Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

Right now, we're using it as overflow storage. We initially had a VNX and an Isilon. We needed to grow out further, and we thought that Unity would be a good way to do that. Right now, we're using it a secondary storage platform, VVols across it, and using it directly for VMware storage.

The flash aspects of the Unity make it incredibly fast. The fact that you get that much storage directly on what is basically a 3U box to us, that density has been really useful.

• The easy setup.
• We really enjoy the HTML5. 
• The VVols have worked seamlessly with VMware.

We haven't gotten that deep into it yet to suggest improvements, but based on what we've been seeing here at the Dell EMC World 2018 conference, we'll be looking to make sure CloudIQ is set up for it.

We haven't seen an issue with it since the day we installed. It has been only two months but it's good.

We really enjoy the scalability, absolutely. We're running one box right now, but the fact that we can add additional compartments as needed is extremely useful, and we will probably go that way in the future.

We've had to use very little tech support, but so far it has been fine. Mostly we had some assistance with it during setup and haven't needed it since. When we needed them they were there for us, helpful, on schedule.

We've been using Isilon and VNX. We heard about Unity here, at the conference, two years ago, and had started to look into it. Obviously, as flash has continued to get cheaper compared to spinning disk, it makes a natural choice.

When selecting a vendor, responsiveness and accountability are incredibly useful. A really important part was the support we got out of EMC for Isilon. Often, we'll hear from them that disks are ready to be replaced. They're getting to us, setting their pace, getting out there without much interference from us.

In terms of price, I would say that the support you're getting with it is probably an underestimated value that comes with the box you're buying.

I would tell a colleague this makes a very sound investment. It's very reasonable density for space. The extendability is extremely useful. It's hard to choose a competitor at that level that would do it better.

Most of our customers buy it for data storage for the ERP that they use in their businesses. Most of them have a preference for the flash model.

All of them are very satisfied with the performance. It's very good equipment. Our customers give us very good feedback about it, they are very satisfied.

It's very easy to manage the whole system. We can put all the virtualized servers in one place, so they can share and manage the devices very easily.

It is very high-speed. The compression is also a very good feature, and the deduplication as well.

No complaints about the stability. Our customers are very happy with it.

Most of our customers are medium-sized businesses. My market, my targets, they don't need high-scale performance. But I know the scalability is very good and you can scale very easily.

The TCO is very good. Our customers invest and they get a good return.

When selecting a vendor, I choose the storage to fit the value and budget that the customer can afford. I can set most of them up with Unity, but sometimes I need to give them something with a lower cost. Sometimes, the price point is a little bit high in our market.

Unity is equipment that, if you sell it, you don't have any headaches with it. It's very good, its performance is very good. We are very satisfied.

Our primary use case is for our product, Oracle Database, and it's performing very well.

The benefit of the solution is that it allows us to maintain an Oracle Database for our product, for our customers. Given the performance of the Unity array, we've been able to do more with less.

It's just a solid platform.

I would like to see better compression, better dedupe. It's not nearly as good as what is built into the XtremIO. I understand why that is the case, but if they can take some of that technology and leverage that a little bit better in the Unity array, that would be great. That would be the first improvement.

It's rock solid. All of the EMC arrays are rock solid. I wouldn't expect anything less.

Scalability is phenomenal.

Technical support is typically very good. The only issue is, where our products are located. it's hard to get technical support in there. Only certain individuals can go in there, so finding that right, cleared person is sometimes a challenge.

This is just the next generation. We started with the CX models, we went to the Celerra, and now we're only blocks. We've used the 5300, the 5400s. We've used them all for years and years.

When selecting a vendor what's important are 

• price
• the name
• the product itself 
• most importantly, stability. 

I need to know that I've got a device that's running and it's not going to go down; that has rock-solid stability. That's the issue.

The initial setup is different from the VNX arrays and the CX arrays, which we have played with and used for years. The interface is just different.

Previously, we manually did all of our RAID groups. We didn't use the pools in the VNX2, we just went down to RAID groups because that would give us the best performance. We could maintain that performance, we could control that. With Unity, that went away, so that was a little bit of a learning curve. We had to understand and learn to trust that it was going to do what it needed to do.

Compared to XtremeIO, the unity is a two out of 10. Compared to other products, like Compellent, which is a Dell product, I think it's better than the Compellent. I think it's better than the 3PAR, I think it's better than the Netapp. The whole VNX/Unity line has been the industry leader, as far as I'm concerned. if I were to rank the Unity against all of its equivalent competitors, I would say it's probably a nine out of 10.

I would give a colleague the advice that he needs to look at what his product does, or what the use case is for that device. The Unity array is, by design, block, with unified on top of it. NetApp is, by default, file, with a block added on, which is kind of a hybrid; it's not really block at all. It depends on what you're doing. If you're looking for a filer, NetApp is the way to go. But if you're looking for block storage, by far EMC Unity is the way to go. That is its design.

The primary use case is block storage for ESX and structured data, SQL Database primarily.

We have adopted the all-flash array. It eliminates all the overhead of tiering and a lot of the data structuring overhead involved. It gives us a lot of operational efficiencies.

Being able to bring those multiple groups into a central solution. From a storage perspective, that is a bit of a challenge. 

There are also DR and data protection functions that we found in the new Unity, now that we are stepping up from VNX and other storage appliances, that we've started implementing.

The one thing that we would look at would be if they were to expand the file level features, just to give us a balance or a tier between it and Isilon options out there, for unstructured data.

We have never had any problem beyond that which you would assume you might get out of a storage system.

It will scale as much as we want or need. Scalability is not a concern.

We have not had to use tech support often, beyond the normal occasional drive, standard part replacement. The support has been good.

We've been a long time EMC customer. For us, though, it's been a journey of modernization and standardization. We took a couple different storage platforms and then centralized it on the Unity.

When selecting a vendor, from my perspective, I like to come up with the technically best solution possible, and then work retroactively into the price. Then, obviously, the business will make that decision based on price point and other things. But we try not make that one of the deciding factors.

My advice would be, if you're looking for this kind of solution, one of the challenges we had was clearly defining the use case. There is a lot of preparation in clearly identifying the workloads that you're going to put on it.

We're running virtual machines and we're using the NAS filer for file shares.

It has reduced the latency in application and database reads and writes, which is of benefit to the business.

All-flash, it's fast. We have the 650 model which is all-flash, upgraded from VNX. It just flies.

I can't think of any improvements, other than bringing down the price point. That would help.

It seems rock solid so far.

At this point, we're at the high end. I don't know that we have a lot of room to scale up, but I think it's going to meet our needs for a while.

My colleague did a firmware upgrade recently and that went well. I would say that was a good experience with tech support.

We were running out of disk space, and there was some latency that we wanted to improve on. We had the VNX previously.

When selecting a vendor, the price is always important, but we need a product that supports our business, It's both those factors.

The setup went relatively well. It was straightforward. We got migrated over quickly, so I have been very pleased with all of it.

It's working well for us so far. We haven't had it long enough to have a full-term answer, but I am very pleased with it so far.

In terms of advice to a colleague, if it's a mid-size company that has a similar needs to ours, I think the Unity is a good option.

It is primarily for block storage for VMware in our Americas data centers, and it is also used for block storage and file storage in our European data centers.

It's a much smaller footprint than our older storage arrays, which take up some six tiles, a lot of space in the data center. The Unity's are a lot smaller, and they're a lot faster.

We use the all-flash arrays so the performance is probably the most valuable feature. As features go, deduplication and compression are important too.

I would like to see them add Storage Groups, like we have had in Clariions and VNXs. Storage Groups would be a great addition.

We've had no issues with it whatsoever, as far as stability goes.

We have not had to add capacity to them. I would imagine it's going to scale well, we just haven't had to add capacity.

The support is very good.

It was just a refresh.

When selecting a vendor, the criteria for us would be 

• track record
• stability
• support.

I work for a rather large law firm and they're not typically that price sensitive but, obviously, we need to be good stewards of the firm's money as well.

The setup was pretty quick, pretty easy.

At this point, I would give the Unity an eight out of 10. I think it's a little bit early on in the development of features. But overall, it has performed well.

There are some alternatives, but what we've found, working with our partners, for mid-range storage it's probably the best one you could choose. There are other offerings from other vendors, but it's a good choice.

We added it to our Vblock 740 as a storage extension, basically a tech extension for a capacity upgrade. We set it up about three weeks ago. I haven't seen any issues so far.

What we noticed was that the SP utilization is quite high, although the main load is on a VMAX. We'll need to dig into it with EMC and see if there are any issues that might pop up.

The setup was quite easy, straightforward.

Compression, it's an all-flash Unity, so with that compression feature, it's comparable to a hybrid. That is one thing that we definitely like.

It runs. No stability issues.

If those SP utilization things, noted above, get to be an issue, I think scalability might be an issue too. But we need to confirm that. I don't know yet.

We had a licensing issue to do with encryption but, other than that, we have not had to use tech support. It took a little bit, support had to get it into our ELA. It worked out in the end.

Obviously, it is the successor of the VNX. We wanted to add some mid-range capabilities to that Vblock 740 and it was the logical choice.

In terms of selecting a vendor, we're a big EMC partner, so we don't usually look at other vendors. We have very good experiences with EMC support so far. We are currently not looking at other vendors.

It is definitely worth having a look at. The price-point for all-flash is certainly quite interesting. It has NAS capabilities too, if you need it. It's an interesting product, at least for mid-range.

Most of the systems are replacements for ancient VNXs. For most of the customers, we suggest they be replaced by Unity.

For our customers, the benefits are that it's not too expensive and it has almost all of the features from the beginning.

• Simplicity.
• Ease of management.
• It's still running on the ancient systems, so the customers know what they are getting.

I can't really think of any improvements for the next release.

The ease of installation, sometimes, for the customers, is not that positive because the customers think they can do it themselves. Sometimes that is a bit of an issue.

Very stable. Sometimes you can have issues, but they are usually solved with an upgrade of the system.

We have had two issues: replication between two Unity's, and when running several Snapshots on the Unity.

Scalability for us is not yet much of an issue because most of our customers are running on rather small systems.

Sometimes our customers use tech support but, generally, tech support is in order.

Setup is very straightforward. Compared to the VNXs, it's rather easy.

I would rate the Unity at eight out of 10, because of the ease of management compared to the ancient systems. For us, in Belgium, it is more small and medium businesses, so Unity is a good solution.

My advice is to choose the Unity.