Dell PowerStore Reviews

As the administrator for Dell PowerStore, I manage its functions and ensure it operates smoothly. Dell PowerStore provides the storage for all the services we have, so every server gets its disks from there. It has a nice interface and is easy to manage.

The upgrade runs quite well, except that when it shuts down one head, it then says you cannot get in here. You just have to know that you have to log in via the other head, otherwise you stand there for three quarters of an hour wondering if it is still there or if it is coming back. Dell PowerStore is fast storage and easy to administer. I would like to be able to do more on the CLI, but I have other systems where you can do that.

What differentiates Dell PowerStore from other storage solutions is that it has become simpler and more autonomous over time. Earlier, you would say you need a RAID group with a certain number of disks in a specific RAID configuration. Today you say you need a LUN size of a certain amount, and the system does everything in the background, which makes it much easier.

Where Dell in general could be more open is an area where Dell PowerStore could be improved. I have competition in-house where you can only work on the CLI if you really want to do it well, and that is more fun as an admin. However, the nice thing about the simple interface is that you can also hand it to someone who is not deeply involved.

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

Dell PowerStore is great in terms of stability and reliability. Even if something fails, it is really quick to swap it out. If you have virtualization layers on top, such as VPLEX, you can work on the other side and maintain the machine in peace. There are crashes from time to time. We had a controller problem once where something broke. A DIMM was defective, so the controller had to be shut down and removed, but the other controller kept running. If you do that at a time when there is not much load, then it is fine.

Scaling in terms of disks is always possible. Dell PowerStore grows well with company needs because you can cluster them so that you can put them together under one interface. You can just put a second one next to the first one, link it to the other one, and then it is basically a single system to administer.

It depends on the topic you submit regarding Dell support. I have not had any problems with Dell PowerStore, but there are other products where it sometimes gets stuck, though that is not Dell PowerStore support's fault. On a scale of one to ten for support, I would give it a nine. That is typically German; we do not give a ten, so the Americans will have to live with that.

Positive

I have worked with VNX, Unity, and XtremIO, so the whole EMC range. Before deciding on Dell PowerStore, I should note that the previous company had Dell PowerStore. They also had other solutions including XtremIO and Unity, and as Unity evolved, Dell PowerStore came along. Because people were satisfied with those products and I was very familiar with them, we decided to stick with it. At my current company, they also looked at other things, and at the company where I was before that, they also looked at various solutions. However, it is often the case that Dell, or rather the former EMC products, is what people knew and had been happy with for years. Honestly, people are usually too comfortable to switch to a completely different vendor when they do not know what they are buying there.

I took part in installing and configuring Dell PowerStore, including cabling, configuring, bringing it up for the first time, and doing upgrades. I took part in everything I could, and it actually runs quite well.

We do not yet know how Dell PowerStore plays a role in our company's AI initiatives. We had a meeting about a month ago with our sales representative, Dominik Nitsche, who is responsible for us. He was there with his colleagues, and they presented the HCI model again, where you can choose which hypervisor runs on it, and Dell PowerStore would be underneath. In case we decide we would like to try that out, Dell PowerStore would be in play with us again. I do not have much involvement with Dell PowerStore's pricing and licensing because I am just the admin and not the one who has to buy it. I give this review an overall rating of ten out of ten.

We use Dell PowerStore for storage management. We are using the 500T model. We have a standalone box and are not currently clustering multiple appliances.

The management portal is particularly user-friendly. We can access it easily, and the management software is not complicated.

With the recent firmware upgrade, we have a feature to restrict the bandwidth and throughput specifically for the volume.

The compression and deduplication that Dell PowerStore offers is performing well, especially compared to our previous storage solutions. We are achieving approximately a 2.8:1 ratio.

One suggestion for improvement would be related to volume management by both controllers. Currently, a volume is managed by a single controller, with alternate controllers managing different volumes based on load distribution. For example, if volume one is managed by controller one, volume two will be managed by controller two. In other vendors' solutions, both controllers participate in the I/Os. It would be more efficient if the volumes were controlled by both controllers in an active-active configuration.

The firmware upgrade takes longer than the other boxes. It should be better.

We have been using Dell PowerStore for three years.

I would rate the stability of the product at eight out of ten.

We experienced some concerns during a previous firmware upgrade when the controllers became unresponsive, which affected operations.

We have not performed any online scaling or scale-out operations as we use a simple standalone box. However, I believe the scalability features would be good, though I cannot speak from direct experience.

We have about 1,000 users.

I would rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

We have NetApp AFF400, which is also good. However, since Dell PowerStore is a mid-range storage solution, it cannot be directly compared with our enterprise storage solutions. We use CloudIQ with Dell PowerStore.

It is easy. It took about a week.

We are not using ransomware protection. It is enabled in the new code, but we are not using any ransomware protection. We take a snapshot for any protection.

It is user-friendly, so we can easily manage storage. Many features are there. Compression is good, and the data configuration is good. 

I would rate Dell PowerStore an eight out of ten.

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.

I don't use Dell PowerStore myself, but we sell it, set it up for customers, and we are also the best certified, Europe-wide, I think, also for the PowerStore area with Bechtle.

You need block storage whenever you want to give your virtual machines storage where the hard drives are essentially located. For that you rather need block storage, or for databases.

The challenge with Dell PowerStore was MetroCluster, so recently it's been feature-wise MetroCluster over Fibre Channel. I think with the new update, Dell PowerStore has that now as well, and there was a discussion going on for years where people said Fibre Channel is a very German topic and people prefer to use Ethernet. The Americans recently realized they would develop this, and they even introduced the feature for Bechtle as well.

I consider the active-active MetroCluster the most valuable function on Dell PowerStore.

To growth and business success, Dell PowerStore contributes definitely because the appliances have these expansion enclosures and scale-up and scale-out work pretty well with Dell PowerStore, up to a certain degree. Ultimately the machines themselves are also very powerful. I think especially in growth phases, small and medium-sized businesses benefit from the fact that because it has a dual-controller architecture, both controllers run simultaneously and also work accordingly. They get an extremely good package for the money they invest.

The things where Dell PowerStore should be improved have now been improved and are being introduced with the new update.

Then it's actually great regarding everything with Dell PowerStore. You can always talk about the price.

For a rating of ten, what's missing is knowing quite reliably that you end up with the right support team for your problem because way too often you have a problem, call support, and then end up with people who repair laptops. They say they have no idea. The last time I had to do a major troubleshooting, you had to somehow go to Dell America, or I think you get routed via Ireland or something. That's sometimes a bit complicated, and if everything were German-speaking, that would of course be even better, but you can't always expect that.

I have been working in my field for three years.

I wouldn't know what could keep up with Dell PowerStore regarding stability and reliability.

On a scale from one to ten regarding stability and reliability, I would rate it a ten.

I find Dell's support great. I can't imagine a time when they said no idea, go look somewhere else.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it a nine.

Positive

From other manufacturers, I consider Dell PowerStore alongside something similar to NetApp FAS and Pure Storage, which is also in the block storage area. Every manufacturer has something going for them, but Dell definitely offers the best overall package.

Quality has its price regarding Dell PowerStore. The feature set of Dell PowerStore is so competitive that it can easily put the market admirers in its pocket and simply represents a better product.

I actually haven't really dealt with licensing that much yet.

The network is always a big thing with implementations of Dell PowerStore because especially Dell PowerStore with the network—you want jumbo frames, and on Dell networks they're set a bit differently on the switches.

Regarding AI initiatives, I'd say quite good, because not everyone has a manual in their head on how to use Dell PowerStore. If you can use AI to do certain things for you and to troubleshoot, I think that's quite good.

I would rate this review a nine overall.

Dell PowerStore is primarily used for both block and file storage because it functions as a unified block and file storage system.

The most valuable features in Dell PowerStore are the Metro Volume features that are built-in without requiring an additional component. Unity required a VPLEX to have a Metro, but Dell PowerStore has an inbuilt option to have a Metro Volume.

Dell PowerStore has supported operational success.

I would like to see additional features or functionalities for the Metro in Dell PowerStore, especially because there are a few workloads still not supported.

The workloads I would like to see supported in Dell PowerStore are mainly for VMware, and other workloads are not officially mentioned, such as Hyper-V and Nutanix. I would also like to see improvements in the replication, which is currently completely network level replication. If everything goes through SAN, that would be much better.

I have been using Dell PowerStore recently, specifically for the last six months.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerStore as very good, considering it as a midrange storage solution.

I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Dell PowerStore.

I do not use any performance metrics or benchmarks because we have not experienced any latency or anything from the user end with Dell PowerStore. We are not using any tool to assess performance.

I would rate the technical support for Dell PowerStore as eight on a scale from one to ten. I have contacted support a couple of times, and the experience has been satisfactory.

The response time for Dell PowerStore is good, and the first-level support quality is satisfactory.

Positive

Before using Dell PowerStore, I worked with Unity, the normal version, not XT.

I decided to switch to Dell PowerStore after six years because it reached end-of-support.

The deployment of Dell PowerStore was straightforward.

I did not take part in the deployment of Dell PowerStore in my system.

Before finally choosing Dell PowerStore, I did not really evaluate other options.

Dell PowerStore does not play a role in my organization's AI initiatives.

My role in using Dell PowerStore is as an administrator.

I would recommend Dell PowerStore to others in the mid-range segment. My overall rating for Dell PowerStore is eight out of ten.

It's connected to our VMware environment. We have two appliances. We are using 1200T. We are clustering between two sides in the same building.

Dell PowerStore is very stable. After we completed the installation, we haven't made many changes except for a few updates. The Dell support is very good to work with. 

Dell PowerStore has a nice user interface and works as it should. It's fast and stable to work with, and it seems to be good for our purpose. 

The cybersecurity and data resiliency features are also good. Management capabilities are also good.

They could improve the upgrade process. Currently, there are many manual steps required before upgrading the firmware. Making that process more automatic would be beneficial.

We have been using the solution for about two years.

The workload performance is very good, but we have a rather small installation of Dell PowerStore. It's connected to our vCenter and VMware. We just use it as block storage for VMs.

In our case, we haven't needed to scale yet, as we have half the capacity not being used. If we want to expand the volume of disk storage, we only need to install more disks, making it easy to scale.

I would rate their support a ten out of ten.

Positive

I have only worked with EMC and Dell.

The initial setup was very easy. I have also updated it a few times. The system requires updates approximately once every year, and Dell support is very good.

We worked with a Dell consultant. Our experience was excellent.

The solution helps us save money and provides good returns.

It might not be the cheapest product on the market. The purchase was made two years ago, and I'm not certain if the price has increased or decreased since then.

I would rate Dell PowerStore a ten out of ten. 

Some of the main use cases for Dell PowerStore include storing typical user data and virtual machines.

The best features of Dell PowerStore fall in line with most other SANs. The best features include reliability, redundancy, and snapshotting, which are typical capabilities when it comes to a SAN. Dell PowerStore has impacted my organization positively because we have reduced outages. The performance is great and the reliability is excellent. We have had nothing but a positive experience with it.

As far as how Dell PowerStore could be improved, anything can be improved. I would say it needs easier or increased compatibility with other storage solutions for easier application, such as Dell's own PowerVault. They don't communicate or talk to each other, and they don't replicate to each other, which makes it harder to mix and match.

I have used Dell PowerStore for one year.

The scalability of Dell PowerStore is fine and we're happy with that. It is easy to expand Dell PowerStore; you can just buy another one and constantly grow it.

Their support is something I would rate a 10 because I don't have problems with support. This is one of the reasons why we continue using them. They're responsive, knowledgeable, and have a quick turnaround.

Positive

I did use a different solution prior to this year of using Dell PowerStore; we used Compellent. The biggest difference between Compellent and Dell PowerStore is that Compellent was end-of-lifed, so we had no option to continue using it. We had to roll over to something else.

The initial setup of Dell PowerStore is straightforward and not complex. On a scale of one to 10, I would place the setup ease of Dell PowerStore at around an eight.

Dell PowerStore does help reduce my organization's capital expenditures.

We were evaluating other options before choosing Dell PowerStore. We compared Dell PowerStore to other options such as Pure Storage and Unity, as well as NetApp. For us, Dell PowerStore has a lower entry level, where the others started out at a much bigger scale compared to NetApp.

It's a well-known product that seems to be at a cost advantage compared to others. I have been able to consolidate data using Dell PowerStore. Dell PowerStore offers dedupe, which is a standard in this area. For the few, we have close to a petabyte of data, and you save quite a good amount of storage there, about 20 to 30% of your storage comes back because of dedupe. Compression and deduplication technologies are very important for my organization because most of our data resides on virtual machines, and the more virtual machines you have, the better dedupe ratios we get. Overall, I would rate Dell PowerStore an eight.

Our use case specifically for Dell PowerStore is for our e-commerce and data saving purposes. For our partners, we are helping to build Dell PowerStore solutions because it's very easy to reduce the size of the data. It's possible to reduce the size of data five to one compared to other competitors, which is a huge advantage. It saves space in the rack and provides other benefits.

Dell PowerStore caters to the needs of small and medium organizations. From the technical perspective, it's a perfect product for SMB and enterprise customers because of its simplicity to deploy and run. It is easily manageable.

The five to one data compression with Dell PowerStore is valuable. This compression ratio is a huge advantage in the market. We are positioning this as the first valuable feature advancing beyond our other competitors, such as HPE and Lenovo.

From our region perspective, it would be beneficial to have support with local languages for Dell PowerStore. However, English is acceptable for us as it serves our needs.

We have been using Dell PowerStore for two years, and we are satisfied with the storage because it's possible to manage all parts of the storage and align it to our needs fully.

Dell PowerStore supports growth and operational success at our company and our clients' companies. We can operate fully and be ready at any time because of Dell services and support. The RMA rate is perfect for this product.

The benefit of using Dell PowerStore is that we have comprehensive and excellent support from Dell. While we haven't experienced any issues with Dell PowerStore, when we have technical questions, we receive prompt and efficient support from Dell services. This is the main advantage for us in choosing Dell PowerStore. We could have solved our internal problems with cheaper versions from other vendors, but we chose Dell PowerStore because of the additional services we receive.

Positive

Before Dell PowerStore, we used PowerVault ME5, but we only used it for half a year because we realized we needed a more advanced solution.

Dell PowerStore is a price performance product positioned as mid-range, making it the best fit for our needs.

We have not calculated the return on investment from implementing Dell PowerStore because we only have two Dell PowerStore units, making it difficult to count with such a small amount. However, since we can run our business fully online, I believe we have seen a return on investment, though I don't have specific numbers.

We are not currently considering any other solution besides Dell PowerStore. In the near future, we might implement an SCI solution, but what we have now is sufficient. For our partners, we sell and resell all Dell technology solutions, including VxRail, Dell PowerStore, PowerFlex, and PowerScale. We have competence in all these products.

Customer service for Dell PowerStore deserves a rating of nine out of ten, leaving room for improvement. Before Dell PowerStore, we used PowerVault from Dell, but we needed more efficient and advanced storage. Dell PowerStore as a mid-range solution, fits our needs very well. As a distributor, Dell PowerStore is the main storage and driver for our partners. Internally, we are building AI cases on PowerEdge servers currently. While we are not including Dell PowerStore today, we plan to do so in the future. Our partners are already using Dell PowerStore for AI purposes, with one recent case involving hospital image storage. 

I would rate Dell PowerStore 10 out of 10.