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Dell Unity XT pros and cons

4.2 out of 5

Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Unified block and file storage simplifies administration and deployment while reducing rack space.
Integration with VMware enhances performance and ease of management for virtual environments.
All-flash performance offers superior speed and efficiency, with reduced overhead and tiering.
Dynamic Pools enable easy scalability by allowing disks to be added incrementally.
Replication and disaster recovery features provide robust data protection and high availability.

CONS

Dell Unity XT lacks deduplication and compression features in its current version, affecting hybrid platforms and overall efficiency.
Cloud-based replication capabilities are limited, with current replication technology requiring improvement for enhanced integration with systems like VMware.
Several features from previous models, such as VNX, like Storage Groups, Secure Mobile Connectivity, and more granular reporting, have not been retained or improved upon.
Scalability issues are present, with limitations in data-in-place conversion and insufficient IOPS support from its architecture.
Pricing remains a concern, as Dell Unity XT is considered expensive, especially for medium-sized companies, with high costs associated with purchasing and maintenance contracts.
 

Dell Unity XT Pros review quotes

it_user620604 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Infrastructure Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Mar 5, 2017
Unified block and file storage without the need of control stations and data movers. This simplifies administration and deployment and requires less rack space.
RS
Storage Solutions Architect at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Mar 15, 2017
It has a very intuitive web console that runs in HTML5 and makes navigation and administration fairly easy.
it_user448698 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer in the Storage & Systems Practice at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Mar 29, 2017
I like the easy management with the new Unisphere management and the HTML5 interface.
Learn what your peers think about Dell Unity XT. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
880,315 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user657789 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
May 3, 2017
Replication of the communication object (COB) scenarios
it_user757431 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of IT Infrastructure
Oct 18, 2017
User friendly interface
it_user757434 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Supervisor
Oct 18, 2017
Because I always need to trouble shooting for IOPS & database (DB) performance issues. I can quickly focus on what is part of the issue. I can decrease downtime and can plan next year's extended capacity budget.
it_user758244 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a sports company
Oct 19, 2017
Veeam Backup integration: Veeam is the defacto standard for backing up of virtual environments.
it_user758247 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 19, 2017
The ease of management and “user-friendly” management environment (GUI).
it_user760152 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 23, 2017
The multiprotocol support. It's supporting NFS, fiber channel, CIFS, and these kinds of things. The multiprotocol is very attractive.
it_user760155 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Techinal Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Oct 23, 2017
VMware integration: Grants both the Storage and Virtual Administrator the ability to create and mount datastores, or even to check how much space each VM is consuming.
 

Dell Unity XT Cons review quotes

it_user620604 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Infrastructure Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Mar 5, 2017
Include cloud-based replication for blocks
RS
Storage Solutions Architect at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Mar 15, 2017
This product lacks deduplication and compression at the current version 4.1.0. LACP is not available for iSCSI either.
it_user448698 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer in the Storage & Systems Practice at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Mar 29, 2017
The storage processors have less port expansion than previous high-end VNX arrays. Data compression is only available in all-flash pools.
Learn what your peers think about Dell Unity XT. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
880,315 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user657789 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
May 3, 2017
The EMC VNX Virtual Data Mover (VDM) software needs more improvement.
it_user757431 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of IT Infrastructure
Oct 18, 2017
Thick provisioning of LUNs.
it_user757434 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Supervisor
Oct 18, 2017
For the integration of the VPLEX function for Cross IDC structure, they should integrate the function into the SP controller.
it_user758244 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a sports company
Oct 19, 2017
Firmware Upgrades in EMC Unity require you to manually download OS and Drive firmware, this should be integrated (Nimble does this). When you order an EMC Unity, you have to specify the block size. This is weird for me and even weirder that you cannot change this afterwards, you should be able to specify per LUN/datastore (Nimble does this as well).
it_user758247 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 19, 2017
There are features still to come, like compression and deduplication on hybrid platforms, VDM improvements to be developed for NAS environments, and also improvements in the “self-migration” tools to push or pool information (to assist the migrations to and mostly from third-party arrays).
it_user760152 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 23, 2017
We are running VMware, and with the VNXe it was possible to restore. We're using Veeam for VMware backups and with the predecessor, it was possible to mount a backup or restore a backup from a storage snapshot. With the Unity 300, this is not possible.
it_user760155 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Techinal Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Oct 23, 2017
Compression and block deduplication on non-all-flash solutions.