An improvement that could be made is to have a storage solution with all SSD hard disks, as we currently have a Dell EqualLogic PS series with traditional hard disks. It's not simple to replace a hard disk; it's more simple and economical for us to replace the entire SAN and buy another new SAN with all SSD hard disks.
Director of Computing, Biostatistics at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Apr 24, 2024
The main issue was that when there were new storage solutions technologies available on the market, Dell EqualLogic PS Series was not compatible with the latest products. Right now, we have a storage device that offers deduplication along with uniform management software. The tool's front end was not unified, and it was an issue for my company. The only challenging part in the tool was related to some site recovery area. In order to exploit the site recovery area, my company had to purchase additional VMware products. My company did not venture too deep into the tool because we were happy with the low-level integration offered by Dell EqualLogic PS Series. I wish Dell EqualLogic PS Series could integrate well with VMware or ESXi so that my company doesn't have to purchase additional licenses from VMware.
Regarding an area to improve, I would say that from Dell EqualLogic family, I can't buy Dell EqualLogic PS series. I can't buy any more solutions provided by EqualLogic, so the solution will have to make certain improvements in the future. Since we can't buy anything from EqualLogic in our company, we plan to move to another solution. Since I can't buy it anymore, I don't receive any updates on the solution. Also, this is the last year in which one can buy support for the solution.
Dell EqualLogic PS series could improve by providing Fibre Channel connectivity. Fibre Channel connectivity is not supported, which is a requirement of advanced applications, such as SAP HANA. SAP HANA recommends Fibre Channel connectivity, but the Dell EqualLogic PS series is only an ISCSI data storage.
It is at the end of support and no longer supported. We have to move our VMware to another storage platform, and we have decided to use Dell PowerStore. We like Dell's products, and it is a new platform with a lot of features.
The performance isn't as good as, for example, Nimble. The solution needs to have smart data disks and a smarter way to find those disks on certain drives. We are having some issues right now where some of the database operations are recovering and we find there are so many IOPS that EqualLogic fans cannot handle it. That's why we are moving towards a Nimble fan and Nimble is performing way better than EqualLogic.
Network and System Administrator at TWD Technologies Ltd.
Real User
Jan 21, 2021
The number one is probably the scalability potential of the product. If I need to increase the capacity, I cannot. That's the main problem for us. If I need to have more space or more capacity, I need to replace the product. It would be ideal if we could scale without replacing the box itself.
Assistant Circuit Executive for Information Technology at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Oct 4, 2020
EqualLogic has room for improvement but it is not likely a lot will happen because Dell is phasing the product out for end-of-life. What could be improved is their replication efficiency. I forgot what the minimum block size was, but I think it was maybe 64K blocks for replication. To make the effort to get that down to something smaller — even to the bit level — will allow the replication to be more bandwidth-efficient. When it is more efficient it will not require as much time, and that is critical. Right now, the block size is generally larger than their competitors. Because of that, it takes more bandwidth to do SAN (Storage Area Network) replication than other solutions. That has been an ongoing issue. Of course, as data sets grow in size, your backup window — the off-production hours for the environment — stays fixed. You have to push whatever amount of data you need to have backed up to the remote DR (Disaster Recovery) site within that window. We have had some of the replication jobs on EqualLogic run into the daytime production hours and that has caused issues. That they need to concentrate on more efficient replication is a way to summarize that, I guess. It just has to get pushed faster. There is also no onboard, inline deduplication capability. That is probably the biggest issue. Inline deduplication is something you have to do that on the fly. The deduplication capability is key to this type of solution now.
Senior Network Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Vendor
Oct 1, 2020
One problem with this solution is that synchronous replication requires lots of duplicated space. I wish Dell would address that issue. It really wastes a lot of space and it does so in a way that the amendment space required is inefficient. Once it is running it does not need as much space, but to start it up you need double the space on both your source and destination chassis. Another issue is that I can not mix RAID technologies. On one particular box, I can only set one RAID standard and not create multiple RAID sets. That is a limitation that I could do without. One feature that would have been nice on the EqualLogic box is the ability to recover on a file basis. It should not be limited to a volume scale. I do not know that it should be able to recover files being that it is a block-level device for storage. File-level is a completely different animal. But it would be nice to be able to have file recovery even if it is a block-level storage device.
CTO/Executive Vice President at Planet Data Solutions
Real User
Nov 11, 2018
* Performance and vision for the product were lacking. * DELL was taking on too many storage solutions, and it felt like the EqualLogic series was not aggressively supported.
Some of the new features include what they call auto-tiering, where data that needs to be on a faster storage, it would automatically detect that and move it to the faster storage or the most frequently accessed area. Data that doesn't move that much or is not accessed that often would go on a slower storage. It's more efficient, helps a company to maximize what they spend. This kind of storage costs a lot of money; they build that into the newer functionality and into newer SANs. If you are going to go with all-flash then it's very expensive but it has a lot of performance benefits and a lot of improvement in reliability. Some companies can afford leading edge. My company cannot afford leading edge, so we probably have to go one generation below.
Dell EqualLogic PS series offers enterprise-level scalability, reliability, and virtualization at reasonable costs. With exceptional performance and ease of management, it's an ideal choice for modern storage needs.EqualLogic PS series provides impressive scale-out capabilities, seamless virtualization compatibility, automated tiering, and thin provisioning. The storage system supports robust features like snapshot capabilities, synchronous replication, and stable data expansion. High...
I do not have anything in mind regarding new capabilities for Dell products at this time.
An improvement that could be made is to have a storage solution with all SSD hard disks, as we currently have a Dell EqualLogic PS series with traditional hard disks. It's not simple to replace a hard disk; it's more simple and economical for us to replace the entire SAN and buy another new SAN with all SSD hard disks.
The main issue was that when there were new storage solutions technologies available on the market, Dell EqualLogic PS Series was not compatible with the latest products. Right now, we have a storage device that offers deduplication along with uniform management software. The tool's front end was not unified, and it was an issue for my company. The only challenging part in the tool was related to some site recovery area. In order to exploit the site recovery area, my company had to purchase additional VMware products. My company did not venture too deep into the tool because we were happy with the low-level integration offered by Dell EqualLogic PS Series. I wish Dell EqualLogic PS Series could integrate well with VMware or ESXi so that my company doesn't have to purchase additional licenses from VMware.
Regarding an area to improve, I would say that from Dell EqualLogic family, I can't buy Dell EqualLogic PS series. I can't buy any more solutions provided by EqualLogic, so the solution will have to make certain improvements in the future. Since we can't buy anything from EqualLogic in our company, we plan to move to another solution. Since I can't buy it anymore, I don't receive any updates on the solution. Also, this is the last year in which one can buy support for the solution.
Dell EqualLogic PS series could improve by providing Fibre Channel connectivity. Fibre Channel connectivity is not supported, which is a requirement of advanced applications, such as SAP HANA. SAP HANA recommends Fibre Channel connectivity, but the Dell EqualLogic PS series is only an ISCSI data storage.
Dell EqualLogic PS series could improve the performance because in our hybrid configuration the read speed is faster than the write speed.
The solution is out of date and the new version has a lot of advanced features.
It is at the end of support and no longer supported. We have to move our VMware to another storage platform, and we have decided to use Dell PowerStore. We like Dell's products, and it is a new platform with a lot of features.
The performance isn't as good as, for example, Nimble. The solution needs to have smart data disks and a smarter way to find those disks on certain drives. We are having some issues right now where some of the database operations are recovering and we find there are so many IOPS that EqualLogic fans cannot handle it. That's why we are moving towards a Nimble fan and Nimble is performing way better than EqualLogic.
We'd like the solution to have bigger sizing. We need more space and we can't get any. We'd love more memory storage space.
The number one is probably the scalability potential of the product. If I need to increase the capacity, I cannot. That's the main problem for us. If I need to have more space or more capacity, I need to replace the product. It would be ideal if we could scale without replacing the box itself.
EqualLogic has room for improvement but it is not likely a lot will happen because Dell is phasing the product out for end-of-life. What could be improved is their replication efficiency. I forgot what the minimum block size was, but I think it was maybe 64K blocks for replication. To make the effort to get that down to something smaller — even to the bit level — will allow the replication to be more bandwidth-efficient. When it is more efficient it will not require as much time, and that is critical. Right now, the block size is generally larger than their competitors. Because of that, it takes more bandwidth to do SAN (Storage Area Network) replication than other solutions. That has been an ongoing issue. Of course, as data sets grow in size, your backup window — the off-production hours for the environment — stays fixed. You have to push whatever amount of data you need to have backed up to the remote DR (Disaster Recovery) site within that window. We have had some of the replication jobs on EqualLogic run into the daytime production hours and that has caused issues. That they need to concentrate on more efficient replication is a way to summarize that, I guess. It just has to get pushed faster. There is also no onboard, inline deduplication capability. That is probably the biggest issue. Inline deduplication is something you have to do that on the fly. The deduplication capability is key to this type of solution now.
One problem with this solution is that synchronous replication requires lots of duplicated space. I wish Dell would address that issue. It really wastes a lot of space and it does so in a way that the amendment space required is inefficient. Once it is running it does not need as much space, but to start it up you need double the space on both your source and destination chassis. Another issue is that I can not mix RAID technologies. On one particular box, I can only set one RAID standard and not create multiple RAID sets. That is a limitation that I could do without. One feature that would have been nice on the EqualLogic box is the ability to recover on a file basis. It should not be limited to a volume scale. I do not know that it should be able to recover files being that it is a block-level device for storage. File-level is a completely different animal. But it would be nice to be able to have file recovery even if it is a block-level storage device.
* Performance and vision for the product were lacking. * DELL was taking on too many storage solutions, and it felt like the EqualLogic series was not aggressively supported.
Some of the new features include what they call auto-tiering, where data that needs to be on a faster storage, it would automatically detect that and move it to the faster storage or the most frequently accessed area. Data that doesn't move that much or is not accessed that often would go on a slower storage. It's more efficient, helps a company to maximize what they spend. This kind of storage costs a lot of money; they build that into the newer functionality and into newer SANs. If you are going to go with all-flash then it's very expensive but it has a lot of performance benefits and a lot of improvement in reliability. Some companies can afford leading edge. My company cannot afford leading edge, so we probably have to go one generation below.