Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

It's our primary storage. It is just for VMWare with a lot of Fail Over clusters.

For our mission critical applications, we run SQL, Oracle, Fail Over server clusters, VMWare, and databases. We use it for our primary VMWare environments, with a VPLEX, just for failover and performance. We use it for Windows Plus! because you need shared storage. In addition, we use it for healthcare systems.

We only use it for block storage. We don't use any other features. We have a VPLEX for applications.

Unity is supporting the organization, but it's not improving it. It's just hosting the applications.

Simplicity: It is ease to use. It performs. It's easy to provision, and It's stable.

I would like better monitoring capabilities: more historical data with more insight into the performance for the database. We now use a separate tool for it. Therefore, it would be nice if we could have that straight from the tool.

The stability is good. We are very happy with the Unity.

It does what it says it does. It performs, so you never have performance problems with it.

It scales, but then you have to buy additional stuff. So, if we need it, we can scale it. That is not the issue. However, we don't need it to scale further, because when I scaled it down, there are multiple platforms that we will move off the Unity to a hyper-converged or Isilon solution. Scalability isn't that important.

The technical support is good.

It's quite straightforward. It's deciding some IP addresses and building a storage pool, then you're off.

We always buy it with implementation services. However, we did the implementation ourselves.

With the large Unity that we bought, it has saved us about one and a half rack space. That's our return on investment on our flash array. We also need less Fibre Channel connectivity.

We had VPLEX, and it's a good merge with Unity. So, we didn't look very much further.

We also looked at HPE and Hitachi. We went with Dell EMC since we are a Dell EMC house.

It does what it needs to do that is the reason why we bought it.

We are not interested in the cloud option.

We use it for our primary storage platform. All of our primary VMs run off of it.

We went from two boxes that were 8U down to a 2U box. Dell EMC Unity XT reduced the electricity we were using just by making that one change.

On a performance level, with SQL querying, it would take 60 seconds. That doesn't sound like a long time, but when people are staring at a spinning icon they can get outraged. This solution has cut it down to about 22 seconds for a query, so it's a lot faster. The difference was astronomical. We were using an EqualLogic, a hybrid array which had spinning disk and SSD, and the Unity just blew it out of the water.

When it comes to provisioning and management, when you compare Unity to EqualLogic, it's night and day. The EqualLogic wasn't nearly as flexible as Unity is. Once we saw what the Unity was capable of, there was no going back to the EqualLogic at all.

It gives me flexibility with its ability to replicate to itself and the ability to use the Dell EMC Cloud as an option. That's always sitting there and waiting if we need it.

I like the fact that it comes with a cloud option out-of-the-box. Just purchasing it gave us an unlimited amount of storage. It allows us to dip our toes in without a major commitment. With AWS or Azure, you're locked in and you're using up the contract and you're always worried that you'll spend a lot more. The use case for us would be disaster recovery or cold storage.

We use our VMware Site Recovery Manager and we use the device to replicate all of those hot VMs over to our DR site. We've actually tested it and it takes 19 seconds for us to get a virtual machine up and running, in the event of a disaster, because of the replication between the two systems.

What I'd like to see is a little more detail on the networking side. I can go into where it's showing me the replication, but when I go into the network it just gives me broad-based information. I don't know which replication job is actually feeding it. I have to go in and rely on other apps. But I'm thinking, "It's on there. It should be able to tell me this is the one that's eating up the bandwidth."

We've had no issues with the Unity. We haven't had a failed drive yet.

We haven't had to scale it out. We're going to scale it out next year.

We went from a spinning drive array because we needed something faster. We moved our analytic server over to it and the Unity was able to overcome the bottleneck that the previous storage had caused.

Also, EqualLogic went end-of-life, they weren't going to support it anymore. That was our initial driver. But we found we could fix some other issues with the move to Unity.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward, or at least we thought it would be. We have some complex stuff that we do on our network which caused some issues with it. That didn't make it a standard, out-of-the-box setup. Had we had a less complex network, it would have been a lot simpler to put it in.

We used a reseller and our experience was fine. It was not the first time we had actually worked with that reseller. We ended up having to engage with the Dell EMC people to get everything set up right. It wasn't the smoothest of introductions.

We looked at all-in-one, hyperconverged storage. We decided not to go that route simply because we've made such a huge investment on the networking side. If we had gone the hyperconverged route we would pretty much have had to rip all that out.

Then we looked at Pure. In the end, we'd been partners with Dell EMC for so long that it didn't make sense to venture out into some unknown when we were talking about the main platform which we were going to build all our VMs off of.

Find out your needs before you look at your options. Everyone's going to tell you theirs is the best but you need to know what you need going in, and what kind of performance level you need. If they're not willing to do a PoC then don't do it. If they're not willing to put their product out there and compare it with another product, then don't even consider them.

I would give it an eight out of ten. It has some deduplication to try to reduce some of the overlap that VMs, by nature, have. But I feel that could be better to try to save on storage. Also, better reclaimed-space management on it would be nice. Reclaimed space on virtual systems can be a pain to manage sometimes.

We use it for our converged infrastructure in our VxBlock.

We put all our applications on it since it is our back-end storage. We have just one storage area that we dump everything on and scrape for all of our mixed workload use.

It is a streamlined single giant storage area. It is all fast, so we can throw all of our mixed workloads at it. It just simplifies the deployment of things because we don't have to sit there and think about where we want to put stuff or what needs what.

Speed and flexibility are the most valuable features.

It has great mixed work load use, which is nice because we keep growing things for our VxBlock. 

It's great on power consumption, as there is no spinning disk. 

It's super-fast, and you can't go wrong with that. It's helped us across the board to standardize on something very simple.

We use all the data service features and click all the options.

As the solution continues to grow and gain more traction, things will come up that will just continue to deepen the integration between VMware, vCenter, and all those other components. Anything in the divisibility there and additional tools is always great.

It is super stable. I haven't had any issues with it.

The scalability is great. We haven't hit any issues with scaling at this point.

Thankfully, we haven't had to deal with technical support yet.

We were standing up a new data center, so it was easier to standardized on one storage subsystem. We had been using VNXe and XtremIO with a mix of other Dell EMC products. It was just nice for this mixed workload use to have a single solution in Unity.

The initial setup was super straightforward. I pointed it where I wanted it to go, and they put it there.

We used VCE for the deployment, and they were great.

It is a brand new data center, so we haven't quite seen the ROI yet. Just from an overall power and heating usage, it costs substantially less than some of our existing solutions.

We only had EMC on our shortlist.

It is lightning fast, low on power and heat, and has a small footprint with great performance.

If you don't know your mixed use case, or what you're going to do with it, it's a nice mixed use storage subsystem. It easily integrates with great visibility. It is very easy to maintain and operate. It is just a nice platform, especially if you're setting yourself in a new direction and you don't quite know what you're doing.

Right now, Unity is a backup target.

The IT challenge we resolved with this solution was having a backup target. With Unity we've got DDVE, or Data Domain Virtual Edition loaded. It was an array that was not being used for anything in particular and we had a need for the data domain capacity, so we're using it as a backup target under DDVE.

The Unity platform is really easy to use. When it comes to provisioning and management, it has reduced complexity and improved productivity. The ease of the UI means it's not a very complicated system to manage.

For me, the most valuable feature is the ease of management. It's a fairly easy system to manage compared to PowerMax or VMAX.

In other use cases for which we used that particular Unity box, before it landed up being what it is now, the data service feature we used most was snapshots. Snapshots made it easy to roll back to a point in time.

We plan to buy Unity again in the next 12 months and we'll have to see what the next generation of Unity brings to us. But so far, there are no additional features needed.

There's always room for improvement with the UI. That can be a little cumbersome at times.

The stability is good.

The scalability is also good.

We haven't had to call technical support. It has been a pretty solid product.

The initial setup was straightforward. It's an easy piece of equipment to manage.

We are enterprise-level and buy directly from Dell EMC.

Our shortlist had IBM XIV Gen2. We landed on Unity because we had familiarity with the product. Unity has its roots in VNX and we had a number of VNX arrays.

Unity is solid and there is not anything to be afraid of in purchasing it. I would recommend it.

Ours is not a very complicated use case and the performance has been adequate for what we've tasked it to do.

I give the Unity a ten out of ten for two reasons:

• reliability
• ease of use.

We use it for data storage, for file.

When it comes to provisioning and management, the solution has reduced complexity because we combined several systems down into one. We're utilizing that technology to see what we have available for file, instead of multiple technologies, and trying to converge all of that together to understand what our capacity management meets are.

Also, Unity's are more easily administrated, so we need fewer people to do the administration. We have less overhead because of that.

We do replication and snapshotting. We're using that as a backup technology to leverage snapshotting.

We went to the PowerMax because of the needs that we have for the business. We're doing true enterprise-level storage. So we went from Unity to PowerMax to give us that tier that we were looking for.

It's stable. It works well.

We had a lot of different solutions. They were all piecemeal'ed. We have manufacturing sites in 80 countries and every site did their own thing until corporate brought it back in. That's when we started to go with Unity. And now we're making the transition to PowerMax.

We use Dell EMC because they're the premier player.

We used one of our premier partners to implement it. 

My advice is to take this solution. It does what it tells you it's going to do.

Instead of using multiple types of backup or file storage, we were trying to combine all of that into Unity. Now we're trying to refresh that again and go with the newer technology, the enterprise-level storage. Unity met our overall performance expectations for what it is, and then we obviously needed the enterprise level, so we're going with the PowerMax now.

I would rate Unity at eight out of ten. Any application or product has room for improvement. I don't see anything out there that's a ten. Unity is functional for what it needs to be.

We use it for replacing legacy storage. It's just a one-for-one.

This is primarily for storage and the data aspect of it.

Dell EMC Unity XT keeps us up and running. That is the big thing.

• Affordability
• Scalability
• Simplicity of use

I don't have any complaints from the customers or end users, who are using this solution. It's up and running with no worries.

We are very fond of the scalability. We are using the Unity 300, which has a limitation. However, if we needed more, we could go to the Unity 400, 500 or 600. We could go down the series until we get the one that meets the size that we need. It has very impressive scalability.

We're not cloud ready yet, but we like the option for the expandability.

We have Dell EMC engineers helping us out and doing some over the shoulder training. They are working with our customer right now doing data migration over to Unities from the legacy Oracle stuff. While they're doing this, they're showing people how the Unities work and the ins and outs of the software interface. 

It's been a really beneficial relationship. We work a lot with Dell EMC, because they are very accommodating. Our Dell EMC representative does what our team doesn't have the capability of doing yet, because they don't have exposure to the product. I look forward to seeing how it works out. 

Our experience recently, with newer products, has been that once they're installed, we haven't had to worry about them. If there has been an issue, like we pulled something out of a box, it's replaced within a matter of days. It's really quick. 

We really push Dell EMC with our customers because of the customer support. It's been very flexible. We always need a lot of data on the stuff that's purchased because we have people buying it on behalf of the customer. They are very good on the customer support acquisition side to provide that data. Also, the technical support that we get is fabulous.

We replaced our legacy storage, which was Oracle. We couldn't afford the maintenance agreement for it any longer. We saved millions of dollars by not going back with Oracle.

This solution has meet our overall performance expectations. We were going for form fit function. We had to meet certain guidelines. We couldn't put anything in bigger. Physically, we couldn't put in any additional capabilities. We had to meet the existing network connectivity without modifying the other systems. The versatility of the product, with the optional PCI inputs allowed us to get that. We are able to scale it up or down, for actual storage, to meet the capacity that we need. We're using it in two cases where we're doing a form fit function. One for replacement, then another for overall modernization of the same systems. We're able to take the same product and scale it up to almost three times its size with very little effort.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. We had a technician helping with migration because of the legacy aspect of the servers, and what they were connecting to. Once the the over the shoulder training is done, the process is fairly straightforward.

We used a reseller and had a consultant. The consultant had worked for Dell EMC and went to work for a consulting company. He is now back to work at Dell EMC. He actually recommended the product based on his knowledge of our program. He flushed the whole system out, as far as the build. Regarding the flexibility of the product, we have other programs within our larger branch which are starting to take on and use the Unities for storage.

The benefit that we have seen is in uptime.

While it has a good price to start, they could always make it cheaper.

We bought extended warranties out of the box because our customer has a bad habit of managing warranties. The service for the small things that we have had are always handled very quickly. 

We were on old Oracle storage and are still on some old Oracle storage. 

There are lots of options for storage solutions, but our technical and customer support team's experience with Dell EMC makes it a no-brainer for us. 

I hate to speak bad of folks, but we can't even get HPE to return our phone calls, in most cases.

Do the due diligence and look at the details: the specs of the product and scalability. There are multiple series of products in the Unity line, which are very simple to use.

It's met all of our expectations. Our users don't have any technical needs because it's up and running. Overall, we are very excited about the product.

We bought a couple of 450F and 650F to replace our ageing VNX family. The primary use case is for block storage, and VMware for our tier-2 applications.

Moving away from Java-based Unisphere to the HTML5 version of Unity is a huge improvement for our day-to-day management. We are still in the process of getting things in place, but at this stage, I can say the configuration is pretty straightforward and doesn't require additional training to learn the product.

Moving also from a hybrid to an all-flash array helped us to minimize footprints in our data centers. It's like two racks of VNX 8000 down to a quarter rack of Unity 650F.

• New HTML5 GUI: It's really fast and works well on your favorite browsers.
• Data reduction: We haven't seen the actual benefits, but with this feature, we are expecting to gain maximum efficiency.
• CloudIQ integration: This provides really useful data and analysis.

• Storage groups are no longer available in Unity so you will have some challenges if you managed quite a huge environment in provisioning perspective.
• Domain management is also gone in Unity. This is not an issue if you are managing less than two of this, but in our case, we have a number of this array around the globe.
• All models are limited up to two I/O modules per SP giving you fewer front-end ports compare to higher VNX models.
• Unisphere Central is not so useful as we expect. This will provide a centralized management of our arrays, but it ends up giving you only some numbers and figures for you to report to your management.

We use this solution for our databases. We also use some of the applications provided. 

It is a hassle-free storage environment that helps us manage our hardware. The upgrades are helpful and it makes our organization a more productive environment. 

We like the way it integrates with our environment. These features help us use multiple soft applications. The new features of going off the grid and replicating really help us. They give us an advantage versus traditional storage resources. 

We would like an AI feature that would protect the backup and minimize the consumed space so that we can maintain the quality of the backup. This would help us minimize our IT cost in terms of backup procedures. 

In addition, we would like to see the solution integrate easier with any cloud provider. There is a rising demand for moving to the hybrid cloud environment and Dell EMC needs to integrate to these needs. 

It is stable. 

It can easily scale up to meet our requirements. 

We have had good experiences with tech support. 

We used VNX previously and although it was fast, the performance was poor.