Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

• Use Replication function to build up cold or warm Disaster Recovery (DR) site.
• Use Auto-Tier and FAST VP to build up flexible space.

• Performance dashboard
• Because I always need to trouble shooting for IOPS & database (DB) performance issues. I can quickly focus on what is part of the issue. I can decrease downtime and can plan next year's extended capacity budget.
• Integration of the VPLEX function for Cross IDC structure.

For the integration of the VPLEX function for Cross IDC structure, they should integrate the function into the SP controller.

Yes, sometimes the DNS does not work out properly.

No, there have not been issues with the scalability.

I have a few customers who are using Dell EMC products for storage, backup, and other different purposes. 

On the Data Domain side, the most attractive feature is the compression ratio, which none of the other products in the market are currently able to provide. On the Unity side, what customers mostly like is the availability guarantee. 

I have been working with Dell EMC Unity XT for three years. 

This product has been stable. 

Dell EMC Unity is scalable. 

This product does bring a ROI. As I have seen, it helps them to protect their investment since it is future-proof and scalable, so they don't have to change products every year or so. Because of those things, I have seen customers using the EMC product for more than three years. 

When I see other products—like HP, Huawei, and Lenovo—from competitors, I have seen a lot of disadvantages with EMC, price-wise. Huawei and Lenovo are very price competitive. 

Looking at the price point for a country like Sri Lanka, where we have a very low economy, I think you need to look at a pricing mechanism that is a bit more flexible. 

I rate Dell EMC Unity an eight out of ten because, economically, there are a few things that Dell needs to improve. 

Replication: Disaster Recovery (DR) plans, RPO and RTO. Replication and ease of storage setup for block LUN’s and VMware.

Same answer as most valuable features.

GUI updates. I had several hours helping support troubleshoot the difference in what the system was doing compared to what the GUI said.

Less than a year.

Sure did.

No.

• Auto-tiering
• FAST Cache

Automatically, the cool data downgrades to slower disks and no human needs to intervene. The FAST Cache helps to have a large quantity of data in memory and speed up the presentation of new storage.

• We spend less time checking the solution.
• The presentation of new storage to the servers is very easy.

The reports could possibly export all the data at once.

10 months.

No issues.

No issues.

Low.

Yes, we previously used EMC VNX. We switched to upgrade.

The initial setup was very easy and intuitive.

It is a good value given the benefits it provides.

Yes, HPE 3PAR.

The VNX5300 was a good all-around device, which we used for our VMware-based workloads along with CIFS-based file access. After our transition to HCI, we needed a dedicated, non-virtual machine-based CIFS solution that was easily scalable to fit our needs. The Unity 300 fit that and has not caused any issues since being in production.

We currently deploy the Unitys for CIFS-based file access to supplement our VxRail deployment, which was installed around the same time.

I would like the device to have the ability to pull down its own firmware. That would be a great thing.

We have had no stability issues with the product, including when adding replication on the fly, customer installed code updates, and customer installed DAEs.

We have had no issues of scalability with the product. The product has been upgraded with additional drives and enclosures multiple times without incident.

We use this solution mainly with our clients in the education sector, in order to consolidate their data into a single, unified storage setup.

This solution has allowed us a high level of visualizations.

We particularly like the user interface on cloud IQ with this product.

We would like to see more advanced integration capability added to this solution.

We have been using this solution for the last six months.

We have found this solution to be quite stable.

We have had no problems scaling up this solution.

The setup of this solution is very user-friendly and, as long as the prerequisites are met, then deployment should not take more than two to three days.

Before setting up this solution we would advise that organizations prepare the physical equipment that will be required for on-premises deployment, as well as gathering information on the data to be migrated.

This will allow for an average deployment time of one to two days.

We would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

This solution is our primary storage for all workloads.

It has good replication and integration with VMware.

This solution makes it easy to manage storage, provision new workloads, and scale-up.

The most valuable feature is the easy management with a great GUI. We can do a lot from there.

This solution would be improved with the addition of flexible raid volumes.

This is a very stable platform, so far zero issues.

For Unity, our use case is mostly test and dev.

Compared to older generations of arrays there is quite an improvement, compared to the older VNXs, for example. It depends on you use it, but for our purposes, we find Unity simple to use.

It's simple, easy to manage.

At the moment, we are pretty satisfied with it. Perhaps the user interface could be better.

It's more stable than the old generation of arrays. We had a lot of issues with the VNX, for example, but they got better over time. The VNX2 was better, and the Unity has been even more stable.

For our use cases, I believe it will meet our needs moving forward.

Tech support is very good. We haven't had many of serious issues, and the issues we have had have been dealt with very well.

The setup was straightforward. We set most of the configuration ourselves. If you have basic knowledge then it's pretty straightforward.

We did compare it to others at the time, but they have a wide selection of tools and products to meet our use cases. Good support as well.