Dell Unity XT Valuable Features
The data compression technology is very good. It's very good at fetching data as well.
It's very good if there are ever any failures. We've never had an issue with storage.
There's deduplication available.
It's easy to set up.
View full review »The interface is very good. It's user-friendly and easy to navigate.
It is easy to set up the product initially.
The product has helpful local technical support.
It is very scalable.
It is stable and reliable.
View full review »RP
abstract
Systems Engineering Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We can do both block and file storage on one unit. For our projects, we use both of those functions. This is a key feature for us, along with very solid, predictable performance.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
Dell Unity XT
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Dell Unity XT. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
JM
Jeremy Meeler
Systems Programmer/Specialist -- Infrastructure Engineer at NC State University
The inline deduplication and data reduction capabilities have been the most valuable.
View full review »The storage management is superb, with a user-friendly graphical interface and dashboards. The performance is good, and it has high reliability for data applications.
The integration, dashboards, and analytics are excellent. It gives me immediate output and quick access to the reports I need promptly.
View full review »The most valuable aspect of this solution is that it's a single block, a complete block that includes both NAS and SAN. This was our ultimate requirement because we do a lot of file sharing.
When compared to other solutions, particularly HP, they lack the complete block.
The complete block and file sharing are the most usable features.
The features we need are already included.
View full review »PA
Paul Akengo
Storage Engineer at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Unity is scalable and you can configure it quickly.
View full review »MS
Mostafa Shoaei
IT expert/sys admin at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Facilitated optimization of the storage utilization is a really good benefit.
View full review »MG
Mohammad Reza Ghazaei
Network manager at Farabi
The response time is good. It is suitable.
The product is easy to use. It's not complicated at all.
We do have some sanctions in our country, and this solution is one of the options we have available to us.
It is easy to set up the solution.
View full review »MB
reviewer1851870
Works
This is a tier-three solution and it gives us what we need for archiving and backups.
View full review »Inline data reduction is pretty impressive.
View full review »SV
Shahab Vahdatian
Technical Specialist at Pouyan Pardazesh Tehran Co
The solution allows for easy, useful replication with good features for VPLEX and VIVO.
CL
Cheul Jin-Lee
Consultant at TechData BIMA JSC
Scheduled components are sourced from Korea based on their quality selection, with the actual purchase taking place in Vietnam.
The storage dynamics are managed uniformly on a global scale, whether it is a simple or wide-ranging configuration.
View full review »
RP
RAJESHPURI
Owner at FORE SOLUTIONS
The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a unified storage, and it is useful for mid-range storage. All the SME clients of our company that we have here trying to implement SAP want to use the three-tier architecture for server storage, and they all find that Dell Unity XT is one of the leading products, and our company sells a lot of boxes because of the aforementioned reason.
CS
Chong Teck Soo
Managing Director at Infowhiz
I like Unity XT's software-defined storage. It's a new feature that isn't widely used yet, but customers are impressed with it.
FG
Francisco Gimo
Management Information System Officer at a mining and metals company with 501-1,000 employees
The most valuable feature of Dell Unity XT is data duplication. Additionally, the management interface is simple, and is not a hassle using it. You don't need too much to learn or to be familiarized with it.
View full review »IO
ITmanager10038
Senior IT Infrastructure & Data Center Operation Engineer at Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), Egypt
The setup and installation procedures are easy.
The management is done using a single console, which is good. You don't have to use a separate VM to manage the storage.
The most valuable feature of Dell storage systems is the tiering. However, with an all-flash system, there is no tiering.
View full review »FR
Frank R
CIO at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The snapshotting is slick.
I like how it separates the iSCSI drives from the standard shares. It has two different routes to it. I know most of the other solutions do this, but I just like the way that Dell EMC does it.
I like the dashboard, which gives me a quick reference on my monitor as to what is using what bandwidth.
View full review »BM
Sys32189Eng3
System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
- Ease of use: The GUI management is very easy to use.
- The management is easy for us. We rarely touch it now. It just runs.
- Fiber channel connectivity
- Fast cache features
- Support of VVOLS
- 10GB NICs
- Support of high performance and rapid provisioning/expansion options
- Deployment time is quick from unboxing to setup
- Scalable
- Supports both small environments and larger deployments
- Supports hosts connected via fiber channel directly to the unit without the need for fabric switches
RS
RESC
Storage Solutions Architect at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I like the fact that you can use a solid-state array (all-flash array) for your servers. It has a very intuitive web console that runs in HTML5 and makes navigation and administration fairly easy.
View full review »MT
Melvin Thomas
Senior Systems Engineer at Prosperity Bank
One of the features that I find most valuable is that it is easy to access. We're able to access it from just about anywhere, as long as we have access to a browser. That feature is really neat because sometimes we will go to a different data center or a different site, and if we need to access it to see a LUN or to see any type of storage, we can do that. That's one of the big takeaways with Unity.
View full review »JB
JohnBowling
IT Manager - Storage & Backup at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
The All-Flash models are pretty fast for the vast majority of our remote workloads.
Encryption (data at rest - DAR) is easy to implement and has very little performance overhead.
CloudIQ SaaS is also a nice touch and is available for free. You can remotely monitor the health and performance of the arrays online or via a mobile app.
View full review »DC
David Cruz
IT Manager at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
They've integrated NAS and SAN pretty well. It made replication very simple. Because one of our systems has a lot of LANs, for it to replicate we have Consistency Groups in there. That's something that is really helpful, making sure that everything is working, not just for replication but for backups as well. Pretty much everything we need is there.
View full review »SN
SAJI NAIR
GM IT Infrastructure at MSSL
The solution overall has high performance.
View full review »MH
SeniorDi1276
Senior Director at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Speed and flexibility are the most valuable features.
It has great mixed work load use, which is nice because we keep growing things for our VxBlock.
It's great on power consumption, as there is no spinning disk.
It's super-fast, and you can't go wrong with that. It's helped us across the board to standardize on something very simple.
We use all the data service features and click all the options.
View full review »AH
SanAdmin9f5c
SAN Administrator at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
- Being that we are heavily invested in VNX1s, the UI itself is fantastic, and the ease of administration is far better than Unisphere or Navisphere ever were. It's very easy to manage.
- The fact that it has built-in APIs means our automation people can help us automate a lot of tasks, and that has been helpful.
- And, of course, it's really fast. Obviously, that doesn't hurt anything at all.
The most valuable features of Dell Unity XT are the data compression for all of our VMs up to four times and the performance is good.
View full review »PS
Peter Sowerby
Senior Technical Specialist at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees
The most valuable feature is reliability. At the end of the day, it just runs.
This solution is easy to work with and easy to maintain.
View full review »DT
SeniorSy58bb
Senior System Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
For me, the most valuable feature is the ease of management. It's a fairly easy system to manage compared to PowerMax or VMAX.
In other use cases for which we used that particular Unity box, before it landed up being what it is now, the data service feature we used most was snapshots. Snapshots made it easy to roll back to a point in time.
View full review »JD
SeniorEn4274
Senior Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We do replication and snapshotting. We're using that as a backup technology to leverage snapshotting.
View full review »MS
Michael Silvestri
Assistant Administrator at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
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.
View full review »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.
HS
reviewer1851864
Works at a media company with 10,001+ employees
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.
View full review »GV
Gopal Venkatraman
Senior Infrastructure Architect at a leisure / travel company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
View full review »JB
Jimmy Bortzfield
Virtualization engineer at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
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.
View full review »JK
SeniorIT4792
Senior IT Analyst at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
View full review »It is great because it can work as a SAN and net storage.
PA
Pawel Augustyn
System Senior Engineer at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
The most valuable aspects of this solution are its stability, performance, and ease of updating. Overall, it provides good performance and stability.
View full review »FB
François BRUNET
Responsable de Production at Office National des Forets
Overall, I've had a very good experience with the solution so far.
Integration is easy with this product.
View full review »SB
SteveBauer
Senior IT Business Analyst at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Our hope is that they stay up, online, and that we will be able to update them while the data stores are operational. That is why we picked them.
Once it is set up, it is definitely easy to manage.
View full review »AP
StorageA452f
Storage Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
The product is pretty easy to use. The GUI is nice, really easy to use, and the performance is good.
View full review »OJ
Owen Jackson
Senior IT Systems Engineer at a aerospace/defense firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
The most valuable feature is the ease of integrating it into our current environment. It works within our enterprise management application. The NAS is also extremely easy to set up.
View full review »JD
Jason Dong
Solution architect at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
- Its simplicity and simple management.
- Auto-features for data protection.
- Being able to expand the product.
- The Unisphere management interface: We are very familiar with it. It manages all the EMC devices that we have. Management is easy because it is part of Unisphere, which is self-learning.
- The support for Dell EMC is excellent.
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.
View full review »PO
Petteri Olkinuora
System Analyst at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
It's very simple to use. I really love the new Unisphere.
View full review »- The ease of management and “user-friendly” management environment (GUI).
- Simplicity for deploying and controlling storage elements.
- Ability to redefine storage policies and improve performance (adding dynamic cache and “Auto-tiering”).
- Hardware simplification (e.g., not requiring NAS dedicated hardware).
- The true “Unification” (to have a fully-flexible solution combining multiple technologies and protocols in 2U of rack space).
JC
JeffreyChen
System Engineer at Duke Kunshan University
The product is stable. Its most valuable feature is the storage alarm.
View full review »RB
reviewer1338888
Systems Administrator at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Having gone down the flash storage route, we liked Dell EMC Unity XT because of its speed and efficiency. We did compare it with Pure, but we liked Dell because Pure is more niche, while Dell EMC Unity XT is more general purpose. We can also buy other things from Dell, and we get better prices from them, compared to Pure. In Pure, you can only buy storage. These are the things we liked about this product.
View full review »EN
Evangelos Nikolaidis
Freelance IT Professional at a energy/utilities company with 201-500 employees
- One of the most useful features for us was the deduplication. It had been challenging for us to store certain types of data and to use patterns of storage to reduce storage size.
- The IOPS and the speed were also an important part of the solution.
- In addition, there was a Unity machine that offers block-level and NAS, and we used the block-level storage.
- We also use the side-to-side storage verification for the recovery site.
- Finally, the device was flexible and we could change the configuration to meet our needs.
AB
Albie Bokingkito Jr.
Storage and System Engineer at Thales Services SAS
- New HTML5 GUI: It's really fast and works well on your favorite browsers.
- Data reduction: We haven't seen the actual benefits, but with this feature, we are expecting to gain maximum efficiency.
- CloudIQ integration: This provides really useful data and analysis.
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.
View full review »CK
reviewer1516434
Head of Team at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
I like that you can add volume and it is automatically registered in VMware. It's easy to integrate XT with other solutions.
VR
Vinod Raj
Customer support engineer at Al Khalili Technology LLC
I like that the performance is very good.
View full review »ZH
Zahidul Haque
Chief Technology Officer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
My storage team likes Unity's replication features. Three-site replication is a unique feature that EMC offers us.
View full review »MM
Mohammed Mahrous
Storage Support Manager at Alinma Bank
The valuable features of Unity include:
- it's flexible
- friendly user-interface
- good performance.
It's not complicated. Any beginner can work with this environment.
It is not an enterprise-level solution, it's for mid-range companies, but it includes a lot of features like compression and encryption.
View full review »MW
Director22e5
Director of Technology at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
It gives me flexibility with its ability to replicate to itself and the ability to use the Dell EMC Cloud as an option. That's always sitting there and waiting if we need it.
I like the fact that it comes with a cloud option out-of-the-box. Just purchasing it gave us an unlimited amount of storage. It allows us to dip our toes in without a major commitment. With AWS or Azure, you're locked in and you're using up the contract and you're always worried that you'll spend a lot more. The use case for us would be disaster recovery or cold storage.
We use our VMware Site Recovery Manager and we use the device to replicate all of those hot VMs over to our DR site. We've actually tested it and it takes 19 seconds for us to get a virtual machine up and running, in the event of a disaster, because of the replication between the two systems.
View full review »AP
StorageS9b07
Storage Solutions Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
It's pretty easy to use compared to the older version of the product, which was called VNX. This product is way easier to use.
It performs well.
They have a Unity REST API that I use to automate some of the storage stuff. I'm just getting started with it, but it seems pretty easy to use.
View full review »It's all-flash.
The solution is so easy to manage that I forget it is there.
Their support is now a lot better, so that is good. They are very helpful when we called in and say, "This is the project that we want to do. Which box should we go about buying? They will send us the information and go through it with us."
View full review »RB
SenSysEn2d3b
Senior Systems Engineer at BBH Solutions
Storage Snapshots have been really nice. They allow us to do backups without impacting our production workload that much.
The scalability, the ability to add disks dynamically and adjust our workload as needed, has also been really helpful. That definitely makes my job easier.
The interface for managing Unity is very easy. The integrations between VMware Hypervisor and Dell EMC are top-notch, so it's been really easy to use and manage. We already had solutions in place, so it was more just a matter of buying the hardware and migrating workloads over to it. There was no cost other than the purchase of the hardware and software licenses.
View full review »TG
Thirukumaran Ganesan
Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The deployment is very easy. Via a click, we can deploy a data store or LUN to the ESX host. We can also deploy VVOLs to the ESX server.
View full review »RH
ITManage593a
IT Manager at a transportation company with 201-500 employees
The ease of use. Being able to configure it was easy, which I liked.
It is easy to manage. Managing it, I get alerts if there are any type of issues. I had a hard drive go bad, which had never caused any issues. Dell EMC contacted me, and said, "We are a shipping a new one out." My response was, "Why?" He told me that hard drive was bad. So, I went and looked, and it was. This was almost immediate. I never even knew anything had happened.
As frequently as updates come in, it has far more updates than anything else, Dell does it for you, which makes it simple to do them. I just sit back and watch them do it, so it's nice. It keeps us up-to-date and secure.
View full review »GS
Guy Shepperd
Director of IT at a non-profit with 11-50 employees
- The interface is easy to use.
- The ability to programmatically manage it.
VB
reviewer1437474
IT Manager at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
What I found most valuable from Dell EMC Unity XT is its easy management through its multi-cloud support. They also offer remote support or secure remote services, which I also find valuable. The support they provide their users is very good, and they'll really help whenever you need support.
View full review »MM
Mike McCurdy
Solution Architect - Data Center at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Our tech team is small and very busy, so it is about ease of use. The Unity came in, and its very easy to use and expand. We can expand one drive at a time, which has been a cost effective for us along with ease of performance.
A lot of the Unisphere interfaces are greatly improved in terms of monitoring capabilities, alerting, and ease of use. Setting up the storage and the file system are all just a few clicks away.
There are a lot of cloud options. We make use CloudIQ, which is a nice dashboard for our managed service side of the company to easily review what is going on with the health of things. There are a number of other cloud features, but we don't make use of them today.
View full review »BS
VpIT6a0f
VP IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The most valuable feature is the performance. It's still an all-flash array at a good price point.
View full review »LN
Lew Nix
Information Technology Manager at a non-tech company with 201-500 employees
- Speed
- Reliability
- Support
It is easy to manage overall. It is all web-based. It has a an easy, nice dashboard. I receive emails if there are issues. When there are any updates, I receive emails. I can either do them on my own, but normally I schedule them with Dell EMC and they remote in, then it's done.
View full review »The most valuable feature is that the solution is a hybrid system, so you can do both block and file storage.
View full review »The most valuable feature of Dell Unity XT is the GUI, it is very good. End users can manage using it. Additionally, the documentation is of high quality and it integrates well.
View full review »EB
Egor Bobryshev
Consultancy Department Chief with 201-500 employees
The most valuable features include
- Snapshots
- Thin Clones
- Deduplication and compression.
AT
StorageA7579
Storage and Virtualization Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The most valuable feature is the ability to provision storage from the CLI, versus having to go in and use the GUI every time. I can just script it out and it will create what I need. That makes it super-easy to manage.
Also, for us, it's a set-and-forget. Since we provisioned it out, we haven't had to mess with it.
View full review »BL
Ben Liebowitz
Server and Storage Engineer at a legal firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
It's easy to manage. We access it and manage it through Unisphere and have had no issues. We're able to provision storage, create consistency groups, create RDMs for our virtual machines. Creating it through Unisphere, it automatically adds the data store on the VMware side and rescans the LUNs. We just have to add and configure the storage in one place and it takes care of everything, which is very handy.
The benefits are the simplicity, flexibility and the ease of integration between the Unity platform and VMware, for example, and Microsoft platforms; the integration tools and the simplicity of management.
There have been big shifts, of course, in technology moving away from kind of the traditional three-tier architecture, so the Unity has gotten to the point where it's, once again, simple and optimized. Dell EMC has done a really good job of putting together a platform, one that is well supported.
View full review »RK
Rob Koper
Senior Storage Consultant at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
In the hybrid version, I would say they are fast. They have fully automated storage tiering. In the all-flash version, higher performance, compression, data replication.
View full review »DS
David Silberhorn
Senior Systems Engineer at Midland States Bank
For our environment just having a solid, running box is really sufficient.
The administration of it is fine. For the most part, it is easy to manage. There is not a lot that you really need to change, there is not that much you really need to do.
View full review »JL
DeputyCI6143
Deputy CIO at a insurance company with 1-10 employees
It's very reliable. I have not had an issue with Dell EMC Unity.
Their service is good. If there is an issue with our Unity, Dell will sometimes call me before I even know I received a notification. They will tell me that some disks are bad and needed replacement. Whenever we have issues, they respond very quickly.
We are using all-flash disk, so the speed is very good.
View full review »JP
Jonathan Pierce
Senior systems program at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
It is all cost-based. It's as good as a VMAX All Flash with stream I/O. In terms of our use case, we're not thinking of deduplication. However, looking at it based on cost per gigabyte, it's certainly very effective.
View full review »LB
SrEngine0613
Sr. Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
In addition to the price point, you factor in all the features, like replication, and that it works great.
Like most newer SANs, the interface is very simplistic. I'm still used to the old-school SAN where you need a PhD to be able to configure it. I'll pick on NetApp as an example. To work on a NetApp, needing a certification isn't a recommendation, it's a requirement. You don't want someone who hasn't had all the required training working on NetApp. On a Unity, you can throw it in a remote office and tell whoever is there, "Hey, go click on these buttons." And you really don't have to worry about them clicking on the wrong thing.
Or if I even need them to rack and install the Unity, it's a handful of cables here and there, where it's called out and easy to follow. There is just no complexity to it. A lot of SANs are easy to use these days. Unity was - if I recall correctly, especially on the VNX line, before they changed the name to Unity - one of the first to really lead in having that simplistic interface; the "why make this hard?" mindset.
View full review »- Quick Snapshots
- Cloning, which we need in our environment
- It's all-flash array, Unity 450F
- It has performed adequately well for our business needs
OI
OlegIvanov
General Director at miromix unitedMiroMIX United
I like that the solution is scalable.
The most valuable feature is the fast cache with functionality rewrite.
View full review »ZR
reviewer1136826
Manager at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
The interface of the solution is good.
View full review »AW
LeadManab259
Lead Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Speed and ease of use of the interface are its most valuable features.
The Unity interface is much more advanced than some of the older ones that we had, or that I've experienced. It has made deployment, configuration, and maintenance a lot simpler.
For private cloud, it works very well.
View full review »PG
Analytic10f7
Analytics and Sustainment Engineer at a aerospace/defense firm with 201-500 employees
- Affordability
- Scalability
- Simplicity of use
MU
SystemsE3b3e
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The most valuable feature is the interface. It is really usable, easy to manage.
Looking at that ease of management, for LUN creation, I like the integration into VirtualCenter. I used to have to add LUNs manually, then scan them in and format them. It does that all for you, all in one, immediate deployment of LUNs. Also, for replication, we use RecoverPoint. It's a little clunky but, overall, the Unity part of that product works in a very simplistic manner. It's easy to manage.
View full review »It is completely reliable. The plugins for it are quite mature. I don't really have any issues with the interactions with vSphere, they all work as intended. There is a level of reliance and a maturity in the product, whereas the other ones are a little more cutting edge and the bugs can come out of the blue.
View full review »The features that customers are looking for, because I do a lot of architecture work, is the management simplicity. The provisioning is very simple in the Unity platform, as well as the reporting structure back to the customer. They get to know end-to-end visibility in the system environment.
View full review »JR
Juan Rebelo
Pre Sales Manager at Datastar
I think that EMC has a good name in the market. VNX was a great product, and Unity is seen as the natural replacement. Customers see that as an advantage of the Unity.
View full review »MG
Mark Glasson
Senior IT Infrastructure Engineer and Administrator at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
- FAST Cache: The ability for hot blocks to almost instantaneously be served from Flash.
- FAST VP: Enables us to better utilise the Flash resources that we have.
- ESRS/CloudIQ: Having the array communicating back to Dell EMC enables me to get faster responses to issues which may arise, like a failed disk.
FA
Flavio Araujo
Works
Real Unified Storage (Block, File, VVols) in a unique 2U hardware.
View full review »- Expandability for capacity management is pretty important.
- It has compression, which allows you to store more data than you would normally under the arrays.
- The ease of use in central management by Unisphere Central.
- Cost-effectiveness, when compared to other products.
- Replication and reporting
- Replication of the communication object (COB) scenarios
- I appreciate the great performance with flash drives, 12Gb SAS connections, and the 16Gb fibre channel.
- I like the easy management with the new Unisphere management and the HTML5 interface.
- All this comes with a smaller footprint, with the main unit taking 2U instead of 8U.
PF
Paddy Field
It consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Dell EMC Unity XT has good integration with VMware.
View full review »RC
Rolf Colmer
IT Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Simplicity: It is ease to use. It performs. It's easy to provision, and It's stable.
View full review »DH
Dave Homp
Manager of Storage and Backup at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The replication is big for us.
We use file services on Unity and it has a really nice file services interface.
It's also easy to manage. It's really easy in terms of provisioning, replication. There are no real tricks to it. It's just easy.
View full review »MM
NetworkAf069
Network Administrator at a construction company with 201-500 employees
Obviously its speed is the main reason why we got it but we've really loved being able to use the interface. We've been able to create LUNs easily. We're able to get in there and create what we need, do everything we need to do, configure it the way it needed to be configured.
In terms of simplicity of ownership, it was almost plug-and-go. We did have some help getting it set up but, as for licensing and being able to get support through Dell EMC's site, it has been really easy. The interface makes it really easy to manage.
View full review »It's the simplicity, and most of all it's backed up by Dell EMC support, which is very valuable.
View full review »It performs great. Customers really like it. I've had a lot of customers go from the previous platforms up to Unity. They've noticed better performance with it.
What they really like is the easy licensing now - Dell EMC has caught up to a lot of their competitors - based on not having to charge for everything, and they can get everything in one bundle.
Ease of management is one thing I get a lot of good feedback regarding as well.
The flexibility is also important. We still have a lot of customers that have a use case for non-flash, yet you can also build the flash version as well.
View full review »First, it's the "Unity," it's the name itself. It's unified, it does block and file, so that is pretty important to my customers who might have file servers around their environment. I can roll them all up into a single array, as well as provide block storage for them on one array.
It's the simplicity part of it. It's the ease of management, it's the call home, the CloudIQ functionality. It's all built in. I think Dell EMC has put a lot of thought into it. That's what I push out to my customers, to bring that message to them.
View full review »ST
C.
Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Good in-built monitoring tools from the System|Performance Section Tab is valuable. From CloudIQ you can reach out to vCenter as well. ESRS (Call Home) on the service delivery part is valuable.
Remote Code update support (interactive or not) is free of charge, as you wish, nonetheless you are free to do it yourself as updates are cumulative and retained on each new code level.
View full review »MG
reviewer1473288
Pre-Sales and Technical Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The most valuable feature that Unity had at that moment was the ability to communicate with the previous family, the Clariion. So, the migration and all the data transfer was really easy.
View full review »PM
reviewer1716639
Assistant Manager Specialist at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The high availability of Dell EMC Unity XT has been the most important feature.
View full review »CD
NetworkE5be0
Network Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
- Space
- Ease of use
- Snapshots
- Replication between sites
- It is very seamless.
AD
Anthony Dominguez
Infrastructure Team Lead at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
The ease of setup and management have been the best features.
View full review »At the moment we are using it with VPLEX. VPLEX is a very big advantage for us. We don't use very many of the Unity's functions. But it does provide good provisioning, allowing us to save space. We use all-flash systems and they are quite fast.
View full review »- Performance
- Low Latency
- Integration with VMware
These features are important for us for two reasons. The first two features - performance and low latency - are customer-facing and have direct impact on the user experience. This way, our work is more visible and we are able to improve not only user perception but business processes overall as well. VMware integration makes the life of our engineers easier, as we are almost 100% virtualized and this feature is used on a daily basis.
View full review »MT
Engineere566
Engineer of IT Operations at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
Deduplication is the biggest thing for our company.
It is easy to use.
Compression is making a difference towards the amount of hardware that we need to purchase.
We love our snapshots and the CloudIQ function is great.
View full review »- The performance
- Ease of use
- Inline compression
- Auto-shrink
- Data in-place upgrades
CK
HeadOfITa385
Head Of IT at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
The NAS capability is mainly what we're looking for from this product, and being able to recover fast in DR.
View full review »It has the same operating system for both file and block, and it actually simplifies everything. It's much smaller compared to VNX.
View full review »It is very high-speed. The compression is also a very good feature, and the deduplication as well.
View full review »All-flash, it's fast. We have the 650 model which is all-flash, upgraded from VNX. It just flies.
View full review »The reason we purchased it was for dual data centers. We have one in each data center so that we can have that redundancy, that failover if needed.
Obviously, flash, everything's quicker. We did notice a lot of speed difference.
We actually started out with XtremIO, and we were running our SQL servers off XtremIO, but our application servers couldn't keep up. So now, our application servers are all on flash, SQL Servers are all on XtremIO, and the two work together well.
View full review »One of the things that I like the most about it is how they have changed the Unisphere GUI, and how it is now HTML5. It is so easy to use.
The array itself is so simple, easy to set up and easy to use, but it still has that great Dell EMC technology behind it.
View full review »Ease of use is probably number one, compared to the previous storage that we've had. Easy scalability, easy set up. Compared to everything else, the Unity is, well, you could call it child's play. As long as you know what you're doing storage-wise, Unity is really easy to use.
View full review »LL
Solutionb443
Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
It's a great product if you want something that just works, and works fairly well. It's a product that's tested, tried, and true, where a multitude of customers have depended on the product for the overall requirements of their companies' data. Typically, a company's data is the lifeline of the company. So, if you want something that's tried, tested, and true, that is relatively feature-rich, and that just works, go for it, right. It's a fantastic product.
View full review »MM
Marc Mooney
Operations Supervisor at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Ease of use would really be the best feature. We were easily able to get the correct performance details from it. And the configuration was great, it was relatively easy as well; that was brilliant.
In terms of managing it, the performance metrics that it gives, generic stuff, it does everything that we need it to do. We didn't have to create any custom reporting. It all went well.
View full review »RM
CloudEnga630
Cloud Engineer/System Administrator at a aerospace/defense firm with 10,001+ employees
The interface is pretty easy and it didn't take too long to get trained on it.
View full review »CA
Helpdesk5793
Helpdesk Supervisor at a logistics company with 501-1,000 employees
Being all-flash makes everything super-fast.
It's also great to manage. That's the easiest part. We also have another SAN, from Pure, and the Unity is easier to manage than the Pure.
View full review »- All-flash performance
- Snapshotting capabilities
- Replication
It's good. It has a lot of good features.
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.
View full review »- 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.
MB
reviewer1318731
DIrecteur Commerical at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
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.
View full review »BM
IT1c5b
IT at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
- 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.
It is the performance combined with the Gig-per-dollar value. That combination is superior to other storage options.
View full review »- Storage
- Easy to manage and configure.
- I can easily setup and configure the LUN and host without support.
SC
reviewer1153386
Technical Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
We particularly like the user interface on cloud IQ with this product.
JC
Jacob Christensen
Tech consultant at KMD
It provides SAN capabilities and storage replication.
View full review »We're very familiar with the VNX series, we were using VNX before Unity. The features sets are very similar but what I like is the way it ties into VMware. When I create a datastore inside Unity, it just shows up in VMware. I love that tie-in.
View full review »We weren't looking at specific features. We needed to the additional storage and the performance.
View full review »The compression and deduplication which will be coming in version 4.3. With just those features, we will be reducing the amount of data and footprint on our hardware.
View full review »KS
reviewer1103946
Head of Datacenter Department: at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The most valuable features are its performance and simplicity.
View full review »LG
Luiz Gasparelo
Owner at LNETWORK
The feature that I have found most valuable is the unified storage and its capabilities for block-access, file access, and the center box.
View full review »RR
SeniorMa0a06
Senior Manager at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
One of the most valuable features is its cost. It was inexpensive compared to other arrays that we were looking at.
It's also easy to manage. I have 20 years of managing EMC storage and it has been the same from day one, pretty much.
We have also integrated it with vSphere and SQL. There were no costs involved outside of our normal workload licensing, no costs that were specific to the Unity platform.
View full review »The architecture is robust. I know that it has changed a lot with the advent of the all-flash. But it was the good, old-fashioned storage array, block array for customers. It's reliable.
View full review »It's easy to handle for administrators and it's a unified system. It's not as complex as Celerra systems or CX4 Clariions to administrate. You can do everything with one GUI.
View full review »The flexibility of the paradigm and, obviously, its price point.
View full review »- Starting small and being able to grow to a larger scale
- All-flash options are great
- Hybrid options are good for certain use cases
The technology is simple and it is efficient.
View full review »AT
Abilio Tsunoushi
Head of IT, South & Central America at a engineering company with 201-500 employees
- Small device
- Using few U's on rack
- Small consumption of energy
- Fast access on data
Unified block and file storage without the need of control stations and data movers. This simplifies administration and deployment and requires less rack space.
View full review »MB
Mahdi Bahmani
Solution Architect, IT Consultant at Merdasco - Rayan Merdas Data Prosseccing
Features | Description |
---|---|
All-inclusive | All the software needed to store, manage, and protect data included with each array |
Efficiency | Inline file and block data reduction with up to 5:1 DRR and 85% system efficiency for more usable capacity |
Multi-Cloud | Built-in support to easily deploy multiple paths to a hybrid cloud world |
Multi-protocol | SAN and NAS connectivity options enabling storage consolidation |
Performance | Dual socket CPUs, dual-active controllers, multi-core optimization, NVMe-ready to deliver higher performance and less latency |
Rapid Deployment | Install and configure in twenty-five minutes to operational productivity |
Scalable | Up to 8.0 PB raw capacity and up to one thousand drives |
Simplicity | Lifecycle simplicity from ordering through support |
Unified Storage | Support for file, block & VMware VVol data inside a single storage pool, reducing complexity and improving flexibility |
JS
NewTechn7485
New Technologies Director at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
- Cheaper
- Its consumption of kVA
- The easy setup.
- We really enjoy the HTML5.
- The VVols have worked seamlessly with VMware.
We use the all-flash arrays so the performance is probably the most valuable feature. As features go, deduplication and compression are important too.
View full review »AD
Alejandro Diaz
Systems Engineer at Zenware
I like the idea that it can compress and dedupe inline. That is quite a stunning feature for mid-range customers. That is something that is much better than the expectation that we have with VNX, which does that post-processing, and is not recommended for databases. So it's a big step for Unity. When we position Unity, that is one of the first things we say, that it is prepared to work things inline with dedupe and compress.
View full review »All the features are okay, but not all of our customers are using all the features.
View full review »It is easy to use. Setting up replication is pretty simple. We just set it and forget it.
View full review »Easy to use. For beginners, it is very interactive.
View full review »JD
reviewer1527192
Solution Architect at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
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.
View full review »TM
Tahir Mohammad
Country Service Delivery Manager at Citrus consulting
The most valuable features of this product are its reliable storage and its archiving feature.
View full review »QB
Engineer754c
Engineering Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Overall, the most valuable thing for our use case is the flexibility to have multiple-protocol support.
It's just a solid platform.
View full review »The way it takes the Snaps, that is one of the best features. Snapshot performance is what is key in the Unity, compared to a traditional VNX.
View full review »I really like the true unified storage box.
View full review »- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Ease of deployment
- The GUI is very user-friendly.
None. Having used EMC products for more than 15 years, this is the first product in that time that I could find nothing to like.
I didn't choose this solution. My boss picked the solution. I actually suggested something else from a different vendor. Personally, my opinion of it is there aren't a lot of great features with it.
View full review »We use it to provide VMware VMFS to our VMware environment. Also, we use it for replication of data stores to another EMC Unity 300. This works fantastically.
- It’s easy to manage.
- The interface is great.
- Underlying functionality works well.
- VMware integration, why is pretty self-explanatory, though Nimble offers better VMware integration then EMC does, which is odd given where EMC comes from.
- Veeam Backup integration: Veeam is the defacto standard for backing up of virtual environments.
- Fibre Channel support
KY
SystemsA06db
Systems Administrator at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
View full review »The ease of use, which makes it very good.
View full review »LM
Solution672f
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
AL
Administ7d49
Administrador Almacenamiento-Respaldos at Exito
It has good performance.
The solution is extremely functional for the price that we pay for it. It is worth the investment.
View full review »It can be simple to deploy, the standup time is quite quick. The interface is quite quick. The terms are simple, intuitive, it's similar what was there in the VNXE before it. It's very simple to navigate and administer from the console.
The hardware itself, it differs from Compellent and differs from the VNX before it. It doesn't have a separate file harbor that goes with it, there are no separate NAS heads. It's 2U, you have file and block storage, so you get a quite a lot of services for a small footprint.
View full review »Replication: Disaster Recovery (DR) plans, RPO and RTO. Replication and ease of storage setup for block LUN’s and VMware.
View full review »BB
SystemsEbdd4
Systems Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Easy to use management.
I like that it is wizard-driven. In past iterations, it has made it easier to cross-train the team.
View full review »The Snapshot feature.
View full review »- 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.
View full review »- 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.
- 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.
- User friendly interface
- Scalability
- It is shipped with all licensed, included for this product range, no need to buy additional licenses
- Flexible support plans
- Prompt answers from EMC support
RV
SystemsA2504
Systems Administrator at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
- Stability
- Interoperability with the other components of the system
VS
Val Sondoyi
Tech Lead at Complete Enterprise Solutions
The most valuable feature is the easy management with a great GUI. We can do a lot from there.
View full review »- Simplicity.
- Ease of management.
- It's still running on the ancient systems, so the customers know what they are getting.
It's simple, easy to manage.
View full review »The multiprotocol support. It's supporting NFS, fiber channel, CIFS, and these kinds of things. The multiprotocol is very attractive.
View full review »We currently deploy the Unitys for CIFS-based file access to supplement our VxRail deployment, which was installed around the same time.
View full review »NS
Nuno Simoes
Storage Specialist at a tech company with 51-200 employees
- Stability
- Simplicity
- Speed
We like the way it integrates with our environment. These features help us use multiple soft applications. The new features of going off the grid and replicating really help us. They give us an advantage versus traditional storage resources.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
Dell Unity XT
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Dell Unity XT. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.