Dell PowerScale Reviews & Insights

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

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

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

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

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

EMC Isilon Scale-Out NAS is well suited for larger files (greater the 128 Kb) and where you need to have everything in one common name space. Where it is less appropriate is for many small files (millions of files less than 128 Kb in size) - this causes the protection level to becoming mirroring, which will cost more space.

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

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

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

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