Dell PowerStore Reviews

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.

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.

My use case for Dell PowerStore is virtualization and primary data storage.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is the ease of deployment and general use. The ease of use of Dell PowerStore means that we don't have to have as many storage admins, and general people can now use it as opposed to just having specialized teams for that. 

Dell PowerStore has freed up staff to do other things, and they don't have to focus as much on the care and feeding of things on a day-to-day basis. We save approximately 40 man-hours a month, which is significant.

Some of the issues I have with Dell PowerStore are more gripes than actual issues. I wish there were more options to fine-tune things. Some of the information requires deeper investigation to get data efficiency per data store. 

I would rather see this as one holistic view, instead of having to dive down to each one to find where a data store is not performing as well as desired.

I have been using Dell PowerStore since 2020.

Dell PowerStore has been very reliable.

I think Dell PowerStore can grow, especially because we've done in-place upgrades. We've gone from a 1000T to a 3200 live, so we were able to increase the generation from Generation 1 to Generation 2, and then also increase the performance envelope by changing out the controller.

I have used customer services for Dell PowerStore. It has been very favorable. Most of the customer service we've dealt with has been out of Oklahoma for the mid-range tier products, and I've had really good interactions with them over the years.

Positive

Before Dell PowerStore, we were still Dell customers, using Compellent and Unity. We migrated over to Dell PowerStore as an option.

Dell PowerStore is mature now, though we were very early adopters and dealt with different teething pains. It's a mature product now and the ease of use and incremental scalability makes it very attractive for mid-enterprise teams. It fits a wide envelope of use cases, from basic standpoint to high-performance workload that can run without any issues.

I am familiar with the pricing and licensing of Dell PowerStore. The pricing is currently difficult due to global circumstances. The initial attraction was ease of expansion, one thing at a time, but with tariffs there's a lot of fluctuation. The pricing itself is fine, and the fact that we can expand one drive at a time makes it easier to manage capital expenses versus investing in an entire big array.

My overall rating for Dell PowerStore is eight out of ten.

We use Dell PowerStore for all of our file storage and our local storage in general. We have all of our VMs running on it, data backups, and file storage is a big thing for us, with everything else in the cloud.

The features of Dell PowerStore that I appreciate the most are that it just works; it's tried and true and amazing, and we never have to worry about it. 

A lot of the interface is very clean and easy to use, making it very easy to get done what we need to get done.

One of the benefits I have seen from using Dell PowerStore is ease of use. While it is one of the biggest things, another huge benefit is that we have implemented other solutions and had issues with them—hardware, software, whatever it may be—and we don't have those issues using Dell PowerStore; it just works and is very reliable.

How Dell PowerStore could be better or improved is still to be determined with AI. Currently, it suits many of our needs, and there isn't much to want out of it because they are very good and innovative with their solutions.The first thing that comes to mind for improvement would be education. While I know that some educational resources exist, knowing about them would be beneficial, and if I dealt more with our representative to get more education on some aspects, that would be helpful.

I have used Dell PowerStore off and on for 15 years, and recently, for the last two years, we have gone back with Dell PowerStore.

If I would give a rating to Dell support on a scale of one to 10, it would be close to a 10. Ten is hard because that's perfect and nobody's perfect, but I would say it's up there, around eight or nine for sure, as they are always very helpful and responsive.

What would make it a 10 is hard to say since that's a perfect score, but it ticks many of our boxes and we really enjoy working with Dell. I don't have anything negative to say.

Positive

Before we decided to go with Dell PowerStore, we did consider other solutions and used to have a different solution. Then it caused problems, so we ended up going back with Dell and implementing Dell PowerStore.

I have seen a return on my investment in Dell PowerStore. One of the biggest ways is through time savings; we don't have to mess with Dell PowerStore as it just works, and that in itself is a huge ROI.

Comparing Dell PowerStore to our previous solution, we have significantly decreased our time spent on management. 

Annually, we used to spend considerable time configuring, reconfiguring, troubleshooting, and contacting support because things weren't working. It's night and day using Dell PowerStore—we don't do any of that, which is great.

Whether Dell PowerStore supports our AI initiatives is to be determined, as we have been figuring out how we are going to implement these technologies. What we are planning to do with AI in the context of Dell PowerStore is still undecided since it's a new technology, but we are exploring options. Dell PowerStore does not have features that specifically cater to the needs of our company or industry that are outstanding among others, but reliability is crucial, and ease of management is also important. 

I see Dell products growing with our future needs. I feel very comfortable with the scalability of the Dell PowerStore solution for our long-term plans. I can expand and keep using, and scale what we need to do. We don't have any performance metrics or benchmarks in place to measure success with Dell PowerStore; uptime is significant, and it has been great.

For the size of our company, Dell PowerStore has supported our growth and operational success very well. Dell as a whole has been awesome, always there to support us. We are working on a PC refresh right now, and our representative has been very helpful, always a phone call away.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Dell PowerStore a 9.

Dell PowerStore serves as our virtualization platform disk. We use it to create testing environments using the same VM template, which reduces actual disk usage significantly.

The platform is rather easy to use and there is a good documentation. The compression ratio is more than 10. We are using the compression and deduplication technologies. Although it is quite early to say, my assumption is that Dell PowerStore will help with operational efficiency. Even though it is early, I still notice some improvements.

I have not found any issues currently, and I am unsure what could be better. There is an issue related to the way other operating systems handle compressed volumes, but that is something Dell cannot influence. Scalability is probably not yet a concern in our case.

I started at the end of last year.

It is very stable with our short experience.

Scalability is probably not yet a concern in our case.

I only used installation support. That support was very good and helpful.

In the past, we have been using local disks on our servers.

It was quite easy to deploy. We kind of deployed it before we had the installation help agreed with Dell.

I only used installation support, and that was very good and helpful.

I may see ROI in the future, but so far, I do not see any savings.

The pricing was useful for what we got.

I do not remember which product it was but main driver was pricing on longer run.

Since December, we have been using a single Dell PowerStore 1200T appliance, which has impressed us with its compression ratio.  We prefer this on-premises solution over cloud due to high network costs. This review has an overall rating of 9 out of 10.

The use case for companies to buy Dell PowerStore is that it's an all-flash storage, which is needed to save their data or applications that demand faster responses. They brought it because the read and write operations of Dell PowerStore are extremely high, and the IOPS are very good compared to the other Hitachi level storage.

Dell PowerStore helps the organizations that I sell to by allowing them to buy less storage and store more capacity, which helps them save costs. Additionally, it's very durable and priced appropriately, which helps the organization to save money.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is the data compression, which is extremely good, having a data compression ratio of 5:1 that rarely other storages have in the market. This feature is very good compared to others.

What makes the data compression feature of Dell PowerStore so good is that if you need to store, for example, 100 TB of storage, you just have to buy 1/5 of it, the capacity, and then you can store that data. The compression features in the storage make it very special compared to others, apart from the day-to-day, normal data retrieving capabilities such as data deduplication, which this has something more that no other storages offer.

I would suggest that Dell PowerStore could come with various other features, such as a hybrid model apart from only all-flash, which would really help the customers.

I have been using Dell PowerStore for the past four years.

Dell PowerStore has rarely had any downtime; I have never come across it having any downtime, and the technical support is extremely good, which makes it a good product.

Dell PowerStore does not meet the needs of a small organization; Dell has Unity which meets the entry-level or SMB segment. Dell PowerStore is for mid and high enterprise segments, catering to bigger customers. Dell PowerStore can grow with a small company or if the company has less than 2,000 employees; it can grow to meet their needs.

Customer service and support for Dell PowerStore are very good, so once customers buy Dell PowerStore, they always choose to buy it again since the performance is extremely nice.

Positive

Besides Dell PowerStore, we offer other solutions such as HP solutions, Lenovo solutions, and NetApp solutions. Someone might pick Dell PowerStore versus HP or NetApp because PowerStore has the unique compression feature that other products lack, allowing them to buy less storage and save more capacity.

All Dell products are quite easy to deploy and maintain.

The success metrics that companies use to determine their ROI for Dell PowerStore are based on the kind of performance they get or the returns they see once Dell PowerStore is deployed, which are quite substantial since they always look at expanding it in the near future. They don't only buy it for a specific application; once they see the performance, they try to utilize it for all other applications as well.

The pricing of Dell PowerStore is a bit high, as it is not an entry-level storage, so it is priced higher than it should be.

The companies I sell Dell PowerStore to are extremely happy, as they keep expanding it and keep buying more shelves to expand the storage. 

A con for Dell PowerStore would be if somebody has standardized on certain products, such as only buying Dell or HP products, which might lead them to choose HP instead. HP is losing a lot of market share because of Dell PowerStore, as they do not have a product that can match it. 

I rate Dell PowerStore nine out of ten.