Dell PowerScale vs. EMC XtremIO Flash Storage (discontinued)

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.

Incentivized

XtremIO would be useful for any production storage environment, or even any staging or development environment where performance mattered. It would not be ideal to use for backup storage.

Incentivized

• NAS Storage
• Capacity and Performance details of the array
• Alert and Operations details

Incentivized

• The deduplication and compression is very good. This especially helps for VDI applications.
• It is easy to setup and map hosts to volumes.
• The new HTML5 console is much better than the older Java.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Its expensive but worth it

Incentivized

This was one area of real disappointment. EMC support was very slow to schedule work like installations and upgrades. Break/fix support was fairly standard. After the Dell merger, things have started improving but there is a lot left to be desired here.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I/O delievered by XtremIO can't be compared with any other flash storage. Existing relationship with vendor and pressure to improve I/O bottleneck was the key objective

Incentivized

• Isilon provides very high value for money
• Matches the performance and storage requirements of the arrays
• EMC provides very skillful and high response team in case of any issues in isilon

Incentivized

• Using XtremIO has made our VDI much more palatable for users.

Incentivized