Dell Technologies presents Dell PowerScale (replacing EMC Isilon) as a scale-out NAS solution and server technology that provides the flexibility of a software-defined architecture with accelerated hardware innovations to harness the value of data.
Isilon Systems was acquired by EMC in 2010; some EMC Isilon NAS appliances are still available and supported under the PowerScale brand.
We chose Dell PowerEdge R series because we need to consolidate a lot of physical load into a smaller number of nodes. Their hardware configuration, specifically for vSAN helps us achieve a high-density load in a very low number of physical servers. On top of that, they have lots of expansion ports, so we can increase our load internally on each other with simple upgrades.
EMC Isilon Scale-Out NAS is well suited for larger files (greater the 128 Kb) and where you need to have everything in one common name space. Where it is less appropriate is for many small files (millions of files less than 128 Kb in size) - this causes the protection level to becoming mirroring, which will cost more space.
Good price - Compared to other vendors’ server platforms. In our scenario (virtualization) we found out PowerEdge offers the best price/vCPU and RAM ratio.
Customizable - We were able to select optimal memory/disk capacity for our use case. Other platform's minimum requirements were above our needs, hence needlessly expensive.
Good warranty and service - Our project did not involve creating a big cluster with a lot of spare capacity, so the next business day warranty came handy.
Some upgrades require the entire cluster to be rebooted simultaneously. In this day and age, that should not be necessary. This is my biggest disappointment with Isilon to date.
When using multiple storage pools you have to be very careful with your capacity management. Filling up one pool can cause an overflow of data to a pool that is less performance driven. Do not underestimate your capacities or you will find yourself in a tight spot.
Block size is almost always an issue with Isilon. It does not handle all types of data well. In many cases PACS and VNA data is best to be stored on a different storage platform that will utilize the capacity more efficiently that Isilon is capable of.
Deduplication seems to be less efficient on Isilon than on other platforms for similar types of data.
The Dell PowerEdge R range is just intuitive when you have skills engineers managing them in-house, although even with new members of staff on the team, the learning curve is very low providing they have previous general service hardware management experience. From the specification through to the management of this range, the usability is excellent.
We consider Dell's support to be best-in-class compared to other solutions and is also reasonably priced. Their SLA targets have almost always been met, except for minor occasions that have had extenuating circumstances. The service staff is also professional and thorough. Overall, we are very satisfied with the level of support we receive.
PowerEdge R servers was selected by CIO. I think the servers have lots of benefits for our company and are well placed on our projects. In most business cases they are working good and our management have a clear vision to upgrade them to the same brand with better specs. Hope to see this upgrade in close future.
Raw disk space vs. logical disk space ratio was significantly better on the Isilon. Fast cache using SSD drives for faster searching is available on the Isilon but not available on the Overland solution. Isilon solution included faster backend switching between nodes.
From the perspective of physical server consolidations, when servers spread across multiple branch and remote offices are gathered into a central data center, this simplification process provides ROI in several ways. One, the configuration control, restriction of server access.
Reduce complexity and enable greater standardization of hardware purchases, which lowers costs.
Increased security of the move are important.
The costs of moves, add-ins, and changes are reduced, as well as the costs of travel time and maintenance.
Migrating legacy operating systems to a newer version via rehosting brings similar ROI benefits when it comes to server consolidation.
