Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

Most of our customers are using it for Microsoft workloads, like SQL Server, Exchange, on-premise use. We have one customer running Oracle on it, all-flash.

They find the performance amazing from what they're coming from. Some of them say it's blazingly fast. They've switched to all-flash.

The whole cycle of provisioning and acquisition has been simplified for our customers. Also, the deployment and general maintenance of it has been greatly simplified. It has cut into our professional services quite a bit.

For our customers, it's the simplicity of it. They find it easy to use, along with the added features, the dynamic volumes. Things like that have been a big improvement over past generations.

The features they have added have been great, they've greatly simplified it. Bigger, faster. They're always leap-frogging, so the next generation, I'm sure, will have newer processors in it. They have improved leaps and bounds on the interface and ease of use, and I would like to see them keep doing that.

They should have more wizards for customers so they can do more of the self-service types of functions, in terms of upgrades and patching, although it's pretty easy right now.

Also, I would like to see more migration tools. When we're putting the Unity in, I would like to see more capability to migrate from third-party storage platforms, competitive platforms. Migrating from their own platforms is pretty straightforward.

We've had no issues. The customers talk to us before they do an upgrade and we say, "Yeah, it should be no problem." They go ahead and do it themselves now, and there have been no outages or unplanned downtime.

There have been no scalability issues with our customer base. Our customers are maybe, at most, a few hundred terabytes, so scalability is not an issue.

Before they do an upgrade, our customers will talk to us and they will also talk to Dell EMC support. From what I know, our customers are very happy with the support they receive from Dell EMC.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I can't give any product a 10 out of 10. But I'm happy with it, I'd give it an eight out of 10. It has been a good product for us in terms of selling it, keeping the customer community happy. 

My advice would be, download the virtual edition of Unity and try it out. Get used to the interface and ease of use. Also, take a look at the cloud-based analytics and the other pieces that go with it, to round out the solution.

It's a replacement for a VNX, it's faster. It has its good points, and it has its bad points.

I don't think it's providing any great enhancements over the existing platform.

There are some features in VNX that I wish were in the Unity. Storage Groups for isolating LANs and hosts. That is a big issue.

We've also encountered an issue when it comes to migrating to compressed LANs on the Unity, and during the Storage vMotion. It appears that the compression algorithm is overwhelmed, and when it becomes overwhelmed it just stops compressing and writes the raw data to the destination. We later copied internally another Storage vMotion to another compressed LAN and achieved much higher compressions on that internal copy. It would be really nice if there was a way to automatically throttle, as a part of a Storage vMotion, to say, "I want to gain the maximum benefits from the compression algorithm, so throttle back the Storage vMotion to implement 100 percent compression."

My colleague has done most of the migration work, but he's also encountered a few other issues in terms of the integration with vCenter. 

It's a box that has a lot of promise, and it was a very shiny new "sports car" when we got it. It has a few dents and scratches in it. That "new car pride," we don't go out and wash it every weekend now. Some of that reality has kicked in. 

I still have expectations, it's an all-flash array, while our VNX, obviously, is not. So we do anticipate, once we've completed the migration and get more experienced with it and maybe with some code upgrades, improvements to some of the attributes, that it will do a good job for us.

We went from the VNX, where we had about 900 spinning disks, to 27 solid-state disks. There have been no failures in the last year.

It had better scale, it costs a lot of money. I definitely think it will. Also, my hope, being that it is solid-state, is that the ongoing maintenance costs will be reduced, on the off chance that our firm might not want to replace it after five years.

Tech support is good. We've always had our struggles over the years with their support. I characterize their level-one support as being somewhat questionable. But if stuff hits the fan and you have to get up to level two or three, you have a priority-one, they always come through.

• Fully automated storage tiering (FAST) cache capabilities. This allows some FLASH drives to be used to improve the overall performance and reduce the cost of the array versus an all flash or old style spinning disk array.
• Data at Rest Encryption (D@RE). This feature MUST be enabled after the purchase of the array. It has very little impact on performance and does not affect any of the functionality of the array. We advise always including D@RE on the arrays. You need to consider this upon ordering the array.

The lack of deduplication reduces some of the competitiveness compared to other products. The unity platform does not use data deduplication. This is a data-reduction technology to save space on the array.

I have used it for three months

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I have not yet encountered any scalability issues.

I would give technical support a rating of 7/10, given recent issues that arose.

During the merger process with Dell, many of the cases were handled out of India with less expertise than in the past.

The initial setup is very straightforward. There is a wizard that guides you through the process.

Licensing would be easier if it would be more automated. The current process slows the installation as you have to go and get the license from EMC in the middle of the deployment.

Pricing seems very competitive. A majority of the required options come with the base licenses.

We can use Dell EMC Unity XT for backing up SAN and NAS drives. Mainly for databases and for file servers.

The most valuable feature is the dynamic cache of this product. It is very important. We have the physical cache and we can boost this cache using disks. All the products are mainly flash now and this is one of the main characteristics which our customers like.

I have a problem because between the Unity XT and the PowerMax, sometimes we need another product between these two products. There could be better integrated and the capacity of the size could be larger.

In the future, if NVMe disc could be used on the Dell EMC Unity XT it would be beneficial.

I have been using Dell EMC Unity XT for approximately three years.

Dell EMC Unity XT is very reliable.  I used to use legacy EMC products, such as VNX. This product has a long story.

The solution is suitable for Medium-sized companies. When you talk large, it's relative. Our customers here in Algeria are the largest here but they are only medium-sized compared to other countries.

The technical support is good. Opening the ticket, the management of the ticket is good. However, when we have to use or change parts, it can be more difficult because of the customs rules of the disposability and availability of the parts. We have problems delivering them in the time the parts are needed in some cases.

We previously used Fujitsu and IBM products.

When comparing Dell and IBM they are very similar. Fujitsu is a good product too. However, when comparing them all in their strengths for implementation, the lifecycle of the product, and the support they provide, I would rank Dell number one, IBM second, and third would be Fujitsu.

The initial setup is simple. The time it takes for the implementation depends. From scratch, a new implementation takes approximately three days. If you have to migrate a node storage array, the time can increase, I am not able to give an exact time because it depends on the volume and the nature of the data. We can take one week to three weeks to migrate. However, generally, it takes approximately 10 days when we have to migrate and without migration, it's about two and three days.

We provide implementation service to our customers.

The maintenance is done by the Dell representative in our country.

The solution is very expensive. 

There are a lot of advantages with EMC Unity XT, there's no limitation. When you bought the product, the software is included and there's no limitation of the terabyte in the licenses.

I would firmly recommend this solution to others.

I rate Dell EMC Unity XT a nine out of ten.

We primarily use it for backup.

It is a good backup product.

• It is easy to manage. A lot of the system manages itself.
• It is nice the way ESRS works with remote support, being able to remote in and take a look at problems proactively.

• I would like to see more integration with other products.
• The interface can be a little challenging for someone new.

It is pretty reliable.

You can just add nodes and shelves to it.

The remote support is excellent.

We had a case automatically opened last night, and it is being handled.

Dell EMC has been around for a long time. Owning VMware is a big plus.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Support long-term
• Longevity
• Cost is always an issue.

General storage for virtual machines. The virtual machines have different roles, essential roles; and, of course, mission-critical servers running financial services, or engineering programs, etc.

I have a client that jumped from the stone age to hybrid. They do enjoy the hybrid storage, the fast cache, etc. It has greatly improved their performance, absolutely. The customer is really happy about it.

It is the performance combined with the Gig-per-dollar value. That combination is superior to other storage options.

All the features that the client has, the client has really enjoyed them.

One thing they could do is lower the price point. There are other storage products that are available from Dell, the SE series for example. The client is comparing the Unity and the SE3000 for example, the SE is cheaper.

So far so good. No issues with stability.

I'm sure scalability will be fine. It will be great. But the client has not reached the point of needing to increase the capacity, or other features, yet.

So far technical support is very reliable, it's very good that way. We haven't engaged tech support so far, but when did the deployment we did have Dell EMC come in and provide deployment services, and that went through pretty well.

We picked Dell deployment services, so it was very straightforward. The Dell technician came in on time and then, according to the survey that the client filled out earlier - it was great. The client was impressed.

I give it an eight out of 10 and the two missing points are because of the price tag.

In terms of advice, I would definitely recommend Dell solutions. As for Unity, it depends on the budget. I definitely recommend Unity, because I do have clients that are currently using it, and they don't have any issues, they're happy with the product.

• Storage
• Easy to manage and configure.
• I can easily setup and configure the LUN and host without support.

Alert notification via SMS. If the product could only send alert notification via SMS, it would be much better. This is needed mostly when you are not in the office and have no access to email. Therefore, you could check immediately if there was an issue.

Nine months.

No issues.

No issues.

100%. They are very accommodating, and it is easy to contact them.

This solution is much better than the previous one.

The initial setup is straightforward. All I need to do is to configure the LUN and host.

This device is worth it.

No.

The product is easy to use and configure. The support is also superb.

We are using it as a storage unit. We also using it at my customer site.

It is the storage provider that the company is using. The product is easy to manage.

It provides SAN capabilities and storage replication.

• The user interface could use improvement.
• They could move away from flash and make it an HTML5 file. 
• They should update to the cloud.

It is very stable.

It is very scalable.

The technical support is very professional and provides quick responses. 

When using the callback function, we found it to be good. It is also good for creating cases. 

I haven't experienced anything bad with the support yet.

I was not involved with the initial setup. I haven't worked with it that long.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: good support and fair price.