dell PowerStore can be improved or any additional features I would like to see included in the next releases. I do not have any current pain points that I would like them to fix, although we did have one issue when an update stopped the phone-home solution, however they fixed that via support.

We've had Dell PowerStore for the last two years.

I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerStore as very reliable, as we've only had one alert that had an issue with it in the last two and a half years of our full operational load.

As we require additional storage, or once we hit the capacity limit, Dell PowerStore is easy to expand and add extra capacity, so it will be there for years to come.

I evaluate Dell's customer support as good, as we've always been able to upload the logs and get the parts within the four-hour deadline on the one occasion that we needed them. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Dell support a nine. What would make it a ten is that sometimes we go through an initial triage that repeats a lot of the initial triage steps that would have been done by my own engineers, so sometimes it would be nice to skip the starting point.

Positive

We transitioned from an HPE Nimble Storage and an HPE 3PAR, which are no longer supported or offered, to Pure Storage. We had also previously considered an EMC solution.

There was a general ease of deployment, as it was a fairly intuitive web GUI that was self-explanatory once it was racked.

I evaluated the market and the competition, and we settled on Dell PowerStore as our preferred NVMe flash storage solution, so my initial role was to set it up, get it configured, and get it active in the environment, and then plan the migrations to it.

I have seen some return on my investment with Dell PowerStore. You're getting rid of equipment, with the first 3PAR being a full rack, the other 3PAR being half a rack, and the Nimble being more 8U, so we've basically gone down from two rack spaces to a 2U server space. 

I have realized some money and time savings with Dell PowerStore. We're not spinning up that amount of power, and in terms of time saving, I'm sure it's performing some workloads quicker than the previous disks had to, but operational stability and 24/7, 365 operation is more what we need in our environment.

The advice I would give to other organizations considering Dell PowerStore based on my experience with it is that it has to be highly considered, as the price point was not really any better than the competitors; it was close, and it has worked out well, so stick with your account manager and they will do their best to get you a good deal.

Examples of how features benefited our organization include: previously, for the NFS, for the SIEM cybersecurity solution, we had to have a separate Linux server, where we were able to just do it straight from the Dell PowerStore GUI, so we got rid of three layers of complication and resources that weren't needed. 

I rate Dell PowerStore a perfect ten out of ten.

Our main use cases for Dell PowerStore include making it our primary storage platform, and we use it for our active-active data centers with synchronous replication.

The features I appreciate most with Dell PowerStore are synchronous replication and performance.

We are able to do stretch clusters, VMware stretch clusters with the synchronous replication, which benefits our organization.

The immutable snapshots have made a huge difference for our business, and the synchronous replication gives us active-active data centers.

I use Dell AIOps, and while I am not as familiar with it as some other analysts, we do use it.

We like what we are seeing from the insights offered by Dell AIOps, as it has come a long way in the last couple of years.

The impact of Dell PowerStore on our organization in terms of performance and operational efficiency is amazing. I forget how many IOPS we are seeing on it, but we had the Unity before, and it trumps it by 10.

I would like to see more performance and more dedupe and compression features with Dell PowerStore in the next release.

We have been using Dell PowerStore for about three years now.

I would describe my experience with Dell PowerStore data resiliency, availability, and cybersecurity features as great. We are still learning more about the cyber resilience, but we just implemented the immutable snapshots, and so far it is great.

Regarding dedupe and compression with Dell PowerStore, we are seeing about 5-to-1 currently in our consolidation of data.

On a scale from 1 to 10 in rating customer service and tech support, I would say a nine.

We are happy with tech support.

We used the Unity previously to address similar needs before Dell PowerStore.

We looked at Pure when considering other solutions before choosing Dell PowerStore.

We are enrolled in the Lifecycle Extension, formerly the Anytime Upgrade program.

We just found out the new generation is coming out, so I am sure it will be happening soon, which will benefit our organization.

My advice to someone who is considering Dell PowerStore for their organization is to buy it, as we love it. I would rate this review a 9.

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.

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.

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.