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Dell SC Series pros and cons

Vendor: Dell Technologies
4.2 out of 5
112 followers
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Pros & Cons summary

Dell SC Series offers low latency and high IOPS, excelling in mixed workloads. Its scalability features include federation and data migration, but limitations exist for legacy platforms. Auto-tiering enhances performance by moving data to suitable tiers. Flexibility allows switching between all-flash and hybrid setups. CoPilot Support ensures efficient operation, although NVMe support is limited. Pricing may not suit medium companies, and VMware integration issues were resolved with version 6.5, though snapshot compatibility remains problematic.

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Easy management of volumes and scalability with features like auto-tiering and federation provide superior resource utilization and performance.
Replication and built-in data migration capabilities offer seamless transitions between data centers and other storage platforms.
The pay-as-you-grow pricing model and excellent cost-effectiveness make Dell SC Series attractive for budget-conscious businesses.
Its reliability and high performance, especially in mixed workloads, are consistently praised, as well as the ability to switch between all-flash to hybrid configurations.
Excellent technical support and straightforward setup process enhance user experience and operational efficiency.

CONS

Snapshots in VMware are not supported directly since the storage handles this, impacting compatibility with applications like Veeam.
There is a desire for higher compression, deduplication, faster I/O, and larger drives.
It lacks the integration of an internal key manager for self-encrypting drives, requiring an external product.
NVMe over TCP is not supported, affecting performance and modernization efforts.
Migration from legacy EMC platforms needs improvement, as skipping generations in upgrades is currently not feasible.
 

Dell SC Series Pros review quotes

DW
Sep 3, 2018
The most valuable feature is the no-forklift upgrade. While the thing is running, I can change out the controllers one at a time and keep the customer up and running. I can add shelves and storage and SSD drives or spinning drives to the system, while it's running. I can bring all that in and rebalance the load across the new disks or, if we take disks away, rebalance the load across what's remaining, and it just works.
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Managinga2b8 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 3, 2018
The performance benefits weren't surprising, we expected that. What we didn't expect were the densification benefits that we got out of going all-flash. We're able to put more applications on the arrays because of how all-flash performs. The way some of the application profiles have responded to all-flash has been really pleasing.
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reviewer1762782 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 18, 2022
One of the most valuable features is the capability to switch between all-flash to hybrid, which have have actually done for one of our arrays. We started with the hybrid, with the limited if I'm not mistaken, and then over a period of time, we swapped all the hybrids with the SSDs. This was one of the big features because it gave us the capability to not stick with just one kind of media. Secondly, since it has sorted clustering, we were able to bring in the newer boxes and have it all clustered together. These were the two main features that we really looked into, which benefited our use case from an expansion/growth perspective. Another valuable feature is the ease of management.
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Dell SC Series
April 2025
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Whitney Gray - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 24, 2020
They have a feature called Live Migrate; it's been very, very useful.
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ML
Aug 29, 2018
A valuable feature is the performance of the auto-tiering. It will move hot data up to your fastest Tier 1 or move your slow data down. Data progression is what it's called. With the auto-tiering you can have multiple tiers, you can have your Tier 1 be either spinning or flash, all the way down to 7.2K. It will change the RAID on the fly so your writes come in at RAID 10. After they sit for a while, they get converted to RAID 5, then they'll cool off and move down the tiers. Your performance is kept going, while the cold data is moved to your slow, non-performance tiers.
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BJ
Jul 22, 2020
The product offers good performance and is quite powerful.
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reviewer926175 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 5, 2018
The most valuable features are the with back-end dedupe, and the thin nodes. For a 20TB or 60TB, we're using almost a one-to-two ratio.
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reviewer1058013 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 23, 2019
It is just as stable as any other high-end solution.
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RK
Jan 16, 2025
I can mix and match the drives, using older mechanical devices and the latest SFP drives in a single solution with different enclosures.
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TG
Sep 2, 2018
We replicate between SAN to SAN for a lot of features and supportability. It also helps us when we want to upgrade to a newer SC Series or move the data from one data center to another.
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Dell SC Series Cons review quotes

DW
Sep 3, 2018
We can definitely see a need for it being a multi-controller system for customers who want to scale beyond the current capability. That's always a downside. A lot of the new systems are scaling vertically, they scale out, and the Compellent, of course, is controllers with shelves under it, so you don't scale out with it, unless you add another one. But if you do, they don't talk to each other, like some of the other solutions that we sell.
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Managinga2b8 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 3, 2018
Overall, I'd like to see more synergy between Dell EMC's higher-tier platforms and their mid-tier platforms. What I have said, constantly, to my partners at Dell EMC is that the clear articulation of the path is really important to us. In that vein, what I'd also like to see is, with the migration strategy that's built into this product, a lot more attention paid to Dell's - in particular - legacy platforms and how we get from some of our legacy EMC platforms onto this platform with a straight-through migration and scaling strategy, not host-based migrations and not piecemeal... Dell EMC would do well to focus more on my ability to skip a generation, rather than having me take individual hops because I can't greenfield my way into a software-defined data center fast enough. This journey of multiple hops is not helpful.
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reviewer1762782 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 18, 2022
What I understand is that this is a 13 year old architecture, so it has lived its life and they're phasing it out. Honestly, we were initially struggling with the integration with VMware (but it was fixed with the VMware 6.5) and, then, it was around a 10GB network. At that time, it had the longevity to go to 100GB as well. It got us thinking about, when we go into the containerized architecture, what do we need to do to fix the infrastructure?
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Buyer's Guide
Dell SC Series
April 2025
Free Report: Dell SC Series Reviews and More
Learn what your peers think about Dell SC Series. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.
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Whitney Gray - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 24, 2020
There's always room for improvement in the operating code.
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BB
Sep 5, 2018
One option I would like to see is, when you're up on the view-screen, to be able to incorporate getting to what HPE call the iLO, the Integrated Lights-Out. To be able to get that instead of having to go back and trying to find IP addresses and re-institute those would be good. It would be good to be able to that put on the initial splash screen.
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BJ
Jul 22, 2020
While there's always room for improvement in everything, I can't really think of a specific feature of the solution that requires immediate attention.
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reviewer926175 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 5, 2018
An issue we had was that the controller went down during an upgrade because of their upgrading the code. One side of the switch was down.
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reviewer1058013 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 23, 2019
I don't think the solution is very scalable.
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RK
Jan 16, 2025
In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage.
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TG
Sep 2, 2018
We had times that we needed a file service solution. We've used FluidFS, but it's a solution that is being transitioned out.
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Product Categories

Product Categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays
All-Flash Storage

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Product Categories

Product Categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays
All-Flash Storage

Popular Comparisons

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