Dell ECS Reviews

We are using version 3. It's deployed on-premises. We are using it as a DR as of now. We have the Isilon in our environment, so we are taking the tertiary backups to this ECS just for disaster recovery purposes. It's secondary storage.

We are increasing our usage. Our primary storage is growing, so we have to go to secondary storage to cope with the data. We refresh it almost every six months or one year at least.

Because it's secondary storage, users don't have direct access to it. Only the storage administrators have access to it for any DR or any recovery, but the primary storage itself is used by around 17,000 people. It's one of the largest Isilon clusters in the UK. It's around 106 nodes.

It's definitely good for unstructured data. In earlier days, we had Centera, so for the DR, it's really good. It has a load balancing facility, and we're using it with the Kemp Load Balancer.

The disaster recovery could be improved because there should be something in-built within the ECS. Search and recovery should be in-built. Right now, we have to use some external tools for performing the recovery itself. For example, we're using Atempo or deploying Golden Superna, so it has dependency on the external third-party vendors.

Currently, there aren't any pain points with this solution, but there have been some in the past. From the Golden Superna perspective, one pain point was that we weren't able to deploy it successfully. Dell, which provides this solution, was not able to deliver it successfully. The problem was that they deployed the Superna Golden Copy for the recovery purpose, where we create the buckets for the file-level recovery. But the solution itself was deployed on one of the VMs, and the problem was that we were told that this VM where the Superna Golden Copy was setting itself would only direct the Isilon to replicate or take the backup to the ECS directly. However, later on, we were able to discover that this was not directing itself. All of the data had to travel through the VM itself. There were a lot of issues in that case because we were going to face a bottleneck in our production environment, and we discarded that.

I have been using this solution for a year and a half because we deployed it last year in the TRL environment.

I would say it is stable. I don't think there have been any issues so far.

The scalability is good. We are scaling it now, and we're going to add another two nodes in the next two months.

Dell support is very good.

I have experience with Centera, which is also a Dell product but the old one. That's also an object storage kind of solution, but that's an absolute technology now. I know of the technology on the cloud as well, like the NetApp StorageGRID, which is the same technology as the object storage.

Deployment was not complex, but the solution itself wasn't mature. They have provided the solution, which they have not tested in the multiple environment itself.

Deployment took around two to three months. There was a project team working with us. The hardware was applied very quickly. It wasn't very difficult, but the main structure, which was Golden Copy or the Atempo, took two to three months.

It's a lease-based model, so it's capacity-based. We already negotiated the price a lot, but we're still doing that with Dell because somehow the product was not installed successfully, so there was a lot of struggle in the distributor territory between Dell and the environment itself. I would give the solution a 6 out of 10 for the pricing. There's a little room for improvement.

There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees.

I didn't evaluate any other options because I didn't directly choose this option; it was the customer. But because the majority of the landscape was occupied by Dell, we had to go for the ECS only. They tried to put something on the cloud. We explored some options with the customer, but that didn't work out well because they wanted something on-premises, and for the on-premises, we had only two options: ECS or StorageGRID, or we had to go for the Equinix Data Center, the core location data center.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. It's a good solution. If someone doesn't want to go on the cloud, then this is the best solution that we have in the market right now. It's reliable and stable.

There should have been some POC done by the vendor itself. Either it should have been done for a small chunk, but a POC should have been done before implementing it because I don't think they have many customers as of now. My environment has some external dependencies, like Superna Golden Copy and Atempo, so that might be why they are facing those situation load issues.

Our primary use case is for cloud storage to keep the long-term backups.

The most valuable feature for me is off-site storage. Although it is not a complete cloud solution, it has been useful. I can't really compare it with other cloud environments because they are different.

There is room for improvement in the DPI reports, as they could be made more user-friendly. Currently, I have to create my own reports to get the type of information I need. The reporting aspect of the product could benefit from improvements, but it requires some time and investment to learn how to produce the desired reports. I need to familiarize myself with DPS, as it is only integrated with DPC, and I mainly use DPA for searching. A couple of things are not as up-front or as user-friendly as you would want them to be. For example, DPA, I upgrade it now and then, but I never use it.

For me, DP ECS is doing what it's supposed to do. My main thing is that it's elastic cloud storage, but it's basically just off-site storage. It's not a cloud solution, even though you can create your S3 buckets in it, and it's just another storage device set in a different data center where you can keep your backups for longer-term storage. Maybe the name is misleading because you expect it to be a cloud solution that has everything - computing, storage, and applications behind it.

I have been using this solution for eight months now. I have also used it in the past.

I would rate stability a solid nine out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. I would say it does scale out. However, I'm not a hundred percent sure of the scale-up. I haven’t run out of space yet.

I contacted the customer service and support team and found that they were great with ECS. However, when it came to PPDM, the experience was not as good due to its complex multiple layers. It required going through multiple people to determine responsibility for each part. This complexity was partly due to the split between Dell and EMC, which caused some issues initially, but they gradually resolved it over time.

The initial setup is easy if you know what you are doing. However, it can be challenging for new users. There are around 2,000 end users.

I also work with Veritas NetBackup. Currently, I work with Dell's AVAMA, and I would have liked to compare Veritas with Networker instead of Avamar.

Networker was an enterprise-level product, whereas Avamar was mainly designed for small to medium-sized businesses. However, Dell EMC has since acquired both Networker and Avamar.

Dell ECS is stable and reliable. But It is not a full-fledged cloud solution, but we do have cloud functionality integrated into it.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Our archival is on Dell ECS. Some critical data is on the cloud. The rest is stored on-premise.

We have government compliances to follow. We manage compliance using the tool. We also have our backups. We must have backups for audits.

It is a very good product. We face very few hardware failures. We face no downtimes due to hardware failure.

The setup is very complex.

I have been using the product for a long time.

The tool is stable. We never face any challenges.

The support is excellent. The remote team is proactive.

We did not use a consultant for deployment. We have a very strong technical team. We design solutions, buy products, and deploy them.

We have received a return on investment from the product. The data availability is good.

Sometimes, Dell is good. Sometimes, HPE is more suitable. If someone is concerned about their data, Hitachi is the best choice. It is the only organization that gives a 100% guarantee that the data will not be lost. We also use Linksys as our on-premise storage.

Most storage tools have similar features. We have moved the applications that need scalability to the cloud. We recommend the tool to our customers based on their requirements. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Dell ECS is used for HCI and storage. The good thing about NetApp is that it has the same operating system from start to end. Dell ECS uses multiple environments and operating systems for multiple use cases, which can sometimes be challenging.

Dell ECS is a price-optimized solution that is easy to deploy. Dell ECS is a cost-effective solution that provides ease of use and availability. Running a virtual machine, environment, or instance with Dell ECS is much cheaper.

The solution’s stability could be improved.

I have been using Dell ECS for eight years.

We are serving the solution for almost 50 to 60 servers.

I rate Dell ECS a seven to eight out of ten for scalability.

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward.

On average, the solution's deployment does not take more than three to four man-days for a ten-node cluster with 10 to 15 servers and DCDR. We had to set up DCDR and a private cloud to deploy Dell ECS. For that, we used VMware as a platform. Some boxes were from VxRail, and some were from servers and storage.

Running the operating system, application, or list of applications on Dell ECS is much cheaper. Depending on the project, we can get a return on investment in less time.

Dell ECS is a cost-effective solution.

From Dell's perspective, everything is usually hardware-bundled from day one for 80% to 90% of the cases. We have to go for a monthly subscription only in two to three cases where backup is involved.

We have one project manager and two to three engineers per technology, depending on the technologies we are using.

Overall, I rate Dell ECS an eight out of ten.

Dell ECS is used in my company for voice recordings using CAS protocol.

The major weakness in the solution is that there is no cloud version for Dell ECS. The product supports Copaco Cloud when you upgrade to Dell ECS Version 3.8. So, Copaco Cloud is only used for AWS and not for Azure.

The additional feature that Dell ECS should have is that it should be made movable to Azure.

I have been using Dell ECS for six months. Also, I am working on Dell ECS Version 3.6. I am a customer of the solution.

The product is not scalable since it is an older version. The newer versions of the solution are scalable. Three people in my company use the solution. Then, it is used by our business for voice recordings. The usage of the solution happens in a large company.

Dell's technical support team is good.

Though I wasn't involved in the setup process, I think it was an easy process.

I am satisfied with the overall product, but we aim to move to the cloud soon. The main focus of our investigation is to determine whether our product can be successfully migrated to the cloud. This is currently our primary area of interest. There is an option to move to the cloud, but it's related to AWS. So, we're trying to find out if we can move the data from Dell ECS to Azure to make some space since we are currently running out of space.

My company is planning to migrate to Microsoft Azure from Dell ECS. Also, we are still looking for better options. Apart from choosing Azure right now, all we can do is consider upgrading Dell ECS so that it can be scalable.

I recommend the solution based on what ones want to do and after considering the network coding of the ones interested in the solution. Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.

I deal in the area of IT strategy consultation. There was one assignment in our company for which there was a need for a storage solution, and because of this, we chose Dell ECS. I don't use it on a daily basis.

From an improvement perspective, Dell ECS should aim to offer a better pricing plan to its users. There should be an improvement in the product's basic architecture to be able to handle large datasets.

For a multi-technology stack environment, the platform engineering aspect could be simpler.

I have experience with Dell ECS. I work as a consultant.

It is a stable solution.

Around 1,20,000 customers of my company use the solution.

I presume that the product's technical support works since I haven't heard anything bad about them.

My company evaluated file storage and object storage products from Pure Storage before Dell ECS.

My company chose to work with Dell ECS since, with Pure Storage, it is very challenging to get resources capability-wise. Dell ECS was slightly cheaper than Pure Storage.

The product's initial setup phase was straightforward.

Most organizations don't have a single stack, and they opt for multiple or different stacks. The question arises related to the ease of management of hybrid technology stacks in an environment. Even if you have a very compelling proposition for a use case, the tool still needs to fit in with the overall enterprise architecture, and the way to ensure that the product fits in easily becomes an issue.

The solution is deployed on a multi-cloud and multi-storage environment.

I have not faced any challenges with the implementation part of the product.

Dell ECS becomes an important part of the technology stack in an environment, so the company does not look at the ROI part and focuses more on the stability and reliability areas.

The price of Vast.ai is much better than Amazon since it is available as one-tier storage, similar to flash storage or Pure Storage. With Dell ECS, the price per unit is low, and depending on the architecture, the price is almost one-third or one-fourth of the price of other products.

It is an expensive solution. There is a need to make early payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product.

The solution can help with large-scale content repository management in companies, but I see that the trend seems to be moving towards Vast.ai presently since it seems to provide a lot of value to its users at a very low price. For large content storage nowadays, I think that Vast.ai is preferred in the large enterprise area.

The improvements I have noticed in system reliability from the use of Dell ECS stem from the fact that the product works well.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it, but I would also suggest they look at products like Vast.ai before choosing Dell or Pure Storage.

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as an archive storage for our documents.

The compliance mode and such things are the most valuable aspects.

It has been stable. 

The scalability is good.

We're happy with the interface.

It integrates well with APIs.

At the moment, I don't feel like we have to improve anything. 

When the system goes down, then the compliance mode will not be all over the system. The system will stop working. They need to ensure that the system will work if a site goes down. That said, we have yet to have a site outage.

I've been dealing with the product for four years. 

The solution is stable. there are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. The performance has been good. 

The solution is scalable.

We have about 2,000 people using the solution. 

Technical support is good. 

We worked with the EMC Centera product previously. Dell EMC announced the end of life of the Centera assistance, so we changed to ECS.

The setup for us was pretty easy and pretty hands-off as we had outside assistance. 

We implemented the solution a long time ago. I'm not sure how long the deployment itself took.

Normally, maintenance will be provided by Dell EMC. You call and then Dell EMC will do the upgrade and so on.

The setup was done by an external consultant. We don't have so much to do with this setup.

I can't speak to the exact pricing. 

I use the product. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We're a customer and end-user.

The tool is easy to use. 

Dell ECS needs to improve its performance. 

Dell ECS is stable. I rate it a seven out of ten. 

I rate the solution's scalability a five out of ten. My company has 2000 users. 

The tool's support is good. 

The tool's deployment is easy. 

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten. I recommend it since it is reliable, stable, and easy to use.