Dell SC Series Reviews

We use it for running all our business workloads.

it allows us to grow service on demand.

Usually, we have pretty low latency. Our storage is less than 10ms, which is pretty good. No dramas there. That's pretty good performance.

For what it's doing today there isn't too much that I think they need to add to it. It's doing what it needs to do.

The stability is quite good. I have nothing but good things to say about it.

The scalability is pretty good. We have had no problems at this point.

Technical support is really good. We have had good, high-quality support with our SC Series. They respond quickly.

It's very similar to our previous storage, which made the transition to start using it easy. That was pretty good. We had been using EqualLogic storage. We switched because our old solution went end-of-life.

The setup was pretty good. We got the support people, Professional Services people, to come in and install it. It was fine.

It's definitely affordable. Of course, it would be better if they made it cheaper, even more affordable.

I rate it a nine out of ten. Nothing gets a ten.

What we are using from Dell EMC is their server line and their storage line. We're pretty well embedded with Dell EMC.

We no longer have an issue, especially in the support arena, of wasted hours: getting support, waiting for support to arrive onsite. It's been a huge time saver for us.

The most valuable feature is the customer support. Everyone has a product that goes wrong. It's how well they handle it when it does, and Dell EMC has been tremendous at that.

In terms of managing the solution, they've gone from "not bad to manage" to "downright easy."

We have integrated the system with Exchange and vSphere, among others.

They need to make it a little cheaper.

I won't entertain any other vendor at this point.

In terms of scalability, so far, so good. We run a whole lot of different product lines. The ability to scale, at least within the product series, has been wonderful.

Technical support has been top-notch.

The only thing that made the setup difficult were the layers of project management. I know they're going through some changes as Dell and EMC merge, but they really need to take a strong look at how project managers are deployed and what their level of knowledge is. More often than not, I'm having to run those calls.

We've been able to take them and run them completely to end-of-life. For us, storage side, that's about five years. We consider that the best turnover rate for us, while for server hardware it's three years. With support contracts, they've all made it to the end of those time frames.

Licensing, especially on the storage line, could use some simplification. It's not terrible, but, for example, with the Isilon series, they've gone to completely a la carte. A la carte is very difficult to traverse, when it comes to what you need. It would be more beneficial, at least from my point of view as a customer, if they did it more like car companies do, where there are package lines. That would be my one complaint.

I always recommend them.

Regarding the purchasing process, we were working with a VAR and they helped loop us together with the sales engineers and usually, within a few hours of discussion, we were able to drill down on everything. We had a product solution figured out, and almost next-day.

The most important criteria when selecting a product like this are the reliability of the equipment itself and the support.

I rate the solution at nine out of ten. They've really got the customer service, especially in the support arenas, nailed. They make information-gathering on their solutions, especially during pre-sale, easy to do.

We use the SC platform for storage solutions. As a partner, it's usually one of our go-to products for mid-range customers.

When it comes to mid-range storage solutions, it's usually our preferred solution, from all-flash all the way up to hybrid solutions too. Over time, the technology and how it performs, and its tiering capability, have been successful for us.

• Ease of use
• Scalability
• Performance
• Value for price

They've actually already done something that I think is needed, which is integration with Unisphere, which is the Dell EMC management platform, and then CloudIQ is their performance analytics solution. So they've actually implemented things that people have been asking for.

In addition, in any platform, there is always room for improvement. We're always looking for performance increases and keeping up with flash devices, and new products that are coming out.

It's a very stable product.

Honestly, most of the complaints I hear about this solution are either because systems have been misconfigured or sized improperly. Probably 90 percent of the issues people have are because it's not sized properly.

It's very scalable. They have solutions designed for SMB all the way up to enterprise customers with multiple petabytes of data. The SC Series is one of the two mid-market products for Dell EMC, so there is absolutely room for their solutions to grow with a company's needs.

Regarding Copilot - which is what they called their support, pre-Dell EMC - people have always had nothing but great things to say about it.

We use this product for daily business and normal IT operations. We also use it for replication of one system to another system. We also use it for the hostings for HANA virtualization. Those kinds of replications and IT applications. We use a hybrid version.

It had a lot of integration and supported all the platforms, so I was happy with what they were offering. The biggest selling point was when the vendor upgraded it. Dell upgraded the software licenses sold with that. Whenever the hardware is end-of-life, we could upgrade the controller or add a new disk or whatever. There was no lifecycle of three years or five years. We could carry on just by upgrading. It had many features, like a snapshot, replication, on-the-file RAID levels, mix-and-match files, those kinds of things.

Dell could improve the upgrading process. It was the lifecycle that made it very short. You'd upgrade the disk, and in eight, nine months, it would be obsolete. They cancelled an enhancement that included an all-flash unit. This would have improved the product.

We had worked with this product from Compellent's days before Dell bought them over, so I'll presume from 2006.

We never had a single crash with this product. It was just fine. 

The support was excellent. We had this storage for a while and server monitoring from Compellent.

Any IT company can do it. It's straightforward.

Pricing is market-related and is flexible for the solution. Pricing depends on varying life cycles.

We're trying to move some people across to some other storage solutions because this product is at end-of-life. I would give this product 10 out of 10.

Our primary use case of this solution is for deduplication software but that is just one of the features we use it for. We also use it for infrastructure protection or other objectives.

The most valuable features would be the ease of use and the cost effectiveness. Compared to other mid-range constrict technologies from Dell, this is a much cheaper solution.

Compared to other solutions, Compellent comes in the form of a component that's not true of a unified storage platform, for instance, to block a level of support can only be done through two different platforms.

The solution is very stable.

It is easy to scale - you can either add additional hard drives, or use expansion closures. That makes it easier to scale. We have a broad spectrum of small, medium and large-scale clients, and we are able to cover all sizes of organizations.

The technical support is quite good, especially coming from the speed of the technology and support that we received in the past. So yes, it's quite recommendable.

The setup and installation are much simpler now because Dell has standardized the configure process. 

I would definitely recommended this solution to others. However, if they are looking at the unifier, there are other alternatives. I would like to see it becoming more unified in the next release. I will give it an eight out of ten, because I think there is room for improvement. Nothing's perfect.

We only build the basic foundation and the basic installation for the end-user on Dell EMC SC Series. However, I'm not sure what they install on it. Our main use case for Dell EMC SC Series is for VMware.

The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series.

I have been using Dell EMC SC Series for approximately one year.

The stability of the Dell EMC SC Series is very good.

We have approximately 100 users using this solution in my organization.

The Dell support is helpful and the response is quick. The agents' knowledge is very good.

The installation could be easier. The comparable IBM solution is much easier to install.

The process for the installation takes approximately one day.

I did the implementation of the solution myself using the user guides.

We have the basic license for the use of this solution and it is a permanent license. The overall cost could be less, it is expensive.

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

We use the product in our company and I deal with it personally.

The solution is automated, but we still don't get a complete speech from the disc. The flash speed should be addressed. 

While the scalability is good, there are certain limitations. Our racks are at their limit, so we do not have the requisite scalability to expand. 

We would like to see replication of the data storage without the need to resort to third party tools. Storage to storage repetition would be a nice feature. 

We have been using Dell EMC SC Series for four years. 

The solution is stable. 

While the scalability is good, there are certain limitations. Our racks are at their limit, so we do not have the requisite scalability to expand.

When it comes to upgrading, we are contemplating a move to TISON, TI-1, TI-2 and TI-3. There may be a need to move between the TISON. 

As this is our first product, I cannot give a comprehensive review or rating.

I rate Dell EMC SC Series as an eight out of ten. 

We use it in our production and environmental support along with our VDI infrastructure. 

It has been working to our expectations.

Compared to some of the hardware that we support, from an infrastructure operator standpoint, I never had any problems with the system.

We have seen some degraded throughput with mixed workloads. We have been working with Dell EMC to correct some of these latency issues.

It has been one of the most stable products in our data center.

We have not had to scale yet.

We have found the solution to be affordable.

Do your research if you are looking into this product.

I am very happy with it.