Dell PowerScale Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 10 out of 10

Score

10 out of 10

Reviews

5 Reviews

Isilon / PowerScale : #1 NAS Storage Array

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 25, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well suited for scale out NAS storage. One can use Rest API calls to get relevant data. It can be used in the product SRM, where one can discover arrays from Isilon/PowerScale and can monitor the reports. One can monitor Capacity and Performance reports of the array.

Verified User

Engineer in Research & Development (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Isilon - The scalable and Fast Storage

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

January 16, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Isilon is best suited for organizations where a huge amount of unstructured data needs to be stored and also requires a very high performance as well. Isilon is also very suited for businesses where capacity requirement along with the need for more performance will be increasing as time passes. An organization where storage needs to be locally [accessed] and capacity requirements are not high, can go for other products.

Vishal Ranjan Srivastav

Senior Storage Administrator in Information Technology at Larson and Tourbo Infotech (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

View profile

Dell EMC Isilon Scale-Out NAS - Best of Breed

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

August 28, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Verified User

Employee in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

Isilon Scale-Out NAS

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

March 23, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

EMC Isilon is well suited for user data and data analytics. It's not very well suited for medical images on certain VNAs. Isilon native blocksize is very inefficient for storing this type of data and can cause an inefficient use of your capacity.

Kevin Blackburn

Storage Engineer in Information Technology at Northeast Georgia Health System (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

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Best scale out performance with global namespace in the business

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

January 13, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Any unstructured data requiring a global namespace or files share will work GREAT on an Isilon cluster. The only thing I'd recommend is have a Mitrends file assessment done of your data before purchasing to determine if your data is larger than 124kb for your files, if not, you'll end up needing more space.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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Reviews and Ratings

Isilon Scale-Out NAS

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

March 23, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Kevin Blackburn

Storage Engineer in Information Technology at Northeast Georgia Health System (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile