Is Dell PowerScale the right choice for your AI on-premises needs?

TL;DR

• Dell PowerScale delivers high-performance, scale-out storage to meet the rising AI workload demands, combining scalability, accessibility, and integrated cyber resilience to give enterprises peace of mind and flexibility.
• Dell PowerScale forms a foundational unstructured data layer within the Dell AI Data Platform as a core storage engine in the Dell AI Factory with Nvidia helping move AI from pilot to production.
• More than 25,000 businesses globally rely on Dell PowerScale, including over 1,500 running GPU-accelerated workloads, making it one of the most proven storage platforms for enterprise AI.

On-premises AI hosting is growing in popularity among enterprises, particularly as many move away from experimentation and pilot projects to full production and deployment.

Indeed, research from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found the majority of businesses (85%) expect to run at least some AI systems on-premises by 2027.

Two separate reports from Forrester in late 2025 predicted at least 15% of enterprises will shift to “private AI” hosting during 2026.

While initial experimentation with AI has typically been conducted in the public cloud, enterprises are now moving workloads back on-prem – and for good reason*.

First and foremost, this enables organizations to keep their data safe, guarded, and under their complete control. This is crucial from a security and compliance perspective, but there are also distinct advantages in cost efficiency, scalability, and performance.

With this in mind, network-attached storage (NAS) services such as Dell PowerScale offer a range of benefits for enterprises. Here’s what enterprises can expect.

What is Dell PowerScale?

Dell PowerScale is a scale-out NAS platform aimed at supporting unstructured data management for mid-sized to large enterprises.

The system acts as a foundational unstructured data layer within the broader Dell AI Data Platform and is used by more than 25,000 customers globally, with 1,500+ running GPU workloads, spanning a wide array of business domains.

From streamlining AI and machine learning (ML) pipelines and data analytics operations to underpinning basic file management processes, Dell PowerScale aims to simplify data management in the age of AI.

Dell PowerScale is powered by the OneFS operating system and spans three distinct ranges, including:

• All-flash (PowerScale F210, PowerScale F710, PowerScale F910)
• Archive (PowerScale A300, PowerScale A310, PowerScale A3000, PowerScale A3100)
• Hybrid (PowerScale H700, PowerScale H710, PowerScale H7000, PowerScale H7100)

Each of the PowerScale series options is designed to accommodate different enterprises’ unique needs.

The all-flash series, for example, boasts low latency and high Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS), while the hybrid series focuses heavily on performance and capacity balancing.

The archive series, meanwhile, is designed specifically for enterprises seeking cost-effective, high volume storage capabilities.

How does Dell PowerScale work?

Dell PowerScale uses the OneFS operating system, which Dell Technologies says is designed to replace the “three layers of the traditional storage model” – file systems, volume manager, and data protection.

The system works by combining multiple nodes into a single cluster rather than disparate, siloed clusters. This has marked advantages in terms of efficiency, but also scalability, allowing enterprises to continually expand storage capabilities based on evolving needs.

“Crucially, OneFS is designed to scale not just in terms of machines, but also in human terms – allowing large-scale systems to be managed with a fraction of the personnel required for traditional storage systems,” the company explained in a 2025 whitepaper.

Dell PowerScale also provides a single global namespace and automatic rebalancing across nodes and clusters. For AI workloads, features like SmartPools, SmartQuotas, and data reduction offer benefits like tiering, cost optimization, and intelligent data placement throughout the data lifecycle

What are the benefits of Dell PowerScale?

Dell PowerScale is a foundational layer used to fuel enterprise AI innovation, so performance and scalability are key focus areas alongside accessibility, ease-of-use, and robust security.

Dell PowerScale is performant and scalable

The PowerScale F910, the latest in the company’s all-flash lineup, is designed primarily for high-capacity workloads.

According to technical specifications, the F910 hosts 24 NVMe SSDs within each node, allowing anywhere between 92 terabytes to 2.9 petabytes per node, with a minimum of three and maximum of 252 nodes.

This performance makes the F910 ideal for organizations operating in data-intensive industries such as healthcare or media and entertainment.

Lightstorm Entertainment, the studio behind the Avatar film series, used PowerScale to store and manage hundreds of millions of files, for example.

On the other end of the scale, the F210 is better suited for organizations either in the earlier stages of their generative AI journey or with cost considerations in mind. Part of Dell’s all-NVMe lineup, this comes in a cost-effective 1U form factor, offering enterprises up to four NVME all-flash SSD drives per node.

Despite lower capacity, scalability is still a huge appeal for the F210, scaling from 8 terabytes up to 61 terabytes per node, with 15 petabytes of capacity per cluster.

The ability to scale clusters is a key differentiator for enterprises, allowing them to expand storage capacity without inhibiting performance while maintaining limited data center footprint.

Both the F910 and F210 support unified file and object storage, which is ideal for a variety of AI and machine learning workloads, including fine-tuning, inference, RAG, and analytics. PowerScale storage also supports server message block (SMB), S3 buckets, and network file storage (NFS).

Dell PowerScale is accessible

Accessibility – how efficiently enterprises can retrieve stored data – is a key differentiator for Dell PowerScale. With PowerScale, Dell ensures rapid data retrieval through intelligent tiering and distributed access features.

This means businesses can quickly access and harness unstructured data that is vital in AI training, inference, and an array of other business functions such as data analytics.

Unstructured data represents the lifeblood of modern AI systems, with analysis from Forrester in September 2025 noting that “success with AI depends heavily on unstructured data”.

Dell PowerScale is secure

Data security is of paramount importance for enterprises innovating with AI.

PowerScale is part of a zero trust aligned architecture and includes robust security features such as integrated data protection and encryption features, as well as policy-driven compliance and control capabilities.

Dell PowerScale for modern AI architectures

While Dell PowerScale acts as a foundational unstructured data layer within the broader Dell AI Data Platform, it also forms a critical component of the Dell AI Factory with Nvidia, which gives enterprises access to end-to-end AI infrastructure.

Research from Forrester projects private AI factories will reach 20% adoption in enterprises in 2026 as enterprises sharpen their focus on secure architectures for AI training and inference.

Within the context of an AI Factory, PowerScale acts as a persistent data layer, boasting high throughput and giving access to shared compute capacity. The storage platform is NVIDIA-Certified Storage and serves as a certified storage layer in Nvidia DGX SuperPOD, BasePO and AI Factory architectures.

If you think a PowerScale is the right storage solution for your business, find out more on the Dell website: US readers click here and CA readers here.

*Dell TCO studies show Dell AI Factory on-prem can be ~60-70% more cost effective than cloud for certain GenAI workloads. AI ROI Can Be Huge On Premises