Dell SC Series Reviews

There is no need to archive data and/or move data from expensive storage since the device does that itself depending on the use of the data. This is the data that you moved to the slower disks.

1. Easy management of volumes: You can create volumes and easily assign them to VMware clusters, increasing their size.
2. Performance management: The process of reallocating data from fast disks (SSD or SAS) to slow disks (SATA) gives you better performance and better use of resources.

Snapshots in VMware. You can’t do snapshots since the storage itself does that. Therefore, some apps (Veeam, for example) don’t work well with this kind of tiering storage.

No issues.

It is more difficult than others, since once you need to growth, you need to make sure what tier you will increase to in order to redistribute the data. It can take more time and planning, but is worth the effort.

Excellent, Copilot (support for Compellent) is excellent.

Yes, we used to have EMC and Hitachi Storage. The growth of storage was limited and price/performance were not good.

Initially, it can be difficult since you need to understand the tiering philosophy. It is very different to normal SAN deployments, but once you understand them, they are very straightforward.

Take your time to meet with your representative and tell them your needs and listen careful to every recommendation. Always keep in mind, this is not just a enclosure with disks is a complete SAN as a service. There is software, license, and storage in one single solution.

Yes, IBM's and HP's tiering solutions, but there are too expensive and bulky.

Document your needs, current storage, expansion, and timeframe for replays (snapshots). If you have backups or replications in place, make sure they work with Compellent Tiered Storage.

The solution's most valuable features are its storage capabilities and its duplication.

The solution could use more integration with popular backup systems. Dell storage solutions are not very integrated. There are no dedicated models for, for example, Veeam backup or Redhouse backup, etc.

The lower model, the 3000, should have duplication. It doesn't right now. It's only from 5000 that this is offered, but it depends on the performance. It could be they don't offer it on lower models because the duplication is too much of a burden to the performance.

The solution is stable; we've had no problems at all.

Scalability is okay, but the pricing of additional discs is pretty high. It's more optimized for the whole model of discs, not for single disc upgrades. We have about 500 users on the solution currently.

Technical support is good. They have good information and good remote monitoring of the systems. There are good accessibility and knowledgable engineers, so overall, we have a very good impression of the support of this solution. The take a reasonable amount of time to answer our queries.

We didn't previously use a different solution. We added this to replace some older methods because it's flexible and the visual storage was generally a very good idea.

The initial setup was rather straightforward. Deployment took about a month for the  5000, and the SC 3000 took about a week.

In terms of assistance with implementation, for the 5000 we used the Dell pilot program and for the SC 3000 we used a reseller.

We purchased the whole package at once. We don't pay any additional fees annually.

We are using the private cloud deployment model and utilize both the 3000 and 5000 models of the solution.

My advice to others considering using the solution would be, first of all, to buy the full disc on the shelf, not part of the shelf. Buy all the discs, and then buy another shelf because it's most effective financially. Buying a single disc is extremely ineffective and extremely expensive.

I would also advise others to look for backup software that is compatible. If you use something and it's not supported, you may be disappointed. We don't use it and don't plan to use it, so this is not a problem for us. There are probably others, however, that may look for an optimization method for their backups.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten; it would be higher if the solution had better integration capabilities.

What we are using from Dell EMC is their server line and their storage line. We're pretty well embedded with Dell EMC.

We no longer have an issue, especially in the support arena, of wasted hours: getting support, waiting for support to arrive onsite. It's been a huge time saver for us.

The most valuable feature is the customer support. Everyone has a product that goes wrong. It's how well they handle it when it does, and Dell EMC has been tremendous at that.

In terms of managing the solution, they've gone from "not bad to manage" to "downright easy."

We have integrated the system with Exchange and vSphere, among others.

They need to make it a little cheaper.

I won't entertain any other vendor at this point.

In terms of scalability, so far, so good. We run a whole lot of different product lines. The ability to scale, at least within the product series, has been wonderful.

Technical support has been top-notch.

The only thing that made the setup difficult were the layers of project management. I know they're going through some changes as Dell and EMC merge, but they really need to take a strong look at how project managers are deployed and what their level of knowledge is. More often than not, I'm having to run those calls.

We've been able to take them and run them completely to end-of-life. For us, storage side, that's about five years. We consider that the best turnover rate for us, while for server hardware it's three years. With support contracts, they've all made it to the end of those time frames.

Licensing, especially on the storage line, could use some simplification. It's not terrible, but, for example, with the Isilon series, they've gone to completely a la carte. A la carte is very difficult to traverse, when it comes to what you need. It would be more beneficial, at least from my point of view as a customer, if they did it more like car companies do, where there are package lines. That would be my one complaint.

I always recommend them.

Regarding the purchasing process, we were working with a VAR and they helped loop us together with the sales engineers and usually, within a few hours of discussion, we were able to drill down on everything. We had a product solution figured out, and almost next-day.

The most important criteria when selecting a product like this are the reliability of the equipment itself and the support.

I rate the solution at nine out of ten. They've really got the customer service, especially in the support arenas, nailed. They make information-gathering on their solutions, especially during pre-sale, easy to do.

We use it as the OS drives for our VMs. Our is a hybrid solution.

It's good storage product for our C and D drives for the virtualization space.

It has good dedupe and compression. Also, the built-in data migration capabilities are pretty good, as is the federation. When we started migrating the workloads from different storage platforms, like NetApp and XtremeIO, it helped us in moving in that direction.

It would be great if they could increase the compression and dedupe ratio.

We haven't had any issues with stability so far.

It's scalable.

Technical support is good.

We had XtremeIO for the past three or four years and, prior to that, we had NetApp. I think the SC Series works better. We are pretty happy with it. In terms of performance with mixed workloads, the SC Series is pretty good. We don't see a lot of latency as we saw with NetApp. But I would say XtremeIO and SC are similar in that regard.

Most storage platforms are the same, but when it comes to the performance and dedupe, as I said, those were the main criteria, what we were after when we talked to Dell EMC. The relationship and trust are also very important.

The setup was straightforward. We used Dell EMC Professional Services, and they came in. A company like ours is pretty big, so we use the vendors to come in and install things because we don't want to mess them up. They gave us the development documents, etc., so we're really happy.

The ROI is good.

It is affordable. We need more discount, but it's good. Pricing is more important than improving on dedupe or compression.

We looked at Nimble and NetApp. We went with Dell EMC. We have a good relationship since most of our stuff is on VMware. When Michael Dell bought VMware we said, "Yeah, we should increase our usage," and, of course, we have been using EMC for more than a decade.

Research is important. Understand the product. Just like any other technology you use, research is the most important part.

We use it for running all our business workloads.

it allows us to grow service on demand.

Usually, we have pretty low latency. Our storage is less than 10ms, which is pretty good. No dramas there. That's pretty good performance.

For what it's doing today there isn't too much that I think they need to add to it. It's doing what it needs to do.

The stability is quite good. I have nothing but good things to say about it.

The scalability is pretty good. We have had no problems at this point.

Technical support is really good. We have had good, high-quality support with our SC Series. They respond quickly.

It's very similar to our previous storage, which made the transition to start using it easy. That was pretty good. We had been using EqualLogic storage. We switched because our old solution went end-of-life.

The setup was pretty good. We got the support people, Professional Services people, to come in and install it. It was fine.

It's definitely affordable. Of course, it would be better if they made it cheaper, even more affordable.

I rate it a nine out of ten. Nothing gets a ten.

It is performing well.

We have a bit more storage, and it is faster.

• Ease of use
• Reliability
• It is fast and performs well.

The administration and support (on the way that they delivered) was a little bit slow.

So far, so good. However, we have only had it running for four months.

Scalability is good. We still have more room.

We have not used technical support yet.

Our previous solution ran out of space and IOPS. Therefore, we had to get something which was faster.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward, though I was not involved. A co-worker did it.

Only Dell EMC products were on our shortlist.

We did look at Nutanix, but they did not fit into the way that we are organized. We also looked at NetApps, but quickly dismissed them.

I would recommend to buy Dell EMC 3020 to anyone researching these type of solutions.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Reliability
• Support: We knew the support from EMC was really good.

We use the SC platform for storage solutions. As a partner, it's usually one of our go-to products for mid-range customers.

When it comes to mid-range storage solutions, it's usually our preferred solution, from all-flash all the way up to hybrid solutions too. Over time, the technology and how it performs, and its tiering capability, have been successful for us.

• Ease of use
• Scalability
• Performance
• Value for price

They've actually already done something that I think is needed, which is integration with Unisphere, which is the Dell EMC management platform, and then CloudIQ is their performance analytics solution. So they've actually implemented things that people have been asking for.

In addition, in any platform, there is always room for improvement. We're always looking for performance increases and keeping up with flash devices, and new products that are coming out.

It's a very stable product.

Honestly, most of the complaints I hear about this solution are either because systems have been misconfigured or sized improperly. Probably 90 percent of the issues people have are because it's not sized properly.

It's very scalable. They have solutions designed for SMB all the way up to enterprise customers with multiple petabytes of data. The SC Series is one of the two mid-market products for Dell EMC, so there is absolutely room for their solutions to grow with a company's needs.

Regarding Copilot - which is what they called their support, pre-Dell EMC - people have always had nothing but great things to say about it.

We use this product for daily business and normal IT operations. We also use it for replication of one system to another system. We also use it for the hostings for HANA virtualization. Those kinds of replications and IT applications. We use a hybrid version.

It had a lot of integration and supported all the platforms, so I was happy with what they were offering. The biggest selling point was when the vendor upgraded it. Dell upgraded the software licenses sold with that. Whenever the hardware is end-of-life, we could upgrade the controller or add a new disk or whatever. There was no lifecycle of three years or five years. We could carry on just by upgrading. It had many features, like a snapshot, replication, on-the-file RAID levels, mix-and-match files, those kinds of things.

Dell could improve the upgrading process. It was the lifecycle that made it very short. You'd upgrade the disk, and in eight, nine months, it would be obsolete. They cancelled an enhancement that included an all-flash unit. This would have improved the product.

We had worked with this product from Compellent's days before Dell bought them over, so I'll presume from 2006.

We never had a single crash with this product. It was just fine. 

The support was excellent. We had this storage for a while and server monitoring from Compellent.

Any IT company can do it. It's straightforward.

Pricing is market-related and is flexible for the solution. Pricing depends on varying life cycles.

We're trying to move some people across to some other storage solutions because this product is at end-of-life. I would give this product 10 out of 10.