VNX [EOL] Reviews

• It has increased our availability as we have gone to full virtualization.
• It has greatly improved our efficiency as we have reduced server deployment time.
• It has also reduced our energy costs as we now have fewer servers with its support for virtualization.

• Integration with VMware
• Support for virtualization
• High performance
• Easy management

Poor connection to FC.

There were no scalability issues.

Technical support is excellent, but somewhat slow in the African region.

We did not use different solution before.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Pricing is somewhat higher, especially in Zambia, perhaps due to the low sales volume.

It is a great product: scalable, reliable, and robust.

It has a simple-to-manage GUI and provides very good performance for the load-intensive applications. Also, the data tiering capabilities are good.

• FAST (auto-tiering): Doesn't require configuration and is managed by the array itself.
• SNAP feature: Takes only 10% of the space, an improvement compared to the earlier space utilization with RLPs.
• NAS: Using CIFS, NFS, and mixed mode shares is not as cumbersome as when compared with NetApp.

The processing speeds of the Xeon controllers and scalability options are areas with room for improvement:

• Intel Xeon processors with under 2 GHz processing speeds could be replaced with more recent ones.
• Also, the scalability (connectivity between racks; daisy-chaining made more robust - basically, loops of 8 DAEs to be enhanced).

We had no stability issues. Bug fixes are released from time to time and uptime performance with best practices is guaranteed.

We encountered scalability as it is limited by backend slots, and NAS performance is significantly reduced when scaling.

Technical support has superb response times and expertise.

We did not previously use a different solution.

The architecture is fairly simple; hence, the setup has never been complex.

Before choosing, we looked at EVA from HPE and Compellent from Dell.

It is a good product with a simple setup and easy administration.

The product is simple to install and manage. (It has a better GUI compared to others, with performance monitoring embedded within.)

We took a while to jump onto VNX – largely for file with our block storage handled by EMC Symmetrix. VNX turned out to be the rugged little brother that went in, did the job and kept on working while using the same tools – but at lower price.

The most valuable feature is the tight VMware integration, due to the migration from bare metal to virtualized environments and then on to the cloud.

VNX provides the full feature set, automated storage tiering to optimize flash, and file dedupe in what used to be a price-competitive package. That area is now being ceded to Unity as the storage landscape undergoes sweeping changes with HCI.

Storage is undergoing a sea change in affordable cost per bit, solid-state drives and new latency requirements for applications. Over time, VNX has become pricier than its competitors, and we have turned enthusiastically to Unity. While the VNX-F was released several years ago as an AFA in VNX trim, we still went with EMC XtremIO instead because of performance and pricing.

We embraced VNX after it was a mature product and have not had stability issues.

We have not encountered scalability issues, but then we did not try to use VNX beyond its target application range.

We have received excellent support from EMC and now Dell.

We were using EMC Symmetrix and NetApp previously but moved our midrange file to VNX due to the commonality of the tool sets and tight VMware integration.

Initial setup was a breeze compared to our previous EMC Symmetrix space. It was kind of like going from manual to automatic transmission.

Time your acquisitions and license discussions around year-end close.

As indicated, we were on EMC Symmetrix and NetApp. VNX came along at the right time for us and allowed for support and tools consolidation, provided more services and allowed us to reduce overall support costs.

Be clear on what your storage applications are and what level of scale you need. For the big Kahuna in the back end, we still use EMC Symmetrix for our block, but for small to midrange, our VNX is giving way to Unity for price points. Check your application profiles as your mileage will vary.

It is our Tier-2 storage which is easy to provision from and has decent performance.

I really value deduplication and compression to save space.

The CLI could be better documented, like with VMAX.

We actually had data loss from too many simultaneous drive failures on the 7500.

We have not yet encountered any scalability issues in our environment.

Technical support was on a par with typical EMC. In other words, not the best and not the worst.

We were moving to IBM v7000 for price. However, it doesn't support NAS

The initial setup was straightforward.

Look at other newer options. Unisphere is slow and Java based. This is not the easiest array to manage.

It was already installed when I was hired.

To me, the mid-tier storage arrays are getting displaced by lesser expensive All-flash options.

EMC has been selling XIO at a very affordable price.

Hitachi has a lot of cool features out-of-the-box that EMC does not have.

It has enabled us to consolidate storage, both primary and secondary, on a single platform. This simplified administration provided the necessary performance to our virtualized infrastructure.

• Reliability, excellent support by EMC, and VMware integration
• High availability including non-disruptive updates: We cannot afford downtime windows.
• SSD tier: Provided desired performance with fewer disks
• Storage pooling and auto-tiering: Simplified storage management
• Seamless integration with VMware
• Fairly simple administration using Unisphere

I would like to see a larger SP cache and finer grained auto-tiering.

Based on our workloads, we see repeatedly in performance reports that the built-in controller (SP) cache of our VNX model is not sufficiently large, resulting in forced cache flushing.

The report states that this "can be addressed with a shared global cache in next generation VNX systems". But for this VNX generation (1st), the cache size results in an overloaded system.

Regarding auto-tiering, this generation VNX FAST algorithm moves data in 1GB chunks between tiers. With our predominantly transaction oriented workload (random reads) this didn't afford benefits.

So when we purchased new VNXs (same generation), we configured the SSD tier as FAST Cache, a large 2nd tier consisting of 10K disks with a small 3rd tier with NL-SAS disks. Had the block size been smaller, auto-tiering may have been more effective for our workloads.

We did not encounter any stability issues.

We did not encounter any scalability issues.

Technical support was fantastic.

We switched because the previous solution was outdated. We were using Multiple IBM DS4700, external SCSI arrays, and HP MSA.

We needed to consolidate storage along with server consolidation on modern and faster storage technology that would integrate with VMware.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was part of the virtualization project undertaken by our partner.

We evaluated NetApp.

The product has been superseded.

All of the VMware farm is configured into this storage.

• Good performance for VM environments
• In one cabinet, we have many environments: VMware, Oracle, Adabas, NAS (CIFS and NFS resources), and mix disks on tier configurations
• Tier configuration with different disks (SAS, SATA, Flash)
• The software for management is very user-friendly
• Snapshots for backup and refresh development on test environments

There is an easy replication process between distinct data centers via VPLEX and/or RPA. But I hope in the future that EMC/Dell could replicate this with other types of storage.

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

I would give technical support a rating of 10/10.

The setup was very easy.

The pricing and licensing were both very balanced.

This is a good option if you are looking for good performance.

By utilizing the Storage Pools feature of the VNX, our organization can provide the required performance without having to over-invest in storage for data that doesn't require expensive drives.

One of the best features of the VNX is the ability to combine drives of different types into a virtual Storage Pool. By combining small but fast flash drives, SAS drives, and high-capacity but slower NL-SAS drives, the VNX can intelligently move data to the different tiers of storage based on usage. This maximizes performance and investment by making sure commonly accessed data is stored in flash, while rarely-accessed data can be sent to the NL-SAS drives.

The management software used for the VNX is Unicenter. While it is an improvement over Navicenter, used in older EMC SANs, it still feels outdated in comparison to other SAN management software. Reporting is clunky and requires data collection to files, which then have to be retrieved and uploaded to a third-party site for processing before finally downloading the report.

There were never any stability problems thanks to fully redundant storage processors, power supplies, and hot spare drives.

We did purchase additional shelves of drives a few years after the initial purchase. Again, with the support of EMC technical services, the hardware was added to the VNX without downtime or disruption. The Storage Pools allow for dynamic addition of new drives.

Customer Service:

Customer service is top-notch with a dedicated sales and technical resource who are familiar with your environment and spend a lot of time understanding your business needs.

Technical Support:

EMC technical support is top notch when utilizing the ESRS appliance which sends critical alerts directly to EMC. Failed drives were replaced without any input on my end, sometimes before I became aware of the failure. Support can also remote in and perform code upgrades.

Previous to the VNX, we were using an EMC CX-80 SAN. The reason for switching was to stay on a supported platform.

The initial setup involves completing a pre-install survey, which the installer needs to properly configure the settings (IP addresses, DNS, NTP, etc.). The questions are easy to understand.

The initial hardware setup and configuration was completed by on-site technicians from EMC. They were fully trained and certified on the VNX and had completed dozens of similar installations.

We calculated our ROI to three years and the planned life of the VNX is six years. We are currently in the process of migrating to a new EMC XtremIO SAN, which will have an even shorter ROI.

While EMC tends to be on the expensive side, the stability and support of their products are top-notch and I feel are worth the cost.

When we evaluated SANs, we also looked at solutions by IBM. Our familiarity and relationship with EMC weighed heavily with our choice.

Ease of use of the management software

I have used it for five years.

We have not encountered any deployment issues.

We have not encountered any stability issues.

We don't have any case where we need to add more storage on this product.

Customer service does respond on time.

Technical support is good.

I did not previously use a different solution. When I came in to my company, they were already using this product.

Initial setup is not as straightforward as other new storage that is available now; there are many things to do to create pool, LUN.

We implemented it through the vendor team; they have the knowledge on how to implement the product.

You need a lot of licenses in order to use this product, which makes the product expensive; the maintenance contract price also increases significantly every year.

I did not evaluate other options, as they already implemented the product before I started working at the company.