Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
Dell SC Series Logo

Dell SC Series pros and cons

Vendor: Dell Technologies
4.2 out of 5
118 followers
Post review

Pros & Cons summary

Dell SC Series offers strong performance and scalability with features like easy volume management and advanced auto-tiering. Users benefit from efficient data progression and seamless hardware upgrades ensuring continuity. Despite its reliability and robust features, users experience slow administration, compatibility issues with VMware, and upgrades causing downtime. Licensing complexity and throughput degradation with mixed workloads are noted. The price-performance ratio appeals to small and medium businesses seeking cost-effective storage solutions.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.
Get the report

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Dell SC Series is known for its easy management and volume scalability, allowing seamless assignment to VMware clusters and expansion of storage capabilities.
The auto-tiering feature of Dell SC Series offers efficient data management, as it dynamically moves data across various tiers for optimal performance.
With federation, Dell SC Series supports seamless live migration and integration across multiple systems, enhancing availability and reducing downtime.
Dell SC Series boasts excellent performance, particularly for mixed workloads, with impressive densification benefits using all-flash arrays.
Dell SC Series offers valuable replication capabilities, ensuring data availability and continuity, making it ideal for businesses requiring 24/7 operations.

CONS

VMware snapshot limitations affect compatibility with applications like Veeam.
Higher compression, deduplication, faster I/O, and larger drives are desired.
Support should respond more quickly to reduce high turnaround times.
The cost and pricing model are not suitable for medium companies.
SC Series does not support NVMe storage and faces phased-out architecture challenges.
 

Dell SC Series Pros review quotes

DW
Sep 3, 2018
The most valuable feature is the no-forklift upgrade. While the thing is running, I can change out the controllers one at a time and keep the customer up and running. I can add shelves and storage and SSD drives or spinning drives to the system, while it's running. I can bring all that in and rebalance the load across the new disks or, if we take disks away, rebalance the load across what's remaining, and it just works.
Read full review
Managinga2b8 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 3, 2018
The performance benefits weren't surprising, we expected that. What we didn't expect were the densification benefits that we got out of going all-flash. We're able to put more applications on the arrays because of how all-flash performs. The way some of the application profiles have responded to all-flash has been really pleasing.
Read full review
reviewer1762782 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 18, 2022
One of the most valuable features is the capability to switch between all-flash to hybrid, which have have actually done for one of our arrays. We started with the hybrid, with the limited if I'm not mistaken, and then over a period of time, we swapped all the hybrids with the SSDs. This was one of the big features because it gave us the capability to not stick with just one kind of media. Secondly, since it has sorted clustering, we were able to bring in the newer boxes and have it all clustered together. These were the two main features that we really looked into, which benefited our use case from an expansion/growth perspective. Another valuable feature is the ease of management.
Read full review
Buyer's Guide
Dell SC Series
December 2024
Free Report: Dell SC Series Reviews and More
Learn what your peers think about Dell SC Series. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
DOWNLOAD NOW
824,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Whitney Gray - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 24, 2020
They have a feature called Live Migrate; it's been very, very useful.
Read full review
ML
Aug 29, 2018
A valuable feature is the performance of the auto-tiering. It will move hot data up to your fastest Tier 1 or move your slow data down. Data progression is what it's called. With the auto-tiering you can have multiple tiers, you can have your Tier 1 be either spinning or flash, all the way down to 7.2K. It will change the RAID on the fly so your writes come in at RAID 10. After they sit for a while, they get converted to RAID 5, then they'll cool off and move down the tiers. Your performance is kept going, while the cold data is moved to your slow, non-performance tiers.
Read full review
BJ
Jul 22, 2020
The product offers good performance and is quite powerful.
Read full review
reviewer926175 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 5, 2018
The most valuable features are the with back-end dedupe, and the thin nodes. For a 20TB or 60TB, we're using almost a one-to-two ratio.
Read full review
reviewer1058013 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 23, 2019
It is just as stable as any other high-end solution.
Read full review
TG
Sep 2, 2018
We replicate between SAN to SAN for a lot of features and supportability. It also helps us when we want to upgrade to a newer SC Series or move the data from one data center to another.
Read full review
DataCent3afe - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 2, 2018
With auto-tiering, it's easier to understand than most arrays, knowing that all of your writes go to the tier that you specify, with easy-to-create storage profiles.
Read full review
Show 10 more reviews (out of 42)
 

Dell SC Series Cons review quotes

DW
Sep 3, 2018
We can definitely see a need for it being a multi-controller system for customers who want to scale beyond the current capability. That's always a downside. A lot of the new systems are scaling vertically, they scale out, and the Compellent, of course, is controllers with shelves under it, so you don't scale out with it, unless you add another one. But if you do, they don't talk to each other, like some of the other solutions that we sell.
Read full review
Managinga2b8 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 3, 2018
Overall, I'd like to see more synergy between Dell EMC's higher-tier platforms and their mid-tier platforms. What I have said, constantly, to my partners at Dell EMC is that the clear articulation of the path is really important to us. In that vein, what I'd also like to see is, with the migration strategy that's built into this product, a lot more attention paid to Dell's - in particular - legacy platforms and how we get from some of our legacy EMC platforms onto this platform with a straight-through migration and scaling strategy, not host-based migrations and not piecemeal... Dell EMC would do well to focus more on my ability to skip a generation, rather than having me take individual hops because I can't greenfield my way into a software-defined data center fast enough. This journey of multiple hops is not helpful.
Read full review
reviewer1762782 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 18, 2022
What I understand is that this is a 13 year old architecture, so it has lived its life and they're phasing it out. Honestly, we were initially struggling with the integration with VMware (but it was fixed with the VMware 6.5) and, then, it was around a 10GB network. At that time, it had the longevity to go to 100GB as well. It got us thinking about, when we go into the containerized architecture, what do we need to do to fix the infrastructure?
Read full review
Buyer's Guide
Dell SC Series
December 2024
Free Report: Dell SC Series Reviews and More
Learn what your peers think about Dell SC Series. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
DOWNLOAD NOW
824,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Whitney Gray - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 24, 2020
There's always room for improvement in the operating code.
Read full review
BB
Sep 5, 2018
One option I would like to see is, when you're up on the view-screen, to be able to incorporate getting to what HPE call the iLO, the Integrated Lights-Out. To be able to get that instead of having to go back and trying to find IP addresses and re-institute those would be good. It would be good to be able to that put on the initial splash screen.
Read full review
BJ
Jul 22, 2020
While there's always room for improvement in everything, I can't really think of a specific feature of the solution that requires immediate attention.
Read full review
reviewer926175 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 5, 2018
An issue we had was that the controller went down during an upgrade because of their upgrading the code. One side of the switch was down.
Read full review
reviewer1058013 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 23, 2019
I don't think the solution is very scalable.
Read full review
TG
Sep 2, 2018
We had times that we needed a file service solution. We've used FluidFS, but it's a solution that is being transitioned out.
Read full review
DataCent3afe - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 2, 2018
I would like to see an integrated key manager in the controllers. Currently, it's an external product. It would be nice to have the option of having a built-in key for self-encrypting drive features.
Read full review
Show 10 more reviews (out of 42)

Product Categories

Product Categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays
All-Flash Storage

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs Dell SC Series Logo
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs Dell SC Series
IBM System Storage DS8000 Series vs Dell SC Series Logo
IBM System Storage DS8000 Series vs Dell SC Series
See all alternatives

Product Categories

Product Categories
Frame-Based Disk Arrays
All-Flash Storage

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs Dell SC Series Logo
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs Dell SC Series
IBM System Storage DS8000 Series vs Dell SC Series Logo
IBM System Storage DS8000 Series vs Dell SC Series
See all alternatives
Related questions
  • 1
When evaluating Frame-Based Disk Arrays, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?