Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

We are a solution provider and the Dell EMC Unity XT series is one of the products that we implement for our clients. My role is in pre-sales and I help to design the solutions.

It is primarily used to provide our customers with an on-site, high-availability production server. It is also used to provide disaster recovery

Using this product has helped us to improve the security of information. It is shared storage and as such, we have the ability to create an architecture that is resistant to server crashes. It allows us to minimize downtime and secure usage of services.

The most valuable features are its performance and simplicity.

The price of this product can be more cost-effective.

Dell EMC Unity XT

This is a stable product and we don't have a lot of incidents with it.

The Unity XT series is very scalable.

The support is very reactive.

We offer solutions from different vendors.

In cases where customers need a more cost-effective storage platform than Unity, we have possibilities to offer them.

The initial setup and deployment are easy. It can be completed in an hour.

We have an in-house team for deployment. We have five engineers that work with it in our organization. As a system integrator, we install and configure this product for our clients.

The price in our country is very expensive and some of our customers opt for lower-cost alternatives.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use Dell EMC Unity XT for its normal application for DB, Oracle, SQL and VMware and the file system, too.

The feature that I have found most valuable is the unified storage and its capabilities for block-access, file access, and the center box.

In terms of what could be improved, I would say its capacity and its connection.

It has good stability

It requires only one technician for deployment and maintenance.

Its scalability is good.

Technical support is very good.

The initial setup was very easy.

I can advise that Dell EMC Unity XT is a good solution.

On a scale of one to ten I would give it a 9.

The primary use case is NAS.

We use it for its quality and NAS.

It has good performance.

The solution is extremely functional for the price that we pay for it. It is worth the investment.

The application's administration needs improvement and become better. It previously was better.

It is not stable enough.

Dell EMC has good technical support. We haven't had to use it for this product, but we have use it for other products and not had any problems.

The initial setup and migration were straightforward.

The cost of it is good for us.

We purchased a five-year warranty.

We picked Unity, as it is a mature, established solution.

Research the other products that Dell EMC offers, as there is a wide variety.

It saves us time, it does not require a lot of admin from us. We are looking for things that we don't have to spend a lot of time managing. This solution falls into that category.

It is easy to use. Setting up replication is pretty simple. We just set it and forget it.

I'm not sure if it has a single pane of glass management console. That would be something we would like to see. Managing as many platforms as we do, as many physical devices as we have, anything that can provide a single pane of glass would be a huge benefit.

We're happy with the stability. We have not had any issues with it. We run all-flash on two of them and, so far, we have not had any complaints about performance issues.

Other than upgrades, I have not had to use tech support. When I have had to do upgrades, they have been responsive, and easy to get to.

We are replacing our VNXs with it. Performance-wise, it has been pretty stable. The code upgrades are fairly simple and straightforward. I can't say it has had any issues so far. 

When selecting a vendor, product stability is the big thing, but support is probably right up there with it.

I would use this solution over most VNX solutions. It is right up there. We have some Pure Storage, so it is somewhat in contention with that. We are mostly an EMC shop, so that's probably our biggest deciding factor. If you're an EMC shop, I would definitely go with Unity. If not, which you go for will probably be in the middle. Pure probably has the ease of use down a little bit better than Unity, but I would ding their support much more than anything I've done with EMC. 

My primary use cases of this solution are to install storage and perform tech refreshment.  

The most valuable features of this product are its reliable storage and its archiving feature.

An area for improvement is the available capacity. If a customer goes with a base model, which would have its own limit, they could not go beyond the model-supported capacity, so an increase would be good.

I have been using this solution for two years.

My impression is that the solution is stable and reliable.

The solution is scalable to whatever capacity the model allows.

We have had customers reporting issues with slow responses from the support team.

The initial setup is a simple process, taking around half a day at most.

The pricing for this product is manageable, though slightly higher than comparable products.

I trust this product, compared to other vendors. It is best suited to small to medium-sized companies. When implementing Unity XT, make sure that the installation team is clear on the under-storage concepts and product knowledge. I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

With a such a simple configuration you can add datastores on VMFS5 to any clusters on your vSphere organization.

• 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.
• Block compression on F Models: Compression on F Models or in flash pools allows us to almost duplicate the available space on the array; more space for less money, everyone likes this.
• Simple management: The simple GUI implemented on the Unity arrays simplifies management.

Compression and block deduplication on non-all-flash solutions. I know it should not be easy to reach flash-like compression on mechanical disks, but it would bring this array to the top of the charts. And, of course, the block deduplication in mechanical pools. As I said above, everybody likes the "more space for less money" formula.

There were issues with the earlier releases, not now.

No issues.

All of our servers are Dell EMC servers. We have it integrated with SharePoint and all of our applications.

It's been a great infrastructure to build upon.

For me, the best thing is the reliability. Even some of ours that are somewhat old or out of warranty have a very solid, excellent reliability.

I love the systems management of the servers. It's easy to set up, easy to monitor.

Excellent stability. A lot of ours are older, even past what would be considered end-of-life, but they still have a very low failure rate.

Scalability is good. We use some Dell EMC blade servers, so it's easy to add another blade server without a lot of cabling or setup.

Good tech support. We can usually get a parts dispatch without too much fuss.

The initial setup was easy.

The pricing is right in line with competitors.

I always recommend Dell EMC servers in general, as far as their reliability goes and the management software built in.

I rate it at nine out of ten. Overall, we're very happy with the product. It's not perfect, there are little bits of improvement that could be made to things that we use such as Dell EMC OpenManage Essentials, minor things. It's good, just not perfect.

The ease of use, which makes it very good.

We use it to backup our storage, and also positioning LANs by using the file option, then the block. It is very easy and convenient.

The payment account area.

For approximately a year.

At the moment, there are no issues.

We once had an issue where one LAN was full, and because it was full it was making the SP reboot. But with the upgrade, we decide it was a non-issue, and with the upgrade, it was fixed. The upgrade fixed it.

There are no issues with the scalability.

They have been helpful and knowledgeable.

We used DNX, but we needed to buy something for the backup solution. That is why we went for Unity.

The initial setup is simple, okay, and easy.

The pricing is fine and licensing is okay.

Yes, we looked at Hitachi.

We are partners with this vendor.