Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

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.

Dell Unity XT is used for almost all types of mid-range requirements, such as databases, virtualization, file services, and other applications, for example, exchange servers.

Dell Unity XT has unified storage which provides both blocks, and file protocols, which helps to get rid of separate storage for each purpose.

The most valuable feature of Dell Unity XT is its support of protocols for both block, and file levels. It has the features a store solution should have.

I have been using Dell Unity XT for approximately five years.

The stability of Dell Unity XT is great. We have not received any complaints about errors or failures in deployments.

We have more than 10 customers using Dell Unity XT. We are focusing on Dell PowerStore more because it is a newer product. We would like to convert our customers from Dell Unity XT to Dell PowerStore.

The scalability of Dell Unity XT is very good.

I rate the scalability of Dell Unity XT a nine out of ten.

I rate technical support from Dell Unity XT a nine out of ten.

Positive

Dell Unity XT is straightforward to set up.

One person can handle the configuration and deployment, but a helper is needed for rack mounting and cabling.

The features of Dell Unity XT allow support of both block-level and file-level protocols and provides a good return on investment because customers don't need to purchase separate storage systems for each protocol.

The pricing of Dell Unity XT is good.

I rate the price of Dell Unity XT a nine out of ten.

If a customer is considering implementing Dell Unity XT, I would advise them to also purchase the implementation from professionals to receive the best results.

I rate Dell Unity XT an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for customers who are looking for a cost-effective option that provides an end-to-end solution for servers, backups, and storage.

The unified storage feature is valuable because it means my customers don't require the setup of a separate mass. They can use the existing storage system as a mass.

Using this solution has meant that I do not need to look for different partners to provide me with solutions like a backup service. Dell provides end-to-end solutions.

This solution could be improved by offering containerization. This is something many of my customers are looking for. 

I have a limited budget for IT solutions so it would be great to provide Dell's solutions at a lower cost. 

I have been using this solution for five years. 

This is a scalable solution. 

I would rate the customer service for this solution an eight out of ten. 

Positive

I have previously used HPE. HPE only offers hardware and so we needed to find a cloud-based solution. 

From a pricing perspective, this solution is comparable to others on the market. 

This solution requires regular maintenance from a dedicated team. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

We are using it mostly for VMware and Wintel. It is also for applications, like SQL, which need to be used on multiple different operating system, such as Windows, Linux, and sometimes Citrix. We use it with virtualized infrastructure.

We use QoS and snapshots features, which I like.

Unity provides a complete storage solution for VMware on a Wintel Windows box for various applications, such as SQL or Patron Databases. It is seamless, and it sits there providing all the storage and connectivity, so we can forget about it. Unity takes care of itself, solving all the basic needs of a robust infrastructure.

It is easy to deploy. That is the best feature that I like, because I used to fly into locations to install a Unity. We used to have an expense of $5,000 on the product. Now, I just send whomever is onsite over there locally with the initialization information in a text file. Then, they can put it in a USB drive, come back, and it's deployed. Afterwards, I can remotely access it, saving us $5,000 every time. It is not very expensive, so the value added is you get big bang for your buck.

If I can connect to my Unity through my iPad or my cellphone to check everything is okay and view the information via a dashboard. 

I would like to have secure mobile connectivity going forward. This would help me be more proactive.

It is pretty stable. I like the stability, because everything works like it should. We made it all redundant. So, we don't have anything to worry about.

We are so virtual that we have two of us managing the whole infrastructure. Everything is taken care of and highly available. Nothing is vulnerable at all. Everything is good. There have been no issues at all, so far.

We have 30 to 40 Unities out there in the field. We don't even scratch the full capabilities of the Unity. We are at about 20 to 30 percent utilization. It is just provisioned so well that we are sitting at 90 percent performance level. We have it well-provisioned so we don't need to worry about performance for the next five years.

It is quite scalable. If you want to add on, you can add on easily. We have a 25-slot enclosure and are probably at 15 right now. If we purchase a big company, need to scale up, we can easily scale up. 

If there's any issues with a hard drive or any other hardware components, Dell EMC is contacted, then they will call us back to schedule to get into the data center to replace something. This is all virtual. Support is not a problem, because it's automatically taken care of. Only thing we have to do is to give them access to the data center to go do what they need to do to fix it proactively.

The local account team and system engineer are the best part of working with Dell EMC.

Everything is becoming virtual. Then, cloud transformation is being considered right now. Everybody is going over there. We want to evaluate everything, and if the cloud solution is good for us, we'll go there. Everything will be in the cloud.

The speed and performance that we get through the SSD hard drives. That's a big factor for us.

We have a date warehouse server. Prior to being on Unity, we could get about one or two data warehouse refreshes a day. After standing that up in VMware and using Dell EMC Unity, we are able to get four data warehouse refreshes, which gives our finance and accounting group more information to react to throughout the day for inventory and purchasing.

I'm able to manage it very simply. The interface is a lot easier than the couple of VNX2s that we have. At least to me, Dell EMC Unity has a quicker responsive web GUI for management.

The quick integration with VMware. The ability to stand up a data store in one place, where you don't have to go and rescan for the data store through the vCenter Client, as well as SMB shares. This ended up being a big selling point for us.

I don't know where the hybrid cloud might be going or what connectivity there is between what was recently released as far as AWS and being able to manage both of them. Maybe there is an on-prem and an AWS instance in the same window, like a single pane, but I would like to see something along those lines, where there wouldn't be two locations to manage storage.

Stability has been 100%. We have had zero failures.

We have added one additional shelf to one of the two Unities. As far as I can tell, it went really well. It was not something I was involved with, but we may have had Dell EMC assist us with that.

In the SQL Server instances in our data warehouse, we immediately saw a great return on investment.

We purchased our Unity in September 2017. It was a simple process. We budgeted for it in the prior year. Then, we had the funds to take care of what we wanted to purchase.

I did bring up other vendors that I have worked with: NetApp and HPE SAN. Comparing them to my previous work and working with Unity now, I find Unity a lot easier to work with. For example, the NetApp seems to be more complex in just the ease of setting it up.

Do a little research into how you will create your storage groups. Ensure they have all lined out prior to going in and making one single storage group take up all the hard drives which we've seen some individuals do before and have to break it back down and start over. Definitely manage out what you want to place on the SSDs or on that Unity for your quickest response time. We've made sure that all of our high availability productions devices are on the Unity.

We have Hyper-V and VMware running on the Unity. We have moved Exchange off into Exchange Online onto the cloud. We did most of the integrations in-house. The big thing that we have done on it is running SQL Server. We have quite a few different SQL Server instances running on the SSDs.

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.

We propose this solution when customers need to expand their workload or storage.

It is great because it can work as a SAN and net storage.

It is expensive, and the pricing could be better.

We have been using this solution for three years, and most companies in Egypt partner with Dell EMC. It is the main storage solution that we sell to customers. It is deployed on-premises.

I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

I rate the scalability a nine out of ten, and we have more than 80 customers in Egypt.

There is a good ROI if the customer has critical applications and file storage.

The licensing is included in the appliance, and I rate the licensing costs an eight out of ten.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten and recommend it to others.

I am an end user.

We use Dell Unity XT as a block and file system.

The most valuable aspects of this solution are its stability, performance, and ease of updating. Overall, it provides good performance and stability.

There is no de-duplication. Unity used to be Bionics, which had de-duplication; however, in Dell Unity XT, the de-duplication was deprecated and is no longer available. 

The de-duplication function is back in the new Dell PowerStore, but it is missing in Dell Unity XT.

I have been working with Dell Unity XT for four years.

I have started to use a new product from Dell called PowerStore.

I still use Unity, but I stopped using Bionic because it's unsupported and, as far as I can tell, it will be discontinued in January 2022. 

It's nearing the end of support, which is why I purchased a new product known as PowerStore and am in the process of migrating to new storage at PowerStore.

I have time to check and test performance, as well as PowerStore, but I have extensive experience with Unity.

The version depends on whether it is a hardware or software version.

The hardware model is 400, and it is a hybrid store because the storage is shown as SAS and SSD disc.

Dell Unity XT is very stable.

I would rate the stability of Dell Unity XT a five out of five.

Dell Unity XT is scalable. It is easy to scale.

Scalability, I've done it a few times with new enclosures, and it's a simple process to connect and extend. It's straightforward.

I would rate the scalability a five out of five.

The product is not specifically designed for users but I believe it is for a few thousand or more clients. It is for our production where production services and applications are deployed and exposed to our clients.

Technical support is good.

In the four years that we have used this solution, it's been good, and I would rate technical support a five out of five.

It is simple to create a ticket, and they have good skills. 

I have the highest level of support for our mission-critical operations. 

It's very fast with good skills.

I am happy with the technical support.

I used two storage units a year ago. The Unity storage is newer, whereas the Bionic storage is older. However, Dell now manufactures new storage as a Dell PowerStore.

I have two products, Dell Unity XT, and Dell PowerStore.

It has three storage units. It was Bionics first, and Unity is now in production. And we have been using PowerStore for two years. I am still interested in using Unity because the end of support for Unity is in 2025.

Bionics' support is about to expire in a few months. I purchased PowerStore. It's storage; everything after that is flash storage. And I migrate from Bionics to PowerStore, but I believe I will continue to use Unity for a few years.

Bionics was the first product we deployed before moving to Dell Unity XT., and then to Dell PowerStore.

We moved from one location to another because the data center was our private cloud.

I am not familiar with the initial setup, because it was deployed when I went to this company.

I maintain this solution myself.

The license is not required, but we must renew the support every year, every two years.

I believe it is overpriced. I don't have a lot of experience with other vendors, but I believe it is expensive.

I would rate the price a three out of five.

PowerStore support is more efficient now that I have experience with it. I won't go back based on the cost of support; PowerStore is the most straightforward.

I would recommend this solution to others, but it depends on the need for de-duplication. If your data is encrypted or hidden, you don't need de-duplication. Dell Unity XT is good, but if the data isn't encrypted or is hidden, I recommend PowerStore. I would not recommend Unity where the data isn't encrypted and is hidden.

I would rate Dell Unity XT a seven out of ten because the de-duplication is missing.