We use IntelliFlash for our virtualization environment. We use VMware, and it's used to show the virtual machines.
The initial setup is straightforward.
I wouldn't say I like anything about this solution. We are looking for a replacement with Dell EMC and Pure Storage. Tegile's performance, support, and features are horrible. It's going down.
Multiple companies have bought it. It looked okay at one point in time, like four years ago. Even though it wasn't one of the best, it still looked okay. Since the management has changed several times, it looks like it's going down the drain.
Performance is horrible now. Our original intent was to buy new storage in about two years. But since it became a critical urgency for us, we decided to purchase a new one in two or three months.
It would be better if they improved the codebase. We have issues very often with their code, and I think that is the main pain point. The hardware is also horrible because we have either a controller failure or a SATADOM failure very often. Now and then, we also have a disc failure.
They have to get their act together. They have to make sure their hardware is robust, they have to make sure their code is good, and then we can think about new features and functionality.
First, make the unit run properly, and then we can think about additions. Obviously, their support has to be knowledgeable. Because when I told them, "we have latency issues, come troubleshoot it for us," nobody came. But if we tell them that "we need to do a firmware upgrade," then they are like, "okay. Let's do a firmware upgrade." They will come to do the firmware upgrade, and then they will go. But with the firmware upgrades, you might never know when it works properly and when it doesn't work properly.
If there is a disc that needs to be replaced, and we ask them to replace it, they'll say, "okay, just share the remote station with us, and we'll run some commands, and we'll validate which disc is faulty. If it's really faulty, we will send the disc. We do that, and then they find the faulty disc and send a replacement.
They will do these minor things. But that's not what we are looking for. We are looking for more features and more functionality. Like if there is latency, try to help us out and help the customer find where the latency is. It doesn't necessarily have to be only with SAN storage. It might be a configuration issue, or it might be something else. So, you should help the customer find where the issue is. Unfortunately, that is not what we are getting from them. So they have to improve that a lot.
I have been using IntelliFlash for the past four years.
IntelliFlash isn't stable at all. Its performance is horrible.
I don't think there's any scalability. From the outside, it looks awesome. But performance-wise, it's not good. You just have to buy new arrays if you want to scale. It's not like a traditional SAN where you just add in a bunch of this or that and start increasing your capacity. It's not like that. We have 4,000 virtual machines and about 1,000 people using them.
Technical support is horrible. Their support is not able to handle the volume of issues. It's indirectly affecting the support system. Even though you create a ticket, it looks like they know what the issue is, and they don't have a fix for it. So, they don't really respond to you.
Even though they release a fix and apply it, you get some other issue in two or three days. They have to go back to engineering again and get that resolved. We have been spending a lot of time with that array, which, ideally, we should not be doing. But unfortunately, that's the situation where we are in.
They are seriously bad. For example, we had virtual machines which were having high latencies. What do you do when you have virtual machines with high latency? You look at the application, you look at the virtual environment, and you look at the SAN switches, and you also look at the SAN storage. When I created a ticket, VMware hopped on very quickly. Then they looked at the thing, and they said, "oh, yeah, everything is good." I know everything is good, but still, I had to create a ticket as per our policy. Then I did the same with SAN storage. They responded after a day, saying, "okay, do one thing and just create a ticket. Set up a call with VMware so that we can work with them."
If that is what they want, then I'm going to set up a call with VMware and rope them in. I set up a call and roped them in. They didn't really attend to the call until now. It's been four months, and we haven't heard from them. I had to work with VMware. We had to make some changes, but still, there is a latency issue. That's why our management is like, "okay, we had enough of this company, let's go ahead and get a new one."
On a scale from one to ten, I would give their technical support a one.
The initial setup was straightforward. There weren't really many features or functionality for this product. It was very simple. You didn't need a storage administrator to manage it, and it was straightforward initially. It was good and took about a day to deploy this solution.
Initially, we used the help of a consultant to implement this solution. Our experience with them was okay. It wasn't bad.
Maintenance over the last year has become horrible. We had to dedicate one person or an administrator to do maintenance on these units. It's every day for maybe four hours on average.
I think we pay around 100 grand per year for three arrays or four arrays.
I would tell potential users not to implement Tegile. We are leaning towards Pure Storage. We found it more stable when we did our research, and many people seem to be happy with it. It looks like the management will make the final decision, and we should be going towards Pure.
On a scale from one to ten, I would give IntelliFlash a one.
