Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

We're using it to host development workloads and it's performing as expected.

Dell EMC Unity XT is cheap and deep storage. It fits the business need that we had. I'm sure there are a number of other products out on the market that compete just as well.

One of the most valuable features is its cost. It was inexpensive compared to other arrays that we were looking at.

It's also easy to manage. I have 20 years of managing EMC storage and it has been the same from day one, pretty much.

We have also integrated it with vSphere and SQL. There were no costs involved outside of our normal workload licensing, no costs that were specific to the Unity platform.

It does what we bought it for. I don't know that there's anything else that it needs to do that we're not leveraging from it already. From a product perspective, I don't see any room for improvement.

From a service perspective, they can do nothing but go uphill.

One to three years.

It runs. It operates. Developers can do their development work. It's not screaming-fast, but it doesn't fall down when you bring up a workload. So it's performing as expected.

We did encounter a firmware bug which actually caused loss of data. There was some heartburn around that. But in general, it has operated as expected, except for that bug. Fortunately, we found the bug in pre-production, so we didn't lose anything that we needed. However, had it been in production, we'd be having a very different conversation about Unity.

I can't really comment on scalability. We bought the frame fully loaded. I don't know whether it scales or not. I suppose if I bought a unit that had half the capacity, it would scale to the max capacity. That wasn't my need.

Technical support has gotten progressively worse. In the past 24 months, give or take, the amount of attention from Dell EMC support for flagship products, both the Unity platform - which replaced VNX - and their VMAX platform: Their support teams and R&D have gone down under the Dell regime.

Our customer service, our support, the engineers that we get on the phone, the hassles that we put up with at level-one and level-two, didn't exist three or four years ago with EMC. We paid a premium for EMC products and you got a premium service as part of that investment. We don't get that anymore.

Set up went flawlessly.

Generally, with these types of products, there is not really much documentation from the build and configure perspective. There's a config sheet that you work on with your SE team. But it's not like going out and getting a packaged product from a Best Buy and implementing. There is an expectation from the config sheet for fiber connections, network connections, speeds and feeds, and the like. That is enterprise-class architecture. That's out-of-the-box. 

Dell EMC came in and did the implementation. They were knowledgeable.

I didn't put together an ROI for this product. We had a fixed budget that we wanted to invest in storage for development teams. This fit the bill.

Pricing was competitive compared to other products on the market. Among the ones we considered, Unity came in with the best price.

Compared to other EMC platforms, Unity is nice because it is all-inclusive, in terms of the licensing model. That's unique for them, compared to other manufacturers. It is beneficial. We could use replication, native, right out-of-the-box.

We looked at NetApp, Infinidat, Pure. 

My advice is: Stay up to date on code.

Regarding the purchasing process, we went through a VAR and it was easy. Once pricing was established, the bill of materials was defined, we paid for the product, and it showed up.

In terms of important criteria when selecting a vendor, from an executive perspective, it's partnership. From my team's perspective, it's probably 

• usability
• performance
• stability.

I want it up, I want it to stay up, and I don't want to have to manage it.

I would rate the solution at eight out of 10. It's not an all-flash array so it's not the fastest thing on the market. But the stability has been good, minus the initial bug. It does what we ask of it.

Our use case is very unique. We just need it in our offices.

It used to be a complex product. Now, it is becoming simpler. 

Overall, the feedback from my team has definitely been positive.

• Its simplicity and simple management. 
• Auto-features for data protection.
• Being able to expand the product.
• The Unisphere management interface: We are very familiar with it. It manages all the EMC devices that we have. Management is easy because it is part of Unisphere, which is self-learning.
• The support for Dell EMC is excellent.

I would like to see a more seamless virtual box integration with the physical box which can replicate, because the setup of the replication is very difficult right now. We tried it multiple times, and while the physical box is easy, when we mixed it with a virtual edition and it seemed very complex. We been trying this for several months, even with the cabling included. We are still working on it.

No issues so far. It is very stable.

It is scalable. We can always add additional tools if we need to expand it. 

We had been using VNX for a long time that it is now a part of our lifecycle. We introduced Dell EMC Unity into our environment to replace the VNX.

We contact our VAR, get a quote, and order all the hardware. Then, they ship and install it with a Dell EMC engineer. It is very straightforward.

We can see improvement since moving to the inclusive licensing.

The Dell EMC Data Protection license covers everything, like a one stop shop. All our options are covered. 

We have worked with different vendors. However, right now, we are sticking with Dell EMC Unity as it seems like it is a very solid, mature product.

Do your homework. Obtain all the use cases. See what license you need and purchase the license as part of your preparation. Then, the process will be smooth.

We do integration with vSphere, but it is very limited because we outsource with IBM. 

We use it for storage for our ESXi hosts at our smaller sites.

It increased our uptime because we switched from physical stuff to virtual stuff, and being able to have that we could do the high-availability and failover.

I like the ease of configuration, the quick setup, and the fact that it seems to be hardened. We haven't had any issues with them. In terms of simplicity of ownership, once they're running you don't have to touch them.

They're also simple to manage. We came from the VNXe 3200s so it's very similar.

We integrated it with vSphere but that integration was "iffy". It was okay but we had a few challenges with it.

It's very solid. No issues at all. The only issue we have is that the power supply ramps up and down and makes some noise on SPA. But other than that being a nuisance, we haven't had any reliability issues at all.

Scaling is easy. Just add drives, extend the space. It's super simple.

We called them and put in a service ticket on the power supply issue. We tried a few things and then they sent us another one, but other than that we haven't had any issues. They've been easy to work with.

The initial setup was straightforward. Coming from the VNXe's, it was almost identical, just has a different GUI platform. It was very easy.

The price is up a little bit from what we used to pay so I'm hoping that it's a little bit of a better system than the VNXe was. But I still think it's a good value. It's new, so I'm sure there's room for the pricing to drop.

We did have an issue with licensing once but we were able to reach out to the licensing group and do an online chat. They helped instantly, so that was nice.

My advice is to follow the installation guide, it's pretty straightforward, step-by-step.

In terms of the purchasing process, after we had figured out what we wanted, it became easy. But we had to get into our first set of standards. The first one that we ordered had the SFP module cards in it, which we didn't need. We just use the 10-gigabit copper. After figuring out our standard template, it has become super simple every time.

What I look for when selecting a vendor to work with is somebody who

• is big
• guarantees their product
• has good support; somebody who is going to answer their phone 24/7.

So far, I rate the Unity a nine out of 10. It has been easy to set up, we've only had a few small issues. Once they're set up, they're running, you don't have to touch them. The one point I held back is because we're new to them. The version we're using is the 300 and it's also new out there so there has been a little bit of a struggle here and there with some small things; for example, the fans ramping up and we have one right now that's not responding after updates.

It fits what we're trying to do. It has everything and more. There are some features that we're not even using yet.

It's our storage solution. We have a Dell EMC Unity 400. The performance is great.

The fact that it's hybrid is the most valuable feature. We have the SSD so we put our SharePoint on there and some of the stuff that requires a little more speed. For SharePoint, we want the pages to respond a little more quickly. And it's nice to be able to use the slower storage for stuff that we don't need as quickly, like file servers. If they're a little slow, it's okay, nobody really complains. Overall, the hybrid is what we really like about it.

I like that when you log in it gives you a dashboard of what your storage looks like. Pretty cool with that.

In the dashboard there could be notification of duplicate files and the like, so we don't have to rely on Windows to do that. They have all the files in the Dell EMC so that would help us out.

I haven't had any issues with it at all. The stability has been very good.

Dell EMC is one of the best in terms of scalability. They can just add another component to it. It's so modular so it's super easy. The scalability is very nice.

We had a year's worth of support from them when we first bought it. They were very responsive, whether via email or phone calls. We could get a tech onsite if we wanted to, to help us with the installation.

We had Tintri before. It was good, it's also a very simple solution. The problem was that they got too expensive, once you tried to scale up with them. They quoted us something like $800,000. We said to ourselves, "Um, let's go to Dell EMC. We know Dell, we know EMC, so let's just switch."

In the industry in which we work, a lot of people use Dell EMC and there weren't a lot of Tintri users. Being able to reach out to somebody in another company who uses Dell EMC makes that partnership with everyone a lot easier too.

Setting it up was super easy, as is the management of it. We used the same thing for setting up a disaster site and it was pretty seamless.

I don't know an actual number for ROI but, especially because we are a small IT shop, having something that is easy, that doesn't take a lot of time to set up, monitor, and manage helps us a ton. We can focus on other things.

When you look at what Dell EMC is compared to, like NetApp, they're all priced pretty similarly. I think the pricing of the hybrid model is good. Obviously, we would want cheaper prices but you can't get everything.

My advice would be to use their support. If you bought it, have them come onsite, have them help you set it up, make sure you get comfortable with it. If you bought the support have someone come onsite. It's like free training. Don't wing it.

Primary use case is block and file. It's like a combo device. It has performed well, except for the migration process.

It requires a lot less management.

• All-flash performance
• Snapshotting capabilities
• Replication

It's good. It has a lot of good features.

I think there are a couple of things on the file side that we're lacking from the VNX world. It would be nice if we got some of those back. I think there are limitations on how many file systems you can back up at a time. Whereas you can do, I believe, eight continuous per data mover on the file side on the VNX, you can only do something like two or four on Unity. If they could step up to that, that would be good.

It was difficult at first. It wasn't very stable. It was crashing a lot. I think we were early adopters and, during the file side of migration, it crashed a number of times.

Scalability is good, although we only have a 400F. I think we missed out on getting the 450, but it seems to be fairly scalable.

Tech support is good. Just like most of the EMC products, there is a knowledgeable staff.

Setup was fairly straightforward, although we had EMC onsite to give us a hand.

The important criteria for us when selecting a vendor are

• relationship
• quality of product.

I would rate the Unity between seven and eight out of 10. It's not quite at the level of what the VNX was, but it's one of those products that is improving with time.

I would definitely recommend you look at Unity.

It's a tier-two storage array. The performance is okay.

The all-flash array and the compression ratio are benefiting us. We still have to migrate a couple of systems. We are still in the process of doing it and we'll know better afterward. But, we've seen some good improvements. For example, we put it on one of the file servers and the backup performance improved quite a lot.

It has the same operating system for both file and block, and it actually simplifies everything. It's much smaller compared to VNX.

I have just been to one of the briefing sessions, here at the Dell EMC World 2018 conference, and they released a very cool feature, Snapshot replication, which is very interesting. I'm excited about that.

Stability seems to be good but we had some issues recently because of a bug in the system. We were presenting LANs to the Unity array but I think it caused a disruption to the host. EMC did acknowledge it and provided an alternative way to do it. We felt that this could have been avoided. It caused downtime to the host on two occasions.

Scalability for the 650F is good, but I was expecting a little bit more than that.

Technical support was helpful. I would have appreciated it if it were a lot faster, but we got a resolution for our issue.

We come from VNX, and we also have VMAXs.

When selecting a vendor we look at the 

• performance 
• scalability
• price.

First of all, it should meet the business requirements such as performance, and it should be compatible with all applications. Then we will look at the third factor which is the price.

Regarding advice, it depends on the size of the business. Unity, price per Gig, is actually a good system. In fact, I'm thinking of moving some of the old VMAX arrays to Unity because of the price performance per Gig. If the stability makes sense, then I'm actually going to move it.

We had a stand-alone storage system and we wanted to purchase a Metro Cluster system. We looked at other companies and we found EMC was the best of them. That's why we choose them.

At the moment it's a cluster, we use it in different data centers. In case of any interruption, a power cut or something, our data will be continuously available.

At the moment we are using it with VPLEX. VPLEX is a very big advantage for us. We don't use very many of the Unity's functions. But it does provide good provisioning, allowing us to save space. We use all-flash systems and they are quite fast.

The monitoring part could be better. With EMC storage systems - or Unity and VPLEX, because I'm using them, for the moment - the monitoring part is very difficult. They should improve this to have a better reporting system.

The stability is quite okay. We have not had any downtime with the Unity. We have only been using it for three months. We have just finished the migrations, but so far it is working quite well.

For us, it's scalable.

Setup was very easy.

When selecting a vendor, as a technical guy, it's the power or bandwidth, the technical details, that are more important to me.

I would definitely tell a colleague to go for Unity.

The main use case for my clients is for mid-range storage performance. It's primarily all-flash arrays. It's always with two sides replicated. It's working well.

The architecture is robust. I know that it has changed a lot with the advent of the all-flash. But it was the good, old-fashioned storage array, block array for customers. It's reliable.

The feedback I have is it's quite stable. We have a configuration with VPLEX. The issues are not coming from the Unity itself, in general. It's more about the SAN or the VPLEX, the virtualization layer. On that specific point, I'd say the Unity is doing well. It's reliable.

The market I'm working, in Switzerland, is quite small. The Unity, in terms of scalability, covers 90% of our use cases.

Replication with VMware - it's called the vSphere Metro Storage Cluster - is lacking in the Unity and is present in Compellent. In general, that's a key decision metric. If we need to have synchronous replication... That's why we had to use VPLEX, because it's not in the Unity. Look out for this. If that kind of setup is not required, you should always go for Unity.