Dell VPLEX Reviews

Corporate storage for VMware, databases, and file servers supporting a multi-vendor structure with several storage models.

• Hot storage maintenance
• Vendor agnostic environment
• High availability
• Data recovery (DR)

Storage virtualization and geographic resilience for Metro Sans, plus a great performance improvement.

• VPLEX hardware migration to spare equipment in case of major disruption.
• Today, it needs a huge effort that is not acceptable during disaster recovery.

• For non-disruptive migrations
• For replicating non-EMC vendor storage arrays using RecoverPoint
• High availability using VPLEX Metro
• Used as additional read cache for storage arrays

We have see performance improvement in our databases. We can use older arrays for archiving.

I have used VPLEX for over five years.

We have not had any stability issues.

While scaling VPLEX from 2-engine to 4-engine, you need to be careful with the design connecting to VMAX. In our environment, we encountered an imbalance on VPLEX BE ports. But, we resolved that issue with the help of EMC.

Technical support is exceptional.

We did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup was a little bit complex when connecting to VMAX.

We evaluated IBM SVC.

Initial architecture is important. It will help you to scale-out the solution easily.

Clustering (Metro or Geo). It helps organizations to instantly replicate their data to the backup site, while making this totally transparent to the end users.

It enables our customers to instantly distribute their block data across two different sites.

Maybe setup a one-to-many cluster, instead of just a 1-to-1. If EMC could come up with a way to establish a cluster from one VPLEX to many VPLEX(s), that would allow organizations to be able to have more than one copy of their data, and therefore have one, or many, backup (or disaster recovery) sites.

Currently, a cluster can only be established between 2 VPLEX nodes. For example, if a customer has 3 sites, he can’t replicate data from Site #1 to both Site #2 and Site #3. Therefore, with VPLEX, only a 1-to-1 replication is possible.

If there was a way to set up a one-to-many or many-to-one replication, then it would allow customers to have more than one backup site.

I have used VPLEX for three years.

We have not had any stability issues.

We have not had any scalability issues.

Technical support is excellent.

We did not have any previous solutions.

The procedure is very clear and easy to follow.

We evaluated EMC RecoverPoint.

It’s a great product; very reliable. Just get trained and understand all the concepts around EMC VPLEX.

The ability to move disks online without disruption to the environment.

Ability to create geographically distributed clusters.

Possibility to replicate volumes with storage devices from multiple vendors.

The production environment needs improvement.

I have used VPLEX for five years.

We experienced increases in latency in accesses to disks and some bugs on engines.

I did not have problem with scalability.

There were delays in solving problems.

I have two solutions: HPE 3PAR and VPLEX.

It is very laborious to allocate volumes on servers.

The VPLEX, along with the RecoverPoint price, can raise the price a lot.

Due to the large number of models and different brands it is a very good solution to virtualize volumes.

Evaluate the native features and a possibility of a good integration with the RecoverPoint.

Volume replication in almost real time, across metro distances.

With the help of EMC VPLEX, we improved the architecture of the geographic redundant infrastructure our application required.

Cost. This is really expensive.

I’ve used VPLEX for six months, during the architecture and implementation phase of the project.

I was in contact with presales support only, which did a great job.

We did use a previous solution, but it had a totally different architecture. With the help of EMC VPLEX we simplified the architecture and improved the response time.

The setup is pretty complex, since the solution is stretched across two sites at metro distances.

At the time of the project, I was not aware of any similar product.

Cross datacenter automated failover.

My organization uses two data centers. In the past, we would have to manually failover between those data centers. This timing would be unpredictable since it required human interaction. With VPLEX, we are able to automate this process where failovers between sites now occur automatically.

The licensing model for enterprise storage (EMC VMAX) and integrating the solution into the actual storage frames instead of a separate product. I do believe Dell EMC is addressing both of these concerns in current and future product offerings.

I have used EMC VPLEX for three years.

We have not had stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

The solution just runs and is very stable. It is only after an issue, such as a site disruption, that we even contact support to validate everything is healthy.

We didn’t have a previous solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. There was a bit of a learning curve on our part since this was our first implementation of a storage virtualization product.

Our current licensing model is mid-tier arrays (EMC VNX) that are licensed based on frame, which lends itself to putting all servers attached to that frame under VPLEX control. The enterprise arrays (EMC VMAX) are capacity based. This makes using VPLEX on these frames very expensive and we only do the systems that are most critical and require failover between sites on these frames. Dell EMC has told me they are addressing this concern.

We did not evaluate any alternatives.

We used it to primarily provide automated failover to our VMware virtualized environment. I would highly recommend any organization get their virtualization team involved right from the beginning. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, you may have to change how you setup your VMware environment to accommodate the VPLEX implementation.

Based on our requirements, we bought this product for doing online data migrations without data disruption, but we realized that there is a limit to backend storage that can be encapsulate to it. Hence, we ended up spending more money of buying additional VPLEXs to support more backend storage, which in turn came out as an expensive solution for us.

We don't see any improvement in the organizational functions.

If it can support more backend storage per VPLEX.

I have used EMC VPLEX for three years.

We have had stability issues. It adds another layer of connectivity and hence another layer of single point of failure.

We never went into a situation of upgrading/scaling out the engines on the VPLEX.

Our main motive was to perform data migrations across the data centers from one environment to another and that is why we bought this product. But we ended up doing database and host-based data migrations due to the complexity of the product, which adds another layer of connectivity. For a new application setup, it worked like a charm.

It was straightforward to deploy the VPLEX, but the trick was the encapsulation of existing live applications to the VPLEX. It would required downtime.

It’s a bit of an expensive solution if you have multiple storage arrays that need to be encapsulated.

We were recommended by EMC to use this product for our dynamic environment where we do a lot of data migrations in and out.

To move LUNs non-disruptively between arrays and there is a mirrored LUN between data centers, that is to read/write on both sides which are very helpful features.

The business continuity is sorted, as the data is in two data centers, i.e., readable and writable. If one side goes done, there is no downtime and the other side continues non-disruptively.

It needs to improve the thin reclaim on certain arrays.

I have used this solution for three years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

The technical support is very good.

Initially, I was using IBM SVC. It was a bit different and it was not a true active-active solution.

The setup was a bit complex in order to split the traffic and the zoning.

There are two license types, i.e., Metro and Local.

Make sure this is what you need.