Name: Dell PowerScale
Rating: 10 (24 reviews)
Author: Dell Technologies

Help Desk

Web and Video Conferencing

Customer Support

Beta Testing

Product Analytics

Development

Board Management

Business Intelligence (BI)

Collaboration

Contract Analysis

Demand Planning

Electronic Signature

Enterprise Generative AI

Internal Communications

Policy Management

Whistleblowing

Enterprise

Accounting

Invoicing

Nonprofit Accounting

Finance and Accounting

Applicant Tracking

Corporate Learning Management

Employee Recognition

HR Management

Job Board

Leave Management

Payroll

Talent Intelligence

Talent Management

Workforce Analytics

Workforce Management

Human Resources

AIOps

Cloud Cost Management

Cloud Storage

Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS)

Cybersecurity Consulting

Email Verification

Enterprise Service Bus

Fraud Detection

Function as a Service (FaaS)

IP Address Management (IPAM)

Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)

Machine Identity Management

Network Performance Monitoring

Network Simulation

Open-Source Database

Release Management

Scale-Out Storage

Session Border Controllers

Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

Website Hosting

Workload Automation

Information Technology

A/B Testing

Ad Serving & Retargeting

All-in-One Marketing

Appointment Scheduling

Audio Editing

Competitive Intelligence

Content Management

Customer Journey Analytics

Email Marketing

Email Testing

Gamification

Marketing Automation

Product Sampling

Social Media Management

Survey & Forms Building

Web Analytics

Marketing

Project Management

Task Management

Professional Services

Auction Software

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Lead Management

Sales

Architecture

Medical Billing

Veterinary

Vertical-Specific

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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.

Dell PowerScale

Scale-out storage is expandable network-attached storage (NAS) architecture not confined to a single form factor, but extensible and configurable as needed, intended to scale with business storage and performance needs.

Likelihood to Recommend

Since 1984, Dell has played a critical role in enabling more affordable and accessible technology around the world. As an end-to-end computing solutions company, Dell continues to transform computing and provide high quality solutions that empower people to do more all over the world.

We serve customers ranging from the world's largest businesses and public-sector organizations, to small and medium businesses, and individual consumers. We are deeply committed to serving our community, and the company has also received numerous accolades ranging from employer of choice to energy conservation awards.

At Dell, we promote an environment that is rooted in the entrepreneurial spirit in which the company was founded. This means fostering an open approach to technology innovation that delivers effective solutions for all customer challenges. We believe technology is essential for human success and that it should be accessible to everyone.

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TrustRadius

Types of data

Lot of bugs

Support support

System wide

Need to install

Image files

Meta data

Capacity management

Storage devices

User data

Ad integration

Sharing files

Access files

Permissions management

Active directory

File systems

Load balancing

Quick and simple

Integrate with microsoft

Scales up

Home

Scale-Out Storage Solutions

Isilon clusters are the most widely used storage solution in our environment. Isilon is used to store mostly media content. Isilon provides a highly scalable and power packed solution. It is being used company-wide and in some other departments as well. We use Isilon to create home directories of hundreds of users as it is very easily accessible and provides very high throughput.

The installation of the cluster is very quick and simple.
The cluster provides very high performance and throughput.
Isilon is very scalable and works on scale-out architecture. So when we add a new node, it not only increases the capacity but, also increases the performance linearly as well.
Management of the array is very easy.
GUI is very user-friendly and so does the CLI which is very smart.

In my experience, I have seen a lot of bugs in the oneFS and for remedying it, we need to install patches which requires a node reboot.
In old isilon OneFS versions, the nodes need to be rebooted every 250 days which is quite less compared to other storage devices.
The operational cost of Isilon is a bit on the higher side.

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

We used Dell EMC PowerScale in the product called SRM. Basically, it is a storage product that can be used by storage admins and IT. We have few PowerScale/Isilon devices discovered in our labs. It is basically used as scale-out NAS Array. It did help us to get information about capacity and performance-related data. In the product SRM, one can easily discover Isilon/PowerScale devices and can monitor the reports.

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

UI could have been made better
No information related to IP addresses
Performance data mismatch

NAS Storage
Scale out Architecture
Rest API calls

Helped us to monitor storage environment
Helped in monitoring capacity and performance data
Helped in improving business growth

Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe, NetApp AFF A-Series All Flash Arrays and XtremIO Flash Storage

NetApp FAS series, XtremIO Flash Storage, Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe

We use Isilon NAS accross our entire organization. It houses multiple data types, from user file share and home directories to PACS images and archives.

Isilon NAS scales up well and node replacement is easy. You can replace a node by simply adding a new node and evacuating the node that you want to retire.
If the file system layout is designed and executed properly it is an excellent SMB platform with the flexibility to adjust to different share structures. Make sure to take the time to fully understand the AD integration and best practices for share and NTFS permissions management.
Node redundancy allows for most upgrades to be installed and applied with rolling node reboots allowing the file systems to stay available throughout the process of applying updates.
Native replication is excellent. Jobs complete quickly and we rarely have any replication issues with our Isilon to Isilon replication.

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.

We are currently researching other vendors for our Medical imaging archives due to issues with space utilization efficiency on Isilon.

We are using Isilon Scale-Out NAS across all departments within our organization. We use it for storing everything from administrative data (Excel and word documents) to research and multimedia projects. Isilon allows us to grow seamlessly (our environment has been growing at a very rapid rate) and to provide our users with the space and protection their data needs.

Snapshots of folders/files which integrate with Microsoft VSS (previous versions). This allows for quick recovery of lost or deleted files.
Replication of data to a secondary location. We do not need to try to backup such a large environment since we are replicating off site.
Integration with with our Identity management. We can allow users to access files using Active Directory authentication and SMB or NFS protocols.

Job engine. The larger the cluster becomes, the longer some of the jobs can run (AutoBalance, DeDupe). Some jobs can not run at the same time, meaning you have to wait for 1 to finish.
Support - Support has been less than spectacular over the last 2 years or so.
Meta Data analysis. You need to use third party tools to catalog and search meta data.

We were able to consolidate multiple Windows Files servers into our 1 Isilon and users can easily navigate to find their files.
With snapshots and replication we are able to protect data both locally and off site without having to worry about backup windows.
We are able to quickly and easily add capacity as needed. No fork lift upgrades.

Our company implemented an Isilon cluster to manage millions of black and white tif image files that our software manipulates and makes searchable for end users. We also have solved other business obstacles including a secure FTP on the Isilon cluster.

Auto data balancing between nodes while still maintaining great performance
Directory snapshots
Universal namespace
Network load balancing across nodes

OneFS block size is somewhere around 128kb stripe unit while most of our tif image files are around 50kb so our logical vs. physical storage is far apart. This caused extra capacity to be needed. I'd like to see the minimum block size to be smaller or initially adjustable depending on user data type.
This may just be a training issue, but it's confusing looking at "free" space available when I have a file share mapped to Windows vs. what OneFS states for available free space as they do not match.
We noticed that after adding a new node to an existing cluster in production that we had to adjust the networking config in OneFS to allow for another dhcp address so the new node could get an IP address. Normally this wouldn't matter, but it did have a nasty side effect where the SMB service failed after changing the network config which caused a system wide outage since we mostly use SMB protocol. Once the SMB service was restarted via ssh, we were back in business and it was working again.

The global namespace feature has reduced complexity significantly and made projects turn around faster.
Conversion of data is 10 times faster and less complex.
Initial customer installations are significantly faster.
Management of data is significantly easier.

Dell PowerScale
Formerly EMC Isilon

Overview

What is Dell PowerScale?