The product is generally stable, but there have been instances, to my knowledge, where we faced issues in the controller during software upgrades. The availability is not at the desired level during these upgrade processes, as we sometimes need to shut down both controllers. This could be an area for improvement.
Many features are coming up for Dell PowerVault. Most of these features are available on the Dell cloud IO platform. They include reporting and monitoring capabilities. While some customers may not need all these features, the platform performs very well for a particular region. It is a good solution with many possibilities for every type of customer. Customers who need more features than PowerVault offers can scale up to the next model, such as PowerStore, PowerScale, vPlex, or Extreme IO. The possibilities are endless. There could be a starting model where you have a central storage solution for a pretty good price.
System Administrator at a tech company with 11-50 employees
Reseller
Top 20
2023-10-03T10:01:16Z
Oct 3, 2023
The high prices of the solution are an area of concern where improvements are required. In the future, I would like Dell PowerVault to provide me with replication features since, currently, it is a feature for which you need to make certain payments and is not included in the standard package provided by Dell.
There have been situations when our customers requested professional support and the price of that feature is quite high. I believe that customizing the pricing or offering some sort of flexibility regarding professional support would be of great benefit.
PowerVault doesn't integrate with Active Directory. Other storage solutions offer SAN and NAS unified storage in a single appliance, but PowerVault is only SAN.
Dell PowerVault is block-oriented storage only. It could benefit if Dell PowerVault's storage could support blocks and files. Dell PowerVault is a simple base model storage system where you receive as much as you pay, and you cannot expect more than you paid for. It is good to have file protocols instead of a dedicated NAS device, even for small environments. It is better to have only one reliable storage than some NAS devices. It is better to have a unified storage system that supports block and file protocol for the environment. Some other functionalities should be improved. The power functionality adaptive RAID improves the functionality compared to the traditional rate.
Senior presales consultant at TechFacto Global Services Private Limited
Reseller
Top 20
2023-04-12T04:51:38Z
Apr 12, 2023
The solution has made a lot of improvements when you compare it now to ten years ago. Sometimes integrating into a cluster can be difficult as you have to do it manually.
Junior Manager (Virtual Infrastructure) at a maritime company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
2022-08-31T11:32:02Z
Aug 31, 2022
We've had some control issues. Otherwise, over the last five years, it's worked well. The implementation process takes a while. The UI could be better.
I would like Dell to improve on the configuration of the disk groups. Only one group is expandable. Once you configure the other disk group types, you cannot expand them. It limits scalability. If you want maybe to grow a disk group, you lose information, and then you need to build it up again, which is not a good use case for customers. Maybe they could upgrade the firmware to allow other kinds of disk groups that are the usual disk group protection. It should let you expand without destroying the disk groups first.
I'll need to replace Dell soon because it's almost obsolete and considered old technology. If I continued using it, I'd need to increase its capacity. We need higher performance and more reliable storage. It's considered an expensive solution in Jordan, it would be better if the price could be reduced.
Deduplication and compression is an area that needs development. This is currently not on the device. In the next release, I would like the deduplication and compression included, as well as the flash technology. It doesn't currently use it.
PowerVault MD3 storage arrays help you cost-effectively address the challenges of data growth with versatile solutions that are optimized for smaller-scale storage consolidation, flexible virtualization projects and high business continuity.
The product is generally stable, but there have been instances, to my knowledge, where we faced issues in the controller during software upgrades. The availability is not at the desired level during these upgrade processes, as we sometimes need to shut down both controllers. This could be an area for improvement.
Many features are coming up for Dell PowerVault. Most of these features are available on the Dell cloud IO platform. They include reporting and monitoring capabilities. While some customers may not need all these features, the platform performs very well for a particular region. It is a good solution with many possibilities for every type of customer. Customers who need more features than PowerVault offers can scale up to the next model, such as PowerStore, PowerScale, vPlex, or Extreme IO. The possibilities are endless. There could be a starting model where you have a central storage solution for a pretty good price.
The high prices of the solution are an area of concern where improvements are required. In the future, I would like Dell PowerVault to provide me with replication features since, currently, it is a feature for which you need to make certain payments and is not included in the standard package provided by Dell.
There have been situations when our customers requested professional support and the price of that feature is quite high. I believe that customizing the pricing or offering some sort of flexibility regarding professional support would be of great benefit.
If the solution came with a synchronous application, it would be particularly advantageous for small businesses operating across multiple sites.
PowerVault doesn't integrate with Active Directory. Other storage solutions offer SAN and NAS unified storage in a single appliance, but PowerVault is only SAN.
Dell PowerVault is block-oriented storage only. It could benefit if Dell PowerVault's storage could support blocks and files. Dell PowerVault is a simple base model storage system where you receive as much as you pay, and you cannot expect more than you paid for. It is good to have file protocols instead of a dedicated NAS device, even for small environments. It is better to have only one reliable storage than some NAS devices. It is better to have a unified storage system that supports block and file protocol for the environment. Some other functionalities should be improved. The power functionality adaptive RAID improves the functionality compared to the traditional rate.
The solution has made a lot of improvements when you compare it now to ten years ago. Sometimes integrating into a cluster can be difficult as you have to do it manually.
The price of the solution could be lower.
Dell PowerVault could improve by having a higher cache and file protocol support added.
We've had some control issues. Otherwise, over the last five years, it's worked well. The implementation process takes a while. The UI could be better.
I would like Dell to improve on the configuration of the disk groups. Only one group is expandable. Once you configure the other disk group types, you cannot expand them. It limits scalability. If you want maybe to grow a disk group, you lose information, and then you need to build it up again, which is not a good use case for customers. Maybe they could upgrade the firmware to allow other kinds of disk groups that are the usual disk group protection. It should let you expand without destroying the disk groups first.
PowerVault could be improved by increasing its memory cache capacity and adding the ability to export data to the cloud.
I'll need to replace Dell soon because it's almost obsolete and considered old technology. If I continued using it, I'd need to increase its capacity. We need higher performance and more reliable storage. It's considered an expensive solution in Jordan, it would be better if the price could be reduced.
I would like to see improvements made to the user interface.
Deduplication and compression is an area that needs development. This is currently not on the device. In the next release, I would like the deduplication and compression included, as well as the flash technology. It doesn't currently use it.