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Dell EMC PowerStore 1000T Unified Storage

Mfg # 210-ASTZ CDW # 6111057

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The Dell EMC PowerStore 1000T provides organizations with all the benefits of a unified storage platform for block, file and vVol data, while enabling flexible growth with the intelligent scale-up and scale-out capability of appliance clusters.

This item was discontinued on October 06, 2022

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Dell EMC PowerStore 1000T Unified Storage is rated 4.60 out of 5 by 40.
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Enables us to add compute and capacity independently, giving us flexibility in responding to business changes What is our primary use case? PowerStore is joined to four application servers in a cluster. We're running an application that we use to monitor our activity in the financial markets. We collect all the data from the market—books, trades, orders—that we send to the market. In terms of volume, we are collecting about 100 million rows a day for the books, 10 million a day for the orders, and about 500 rows for public trades. It is a mission-critical application because of compliance and the regulators. We have to maintain this kind of monitoring because it's a direct link to our activity in the regulated market. How has it helped my organization? An interesting feature is the guaranteed reduction when it comes to the physical capacity of the disk. We have 30 terabytes of SSD and that is equivalent to 100 terabytes of effective capacity. It allows us to reduce the costs of capacity. Our previous solution was Dell EMC Compellent. What we have seen immediately is how easy it is to use PowerStore compared to Compellent. PowerStore is much simpler to manage. What is most valuable? The most valuable features include * easy of use * performance in terms of read-write capacity. It is also important that you can add compute and capacity independently. We have sized the solution based on our current needs, but in the future we can choose to increase capacity if we grow our activity in the market. And if we have more business in our monetary system, we can increase compute. The ability to choose what we increase is a good feature. What needs improvement? The only area I can highlight for improvement is that the 4:1 data reduction target has not been reached. This may be due to an issue with Dell EMC's initial analysis of data compression. As a result, we have had to add new physical disks to reach our goal of total available disk space. Dell EMC has met us partway on this DRR issue by providing some of the additional disks free of charge, but we have had to purchase the remaining quantity of the disks we need. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using PowerStore in our production environment for a few months, after using it in pre-production for about two months. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability has been very good so far. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We have not tested the scalability yet. All our data is well supported in the current solution, but we sized the new solution with more capacity than the previous one had. How was the initial setup? The initial setup of PowerStore is a straightforward process. Setting up the Compellent was much more complex. Overall, the setup took us about three weeks. We ran it in a pre-production environment initially. We loaded all the data that was in production into the new environment and ran our application in both the pre-production and the production environments, just to test the stability and the availability of the application. There are four people involved with the solution in our IT operations, and there are about 50 people who use the application that runs on it. Our application is a specific, department-level application, that is used for monitoring the activity in financial markets, so its use is limited to our business area. That is why the number of users is limited. What about the implementation team? Dell EMC's support was very efficient during the setup of the entire solution. They handled the complete setup in terms of connections and also helped us with the software configuration and moving data from our old solution into the new solution. What was our ROI? We haven't seen ROI yet, but the return for us will be in the efficiency of monitoring our activities. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The pricing is in line with other vendors' pricing, more or less. There are no costs in addition to the standard fees. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We did not evaluate other solutions because Dell EMC is a partner for us and we're satisfied with them. We have evolved with their solutions and PowerStore is the best. Dell EMC is our vendor and provides us with all our other client-server solutions. What other advice do I have? At the moment, I am satisfied by the simplicity and ease of use of the PowerStore. Disclaimer: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Date published: 2022-01-03T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from There have been multiple problems with stability, yet the performance makes our system faster What is our primary use case? We use it for machines from VMware vCenter which we keep separate from the PowerStore. It is only the storage. They are connected with iSCSI and NFS. We have no virtual machines directly on the PowerStore. How has it helped my organization? We are very impressed by the power of the system. We have gained performance for all our virtual machines and our system is running very fast. Another benefit, for us, is the dedupe rate. What is most valuable? For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance. Also, the live dedupe application is very good. What needs improvement? In the first weeks, we had some problems with the dedupe. According to the warranty, we should have had a dedupe rate of at least two and we had not reached this value. We got an additional hard disk to match the planned capacity of the system and this helped a lot. We got to a dedupe rate of 1.9, and this was very good. What we are missing is the monitoring. We cannot implement the health check of the system in our monitoring system. We have to open the PowerStore GUI every day. Also, we have tried to install a separate virtual machine to integrate PowerStore to vCenter. VMware then provides a virtual machine with Photon OS. We have done this integration two times and it has run for some weeks. Then it stops working and I don't know why. We have not used it again. It has nice features and has saved a lot of time and creates a good integration, but it needs to be more stable. Overall, they need to make the system stable. Again and again, we have problems with upgrades. The upgrades themselves are running fine, but after the upgrade is when we have a problem. With the update to 1.4, we had a head crash. They told us, "This is a known issue. Please upgrade to 2." We upgraded to 2 and, one week later they told us, "Yeah, there are some issues in 2.0.0. You can lose data. Please upgrade to 2.0.1." Overall, they need to make the system stable. I try to avoid updates for such important, central systems. They require downtime for the whole company, as this is our only storage. It's not good to do so many upgrades. I have used other storage systems and, with them, it was never necessary to do so many upgrades in one year. Last year, I did four upgrades for the PowerStore but I have never done four upgrades over the lifetime of other storage systems. They have run four, five, or six years, sometimes more. I have never patched so often as I have with PowerStore. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using Dell EMC PowerStore since December of last year, so almost a year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The problem is the stability. We have a single system and on three occasions we have had unplanned head reboots because of a software failure. The positive side is that there was no impact as a result because there are two heads. It's not good to reboot a head, and we have submitted tickets about it, but the performance and the failover have been good. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We only have a single machine and we are currently using half of the hard disk slots. We have asked for an upgrade for the rest of the hard disks but, from my point of view, it costs too much. We have 12 to 15 hard disks inside and if we try to upgrade only the hard disks, it costs the same as the complete system. This is something I don't understand. It makes no sense. Buying 16 hard disks with storage costs about €40,000 and buying only 16 hard disks costs the same. How are customer service and support? Dell EMC's first-level technical support is very fast and they communicate well. Sometimes they explain things so I can understand why something is working the way it is. But currently, we have a ticket at the second level and for two weeks I have had no answer. The issue is that each day we get a message from the storage, every three hours, telling us the network connectivity is lost. I don't know if this is true or not, and whether it is a failure. That is the ticket at level two but I have had no information about its status. How would you rate customer service and support? Neutral Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? I have used NetApp as well as HPE in the past. In this company, they replaced NetApp with PowerStore because the NetApp system was slow. The dedupe needed much improvement. If they stopped the dedupe, then the system power would go down. And the backup procedure took a lot of time. With PowerStore we have reduced the time for the backup by half or more. In terms of the decision process to go with PowerStore, I was not working here at the time. After I started the company said, "Okay, in two weeks we are getting new storage. Please integrate it into our infrastructure." I know they needed a more powerful storage system and they wanted an upgrade option for the system. How was the initial setup? The integration of PowerStore into our existing environment was very straightforward. We had an external partner that helped us, but we had prepared the system in a test environment. We took that system and put it into the production system in about eight hours and the system was running. We then started to migrate the machines. It was a good implementation process and very fast. We have two administrators of the solution. They are working with the system full-time handling requests to change hard disks or volumes, and they create new volumes. Across the company we have about 300 users using virtual machines and virtual desktops that are stored on the PowerStore. What other advice do I have? The performance of PowerStore is good, but I don't feel the software is completely ready. We have upgraded the system and have had failures on the system. I have never seen as many head crashes on other systems as we have had on the PowerStore in the last year. The system is fast but not stable enough. I would not buy the system again. You should wait some years until the software is ready and doesn't have a new software release every two months. Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Date published: 2021-11-18T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Mid-range data storage solution that allows quick and easy access to data What is our primary use case? We use this solution for customers who are looking for NFS and SMB file shares with faster access, migrating from the existing Unity and VNX onto PowerStore. We use this solution for consolidation. How has it helped my organization? We are an implementer of this solution for our customers. It allows our customers to access the file shares quickly and easily. What is most valuable? The supportability of SCME drives for faster data access from the PowerStore and has been the most valuable feature. What needs improvement? Many customers are looking for a cyber recovery feature included in PowerStore. We would like to see this added in a future release. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using this solution for two years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? This is a stable solution. How are customer service and support? I would rate the customer service for this solution an eight out of ten. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is straightforward. The time it takes to deploy this solution depends on what a customer is looking for. It usually takes between two to three days. We start implementation by gathering the customer requirements before going on-site and completing implementation. What was our ROI? This solution has allowed us to consolidate our storage efforts and operate with less of a footprint. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We did not evaluate any other options as I am a Dell EMC partner. What other advice do I have? From a technology perspective, this solution is up to date and supports NVMe. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2022-05-11T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Reduces the footprint, is easy to use, and can handle heavy workloads What is our primary use case? We use the very first one we added for a very pinpointed solution for a high performance Oracle database. We've added four more, and they're going to be primarily to migrate away from HP systems. Our environment is 80% to 90% virtualized VMware. We have some pretty heavy workloads, whether it be SQL databases or Oracle databases working on the PowerStores right now. It's about three petabytes in size. How has it helped my organization? The systems I currently have in place are old, and their support is running out. They're at the end of their life cycle. One of the key improvements that PowerStore is going to bring is that it will enable me to shrink the physical footprint. I'll be going from 5 physical HP arrays, which are about 12 racks in size, down to 4 PowerStores, which can fit on one rack. As a result, I'll be able to shrink the footprint, save power, cooling, etc. I will also be able to improve upon the existing performance and longevity of the platform. When we put the PowerStore in for the Oracle database, it was previously on NetApp. The staff wanted to do snapshots but also do clones and then be able to clone from a clone to add it to another system. PowerStore enabled them to do just that. They not only got their performance back to where it needed to be from previously being on the NetApp array but also got some of the feature functions that they require for the application. What is most valuable? The simplicity and ease of use have been very valuable features. I have a very small team, and only half of the team is well versed in the HP product. Whereas if I bring PowerStore in, everyone can learn it because it will be new on the floor. Also, the simplicity of the administration, snapshot capabilities, and its replication are other features of PowerStore that I've found to be valuable. What needs improvement? Reporting is an area that could be improved. It's very simplistic sometimes, and some of the very technical guys on my team want to see more of the details and be able to massage the report a little bit better. For how long have I used the solution? We originally added our first PowerStore about a year ago. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I haven't thought about the stability of the product, which means that it's working. That says it all. As a manager of the environment, if I'm not thinking about it on a daily basis, then that means it's doing what it's supposed to be doing. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I haven't really had to scale PowerStore as of yet, but it does have the scalability features that I need. I'll be able to scale up, when we do grow. How are customer service and support? Dell's support staff are very proactive. They were with us every step of the way to make sure that we were plugging everything in properly and making sure that everything is fully redundant during deployment. With regard to post-deployment support, if we have any needs and call them, they respond within minutes. So, I would rate them at ten on a scale from one to ten. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We replaced HP and NetApp with PowerStore because we wanted to reduce the physical footprint. How was the initial setup? Deployment is very simple. I think we were up and running in less than a day. What about the implementation team? Dell has helped us with our deployments. They use ProDeploy, and we used it for one of ours that's overseas. Normally, my data center team does all of the rack and stack and cabling. I share all those requirements with Dell to make sure that they understand that we're following best practices. We can plug it in, and do it all online. What was our ROI? The rack space I'm saving alone is an ROI because I'm able to then use those racks for more servers. Power and cooling are big factors for us because we're trying to shrink the footprint as we move things over to the cloud. Performance wise, if I can have jobs that used to run for 10 or 11 hours cut down to 3 or 4 hours, then that allows everyone to be more productive. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Pricing is very good. It's very competitive against those of all the others that I have looked at in the marketplace, such as Hitachi, IBM, HP, and Pure. Dell is right there in the mix as far as providing the best price point as well as meeting the performance requirements that we have. Which other solutions did I evaluate? I looked at IBM and Pure Storage during the last purchase cycle. The reason that PowerStore won that purchase was the pricing. They definitely set the bar high as far as pricing is concerned. Going with PowerStore would also help me to shrink the environment. What other advice do I have? Don't shy away from the higher-end workloads. You don't necessarily have to go with a big iron box like PowerMax when PowerStore will suffice. It will then allow you to save some dollars and also meet the performance requirements that you have. On a scale from to ten, I would rate PowerStore at ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-05-10T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Enabled us to consolidate high-IOPS and lower tiers, but the licensing process is complicated What is our primary use case? We use it to host all the VMware workloads in production. It has all the types of workloads that any data center would have, from AD to file servers as well as SQL, Exchange, and BI. It holds all our high-tier VMs. How has it helped my organization? PowerStore helps to simplify IT operations. At the site where it is installed, we have consolidated two tiers with the high-IOPS and lower tiers. We have enough capacity with lower power consumption and enough performance to handle the required overload. It gives us the capacity and the performance we need. Before, things were on 10K disks, while this is flash. There is a very big difference. Previously, we were connected directly, with a back-to-back connection between servers and storage. Now, we have multiple servers connected to SAN switches and those switches are connected to the storage. For sure, the performance of the system is sky-high. In terms of IOPS we are fully satisfied by the PowerStore. We use the solution’s built-in VMware hypervisor to run VMs and virtualized applications, directly on the storage appliance. We manage multiple sites and we don't have enough teams to allocate support at all sites. So our support team handles all our sites. It's very important for us to have a consolidated infrastructure that we can manage remotely, without needing someone available locally to do the patching/power-up/creation and life cycle management tasks. Having this box, along with the integration with VMware, and VMware's capabilities, gives us what we need. What is most valuable? I like the performance of the PowerStore. When you talk about PowerStore, it's mainly about flash systems and high-end IOPS. The 1000T is a midsize box, in terms of the way the vendor positions it, but it is more than enough for our needs. At the site where it is located, there are about eight servers connected. The high IOPS support our needs. It is very performant. What needs improvement? We have an issue with the integration of this box and VMware. I have downloaded so many books from Dell EMC's website. We created the volumes as VVols. The information they gave us said we would directly see the capacity. Unfortunately, that is not true. You only see it after you put data on it. When you create the volume but there is no data, you don't see how the actual capacity grows. This is peculiar regarding this box. For how long have I used the solution? We installed it at the beginning of September, about three months ago. By the end of September it was put into production with all the loads we required. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is stable, but we have only operated it for less than six weeks, which is not that much. But performance-wise it is giving us what was promised, so far. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Because we have changed the topology of our data centers' interconnectivity and the data movement between sites—we have multiple sites in multiple locations and countries—we asked Dell EMC to give us additional expansion for the box, but with disks at the lower tier. In that way, we are insuring our investment in this box and doing a consolidation. But it also means we don't need to buy high-end disks for it. We may go with 10K disks for the lower-tier data. I think we will go for a second box like this one in the near future, but in a different location. How are customer service and support? When I tried to open a ticket with the Dell EMC team, during the installation phase, they kept bouncing me from one support center to another, from the United States to France to wherever. I ended up preferring to finish the installation without continuing the case. Dell EMC's support case management wasn't really set up to suit our needs. When I gave them the serial number of the box, they said, "Ah, it's a PowerStore. It's not this department, you need a different department." The support is not very well structured. In addition to the licensing issue I mentioned, we also opened a ticket concerning the dedupe and the data showing on the storage interface. No one answered so we escalated it to our partner and they escalated it to a consultant. Overall, support is not smooth when it comes to the portal and the standard support system. I had to go to our reseller to ask him to get us the information we needed. To be fair, I spent a huge amount of time working with IBM, versus only the two to three months on Dell EMC. But knowing Dell EMC as a brand, as a competitor to IBM, I know it can do much better in terms of support and awareness of customers' needs. How would you rate customer service and support? Neutral Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We were not searching for a particular brand. We were searching for storage that would be delivered ASAP with a certain IOPS capacity. And, of course, pricing was part of it. The vendor that sold us this box said they were able to send it right away. From that point, the discussion went to Dell EMC versus ordering IBM. Our discussions about how to move forward with our storage took at least four to six weeks. If we had then put in an order with IBM, it would have taken at least another six weeks. So we would have had a 10 to 12-week process. We didn't have this luxury. We couldn't wait that long, so the decision was based on the time of delivery. We will move everything off our old Lenovo storage that is now four or five years old, and that will be used for backup only. All our production VMs will be on the flash and all the less important pieces, like the file servers, will be on the 10K disks. How was the initial setup? During the installation phase, the licensing part was not straightforward. It was very difficult for the technicians, who are not trained Dell EMC technicians, to do the licensing because the information on their website is not straightforward. You can't find your way easily. You spend some time getting the information. So the licensing activation was a little bit tricky for us. Maybe the installation issue was due to our lack of knowledge, but the licensing part and the escalation need to be smoother. Eventually, I had to pass this task to our business partner and they did it for us. There is a web interface for LAN creation, host mapping, and digital capacity. We created it as a VVol, mapped it to the box, and started moving data from the old Lenovo to this box. Because my background is not Dell EMC, it took us about two to three days to finish not only the boxes but the installation of the SAN switches as well. We had to migrate all the data from the old Lenovo to it, and we had to do work related to the ESX servers. What about the implementation team? We only used internal resources. Which other solutions did I evaluate? I was a technical manager for about 20 years in a company that is a business partner for IBM. My "DNA" is in IBM. However, when I shifted to my current company, they have multiple types of hardware vendors, both IBM and non-IBM. Before the acquisition of the Dell EMC PowerStore 1000T, I did a comparison with information from IBM sources, from Dell EMC sources, and from neutral sources. At that time I downloaded information from IT Central Station. After that, we acquired the box. What other advice do I have? I would like to wait another few months before giving any advice about the product, to see if there are any other hassles or any issues. But if someone is considering going with PowerStore, I would say yes. It's a good box. Ultimately, it's about performance, capacity, and price, as opposed to AI learning et cetera, the same as it has always been. I was not concerned about the fact that it is a relatively new platform because the Dell EMC brand is number-one in the market. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-11-29T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Efficient, good performance for deduplication and compression, and it integrates well with VMware What is our primary use case? Most of our PowerStore units are used for VMware VMs and vSphere. We migrated the VMs from our Unity storage. We have two sites; the data center site (DC) and the disaster recovery (DR) site. We only use the PowerStore on the DC site. The project was put on hold due to COVID but we plan to continue with it this year. How has it helped my organization? VMware integration with the product is good. We use vSphere, which is one of the main VMware functions. In addition, we use vSAN for storage, and we have to use the SIEM. This solution has helped us to simplify our storage operations, although we have a lot of storage devices and too few administrators. Because of this, we're looking for a software solution to assist us with administration. This is something that we will be doing next year. Overall, we're quite happy with the product because we can move the data that is stored on more than 10 of our current storage devices to a single PowerStore. In terms of efficiency, this solution is the best choice for us. What is most valuable? The deduplication and compression features are quite impressive because when we enable this feature on other products, such as HPE 3PAR, we have a lot of latency. With PowerStore, we don't have that issue. This device is less CPU intensive than the EMC Unity and the HPE 3PAR. PowerStore supports the iSCSI interface, which we find helpful. We use one for our fiber channel but another one for iSCSI. What needs improvement? There is no Synchronize replication feature on the storage. PowerStore should include more NAS functionality. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using EMC products since 2003, although I began using Dell EMC PowerStore only last year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Stability-wise, we have had no issues at all. In the past, all of our EMC products have been stable. We have not had the storage fail or had a faulty port. We have not even had to call support since putting it into production. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We plan to expand our usage in the future. One of our next goals is to purchase a PowerStore for our DR site because we need to have replication for our financial use case. We also plan to replace some of our other storage devices with PowerStore because we need to improve the overall efficiency. How are customer service and support? We have not opened a technical support case with Dell for PowerStore but because most of our products are from Dell, we have dealt with them in the past. We have purchased approximately 100 servers from Dell and we have always been quite happy with their support. We don't have any issues with them and I would rate them a ten out of ten. Every time we have an issue, they work with us to resolve the problem. There has never been a need for a repeat call and we are quite happy with that. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We have many Dell EMC Unity storage devices, including the Unity 450 and Unity 650, but we wanted a new, smaller storage unit. The main reason that we moved to PowerStore was the compression and deduplication. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is easier than other products, such as Unity. We were able to set up the storage and put it into production within one day. PowerStore is very quick to set up. By comparison, Unity will take at least two days to install. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? We are happy with the pricing that we get from Dell. What other advice do I have? This solution enables us to add compute and capacity independently, although we have not had to change our configuration. PowerStore uses machine learning and automation for optimizing resources but we are just starting with it, so I don't know much about these features. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-12-13T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Scalable, reliable, and straightforward installation What is our primary use case? We are a cloud service provider and we use Dell EMC PowerStore for the storage. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using Dell EMC PowerStore for approximately one year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? We have found the solution very stable and we like it very much. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Dell EMC PowerStore is scalable. There are many users using this solution and we have over 50 customers. How are customer service and support? I did not contact Dell support for this Dell EMC PowerStore solution but I have contacted them before for other solutions. I am typically happy with Dell's support. How was the initial setup? The solution is easy to install. What about the implementation team? We have a team of four engineers that do the implementation and maintenance of the solution. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price of Dell EMC PowerStore could be better, it is a bit expensive. What other advice do I have? I would recommend this solution to others. I rate Dell EMC PowerStore a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? Public Cloud Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2021-10-16T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from An appliance that is well-suited for a variety of use cases when it comes to virtualization What is our primary use case? It's a good product, especially for companies dealing with virtualization. It's well-suited for a broad range of use cases and stands out when it comes to tasks like personalization. If you require power and flexibility in that regard, it's a reasonably priced, straightforward product that is easy to manage. It delivers on its promises without unnecessary complexity. What is most valuable? A particularly valuable feature is its simplicity. The reporting tools and support are good, and the solution promotes data reduction, often meeting the compression ratio. You can initially invest in less upfront capacity and expand later as needed. What needs improvement? Data reduction needs improvement. While the reporting is generally good for general purposes, it may lack sufficient detail for more technical analysis. If you want to delve into where your I/Os are going, the reporting might need more in-depth information to make informed decisions. For how long have I used the solution? I’ve been using the solution for around three years. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is scalable within regions. It allows you to scale up to four nodes in one tool for extensive storage. You can create as many tools as needed, providing scalability based on the use case. It performs well for midsized use cases, especially those involving up to a hundred servers for virtualization. However, you might consider alternative products for more complex and larger-scale operations. How are customer service and support? The technical support is good as they continuously monitor the system remotely through a support agent. This agent provides critical alerts, and the response time is typically within an hour. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is straightforward. Firstly, the initial step involves unboxing, followed by configuring connectivity. There are various types of connectivity setups, including straight connectivity, direct connect, and private channel connectivity, offering diverse IT capacity configurations. The setup process encompasses unboxing, provisioning power, and connecting to the necessary switches. However, it's crucial to begin with a well-thought-out plan. One person is required to set up the solution. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The pricing is good. There's no need to pay for a license; it's all-inclusive. The only cost is associated with a support contract based on the level of support you desire. What other advice do I have? I recommend this solution, especially if you're not moving everything to the cloud and require reliable local storage. It proves to be an excellent choice. I rate Dell PowerStore a nine out of ten. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2023-11-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from An easy-to-use and fast tool that needs to offer its users a better technical support team What is our primary use case? I use Dell PowerStore in my company as a storage system. How has it helped my organization? Dell PowerStore is an easy and fast tool to work through our company's data. What needs improvement? Dell PowerStore is not a powerful tool. From an improvement perspective, Dell PowerStore needs to be a more powerful product. There are certain shortcomings with the technical support team of Dell PowerStore, where improvements are required. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using Dell PowerStore for five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. My company is a bulk user of the product and has around 100 users of Dell PowerStore, consisting of eight to ten IT engineers, and the rest are administrators. My company plans to increase the use of the solution in the future. How are customer service and support? With the technical support team of Dell PowerStore, my company faces certain language barriers. How would you rate customer service and support? Negative How was the initial setup? The product's initial setup is easy. I rate the product's initial setup a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is an easy setup phase, and ten is a difficult setup phase. The solution can be deployed within two to four hours. One person is required for the deployment of Dell PowerStore. Two people are required for the maintenance of Dell PowerStore. The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Dell PowerStore is not a cheap solution. What other advice do I have? I would not recommend Dell PowerStore to those who plan to use it. As the price of the product is high and it is difficult to contact the support, I rate the overall tool a seven out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2023-11-07T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Great migration performance with unlimited scalability What is our primary use case? Our company partners with the solution to offer customers storage as a service. We currently use the solution internally for our data center and to conduct tests or demos. We have not yet used the solution for customers because product lead time is slow and long. How has it helped my organization? We are focused on providing our customers with quality service. The solution saves customers time and money because it handles migrations quickly and does not require additional IT resources or staff. What is most valuable? The solution's scalability, capacity, and performance are great. Migrations are very easy and fast. The solution works well with native products such as VxRail, Unity, or VMware. What needs improvement? Products that are not native sometimes cause migration issues. The solution should include access to Dell Demo Center. Our prior partnership included it and I was able to learn more about products, schedule demos, view functionalities, and run tests in real-time. Without access, I have to wait to get answers to my questions. More demonstration and training options are needed. It is important to understand the solution before speaking with customers about its functionality and benefits. Documentation and videos are not very rich and should include the whole interface with detailed information that can be shared with customers. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using the solution for one year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? We don't have enough use cases to determine overall stability. The solution does perform well when scaling. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution's scalability is great. Customers view this as an advantage because they can roll out in stages. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? The company previously used Dell Demo Center. In my role as presales engineer, I implement products for a demo environment. I have knowledge of HPE 3PAR and NetApp but have worked almost exclusively with Dell products for twelve years. How was the initial setup? The setup is advertised as plug-and-play but it is not quite that easy. What about the implementation team? We installed the solution in-house for our demo environment. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price is high compared to the Tunisian market. The solution is T-level but is not priced that way. Customers want the option to scale in or out while managing costs. We are using PowerStore 1000 but that is already secondary level since 1200T and 1200X have been released. The price is more exciting when you consider the solution's scalability and performance. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We were already with Dell so we knew the solution would easily manage our migrations. What other advice do I have? I rate the solution an eight out of ten. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2022-11-21T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Beneficial flash storage, useful compression, and scalable What is our primary use case? We are using Dell PowerStore for block storage. We store all the virtualized environments, such as ERP, virtual machines, Oracle, and SAP-based Virtual Machines. We use storage for all our blocks. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is the all-NVMe flash storage. This is the most powerful feature of this series. It supports compression and duplication leads. What needs improvement? We are looking for the Dell PowerStore to become more mature to maximize our use cases. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using Dell PowerStore for approximately two years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Dell PowerStore is stable. All solutions have some issues, but overall it works well. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Dell PowerStore is scalable. We have 15 to 20 people using the solution in my company. The amount of use of the solution depends on the project we are in. How was the initial setup? Once you deploy this solution in an environment from scratch it can be challenging. However, if the sizing and the planning are good, then the challenges can be covered upfront. I rate the initial setup of Dell PowerStore a four out of five. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price of Dell PowerStore could improve. The price should be managed more compared to Huawei Dorado or IBM All-Flash series. What other advice do I have? I rate Dell PowerStore a ten out of ten. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2022-11-12T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Provides great data compression What is our primary use case? We are partners with Dell. What is most valuable? Data compression is a great feature. What needs improvement? The user interface could be improved. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using this solution for one year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is stable. How are customer service and support? We use a third party for our technical support. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is straightforward and doesn't take long. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Licensing is a little expensive and there's an extra fee for support. What other advice do I have? I rate this solution nine out of 10. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2022-12-30T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Unified storage, simple to install, and cost-efficient, but it could include public to private cloud adoption features What is our primary use case? We are using Dell PowerStore primarily for SAP applications as block storage, for replication across different locations. How has it helped my organization? We see a lot of value in the investment. Primarily, it's quite cost-efficient, and with the latest NVMe technology, we see the performance of this has improved compared to the previous generation VNX or Unity array. What is most valuable? When compared to Pure Storage, Dell PowerStore's cost was quite attractive. What needs improvement? The UI should be a little more user-friendly to manage. We want to see additional public to private cloud adoption features included if they are at all possible. For how long have I used the solution? I have been working with Dell PowerStore for approximately one year. We are working with Generation One, and we are looking for Generation Two. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Dell PowerStore is very stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Dell PowerStore is scalable. We can add multiple engines to it. We have 200 users in our organization who use this solution. How are customer service and support? We have not contacted technical support. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? At the moment, I am using Pure Storage and NetApp All-Flash Storage Arrays. We have worked with TCS. We chose it because of NVMe and the performance-enhancing technologies it offers. We worked with HPE Alletra and Pure Storage. Because HPE Alletra was not unified storage, we chose Dell PowerStore because it was. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was straightforward. It took less than a day to deploy. This solution does not require any specific maintenance. What about the implementation team? We carried it out using OEM and other methods. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? We purchased it with a five-year warranty. What other advice do I have? When compared to the technology that has been evaluated earlier or has just come onto the market earlier, it provides a good value for the money. Since the price is significantly lower and performance features have improved. That being said, I would recommend this. I would rate Dell PowerStore a seven out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-12-18T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from It has a very strong NAS that can support a lot of big, heavy environments What is our primary use case? I use it to solve a problem for a customer when he has a big VMware ESX environment with virtualization. You can solve a big problem with money or a lot of hardware since you can take the virtualization from PowerStore. Inside PowerStore, on the operating system level, you can use virtualization with VMware ESX or something like it. So, you don't need any hardware. My company does backups and security. We use a lot of OEMs. We use Dell because they have the strongest product, especially in Israel. Hybrid environments are very important for our disaster recovery issues. By default, we have 50% to the public cloud, with either Azure or AWS, and 50% on-prem. If it is on-prem, then it is a PowerStore. In Israel, 90% is deployed on-premises. PowerStore is used in Israeli universities since they have big environments with a lot of vendors. They take all the versions from the 500 to the 3000. It is also used in IT companies with 1,000 or 2,000 employees that have a lot of traffic with heavy loads. There are a lot of people in Israel who love to work with Dell. How has it helped my organization? It provides a big benefit when upgrading a new VMware environment. For example, in a big environment with 10 to 30 ESXs, you can take everything and put that into PowerStore. So, it is cost-effective, which is very important and has been massive for us. You reduce almost 80% from the hardware and work directly from PowerStore. Building hardware, especially in a big VMware environment, is a big issue for my organization. It brings us a lot of security, creating security between the containers. Then, we can separate an environment for security. You have IDS, IPS, the firewall, etc., but if you take the environment that you built on the containers then it creates a different security. I use the security between the rack server and PowerStore. Or, we use a connection with the fiber channel. It also separates the network from the SAN storage. This is the most important security when you are connecting storage to PowerStore for any environment. What is most valuable? * The level of virtualization is a big feature. This is the most important thing in PowerStore. * PowerStore has a very good replication tool. * It has a good NAS environment. It has a very strong NAS that can support a lot of big, heavy environments. * The container and its ability to connect directly to the cloud. We can use a lot of workloads and get all the workloads that we need. For example, we can get VMware directly from PowerStore and move it to the Cloud or any other containers. This is an added value of PowerStore. If you want to solve a workload problem, this is the best way. Once you build an environment based on a container, it is a big benefit because you can take the workloads from the cloud directly to on-premises and vice versa. It is a big benefit, especially in an environment based on VMware, a virtualization environment, and heavy storage. OpenManage Console is the best tool that Dell has. It is a great thing. We use it to configure the networking. It helps you realize what you need to discover. It is a little bit heavy. However, after that, it is a very user-friendly tool. It can connect to any vendor, switch, storage, etc. I would rate OpenManage Console as nine out of 10. What needs improvement? On downtime, it is okay. I would rate it as seven or eight out of 10. There are a few things that Dell has to change, fix, or upgrade. The storage could be improved. I would like a feature for how to best secure an appliance and the storage since we are connecting the container to the public cloud. I would like them to develop another level of security, making it more secure than from what they have now. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using it for a year to a year and a half. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I would rate stability as 10 out of 10. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It is very scalable. When you are trying to scale in or out with a system, you can see the return on investment. How are customer service and support? In general, Dell technical support is very professional. They have a good SLA. We have had a few cases that I personally use them to support, and they are great, especially the on-call. They are very professional and have very fast reactions. I would rate them as eight or nine out of 10. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We previously used Unity and VNX, and Unity especially belongs in the past. How was the initial setup? The initial deployment was very straightforward. If you need to install the system and upgrade the existing environment, that can take around half a day. If you don't need to install it, then it can take around an hour or two. Be very professional when designing the system and ensure your environment fits with the PowerStore. What about the implementation team? Two people can do the entire deployment project in Israel. You take the storage, place it on the rack, and start to install it to make the volumes, view, and networking. In the most bigger, complicated cases, it takes around two or three people. What was our ROI? If you use PowerStore as a virtualization environment and don't buy a rack server, then the solution is very cheap since you no longer need to buy the hardware or server for the ESX. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The big pricing issue is with capacity: * If we use the 500 or 1000, the licensing and pricing are reasonable. PowerStore can compete with any vendor and the price isn't that expensive. * It is very expensive though when you get to this point of using the 3000 with a client. They will start to think about using another vendor. There are a lot of solutions similar to PowerStore in regards to networking capacity and their prices are very cheap compared to PowerStore. Which other solutions did I evaluate? Dell has very good rack servers that are all on PowerStore, e.g., R640 and R740. These are the best servers that we have with our virtualization environment. This is the best hardware that you can use today. When it comes to servers and storage, there are a lot of vendors. NetApp is also a very good vendor in the world of storage, but there are some added values with PowerStore that I can't see on other vendors, such as the virtualization where you can take all your ESXs and put them inside PowerStore. I don't see this with other vendors. What other advice do I have? It is a very good tool for networking, storage, and working with the rack server. I would recommend this solution to other people. They should just take it. I would rate it as an eight out of 10. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? Hybrid Cloud Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2022-07-18T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from A solution with great virtual machines and file server databases What is our primary use case? Our primary use case for this solution is virtual machines and file server databases. What is most valuable? We have found the duplication compression feature very valuable. What needs improvement? The product could be improved by including a synchronizing feature for the file systems. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using this solution for ten months and we are currently using version 1.0. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is stable. I rate it an eight out of ten. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is scalable. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was straightforward. What about the implementation team? We used vendors the first time we deployed and deployed it in-house the second time. It took us half a day to complete the deployment. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I rate the licensing costs a seven out of ten. What other advice do I have? I rate this solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good, but a synchronizing feature could be included to improve the solution. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-09-17T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Midrange data storage solution used as a lab to showcase new technology What is our primary use case? We use this solution for VMs and some AI storage. It's mostly an internal use server. We use it for lab for customers to access it. We use iSCSI on it. How has it helped my organization? This solution is very useful to us as we use it internally for all our services that we need. We use it as a lab to be able to showcase the customers new technology and how it can help them going forward. What is most valuable? The interface is very easy to use and easy to install. Everything essentially comes with it. So, it's all the software is there for us. What needs improvement? I do not like having to use a VPLEX for synchronous replication, as opposed to having the store software built in. For how long have I used the solution? We have been used this solution for one year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? This is a stable solution. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We use the 500T model which is not scalable but there are other options that offer scalability from Dell. How are customer service and support? The technical support for this solution is really good. I would rate it an eight out of ten. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive How was the initial setup? The initial setup was straightforward. We did all our prerequisites before the Dell representative came on site to help finish it off. It is a plug and play setup. I was the only person involved in setup and deployment. I made sure that all the information needed was provided to Dell. The only maintenance that has been needed so far are software upgrades. What about the implementation team? We implemented this solution with help from Dell. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The licensing for this solution good and is in the mid range tier. It matches the old UDXT platform. What other advice do I have? The Power Scale pretty well does everything you need. That said, the advice I have is to determine what you need it for upfront, because there's some decisions you have to make up front that if you don't make, you'll have to restart later on. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-05-25T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Good block storage with responsive support and an easy implementation process What is our primary use case? We are a reseller, and we use them to demonstrate to our customers the PowerStore interface as well as to power our own lab demos, running vCenter, NSX, and other software utilities. How has it helped my organization? For our demo lab, before we got the PowerStore, we were running on a really outdated storage platform that was running out of space and didn't have really enough internal resources to be able to power our customer demos. This product has really helped facilitate and we do quite a few PowerStore demos since we have that device. It's current and well spec-ed enough to support us. What is most valuable? Our older PowerStore is where most of our demos are located. We're just using it as a block of storage and storage to power the VMware environment. That's been the main use case for it, for us. What needs improvement? The networking was difficult. It was complicated. It took as long to configure it correctly for the networking, as to roll it out. If there was a way to simplify the network complexity, that would be good. It's also only supported with a limited amount of switches. If I hadn't bought the Dell switches, I would've had some issues with my legacy switches. That's been our number one issue with customers - when they say, "oh no, I'm going to use this other switch." For how long have I used the solution? We have two PowerStores. We have one that's three years old, and we have a new one we just implemented a couple of weeks ago. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues with it. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We only have the product in one location. The only people who actually touch the solution are about six people. That's between the people who maintain it and sales architects who use it for demonstrations. How are customer service and support? We have full Dell support. One time, my engineer was in the lab and knocked a power cable loose. I got an email within 15 minutes saying "you had an unexpected node failure, and do you need help?" They were on top of it. They are right there and they reach out proactively. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We had a Compellent previously and that had aged out. It was six years old. Then we had an Equalogic that was in place just for NAS storage. That one also basically aged out and was running out of space. This product replaced both of those units. How was the initial setup? I was involved in the initial setup of this solution. It was pretty straightforward, actually. With the first implementation, we were done in about 12 hours. That included the networking switches. The unit, the PowerStore itself, is probably deployed in only six hours. The solution requires maintenance. I am not the one who performs the maintenance. Our lead engineer handles it. What about the implementation team? We actually used Dell Professional Services during the implementation. I also had my lead PowerStore engineer and some of our sales architects shadow it, as well as a couple of my other engineers who hadn't used PowerStore. Dell let us have about four people shadow the installation so that my staff could get some knowledge as it got deployed. What was our ROI? We've seen an ROI. We're a reseller. Being able to do those demos for our customers helps us sell more products. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I don't really have any line of sight on the pricing. I heard it's comparable to the other Dell storage units. What other advice do I have? I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. It's a really good product. I'd advise potential new users to definitely have a demo or do a hands-on lab to try it out. Also, definitely make sure you buy supported switches. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? Private Cloud Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-05-17T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Great replication and deduplication with helpful new features about to come out What is our primary use case? We're addressing performance issues in our data center as well as the data duplication features to make sure we can be efficient in how we're storing data. How has it helped my organization? The main improvement has been just storage efficiency. The price per gig of what we're able to store has been the biggest aspect the business has seen. What is most valuable? Some of the new features that are coming out, like vVols support. We're very excited about it. Currently, the features of replication and deduplication have been very important to us. What needs improvement? The support for vVols and the storage replication of those, which are new features, we've just heard are coming out kind in the second half of this year. We're very excited about those. We've been waiting for them for a while. It was very new when we first deployed it a year ago. Even just the upgrade processes and knowing what to expect, as well as documentation, could be more robust. We had folks that helped us through, however, we did have some bumps and bruises along the way. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using a solution for just over a year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability has been solid for us since we deployed it. We haven't had any issues to speak of. Maybe a part that failed somewhere that didn't cause any user impact, however, that's been the extent of it. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We tend to think of the users being our applications that are in there. However, in terms of the total global footprint of users, we've probably got 40,000 end-users, and probably 500 applications that run on top of it. We are considering increasing usage. We have two other global data centers where it'll be deployed and then about 120 remote sites that we're just looking at now, whether we should make PowerStore our standard there or stay with the current unity. How was the initial setup? My team was involved in the deployment. I know we had the pro deploy services that did a lot of the work for us. It took a little while to get updates done. It sat for a few months before our data center was ready to put it in. Other than that, things went pretty seamlessly. Once we actually had all the prereqs done, it was deployed within a week, it was probably just a few days even between the two sites. It was a couple of months of waiting, however, that was more on our side. These were two new Greenfield data center builds. It was kind of starting from scratch with a partner and now we're migrating workloads into them. It wasn't integrating with anything existing. There was really just one person on my team who was coordinating with outside organizations to do some implementation work for us. He was a cloud/storage engineer. In terms of maintenance requirements, there's one person who looks after things. We've got it integrated with CloudIQ from a management standpoint. It largely tells us when things need to happen, however, one person keeps up with updates, new firmware, and those kinds of things. What about the implementation team? We did have outside assistance. We had Presidio as part of that deployment and we also had Dell's ProDeploy services. Both were very positive. They helped us understand both the prerequisites and what we needed to get started and then got us up and running effectively. What was our ROI? In terms of ROI, I don't have a good measure of it, however, I do know that we've seen definite improvements when we just compare what we've done in the past to what we're doing now. We've definitely seen improvements in terms of price per gig. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The great thing was the guarantee that came with it of the four-to-one deduplication ratio. That really helped with the pricing as well as the anytime upgrades. From a TCO standpoint, we were really able to see some benefits there. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We did a bake-off between NetApp, Pure, and Dell. We've used EMC and then Dell storage solutions in our environment for years and just have a proven relationship with the organization, as well as the product's capability. What other advice do I have? We have a private cloud within our two new North American global data centers. We've looked at connectivity to both AWS and Azure, however, we really don't have any storage replication heading there at this point. I'd rate the product nine out of ten. With the new features that'll be out in a few months, it just continues to get better. I like this solution. This was just built more from the ground up with new features in mind. In particular, some of the capabilities that are coming out in the near future are really going to set it in a class above what the others have to offer. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? Private Cloud Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2022-05-17T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Has its own encryption and is versatile; lacking in sufficient documentation What is our primary use case? We use this solution for storage. I'm an enterprise architect. What is most valuable? It's a versatile box that has different kinds of protocols that can be switched off and on. They have their own encryption which is good. It also has its own file formatting protocol, which saves us a lot of space. What needs improvement? A downside of Powerstore is that it can only do thin provisioning. I had trouble finding articles on the internet about it. When I was looking for information on switching features on and off there was not a lot available. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using this solution for several years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability is good. How are customer service and support? We have a bit of a challenge with technical support. We didn't purchase any support but it would have been really appreciated if Bell would have provided some minimal support for us. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is quite straightforward although we had to make quite a few adjustments. There was some trial and error but we got there in the end. Some additional documentation around that would have been good. What was our ROI? I believe the ROI is good although I haven't checked it. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the price point is quite good. What other advice do I have? I like this solution, it has everything you need for enterprise-grade storage. It supports all the protocols. It is much more reliable and efficient than the normal HPD. I rate this solution seven out of 10. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2023-04-02T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Easy to implement and extend with good reliability What is our primary use case? We primarily use the solution for storage. What is most valuable? The solution is very easy to implement. It's stable. The solution can scale. Its pricing structure is reasonable. What needs improvement? There is a bit less functionality than, for example, NetApp. You cannot monitor as well with this product. You cannot delegate permissions. For example, in NetApp, you can give two virtual storages and give them each to a different company. In Dell, you can only have one or two admins, and you cannot give permissions independently. It should be more flexible. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using the solution for half a year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability of the product is good so far. There are no bugs or glitches. It's new. It hasn't crashed or frozen. I'd rate the stability eight out of ten. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? For now, the scalability is fine. I can grow double my size with no problem. I have yet to scale, however. I'd rate the scalability potential nine out of ten. There are 800 people using the solution right now. We do not have plans to increase usage. How are customer service and support? If I had any issues at the beginning, it was dealt with in the presence of the integrator, and he fixed it. I have yet to contact technical support to troubleshoot. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? I've also used NetApp. Before that, we also used HPE. The company chose Dell PowerStore based on budgeting choices. How was the initial setup? The implementation process is straightforward. It's not complex. It's easier to deploy than NetApp. The deployment takes about six hours for a basic setup. You just set it up and connect it to the laptop and input the details. The technical team for deployment and maintenance only took one system admin. What about the implementation team? We had the help of an integrator during deployment. What was our ROI? I have witnessed ROI while using the solution. It's been good so far. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The pricing is okay. It's expensive, yet fits within our budget. It has cost us less if we compare it to NetApp. We bought the license for the whole five years. There are no extra costs. I'm not sure of the exact cost of the solution. What other advice do I have? I'm an end-user. I'm an administrator of Dell PowerStore. We are using the latest version of the solution. I've been very satisfied with the product. The solution is easy to manage and implement. It's worth the money you pay for it. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2023-03-31T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Gives us performance and flexibility, and has completely changed our scientific computation environment What is our primary use case? The use case for this solution is based on VMware and that is why we chose PowerStore X. During the first period of the pandemic, we decided to use our VMware infrastructure for HPC workloads. We were looking for high-performance storage that could be inserted inside our VMware environment in an easy way. PowerStore, which had just been announced, seemed like the right solution and so we decided to buy. We have this storage environment inside the virtual HPC. In our environment we are doing medical analysis related to genomic workloads. The data are acquired remotely from experiments and stored on the PowerStore. The PowerStore is exposed to the user through virtual machines, and the data are analyzed in this environment. How has it helped my organization? During the pandemic, we were looking for something that could easily increase our scientific computing capabilities. It was not for something related to our university's enterprise applications. We were looking for something that was easy to provide inside our virtual scientific computation environment. PowerStore was really the best we could buy. And it has changed things completely. Our scientific computations were traditional before, in the sense of NFS or traditional HPC. PowerStore, now, is a key factor for the virtual HPC environment that we have. Also, the solution's Anytime Upgrade program is a key factor so that we can keep the storage upgraded without any downtime. We have experienced some software upgrades on the system over the last year, and everything has run quite smoothly and we are very happy about that. I expect the Anytime Upgrade program will save us money and it saves time, for sure. It's difficult, in our environment, to estimate how much time this program has saved us because we don't typically track the time we spend. But if you take into account the fact that the upgrade is almost automatic, almost without people intervening, that is the reason we save time. You can schedule an upgrade, so you know when you are upgrading, but you don't need people looking into it. We save the amount of time people would typically have to devote to an upgrade. We bought the PowerStore for performance and flexibility, and we are 100 percent satisfied with both. What is most valuable? * Flexibility * Performance * Easy of use It also has some very good compression capabilities. We were looking for a solution that was easy to install in our VMware environment, that was flexible. PowerStore X is a type of a VMware cluster that you install inside your environment. If you have a VMware environment, like we have in production, it's easy to install and use. It enables us to add compute or capacity independently. We have also deployed some apps on PowerStore, even though the PowerStore we have is not the biggest one you can buy. One of the main characteristics of PowerStore is that it is like another piece of VMware, so you can run applications on top, applications that have direct access to the storage. The ability to add compute or capacity independently is great because it adds more flexibility to our environment. You are not adding only storage, but you're adding some not-so-big computing capability. You have the possibility of adding some virtual machines, running NVMe storage, and that is a real plus for this solution. In addition, PowerStore's built-in intelligence for helping to simplify IT operations is incredible. When we approached PowerStore, we had an idea that it was a normative platform, but we were impressed by the capability of the solution. It's probably one of the best pieces of storage that we have installed here. What needs improvement? Where the system needs to improve is by adding more enterprise features like replication on other sites. We would also like it to be much more aligned with the VMware version. For example, today we have two different versions of VMware ESXi running to keep the PowerStore online. It would be better if the software cycling was faster. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using Dell EMC PowerStore for almost a year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It's a stable solution. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? PowerStore is the latest and the best technology available. The design for scalability of the solution is perfect. It's something that can grow vertically and horizontally, by design. Of course, it's NVMe storage, so it's not cheap. You can expand the solution using less expensive storage upgrades in the PowerStore, so it's very good. By design, it's a wonderful machine. Of course, if you want to go all-NVMe, you have to be able to afford it. How are customer service and technical support? Dell EMC's customer and technical support are the best in the market, for sure. We have almost all the Dell EMC solutions here, so we know the support very well and it is absolutely the best in the market. How was the initial setup? The installation was quite smooth and easy. After one week, everything was up and running. What about the implementation team? The installation was done by Dell EMC people and us, together. Our experience with them was incredible, as usual. We have several types of Dell EMC storage here, so we know their abilities. Everything was smooth. What was our ROI? ROI was a key factor for us, for this infrastructure. We have seen ROI in that we have been able to give our researchers an environment that they didn't have before. It has been a complete success. It's a completely new environment. We didn't have anything similar before. Every cent spent has been worth it. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price is not cheap, but it's worth it for the features you get from the storage. If you can afford it, you are probably buying the best solution that you can have for this virtual environment. Which other solutions did I evaluate? For this environment, PowerStore was almost unique when we chose it, so we did not evaluate other solutions. What other advice do I have? We weren't concerned that PowerStore is a relatively new platform. We were not inserting it in an enterprise environment. We were inserting it in a scientific computing environment, which is where we tend to install all the latest technologies. It was not a problem. If you have a production VMware environment, the platform is no longer new and is probably the most flexible performance storage system that you can buy today. We are not using the solution's load balancing at the moment but it's something that we are looking into. We use PowerStore's built-in VMware hypervisor to run VMs and virtualized applications, but we are not using it at the edge. We know that is one of the capabilities of this kind of solution, but we are using it in our central computing facility. We experienced some small issues, but the virtual machine was new. But our choice was a good one. The machine is easy to use, the performance is there, and we are happy. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Date published: 2021-03-21T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Machine learning and automation work well, and inline deduplication enables us to host more data What is our primary use case? We were in need of a new enterprise storage solution for our virtual machines. We use it for primary systems and processes, so for us it's very important. How has it helped my organization? The built-in intelligence adapts quickly to changing workload requirements. It works as we expected it to work. It doesn't give you a view into how it's doing it because it's doing it in the backend, but up until now, every process has been working perfectly fine. The biggest benefit is that we have an enterprise storage solution we can rely on. It does simplify storage operations. It's easy to manage. In the few months that we have used it, the performance has been great. What is most valuable? The way you're able to manage all your PowerStores as one solution is very good for us. PowerStore enables you to federate or cluster multiple appliances with automated load balancing. In terms of management, it's helpful that we can do it from a single interface where we're able to manage multiple PowerStores. When you have multiple PowerStores, it works intelligently by running the workloads based on the needs of the infrastructure. The solution's machine learning and automation work well when it comes to optimizing resources. It does inline deduplication which means that the net the amount of storage you have available is bigger. It can do all kinds of optimization in the system itself and that works very well. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using Dell EMC PowerStore for about three months. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The most valuable features of PowerStore are its scale up and scale out. We are able to scale up if we need more space or more power in the current PowerStore setup, but we can also scale out if we want to put in an extra one beside it or in another data center. How are customer service and technical support? Technical support for Compellent was a lot better because for Dell EMC the PowerStore is a new solution and they don't have a lot of people here in the Netherlands with the right knowledge to work on it. Having said that, I don't have many concerns that it's a new solution. Other people do have concerns about that, but I believe in the knowledge of Dell EMC. Also, it's not 100 percent new. It's based on another hardware system, so I have no concerns. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? Before, we were on Dell EMC Compellent hardware, and that was based on a tiering principle whereby we used quick and slower storage. We had more and more issues with that because it was a little bit outdated, around five years old. We were looking for a new solution to house our infrastructure. How was the initial setup? The setup process could be improved. We had some issues regarding configuration and the time it took to do things. It wasn't specifically the people we worked with, but more the process and how it's done. They can work on that. I'm not satisfied with the process they used to do the setup and the timeframe within which everything was done. For example, there were things which we needed to do together with Dell EMC. There were three meetings for doing three specific things, but we could have done them in one meeting. That's why the duration, from the moment we bought the hardware until we were able to use it, was two or three months. We had expected that we would be able to use the hardware quicker. But because of the implementation process, it took us longer than we wanted. What was our ROI? Three months is too soon for us to see ROI. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? When we compared it with the other solutions, the pricing of PowerStore was equal. The pricing is good. Which other solutions did I evaluate? I don't know what the names were because I was not 100 percent involved in the selection process, but there were two other vendors we looked at. One of the main differences was the way they do inline deduplication. In the backend, PowerStore does all kinds of smart things. The result is that with less physical storage being used, we are able to host more data. Also the fact that PowerStore is completely NVMe-based means performance is great, thanks to the technical architecture. What other advice do I have? The solution enables you to add compute and capacity independently, although in our environment we cannot add compute. We are able to add storage and that works, although we have not done so because we have only been working with PowerStore for three months and haven't needed any extra capacity yet. Only three people work with PowerStore in our company, and they are all system administrators. I'm happy with the choice we made. I can recommend PowerStore because the technical architecture is based on NVMe. They have a good USP. There are other vendors who also have NVME-only systems, but I still recommend PowerStore. Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Date published: 2021-04-12T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from VMware integration was a big factor for us, and we have benefited from the advanced dedupe, compression, and replication What is our primary use case? We do a lot of cloning of databases for either troubleshooting or to stage and prepare implementation. We are a SaaS provider in the real estate industry and we're either using the PowerStore to help expedite things in our development environment, or we're using it to help troubleshoot any problems that we have. We have north of 13 petabytes of storage in our environment. How has it helped my organization? PowerStore has enabled us to add additional storage to that we hadn't planned on, which allows us to defer the purchase of some additional storage. We've really improved the amount of storage that we're able to effectively utilize because of its better deduping. It has about a 50 percent better dedupe rate, with its intelligence, than we had been previously getting. Overall, we've benefited from the dedupe, compression, and replication, the advanced technology, of this frame. It's all better than what we had in the previous generation of XtremIO appliances, and above what we were getting in the Dell EMC Unitys. What is most valuable? My guys have told me that the administration tools take advantage of machine learning and make recommendations to the admins, and that makes the administration easier. For how long have I used the solution? We've been using Dell EMC PowerStore for about six months. What do I think about the stability of the solution? We've had no issues with the machines since turning them on. The machine supports "six nines" of availability. Anything they could do to push it closer to "seven nines" of availability would be extremely beneficial. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It scales both horizontally and vertically. How are customer service and technical support? The support has been phenomenal. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We replaced an older, high-performance storage device that was very expensive. With PowerStore, we were able to achieve the IOPS, and we were also able to get a data compression rate significantly above what we had expected. We were able to retire that older, very expensive piece of storage by bringing in the PowerStore. It's been faster and cheaper than we had expected, per terabyte. Another reason that we were after this machine was PowerStore's VMware integration. We're a very large VMware customer. Some 98 percent of our workload runs on VMware. How was the initial setup? The setup was very straightforward. We bought it with the setup from Dell EMC support. We bought it, they shipped it, and a Dell EMC engineer coordinated with my storage engineer. We set it up and then did the data migration. On these particular frames, we needed very little help. It all went very seamlessly. We had a couple of data center engineers involved, as well as a couple of storage admins, and a storage architect. Our storage administrators took very limited training to get up to speed on the machines. What about the implementation team? Dell EMC was involved and the experience was very good. They showed up when they were supposed to, all the pre-work was done. They did the post-work, and there were no concerns from our team. What was our ROI? We exceeded the business case of the device that we had. We were able to add more workloads to the environment than the business case allowed, and we are still migrating more. So our cost per IOP and our cost per gigabyte have been substantially lower than our business case. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? We did a very competitive analysis on the pricing and compared it against the tradeoffs of the other storage products that we had previously bought, and we found PowerStore to be favorable on a cost-per-compute basis. There's still a cap on the upgrade path, where you can consume all the engines within the frame before you have to go to another frame. I would like more flexibility to increase the number of engines on the frames. Normally, we exceed the IOPS on the frames before we can ever exhaust the storage, so anything they can do to help us avoid stranded storage capacity, capacity that we couldn't get to, would be beneficial. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We've looked at several other solution environments, including Pure, HPE, as well as Violin and a couple of the other vendors that rate high in industry reviews. For us, with our large dependence on VMware, if we can get a cost-competitive solution from Dell EMC, with their ability to support VMware, we end up with a whole lot less finger-pointing in the mix. You can add compute or capacity independently, meaning it has greater capabilities than the Unitys that we had been targeting for our non-SaaS environment, and it has performed admirably. What other advice do I have? Clearly test out the workloads and don't necessarily be afraid because it's a new device. Work with Dell EMC to get a great contractual solution that will protect you with the new technology. This new technology does perform. It's a great performance machine. Although it's a relatively new platform, I was fairly confident in Dell EMC technology's support for the environment and in the performance that we had had with other machines. I felt there was very little risk in the migration to this solution, and we were really excited about the improved capabilities. In terms of PowerStore's built-in VMware hypervisor, we really haven't used it at the edge, although I can see its capabilities there. As a SaaS provider, we generally provide in the center. For the targeted workload that we have, it's performing substantially better than we had expected within our business case. We're very happy with the machine. It has multiple CPUs per storage frame, which is better than the predecessor machine, and there is a RAM increase as well. We got what was advertised and even a little bit better than what was advertised. We've been very excited by the capabilities of the appliance, to the point that the person who runs the infrastructure for me is now looking for a proposal to consolidate all of our non-VMAX work on PowerStores. The performance and the administration of the machine have been great and we're looking at how we can get additional returns on this targeted workload. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: IT Central Station contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Date published: 2021-04-07T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The built-in intelligence can adapt quickly to changing workload requirements What is our primary use case? We have two appliances — a primary and a secondary — and they are synchronized, so all the volumes are replicated. If the primary appliance goes down, we can get functions on the other side. When it's writing on one side, writing is disabled on the other side. In the event of disaster recovery, we can enable writing, and then we can do anything from there. How has it helped my organization? PowerStore simplified everything because we have a duplicate copy of all the volumes on the primary side. If anything happens, we can get data from the other side. It also takes hourly snapshots. If anything gets corrupted, we can recover using the snapshots. It's easier for our business to create volumes and allocate space on a volume. You don't have to go through the hassle of zoning the volume and doing everything else. It's simple. What is most valuable? PowerStore is easy to use. All the drives use soft encryption. To upgrade it, you download the app, and it runs by itself. It's very easy to deploy, share, and create volumes. It's active, so you can have two nodes on one appliance. If Node A goes down, you still get node B at the bottom running. I would rate PowerStore's machine learning and AI eight out of 10 because customer automation is very easy. It's just a click of the button, You can also use what they call Cloud IQ, which is an online storage and monitoring software. If you log on to the internet, you can check on your plans to see how much space is left. Cloud IQ analytics software is free as long as you have an account with Dell. Dell's built-in intelligence is the best because it can also calculate how much data is needed for storage beforehand and if you need to add more drives or anything. The built-in intelligence can adapt quickly to changing workload requirements. We were able to migrate from IBM storage by uploading an image. With other devices, it's sometimes hard to migrate from different forms of storage, but PowerStore was very quick. We didn't have any downtime because once we were able to create the image, we just had to do a cut-over on the other side. Pretty soon it's going to be Meditech certified, so it's going to be able to run Meditech. Right now we are using a different solution to run Meditech, but once it gets certified, we'll be able to move from the other appliance. VMware integration is very easy too. PowerStore gives us leverage, we can tell how much space is allocated to the VM and what's happening on a VM. For how long have I used the solution? We just installed PowerStore this spring. What do I think about the stability of the solution? PowerStore is highly stable. If one node goes down, it's going to alert you at any time. And then since you're using Cloud IQ, you can see all the alerts and everything. You can install Cloud IQ on your cell phone, so you'll get a notification on your phone. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? You can scale PowerStore. If you look at the cost of getting a next-generation XtremIO, we can get two PASTs for the cost of one XtremIO, so it's cheaper to get the PAST. It just came out. It's new, so I don't know about the usage out there, but for us, it's a small beast. It does everything. How are customer service and support? Dell's support is perfect. I rate Dell's support nine out of 10. You call them when you have an issue, and they'll get back to you within 24 hours. If it's a serious issue, they respond in four hours. The system itself does a lot. It lets you know when it needs to be updated. And if the upgrade fails, you can just revert to the previous version. This happened once, but we tried again and I didn't have to revert to the older version. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? Before PowerStore, we were using IBM SVC. We switched because we are getting more virtualized. PowerStore is a new solution, but we were not concerned about switching because we went through a third party called SIS, and they've already installed a couple of PowerStore storage devices in different hospitals. If you look at the DS 7000 in the data center, it's a rack. There are maybe four racks for the same storage solution on one parcel. So it also minimizes space. We only have one 2U rack and it's running like 96 terabytes. How was the initial setup? PowerStore is easy to install and deploy. It takes less than a day. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price is on the higher side. It's alright relative to what PowerStore does. What other advice do I have? I'll rate Dell EMC PowerStore 10 out of 10. I haven't had any issues with it since we've installed it. PowerStore is easy to adapt, and it's straightforward to use. You cannot even make a mistake on anything because it's going to make sure you confirm everything before you go to the next step. I haven't seen anything that needs to be improved yet. If I compare it with what we were using before, this one is genius. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2021-11-24T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Straightforward with great snapshots and no complicated configuration What is our primary use case? Typically, the customer uses it and we manage it. We primarily use it to host the sub server. What is most valuable? The usage of the system is very straightforward. It is simple and easy to use. It has great snapshots. I can take a million snapshots and also schedule the timing. There is no complicated configuration for queries and calls. You just create a model and go. This generation of the product, overall, has been very nice. It is stable. The solution can scale. What needs improvement? There are a lot of features in IBM that we'd like to see in PowerStore as well. It has more deduplication and compression processes, all the storage, so that they do not depend on the tool embedded in the cluster. The pricing could be lower. It is very expensive. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using the solution for at least six months. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability is good. It is reliable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's been perfect so far. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution can scale. We can attach an expansion as needed. So far, seeing as how I haven't collected all of the information in regard to scaling, I'd rate it seven out of ten. We have three storage admins. The customer likely exceeds 20,000 users globally. The client does not have plans to increase usage at this time. How are customer service and support? I've contacted technical support, They are fine. They are helpful and responsive. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We have received a new storage device from HP. It is MSA storage. How was the initial setup? While I did not see the deployment, my understanding is that it is easy. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price is very, very expensive. It is more expensive than IBM, for example. Likely the cost is $400,000 whereas IBM may be $250,000. This is a one-time payment to buy the device. There are no subscription costs. There are no other costs for support. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We've looked into IBM SS7 300 as well. I'd recommend it as it has many abilities. It can carry some uploads from storage clusters. What other advice do I have? We are service providers. The solution is on-premises at our company and we manage it for the customer remotely via a private cloud. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2023-03-12T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from reliable and easy to set up with good data reduction capabilities What is our primary use case? We primarily use the solution for storage and data reduction. What is most valuable? The initial setup is very straightforward. The architecture is very good. It's a reliable product. The data reduction feature is quite useful. It has a good reduction ratio during migrations. The solution is stable. What needs improvement? The solution only supports NPE. It doesn't support SSD or Flash. We'd like the option to be more flexible. If a customer finds out SSD is not supported, they will look for another option. For how long have I used the solution? I implemented the solution around two years ago. I haven't used it for very long. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is a reliable, stable product. We haven't had any issues with it. Of course, it is not that old. That said, there are no failures and we have not had controller issues. there are no bugs or glitches. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It is a scalable product. However, I have not needed to go and upgrade it or add more enclosures, et cetera. It can scale up. However, it can not scale out. I have three customers that have already implemented the tool. More are coming online soon. Most of them are enterprises. We do expect expansion in the coming years. How are customer service and support? Technical support is more than perfect. We are quite pleased with the level of support on offer. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? I'm also aware of HP, which is a very similar solution. Sometimes the pricing of HP can be better. How was the initial setup? The solution is very simple to set up. It is not a complex process. I monitor the process from a design and implementation point of view. The deployment takes about 15 minutes if everything is correct and on-hand. Then you move on to the management and you can have the flow up and running. We do the configurations and create the volume and handle the storage of the whole system. What about the implementation team? I've implemented the solution three times at different sites. We implement the tool and do the migration. I work with a separate partner and we deploy to the users. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The pricing is fixed. We have received a good price overall. Users must pay for the licenses. Most of the tools are included in an out-of-the-box delivery. There are no extra fees. What other advice do I have? We're partners. The solution is acceptable for both small and large companies. I'd advise new users to be mindful during the implementation process and make sure it is done right. They need to choose the correct solution and implement either block or unified. It's a good idea to look at the documentation before setting everything up. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2023-03-10T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Efficient, robust, and user-friendly What is our primary use case? We are in the process of replacing our current SANs, FTP servers, and NAS servers, and have already implemented the new SAN solution. What is most valuable? This solution is highly flexible and offers efficient online compression capabilities. The equipment is standardized and can be easily upgraded by replacing the controllers. The disk sizes are also quite adequate, and the solution is user-friendly. Additionally, it offers extremely fast performance. One of the benefits of their continuous improvement approach is that each update comes with additional features, without any extra charges for previously missing functionalities. What needs improvement? The cost of technical support is high. For how long have I used the solution? I have been working with Dell PowerStore for two and a half years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Dell PowerStore is extremely stable. I haven't had any issues. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The scalability of the technology is excellent. One of the enhancements made since last year is the inclusion of NVMe in each shell. By continually extending NVMe, the drives can now reach up to 15 terabytes, which may differ from previous specifications. Although the claimed four-to-one compression ratio may actually be closer to two point eight, or three, it is marketed as four, and it comes with a compact footprint. How are customer service and support? Technical Support is pretty good. We've received an email or a phone call. The higher the scale, the more expensive it is. When you buy it, it comes with a three-year service agreement, but it is quite pricey. However, it includes everything for our response and everything. How was the initial setup? The initial setup process for Dell PowerStore is straightforward and easy to follow. Even when using a fiber channel, which supports speeds of 10 and 25 gigabits per second, the setup is relatively simple. What was our ROI? What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Dell PowerStore has been priced aggressively, especially when compared to other NVMe storage options. It is likely one of the most cost-effective options for organizations seeking a pure NVMe play in terms of pricing. What other advice do I have? I would rate Dell PowerStore a ten out of ten. It's an aggressive box. It's a real departure. From everybody else. We are a partner with Dell. Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2023-03-16T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Has a great mapping feature and is easy to deploy What is our primary use case? I'm a systems engineer and we have a partnership with Dell. What is most valuable? This is an interesting solution and I find the mapping to be a great feature. What needs improvement? I would like to see more automation and more analytics in this product. For how long have I used the solution? We have deployed this solution to our customers over the past six months. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The solution is scalable. Each of our customers has around 30-40 users. How are customer service and support? Dell provides great customer service. How was the initial setup? The initial setup is very easy. What other advice do I have? I love this product and hope to work more on it. I rate it 10 out of 10. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2023-01-26T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Straightforward deployment and valuable features What is our primary use case? Our primary use case for Dell PowerStore is for data protection and data transfer. What is most valuable? I find all of the Dell PowerStore features to be valuable. What needs improvement? When it comes to Dell PowerStore, I would like to see more integration and more security features included. It's unfortunate that the solution does not feature Flash trace. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using this solution for the past one or two years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? My impression is that Dell PowerStore is highly stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? My opinion is that Dell PowerStore is highly scalable. Currently, we have many users of this solution as we have three hundred people in our company. We also have plans to increase the usage of this solution, but that will depend on the storage and customer data and its size. How was the initial setup? My opinion is that the initial setup process is quite straightforward. What other advice do I have? I would recommend this solution for middle-range customers. Overall, I would rate this solution a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2023-03-12T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from A solution offering exceptional stability to its users along with an extremely efficient technical support team What is our primary use case? We were using Dell PowerStore as a block device for VMware infrastructure and in iSCSI Target for a couple of secret server clusters installed at a hardware level. Apart from that, regarding the workload, which is currently more or less 40% for SQL Servers and 60% for the production of VMware machines. We have a small workload on VMware machines to manage a typical number crunching machine and application server. Now, we have six machines running a couple of MongoDB servers. Honestly, our bottleneck is not the PowerStore. Our actual bottleneck is the networking size because we noticed how we got some barriers in LACP algorithms, indicating we have two mixes on every motherboard> However, we are not able to fulfill the double connection. We also have a part of our experience infrastructure, but instead of 25 gigabit, it functions on 10 gigabit. Sometimes, during evenings or on Fridays, we use Rubrik for protection when we run it. When Rubrik works against Dell PowerStore and MongoDB, along with SQL Server, we noticed that PowerStore's QLC is normal while its CPU and compression levels are good. But, we do face a delay in CAPA and the server. So definitely, we noticed that maybe we need to upgrade everything to 25 gigabit, and still, if it doesn't work, then we may consider FortiGate's networking. Dell Compellent was our storage before, and now we are pushing the Ethernet to the maximum with PowerStore. What is most valuable? Three years ago, I was a little scared about PowerStore because I have been working with storage solutions for many years and have a habit of maintaining additional storage machines, firmware, interfaces, and so on. I noticed that PowerStore is a totally virtualized solution. PowerStore runs container, docker, and so on, and the firmware is managed in a different manner, which is a good point for total virtualization of the firmware and so on. But on the contrary, it's like a black box for me. It is different to work on PowerStore compared to IBM. I worked in the past with IBM ESS 800 Shark Storage. The type of super virtualization in PowerStore is a startup feature. A digital machine is present inside the storage server when this startup feature is launched. This digital machine can be managed entirely remotely, with an automatic download available from Dell. We started with the solution's initial version three years ago, and now we are working on one of its latest versions. What needs improvement? Now we are not pushing the PowerStore to its maximum capability, so we are down in respect of the limit of PowerStore we use in our organization. For now, the slackness is ours, not PowerStore's. I'm not able to tell what can be improved since we are not pushing to its maximum speed. Also, we haven't experienced any downtime, and we switched from primary to secondary and so on, and there has been no problem. Initially, we had some problems with the firmware, and it was a serious problem. But, after six months, we upgraded two or three times, after which we didn't experience any problems. So, we never faced any problems or significant failures for two and a half years. We have a double installation, including primary and secondary ones. Also, in the initial six months, even if we had some errors, we never got a stop error. We never stop. Hence, we never stop the protection system. We only have a secondary type of error, which is for one of the parts of the solution but never for the software side. The only thing is that with PowerStore, we don't have a solution for the file object. Because of this, we have been investigating Zephyr and another solution. We are also thinking of not buying anything in our data center. We are also evaluating a proposal from a provider named Wasabi, which provides an alternative to Amazon S3. Also, we want to follow a totally different approach so that there is no more spending or investments inside our hardware infrastructure, and we depend on just pushing it with the help of an external provider. Vaulting is another approach we may opt for, but we may not do it now since we are using Rubrik for vaulting. A good improvement for PowerStore would be to have an embedded vaulting feature. Currently, two providers of block devices offer vaulting capabilities, allowing for signing within multiple objects or on a partition. In such cases, this feature would be beneficial if you want to freeze a part of your storage or apply differential computing. This strategy involves preparing a disk for a machine and deploying ten machines based on multiple basic installations. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using Dell PowerStore for more than three years. I am a customer using the solution. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability has been excellent in the last two years after the initial six months. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I am unable to comment on the solution's scalability since we have no plans in our company to scale up and also because we are only using half of the potential of the solution. I cannot tell if adding another node to the solution is easy or not. How are customer service and support? The solution's technical support is excellent. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We were previously using Dell Compellent in our organization. Before that, I worked in a different company using HPE 3PAR. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was complex and difficult, and we had to rely on the assistance of an Italian partner in Bologna under the name Cinetica. We initially planned for four days over two weeks, with two days set aside for the first week to prepare all the necessary networks for networking and another two days for the second week to start up PowerStore. However, the process took more than ten days, and we received a machine with firmware series one dot from Dell's headquarters. I cannot recall if it was one dot zero one or one dot zero two, but we encountered an issue during the initial setup. After completing the initial setup, we immediately switched to Dell PowerStore Version 2. If the machine had arrived with pre-installed PowerStore Version 2, we might not have encountered this initial problem. The main issue arose in the mapping and network features from the volume exposed by PowerStore, including MLAG, LACP, and the corner configuration in the internet reports. A large number of cables and fiber also made it difficult to align the procedures, with a ton of files on the console level. If I were to install the latest version of the solution in 2023, with the last firmware and its additions, the setup process could be more reasonable. It would be possible to start the entire high-availability solution in four days with a double installation. However, the complexity is also related to the fact that if all production environments require at least a couple of PowerStore solutions, even if only one can be purchased, it is normal to have a high-vulnerability environment. I rate the setup process a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy. Regarding the deployment process timeline, during the dry run testing, we created an initial copy of a portion of SQL Server storage that Compellent was managing. During this phase, we were required to run the exact production workload without any interruptions to the production environment. This phase took us approximately one month. After completing the dry run, we decided to copy the storage from Rubrik to restore all the data to the logical number allocated to PowerStore. We then made adjustments because it was an iSCSI target, which meant changing the worldwide domain in the iSCSI target for the SQL Server machine. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Our organization spent two months considering its budget and economics. We got TRESIO and Excel's expected storage size and special compression, and because of this, we could save some money since the compression is working very well. In the end, we bought a solution that was half the size of the initial solution, and we got a compression ratio of about five to one, which was a win-win solution. With compression, we were able to have a solution within our company's budget. We include a clause in the contract with Dell that states if the compression ratio is not met, we will adjust the workload accordingly. In this scenario, Dell support will provide additional hard drives free of charge to be added to the PowerStore. There was Dell's competitor on our side, and they were supportive of our decision to give hard drives to buy to improve the functioning. Which other solutions did I evaluate? It's important to note that we evaluated another option quite different from a manufacturer, CentOS. However, we cannot say that we were able to make a fair evaluation between a small manufacturer and Dell, as economics played a significant role in our decision-making process. If I can freely test other environments, I would test solutions from IBM and Lenovo. IBM is a large manufacturer, and CentOS is a competing technology. VMware provides a software-based shared mapping storage technology, which emulates disk storage. CentOS is attemptin... Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2023-04-19T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Easy to use, good performance, and highly stable What is our primary use case? We utilize Dell PowerStore for VMware and to establish an OpenShift environment for deploying applications on the customer's end. What is most valuable? The solution is easy to use and has good performance. What needs improvement? Horizontal scaling has room for improvement. The price has room for improvement. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using the solution for around five years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I give the stability a nine out of ten. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I give the scalability a seven out of ten. While the solution can be vertically scaled without issues, horizontal scaling presents challenges. How are customer service and support? The technical support is usually good but they are not very robust. How would you rate customer service and support? Neutral How was the initial setup? The initial setup is straightforward. I give the setup a seven out of ten. To ensure successful deployment, a certain level of technical knowledge is necessary. Typically, a team of one to two engineers can complete the deployment within a few hours. However, the duration may vary and take up to two days depending on the specific configuration requirements. What about the implementation team? We implement the solution for our customers. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The solution is expensive. I give the cost a two out of ten. What other advice do I have? I give the solution an eight out of ten. The solution requires hardware maintenance. Depending on the customer's contract agreement, we can maintain the solution and provide replacement parts by the next business day. Our clients are enterprise-level. I recommend Dell PowerStore because it is a highly stable solution. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2023-04-20T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Good scalability and efficient data compression process What is our primary use case? We use the solution for visualization and protection of the environment. What is most valuable? The solution's most valuable features are the quick data compression process and ease of scalability for all types of support contracts. What needs improvement? The solution's pricing could be better. For how long have I used the solution? We have been using the solution for half a year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? It is a stable solution. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? It is a scalable solution. We have more than 300 end users and two administrators using it. We also plan to increase the usage. How are customer service and support? The solution's customer service is excellent. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive How was the initial setup? The solution's initial setup was straightforward. It took one or two days to complete it. What about the implementation team? Our in-house team of two executives implemented the solution. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The price of the solution is high compared to IBM. There are additional costs for storage and support apart from the standard license. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We evaluated IBM and Fujitsu storage before. In comparison with Dell, IBM has stable software. But Dell is perfect for technical support and training, helping us make the right decisions. Also, we can choose between different strategies or configurations. It is more intuitive and complex as well. What other advice do I have? I advise others to prefer more disks for the solution than standard ones. Also, wait to install updates after release. Overall, it is a great product. I rate it as a ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2023-04-28T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Good compression and an easy setup but needs more reliable support What is our primary use case? We are using and providing storage. This is all-flash storage. What is most valuable? The compression is excellent. It helps save space and allows us to allocate more space to the client. The initial setup is easy. What needs improvement? The support is not very good. It could be more scalable. For how long have I used the solution? I've been using the solution over the last year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The solution is stable. They did not have a stable version last time. It's better now. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? The product is not too scalable. We only have 800 to 900 terabytes. It has a set level of storage available. We have four projects using PowerStore. That's 300 to 500 users. How are customer service and support? We haven't had good support help. They are not available and often not very well educated. It's very hard to get an engineer when we need one. Their level three admins are hard to track down. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We've also used HP 3PAR. How was the initial setup? The initial setup was very straightforward. It only takes one to two hours to deploy when you are talking about racking. We just need to mount the solution to the rack and do the physical connecting between everything. We'll also handle the allocation of policies, et cetera. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? Customers decide on the capacity and then pay for the solution. they do not have to procure licenses. They may have to pay for extra licenses for external applications. What other advice do I have? We're using the latest version of the solution. We're an end-user and provider. I'd recommend the solution for small to medium-scale products. I would rate it seven out of ten. There's not good support here in India, which is an issue. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2023-03-13T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Great support and great for smaller businesses but needs more maturity What is our primary use case? We primarily use the solution as a POC. We have Extreme IOs that we're looking to replace, and this was brought in as a potential replacement for them. How has it helped my organization? For our scenario, it doesn't really fit the bill for where we're trying to go. The unit's fine. Unfortunately, it's a relatively greenfield type of product and we're looking for something with a little more robustness that's been in the field more. PowerMax works great, of course, and that's probably what we're going to go to instead. We just decided Power Store was just not going to fit the bill for what we needed. We needed something with a higher tier in the end. What is most valuable? The support is very good. For smaller shops, the solution is useful. What needs improvement? We felt like this was just kind of a mix of Extreme IO and Unity. We weren't happy with Unity, which is why we weren't going to use Extreme IO. It seems like they just kind of merged two products and made this solution and while I'm sure it's great for smaller shops, we are not a small shop. It needs more mature code. The VASA plugins for ESX could be enhanced. My understanding is that that is in the roadmap. For how long have I used the solution? I've using the solution for about a year. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I'd rate the stability at a three or four out of ten. It could be more stable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate the solution at a six for scalability. How are customer service and support? We've been quite happy with support. they are very good. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We're trying out PowerMax, and will likely move in that direction instead of sticking with this product. What was our ROI? We have not witnessed any kind of ROI while using the solution. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The pricing could be better. I'd rate it four out of ten. What other advice do I have? For new users, I would heavily suggest they evaluate their environment with real-world loads, not synthetic loads, when considering the solution. I'd rate the product five out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2023-01-22T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Uses less CPU resources, has a high compression ratio, and is extremely stable What is our primary use case? We use Dell PowerStore as a storage layer behind the virtualization layer. We have IBM SCC and we have the PowerStore behind that to serve the discs to the SCC and the SCC then presents it to the hosts in the network. How has it helped my organization? The high deduplication ratio means that we need less physical storage space. As a result, we have more virtual storage space available to assign to our servers. We have not encountered any problems with the system so far. Therefore, the system is better in terms of both performance and storage efficiency. The compression ratio is way better with PowerStore. We were getting a ratio of 1:3 and now it is around 1:6. The compression ratio has doubled. Dell's values around ESG are high and they have been working on those areas throughout the years. What is most valuable? We noticed that the PowerStore has a really high compression ratio for data. It's really good for data deduplication and also compressing the data on the drives. The PowerStore's compression ratio is even higher than the Unity system. Also, the way the PowerStore is built with special CPUs for moving data around. The systems also have lower CPU utilization compared to Unity systems. What needs improvement? In the past, with Unity, we could run both block storage and configure part of the system as a NAS system. This wasn't ideal, but it provided flexibility. With PowerStore, we have to choose between block storage and NAS functionality. It would be interesting to retain the option to configure PowerStore as a block storage array and try out the NAS features to see how it performs. It was an interesting way to see if we need a certain type of storage. We were able to do that from the same system, and now we have queues when we set up the system, which one it's convenient. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using Dell PowerStore for one and a half years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? I would rate the stability of Dell PowerStore as ten out of ten. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Dell PowerStore is scalable but we are not using the scalability of the system. How are customer service and support? The technical support is always quick to respond. They are always willing to help us and if necessary, they will search for a specialist within their Dell network who we can approach with our questions. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We replaced Dell VNX with Dell PowerStore. How was the initial setup? The deployment is really easy. If we have a PowerStore and we buy another and arrange all the necessary factors that need to be available in the data center, including cabling, power, and configuration details such as IP addresses and DNS names, it's simple to roll out, and it doesn't take much effort to place it in our data center and have it up and running. It takes a few hours of work if we have done all the prep work to get it up and running. What other advice do I have? I would rate Dell PowerStore ten out of ten. Prior to my joining the organization, they used Hitachi and transitioned to Dell due to cost considerations. We haven't implemented the latest code yet, but we attended a session at the beginning of the day where they mentioned that backups can now be moved directly to the data domain from the power store. This is an interesting development, as it opens up new possibilities for backup management. For instance, we could now consider placing backup clients on a machine that is specifically designed for this purpose. Dell PowerStore is doing what it's supposed to do, and it's even doing it better than we were expecting. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2023-11-29T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Enabled us to achieve significant data consolidation and footprint reduction What is our primary use case? I use Dell PowerStore in my company primarily for virtualization through ESXi. Dell PowerStore serves as a primary system for all the storage needs within our organization. How has it helped my organization? The product's current functionalities that have improved my organization's functioning stem from the SSD caching and SSD capabilities of the product. The product's speed is also crucial for us, especially within our new modern infrastructure, which has a strong networking backbone. My company has a good experience with the product overall. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature of the solution for me is the deduplication part, especially since most of the servers in our organization are Windows-based servers. Due to the deduplication technology in the product, my organization needs just a little storage for many servers, meaning the new technology within Dell PowerStore is a big advantage for us. What needs improvement? Dell PowerStore helps to keep the software we rely on in our organization up and running. In our organization, we do firmware updates due to security breaches or vulnerabilities, and as a system administrator, it is important for me to know that the base hardware is in good condition and safe to deal with against hacker attempts while also looking out for any problems within the software itself. To avoid any concerns when it comes to Dell PowerStore, Dell needs to keep working on Dell products. While using Dell PowerStore's interface in our organization, we sometimes miss out on some information. In our organization, we had to deal with bad firmware last year that generated fast degradation of the disks, and Dell informed us when they would replace the disks, but we couldn't see any notifications about the disks being degraded. I feel that the product's new interface with HTML5 interface is still in the development phase because it lacks the crucial information that system administrators need, like, for example, the degradation of the disk. With the product's current interface, as a system administrator, I just see that the disks are either good or bad, and that's it. As a system administrator, it would be great to use and see through CLI since getting informed at such a level within the interface will be a great improvement since more detailed information is always good. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using Dell PowerStore for two to three years. Considering that the one we use in our company is for SSD caching, I believe it is Dell PowerStore 1000T. What do I think about the stability of the solution? From a stability perspective, my company has faced some problems only with the firmware part of the product, but that didn't really impact the product's performance. There were some problems with the degradation of hard disks, because of which there were more chances of failure of the solution. Dell handled issues related to the degradation of hard disks. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? From a scalability perspective, my company doesn't have any problems since we get what we need and what we expect for about five years. In our organization, we are still good with the limits offered by the product, so we don't really talk about scalability. We can reduce our ESXi service, but my company does not plan to scale up. How are customer service and support? The solution's technical support is great. In our organization, we have had several incidents related to firmware in the last couple of years. Dell's support team is good to reach out when, in our organization, we upgrade the product outside of office hours since they provide you with good information and good tech personnel to resolve an issue or a problem anywhere in the world. In my organization, we have had incidents and seen how the support personnel from Egypt, India, and China are always well aware of the cases or problems, and they always give good information to help us with our problems, making it a good experience for us. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten. Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? I have experience with HPE products that have the same capabilities as Dell PowerStore. I would say that Dell is on the same level as HPE. My company has a good relationship and history with Dell, so things are good for us in the department concerning supplies from Dell. How was the initial setup? The product's initial setup phase was quite smooth. The product's setup phase was done parallel to the old storage in our organization, so we had to make the correct connections and migrate everything to run it on a new storage. There is a need to dismantle the old system and reconfigure the network part. The solution can be deployed in under a month. What about the implementation team? In my organization, we were involved with the implementation phase of the product and during the upgrade from the old storage to the new storage with a specialist from one of our suppliers of Dell products. What was our ROI? I am not aware of any return on investment my company has experienced from the use of the product. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? In the pricing and licensing department, the product is always too expensive. What other advice do I have? My organization does not use CloudIQ to manage and analyze Dell PowerStore. My organization does not get involved in any power management or monitoring to assess Dell PowerStore's overall energy consumption. I have seen a significant data consolidation and footprint reduction with the use of Dell PowerStore since we need to use way less storage in our organization, which is around a 50 to 60 percent reduction if we consider it from a TB perspective due to its deduplication technology. Within our organization, the area revolving around the assessment of Dell Technologies for its values around environment, social, and governance is a hot topic. Our organization has used Dell for a lot of years, and it is great to see that Dell has become innovative in terms of recyclability and reduction of carbon footprint, because of which we don't need to change to another supplier or vendor to help us attain our green goals. Dell PowerStore is a good product since we don't face any more problems with it in our company. Dell's support team's contracts with our company are very good. I hope the product fulfills its duty in a couple of years, after which our organization can replace it with another next-gen product. I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. Which deployment model are you using for this solution? On-premises Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2024-01-01T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The deduplication features ensure that users get more space to use at a lesser cost What is our primary use case? In our company, we use Dell PowerStore for IBM SAN Volume Controller. Dell PowerStore is useful for areas like storage, database, and VMware. What is most valuable? The most valuable feature of the solution is the deduplication part, which is very good. The deduplication part of the solution is valuable since, as a user, you get more space for less money. The product's performance is very good and matches up or exceeds the performance offered by the previous product in our company. What needs improvement? I had a session with Dell concerning PowerStoreOS 3.5. The product can provide backup directly to Dell Data Domain, which we use in our environment, which is something nice for the future, but at this point in time, I can't see anything wrong with it. When you create a case on Dell's support website, you don't always get someone who is experienced in the kind of systems you need help with when you deal with the first line of support offered by Dell PowerStore. Sometimes, you have to explain the issue multiple times to the first line of support, making it an area where Dell's support team needs to make improvements. I understand why the solution's support team is the way it is. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using Dell PowerStore for two years. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? I have heard that Dell PowerStore offers scalability options, but I have never used it. How are customer service and support? The solution's technical support is good. My company has an on-site engineer to provide us with a line of support whenever needed, especially in a short time, which works perfectly for us. I rate the technical support an eight or nine out of ten. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? In our company, we have experience with Dell EMC Unity XT, which prompted us to opt for Dell PowerStore. In our company, we also have experience with Hitachi, which is not so great to use for admins. How was the initial setup? The product's initial setup phase was very easy. For Dell PowerStore's installation phase, my company uses the product's GUI and the tools from some other vendors. Sometimes, it's very difficult to set up the system. Dell PowerStore's installation phase is just like Dell EMC Unity XT, which is very simple. What about the implementation team? My company's in-house team members took care of Dell PowerStore's installation phase. Dell only puts the storage array in the rack, after which our company takes care of the solution's installation phase. What was our ROI? My company has seen a return on investment from the use of Dell PowerStore since it is a good product that is always up and running. We don't have any issues with it. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The product's pricing model is good, and that is why we have Dell PowerStore in our company. My organization had looked at the products and prices offered by other vendors during our decision-making process. In terms of licensing, my organization has Dell Technologies End User License Agreement (EULA), but I don't know exactly how it works, though it is a big bundle of licenses for Dell Data Domain, Dell EMC Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Dell ECS, and all such kinds of storage arrays. Dell told us that opting for Dell Technologies End User License Agreement (EULA) can help us improve the entire picture of Dell products and services. What other advice do I have? The challenges my company wanted to address through the implementation of the product stemmed from the fact that our previous storage array was full and had reached the end-of-life phase, because of which we needed a tool for lifecycle management purposes, after which we found Dell PowerStore to be a logical choice for us. Previously, my company dealt with a couple of systems from HP, while we also had a lot of Dell systems, so we decided to stick with one vendor, Dell. My organization uses CloudIQ to manage and analyze Dell PowerStore since we get the option to use standby, so when we get calls after work hours, we don't have to use our laptops since we can just log in via our cell phones and check the status of the storage arrays, which saves a lot of time. With Dell PowerStore, my company saves a couple of hours a year, though it may not be a lot. I don't know how I would access Dell PowerStore for its overall energy consumption. I have seen that the product has an enormous capacity when it comes to significant data consolidation and footprint reduction with the use of Dell PowerStore, especially when compared to our company's old system, which comes up to around 70 percent. It is tough to assess Dell Technologies for its values around environment, social, and governance. Though the aforementioned values are important for my company and storage admin, even if we don't look at that side of our company, I wouldn't personally mind it. The product has helped our organization in the area of sustainability. The direct space provided by the product can be considered under the sustainability part of the product since, in our organization, we would need less room and fewer cooling modules, which helps. For two years in a row, my company has not even seen a failed disk with the use of Dell PowerStore, making it a great product. I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2024-01-01T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Offers great speed and deduplication functionality to users What is our primary use case? I use Dell PowerStore in my organization mainly for our server environment, so all of our virtual servers run on it. I also use Dell PowerStore in my organization to clone our environment to a test environment and some storage devices. The aforementioned details explain the main reason why our organization prefers Dell PowerStore. How has it helped my organization? With new features in the product, my organization hopes to get some more output. When our organization moved Dell EMC XtremIO to Dell PowerStore, we knew that the functionalities revolving around cloning and copies would become a little slower, but we made the decision to do so because it was cheaper for our environment, making it a cost-based decision. What is most valuable? The deduplication functionality provided by the solution is fairly good. The speed offered by the product is enough for our organization. Our organization also has Dell EMC XtremIO, which is a bit faster, though Dell PowerStore alone is more than enough for us. What needs improvement? After the smooth launch of the product in our company, only the areas around upgrades are a bit problematic. In our organization, we face difficulties when updating the product. Since Dell PowerStore's system health check runs correctly, there is a need to bypass the health check during the upgrading process. Sometimes, the replication part of the product doesn't work, and because of this, our organization has to contact Dell's support to fix it. In my organization, we have had to go through two weeks with no replication, which is not very handy for our production environment. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using Dell PowerStore for two or three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? My company faces issues when we attempt to update Dell PowerStore, but under normal circumstances, we don't face any issues with the product. How are customer service and support? When you have someone on the line from Dell's support team, then everything becomes perfect, especially if they are early to address some of our issues since, in our organization, we have multiple appliances and storage areas, and to maintain it at a level, it's very difficult. My organization needs to create an incident and schedule a call with Dell's support team, which sometimes can be a bit of a rough process. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten. How would you rate customer service and support? Neutral How was the initial setup? The implementation phase of the product was not difficult. An engineer from Dell came to our company to install Dell PowerStore, and afterward, we configured the zones and WWNs, and the product started to work perfectly. There were no problems at all with the implementation phase of the product. I don't know how much time the deployment process takes since one of my colleagues handles it, as I am only a supervisor. What about the implementation team? A third-party help was required to install the product. Which other solutions did I evaluate? My company chose Dell PowerStore over other products mainly because we have very good contact with Dell in the Netherlands. My company uses the server and storage devices from Dell. Our company's main support is from Dell. My company did take a look at Pure Storage. With the discounts and everything from Dell, my company runs about 30 servers, which cannot be the storage provided by Pure Storage. What other advice do I have? In my organization, there were no problems or challenges that we wanted to address through the implementation of Dell PowerStore. I don't know how much money my organization saved after moving from Dell EMC XtremIO to Dell PowerStore, but I know that we have received some discounts from Dell. I don't know what the prices were when my company chose Dell EMC XtremIO or Dell PowerStore. My organization doesn't use CloudIQ to manage and analyze Dell PowerStore. I don't know how my organization assesses Dell PowerStore for its overall energy consumption. I don't know what kind of power it uses for anything. I know that Dell PowerStore is a bit, if not much, better when it comes to areas like significant data consolidation and footprint reduction when compared to Dell EMC XtremIO. Dell EMC XtremIO was also a very good product for areas like significant data consolidation and footprint reduction. It is a good product, considering my assessment of Dell Technologies' environmental, social, and governance values. My organization maintains good contacts with Dell, and Dell also supports us by providing good governance. I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2024-01-01T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Good duplication rate, easy to use, and best support What is our primary use case? We have mainly used it to migrate all the infrastructure we had from a data center to a PowerStore cabin. The truth is that with the good duplication rate that it has, we have been able to migrate everything to a single cabin. We had a large number of servers, some in particular with a SAP solution that needed a lot of data. What we ultimately wanted was to unify all these solutions into a single storage. How has it helped my organization? For me, its great value is mainly the good duplication power that it has and its ease of use. We are able to expand storage, add new storage, and duplicate it. It is very easy to use, and no great knowledge is required. We use CloudIQ to manage and analyze our Dell storage. We use it for all the cabins. It always updates me about possible errors. It often anticipates problems that I may have with log storage and automatically solves them. I have peace of mind knowing that I have all the storage monitored. We have certainly seen a significant data consolidation. We went from three storage cabins to one. When it comes to the values around environment, social, and governance (ESG values), I assess Dell Technologies in a very positive way. I like that large companies in the sector are pioneers in these areas. What is most valuable? It is very easy to use. Access is very friendly. It shows you a lot of important information at the first glance. It has been very easy to use. What needs improvement? I have not seen anything specific. The only thing I can think of that needs improvement is the price. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using Dell PowerStore for six months. What do I think about the stability of the solution? Its stability is very good. It is very reliable. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? Its scalability is very good. How are customer service and support? Their support is very good. It has always been the best. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We were using Dell's Unity solution. We switched because our partner offered us this solution. We had very good references from him, and we trusted our partner a lot. What was our ROI? We have not yet seen an ROI because we have not had much time using it, but I am sure that we will see an ROI. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? The prices in the market for these storage solutions are very similar, but with the power of duplication, it seems like you are paying less. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We evaluated EMC Unity, but in the end, they are also Dell’s. In terms of the importance of sustainability when evaluating a storage solution, being from the IT area, I do not value it, but I know that other departments in my company do. What other advice do I have? I would rate Dell PowerStore a nine out of ten because I have not had much time working with it, but as of now, I am very happy. Foreign Language:(Spanish) Buena tasa de crecimiento, fácil de usar y el mejor soporte ¿Cuánto tiempo llevas usando esta solución? He estado usando Dell PowerStore durante seis meses. ¿Cuál es su principal caso de uso de esta solución? (Incluya detalles sobre su entorno). Principalmente lo hemos utilizado para migrar toda la infraestructura que teníamos de un centro de datos a una cabina PowerStore. La verdad es que con el buen índice de duplicación que tiene hemos podido migrar todo a una sola cabina. Teníamos una gran cantidad de servidores, algunos en particular con una solución SAP que necesitaba muchos datos. Lo que finalmente queríamos era unificar todas estas soluciones en un único almacenamiento. Comparta cómo Dell PowerStore ha mejorado su organización. Si no fue así, explique por qué. Para mí su gran valor es principalmente la potencia de duplicación que tiene y su facilidad de uso. Podemos ampliar el almacenamiento, agregar nuevo almacenamiento y duplicarlo. Es muy fácil de usar y no se requieren grandes conocimientos. Usamos CloudIQ para administrar y analizar nuestro almacenamiento Dell. Lo usamos para todas las cabinas. Siempre me actualiza sobre posibles errores. A menudo anticipa los problemas que puedo tener con el almacenamiento de registros y los resuelve automáticamente. Tengo la tranquilidad de saber que tengo todo el almacenamiento monitoreado. Ciertamente hemos visto una importante consolidación de datos. Pasamos de tres cabinas de almacenamiento a una. Cuando se trata de valores ambientales, sociales y de gobernanza (valores ESG), evalúo a Dell Technologies de manera muy positiva. Me gusta que las grandes empresas del sector sean pioneras en estos temas. ¿Qué características le han parecido más valiosas y por qué? Es muy fácil de usar. El acceso es muy amigable. Te muestra mucha información importante a primera vista. ¿En qué áreas se podría mejorar Dell PowerEdge PowerStore? No he visto nada concreto. Lo único que se me ocurre es el precio. ¿Utilizó anteriormente una solución diferente? De ser así, ¿por qué la cambió? Estábamos usando la solución Dell Unity. Cambiamos porque nuestro socio nos ofreció esta solución. Teníamos muy buenas referencias de él y confiábamos mucho en nuestro socio. Antes de elegir, ¿evaluaste otras opciones? ¿De ser asi, cuales? Evaluamos EMC Unity, pero al final también son de Dell. En cuanto a la importancia de la sostenibilidad a la hora de evaluar una solución de almacenamiento, siendo del área de TI no la valoro, pero sé que otros departamentos de mi empresa sí lo hacen. ¿Qué aconseja a otros sobre el costo de instalación, el precio y/o la licencia? Los precios en el mercado de estas soluciones de almacenamiento son muy similares, pero con su habilidad de duplicación, pareciera que estuvieras pagando menos. ¿Cuáles son sus impresiones sobre la escalabilidad de esta solución? Su escalabilidad es muy buena. ¿Cuáles son sus impresiones sobre la estabilidad de esta solución? Su estabilidad es muy buena. Es muy confiable. ¿Has visto el ROI (Retorno de la Inversión)? En caso afirmativo, ¿de qué manera (es decir, métricas/puntos de datos)? Aún no hemos visto un retorno de la inversion porque no hemos tenido mucho tiempo usándolo, pero estoy seguro de que lo veremos. Cuéntanos tu experiencia con el servicio y soporte al cliente. Su apoyo es muy bueno. Siempre ha sido el mejor. ¿Cómo calificaría esta solución en una escala del 1 al 10 en cuanto a servicio y soporte? 10 En una escala del 1 al 10 (1=peor, 10=mejor), ¿cómo calificaría Dell PowerStore? Por favor explique por qué. Calificaría a Dell PowerStore con un nueve de diez porque no he tenido mucho tiempo trabajando con él, pero hasta ahora estoy muy contento. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2024-01-31T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Simplifies storage management and improves performance What is our primary use case? We use Dell PowerStore in all corporate infrastructures. It is being used in the two data centers that we have here in Madrid. We have it deployed on all our systems. By implementing Dell PowerStore, we mainly wanted to cover all the needs for our ERP and our entire corporate system. How has it helped my organization? The performance of the storage layer has improved. We use CloudIQ to manage and analyze our Dell storage. It has significantly simplified storage management and helped us feel more calm about this issue. The overall energy consumption of Dell PowerStore is appropriate. I have felt a change in terms of the data consolidation/footprint reduction as compared to our old system, but I cannot say exactly how much reduction there is. When it comes to the values around environment, social, and governance (ESG values), they are very committed to the whole issue of sustainability. I am happy to know that their goals are in favor of this issue. It is an initiative that stands out in today's market. What is most valuable? Its flexibility is valuable because we have had some moments where we had to adapt, and it has been quite flexible. What needs improvement? We are happy with the service in general. The only thing would be the price of the platform. For how long have I used the solution? I have been using Dell PowerStore for three years. What do I think about the stability of the solution? The stability is very good. We have not had any problems with them. They are very robust storage cabins. What do I think about the scalability of the solution? We have already scaled several times, and the result has been very satisfactory. How are customer service and support? Their support is very good. How would you rate customer service and support? Positive Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch? We used CX 340, CX 500, VNX, VPLEX, and a few others. We switched mainly because of technological evolution and performance. Nowadays, we are required to find a solution that gives storage options for high-weighted data. It is something that the management is asking us to do. We need to incorporate services that are sustainable and that help us reduce our impact and our carbon footprint. How was the initial setup? The implementation was not complex. The whole process was very simple. We had a clear migration strategy. We have had virtualized storage for a long time. In the end, it was a replacement of other EMC arrays because we had the old VNXs and Unity deployed. The migration process was done in the best recommended way, considering the client’s use case. We relied on VPLEX, and that allowed us to have no loss of service and quite high flexibility. We used KISER services for this. What was our ROI? I have seen an ROI in terms of the reduction of the space that we need in the data centers and reduction in the computing capacity. We have reduced infrastructure but the same performance. What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? It is an expensive service but within the market range. Which other solutions did I evaluate? We did not evaluate other solutions. What other advice do I have? I would rate Dell PowerStore a ten out of ten. Foreign Language:(Spanish) Simplifica la gestión del almacenamiento y mejora el rendimiento ¿Cuánto tiempo llevas usando esta solución? He estado usando Dell PowerStore durante tres años. ¿Cuál es su principal caso de uso de esta solución? (Incluya detalles sobre su entorno). Lo utilizamos en todas las infraestructuras corporativas. Se está utilizando en los dos centros de datos que tenemos aquí en Madrid. Lo tenemos implementado en todos nuestros sistemas. Al implementar Dell PowerStore, principalmente queríamos cubrir todas las necesidades de nuestro ERP y de todo nuestro sistema corporativo. Comparta cómo Dell PowerStore ha mejorado su organización. Si no fue así, explique por qué. El rendimiento de la capa de almacenamiento ha mejorado. Usamos CloudIQ para administrar y analizar nuestro almacenamiento Dell. Ha simplificado significativamente la gestión del almacenamiento y nos ha ayudado a sentirnos más tranquilos sobre este tema. El consumo de energía general de Dell PowerStore es apropiado. He sentido un cambio en términos de consolidación de datos/reducción de huella en comparación con nuestro sistema anterior, pero no puedo decir exactamente cuánta reducción hay. Cuando se trata de valores ambientales, sociales y de gobernanza (valores ESG), están muy comprometidos con todo el tema de sostenibilidad. Me alegra saber que sus objetivos están a favor de este tema. Es una iniciativa que destaca en el mercado actual. ¿Qué características le han parecido más valiosas y por qué? Su flexibilidad es valiosa, hemos tenido algunos momentos en los que hemos tenido que adaptarnos y ha sido bastante flexible. ¿En qué áreas se podría mejorar Dell PowerEdge PowerStore? Estamos contentos con el servicio en general. Lo único sería el precio de la plataforma. ¿Utilizó anteriormente una solución diferente? De ser así, ¿por qué la cambió? Usamos CX 340, CX 500, VNX, VPLEX y algunos otros. Cambiamos principalmente por la evolución tecnológica y el rendimiento. Hoy en día, debemos encontrar una solución que brinde opciones de almacenamiento para datos de alto peso. Es algo que la dirección nos pide que hagamos. Necesitamos incorporar servicios que sean sostenibles y que nos ayuden a reducir nuestro impacto y nuestra huella de carbono. ¿Antes de elegir, evaluaste otras opciones? ¿De ser asi, cuales? No evaluamos otras soluciones. ¿Qué aconseja a otros sobre el costo de instalación, el precio y/o la licencia? Es un servicio caro pero dentro del alcanc e del mercado. ¿Cuáles son sus impresiones sobre la escalabilidad de esta solución? Ya hemos escalado varias veces y el resultado ha sido muy satisfactorio. ¿Cuáles son sus impresiones sobre la estabilidad de esta solución? La estabilidad es muy buena. No hemos tenido ningún problema con ellos. Son cabinas de almacenamiento muy robustas. ¿Has visto el ROI (Retorno de la Inversión)? En caso afirmativo, ¿de qué manera (es decir, métricas/puntos de datos)? He visto un ROI en términos de reducción del espacio que necesitamos en los centros de datos y reducción de la capacidad informática. Hemos reducido la infraestructura pero mantenemos el mismo rendimiento. ¿La configuración inicial fue sencilla o compleja y de qué manera? La implementación no fue compleja. Todo el proceso fue muy sencillo. Teníamos una estrategia migratoria clara. Hace tiempo que contamos con la modalidad de almacenaje virtualizado. Al final, fue un reemplazo de otros arreglos de EMC porque teníamos implementados los antiguos VNX y Unity. El proceso de migración se realizó de la mejor manera recomendada, considerando el caso de uso del cliente. Confiamos en VPLEX y eso nos permitió no tener pérdida de servicio y tener una flexibilidad bastante alta. Para ello utilizamos los servicios de KISER. Cuéntanos tu experiencia con el servicio y soporte al cliente. Su soporte es muy bueno. ¿Cómo calificaría esta solución en una escala del 1 al 10 en cuanto a servicio y soporte? 9. En una escala del 1 al 10 (1=peor, 10=mejor), ¿cómo calificaría Dell PowerStore? Por favor explique por qué. Calificaría a Dell PowerStore con un diez. Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2024-01-31T00:00:00-05:00

This page was printed on 4/25/2024 12:30:05 AM.