We performed a comparison between Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and Panasas ActiveStor based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two NAS solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The solution is stable."
"The flexibility and the user-friendly interface are the most valuable features."
"The solution has simplified management by consolidating our workloads. Rather than managing all the different workloads on different storage arrays, Windows Servers, etc., we just have one place per data centre where we manage all their unstructured data, saving us time."
"For maximizing storage utilization, PowerScale is great. When you write the data to it, it spreads it out to all the nodes, so you get all the performance from the entire pool."
"The solution is extremely easy to manage. This is its most valuable feature."
"There are also the policies that you set up on replication and purging files, and policies for something called WORM. That's a "write once, read many," where you can't overwrite certain files or certain data. It puts them in a "protected mode" where it becomes very difficult for someone to accidentally delete. We use that for certain files or certain directories, because we're dealing with video and some video has to be protected for chain-of-custody purposes. The WORM feature works great."
"The most valuable feature we started using, beyond the initial scope for the solution, is the multi-protocol system that allows you to access the same set of files using different network protocols like NFS or SMB. PowerScale’s Unified Permission Model ensures that data security and access permissions are honoured regardless of whether the client is a Windows desktop or a Linux server"
"It has allowed us to have more consistent quality controls. It has also allowed us to expand the number of servers in clients processing and accessing data, allowing us to get a lot bigger projects out the door."
"I am impressed with the tool's performance and bandwidth."
"We've found the product to be quite flexible."
"We had some issues with level 1 support. We had to fight with them on repeated issues. There is room for improvement in level 1 support."
"It would be nice to see tools like Superna Eyeglass built into PowerScale."
"The cost of Dell PowerScale is currently high and there is room for improvement."
"That said, for the other security features, it would be helpful if Tenable - and I know it's outside the scope of this question itself - had Isilon-specific plugins."
"Additional metadata reporting would be great. We have to use a separate tool to report on that. We would like to view the age of data and how long it has been since someone has accessed a file."
"The only thing that I think PowerScale could do better is improving the HTTP data access protocol. At the present, you cannot protect access to data via HTTP or HTTPS the same way that you can secure data access through other protocols like NFS or SMB[...]the Unified Permission Model that would allow a user to authenticate before being able to access a private file, does not apply."
"The solution can be a bit complex for those not well versed in the technology."
"The replication could lend itself to some improvement around encryption in transit and managing the racing of large volumes of data. The process of file over and file back can be tedious. Hopefully, you never end up going into a DR. If you do go into a DR, you know the data is there on the remote site. However, in terms of the process of setting up the replicates and filing them back, that is just very tedious and could definitely do with some improvement."
"We have received complaints from customers that the tool is not easy to use. The tool's local technical service is slow. The solution is good for Linux customers and not for customers with other operating systems like Windows. The solution should provide storage without client software integration."
"The solution is quite expensive."
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is ranked 1st in NAS with 40 reviews while Panasas ActiveStor is ranked 14th in NAS with 2 reviews. Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is rated 9.0, while Panasas ActiveStor is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) writes "We can easily deploy, manage, and maintain systems without needing a huge amount of expertise to facilitate them". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Panasas ActiveStor writes "A stable solution with good performance and bandwidth". Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is most compared with NetApp FAS Series, Dell ECS, Pure Storage FlashBlade, Qumulo and HPE StoreEasy, whereas Panasas ActiveStor is most compared with NetApp FAS Series. See our Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs. Panasas ActiveStor report.
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