Dell SC Series Reviews

I mostly like the interface of the product.

Compellent is a nice technology, but it's not very efficient anymore. There are better products out there.

I have been using Compellent for five years.

In terms of stability, it's good enough. It's okay. 

Compellent is not scalable.

We have a medium size company using the product.

The support is good.

Compellent's setup is straightforward.

I would not recommend the product. There are other, better products out there.

This system is not a good fit for most customers. It's not only the fact that it's too old, but it has not developed any more since Dell bought it.

On a scale from one to 10, one is the worst, 10 is the best I'd give it a 6.

The flexibility of this solution has been valuable for our business. 

This solution could be improved if overall performance was improved and operated with a higher speed and supported a higher volume of RAM. 

I have used this solution for one year. 

The initial setup was complex, specifically when integrating this solution with other technology. The deployment was easier and offered flexibility. Before deployment, I would suggest checking other technology to ensure there is compatibility. 

This solution could be better priced in comparison with other vendors. 

I would recommend this solution for customers looking for Unity or PowerStore functionality.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

The solution is used for shared storage for the ESX cluster, VMware, or Vcenter cluster. It's a virtual machine and it's hosting space for virtual service. The primary reason we use the solution is to host the core infrastructure, the virtual servers including file servers, domain controllers, application servers, sequel servers, etc. Basically, the servers that run the business.

The solution's most valuable feature is its performance redundancy. The solution works quite well for that. The redundancy is important to us for snapshot and recovery purposes.

The product offers good performance and is quite powerful. 

The implementation is straightforward. 

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.

I've been using the solution on and off for over a decade. It's been about 12 years at this point. However, I should note that I don't use it every day. 

The stability of the solution is good. There don't seem to be any issues with reliability. There aren't bugs or glitches. It works well.

The solution is targeted at small to medium businesses, I would say. It's usually something that you would put in and expand on, so, in that sense, yes, it is scalable to a degree. 

However, it is not infinitely scalable. That's not a criticism. You just need to buy the right product in the first place. I don't have any problems recommending it for companies of a certain size that may need to expand a bit.

We contact technical support all the time, so we've been in touch on multiple occasions. They are very good. They're responsive and knowledgeable. They help us when we have issues. We're very satisfied with the level of service they provide.

The initial setup is fairly straightforward. It's not complex by any means.

The time it takes to deploy the solution depends on how big it is. It's difficult to say exactly how long it will take as each company is different. At the most, it might take three days, however, it depends on where it is and what has to be set up. Right from out of the box users can start putting data on the storage. 

We handle the implementation for our clients. On top of that, wherever we've been asked to either install or work with Compellent SAN, there's usually someone on site who is trained to do basic maintenance and tasks of that nature.

I don't really have experience across different vendors. 

I'm a contractor and a Dell partner; I help implement the solution for clients, however, I'm not a reseller. I help fix and update the solution and occasionally maintain the product for clients. In my experience, the solution is usually deployed either on-premise within the office or the head office, or quite often in a co-located data center.

I would recommend the solution, however, only if it made sense for the individual company. It's not right for everyone and it would depend on the situation. A company considering implementing it should always check their requirements.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten overall. Now and then, they do break and you do have to replace them. With any solution, something always goes wrong at some point. That's not a mark against this particular product. I don't believe any product is perfect.

We use it for various type of data but mainly for virtual environments.

With the hybrid storage approach, we can balance between cheap space and good performance.

The solution has a wide variety of valuable features. The data progression works quite well. We use a lot the snapshots functionality.

We appreciate the solution offers deduplication and compression as well.

I would prefer to have NVME, at least on the back-end and inline deduplication. Anyhow as Dell EMC has announced the new product - Power Store these features will not be available for Compellent.

I've been using the solution for six years.

The solution is very stable.

We have about 60 ongoing operations. As you can imagine, we have had some challenges in the past, but not something that it's more concerning than what might happen when compared to the other storage vendors.

We didn't have a need to replace the controllers. These can be added, however, we didn't replace the controllers in any of the cages. As I understand it, that is something you can do. 

The only issue with scaling up is that the pricing gets pretty high. It's not easy to get a discount for a vendor if you want to extend the box. It might be about 1000 Euros for a few terabytes and goes up pretty quickly from there.

The support works very well. We deal with support from different parts of the world including Europe, Asia, and America. There are local support centers in each region. It's easy to engage the support and usually they are very proactive. I have very good feedback for support. We have had some challenges sometimes in a very few amount of cases where the parts were not delivered on time.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's simple and lower models are customer installable. 

We do the physical installation for our clients. We handle the initialization of the site. We get access and do the initial configuration where we configure the storage pool, the profile, and whatever is needed there. Then we do a series of tests. Functional tests, such as failover tests, are something we do for our clients during the implementation process.

The solution is not expensive. Initialization is strait forward, not complicated

They have a few features that can be licensed.

THe solution works well for small to medium-sized environment. The storage isn't enterprise-level. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our use cases are related mostly to manufacturing industries. 

Dell SC Series' most valuable features are performance and network facilities. We have no issues with its integration. The tool helps to visualize servers. 

The tool's pricing is high and not suitable for medium companies. 

I have been working with the product for eight years. 

We have had no issues with the solution's stability. 

One client company has more than 5,000 users. Most of our customers have users between 500-1000. 

If customers have any issues, they can contact Dell support. 

Positive

The tool's deployment is not complex. It takes around two to five days to complete. 

I rate the tool a ten out of ten. 

Dell EMC SC Series has many valuable features.

We are very satisfied with Dell EMC SC Series.

The user interface is good, I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We had some issues with the battery in the previous version that we were unable to resolve. We are unable to resolve this issue, despite the fact that we have been using this product for over five years.

The price could be improved.

We have been working with Dell EMC SC Series and storage for more than 10 years.

We work with both the MD3620F and PowerStore 1000T versions.

Technical support is good. We have received good next-day technical support from them.

We are also working with NetApp.

The pricing is reasonable, but it is expensive.

We are partners with both NetApp, and Dell EMC.

I would rate Dell EMC SC Series a nine out of ten.

The solution's most valuable features are its storage capabilities and its duplication.

The solution could use more integration with popular backup systems. Dell storage solutions are not very integrated. There are no dedicated models for, for example, Veeam backup or Redhouse backup, etc.

The lower model, the 3000, should have duplication. It doesn't right now. It's only from 5000 that this is offered, but it depends on the performance. It could be they don't offer it on lower models because the duplication is too much of a burden to the performance.

The solution is stable; we've had no problems at all.

Scalability is okay, but the pricing of additional discs is pretty high. It's more optimized for the whole model of discs, not for single disc upgrades. We have about 500 users on the solution currently.

Technical support is good. They have good information and good remote monitoring of the systems. There are good accessibility and knowledgable engineers, so overall, we have a very good impression of the support of this solution. The take a reasonable amount of time to answer our queries.

We didn't previously use a different solution. We added this to replace some older methods because it's flexible and the visual storage was generally a very good idea.

The initial setup was rather straightforward. Deployment took about a month for the  5000, and the SC 3000 took about a week.

In terms of assistance with implementation, for the 5000 we used the Dell pilot program and for the SC 3000 we used a reseller.

We purchased the whole package at once. We don't pay any additional fees annually.

We are using the private cloud deployment model and utilize both the 3000 and 5000 models of the solution.

My advice to others considering using the solution would be, first of all, to buy the full disc on the shelf, not part of the shelf. Buy all the discs, and then buy another shelf because it's most effective financially. Buying a single disc is extremely ineffective and extremely expensive.

I would also advise others to look for backup software that is compatible. If you use something and it's not supported, you may be disappointed. We don't use it and don't plan to use it, so this is not a problem for us. There are probably others, however, that may look for an optimization method for their backups.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten; it would be higher if the solution had better integration capabilities.

We use Dell EMC storage at two data center sites for hosting vSphere server environments. Those server services are something that we offer internally in the company: SharePoint, GIS mapping services, license servers, and domain controllers. Pretty much everything is hosted on those servers or on the storage.

It is easy to use, expand the hard drives, add storage, and set up replication.

• I would like the ability to monitor and manage the storage.  
• The web GUI is not fully there. 
• I would like to have 100% functionality through the web app.

The solution is stable. We have not had too many problems. The issues that have come up have been addressed very quickly via Dell EMC. 

It is scalable. You can easily add-on storage to the core platform. 

I like using the technical support. Their support is set up where they actually get notified before we do if there's an issue. Thus, they are very proactive about issues.

It has a good price point and offers some value-added enterprise features.

Dell has a foot in the door. We buy their servers and have relationships with their account manager and reps. I'm content. 

Dell EMC has been through some changes over the past couple of years. When Dell merged with EMC, it was a bit rough, but they have great experts. That kept us in this realm because of their support and team.

It is a great, mid-level introduction to storage. I would recommend it. We are happy with it.