Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

It's a tier-two storage array. The performance is okay.

The all-flash array and the compression ratio are benefiting us. We still have to migrate a couple of systems. We are still in the process of doing it and we'll know better afterward. But, we've seen some good improvements. For example, we put it on one of the file servers and the backup performance improved quite a lot.

It has the same operating system for both file and block, and it actually simplifies everything. It's much smaller compared to VNX.

I have just been to one of the briefing sessions, here at the Dell EMC World 2018 conference, and they released a very cool feature, Snapshot replication, which is very interesting. I'm excited about that.

Stability seems to be good but we had some issues recently because of a bug in the system. We were presenting LANs to the Unity array but I think it caused a disruption to the host. EMC did acknowledge it and provided an alternative way to do it. We felt that this could have been avoided. It caused downtime to the host on two occasions.

Scalability for the 650F is good, but I was expecting a little bit more than that.

Technical support was helpful. I would have appreciated it if it were a lot faster, but we got a resolution for our issue.

We come from VNX, and we also have VMAXs.

When selecting a vendor we look at the 

• performance 
• scalability
• price.

First of all, it should meet the business requirements such as performance, and it should be compatible with all applications. Then we will look at the third factor which is the price.

Regarding advice, it depends on the size of the business. Unity, price per Gig, is actually a good system. In fact, I'm thinking of moving some of the old VMAX arrays to Unity because of the price performance per Gig. If the stability makes sense, then I'm actually going to move it.

Most of our customers use it on-premise, 90 percent of our customers use VMware vSphere on top of it, and a little more than half of them use Fibre Channel to connect to the Unity. They use it for most of their workloads.

Our customers have a competitive edge when compared to the other solutions in the market. Most of our customers don't just look at the value per Gig, they put a great value on the after-sales support and the stability of the appliances.

It's the simplicity, and most of all it's backed up by Dell EMC support, which is very valuable.

There aren't any improvements that come to mind, none that are obvious. After what I've seen today, here at the Dell EMC World 2018 conference, they pretty much have the next couple of years covered. For example, the current buzzword is the Cloud Tiering Appliance which allows you to tier data from your on-premise to the cloud or on-premise cloud.

To me, the stability is impeccable.

Scalability is good.

Tech support is very good, very efficient.

Setup is straightforward. Once you do it once, it's a walk in the park.

The backing of the vendor is important. In Dell EMC's case, we know that there is always someone backing us, just in case we get stuck.

A rating out of 10 out of 10 is a bit too much because, obviously, no product is super perfect, but I would rate the unity a good nine. What might make it a 10 is a better price.

I would vouch for this solution, I would definitely say go for it.

I think that EMC has a good name in the market. VNX was a great product, and Unity is seen as the natural replacement. Customers see that as an advantage of the Unity. 

VNX used to have some features that Unity still doesn't have. From that perspective, the progress is not that advanced, at least compared to what customers might expect.

We hear from our customers that it is stable. The other thing that customers say is that it's easy to manage. But, as I previously said, I think it has some things that are not ready yet and they are being announced for the next releases, such as inline compression and deduplication, IP replication, synchronous replication. VNX used to have these but Unity, not yet so. But we have good feedback about the product.

For our market, in Argentina, Unity is, most of the time, a good product, a big product. It is unlikely our customers would be short of on the number of drives or IOPS with the Unity. We don't have huge enterprises compared to the American market, for example. Unity is enough for our market's scalability. With the biggest products in the Unity line, we cover pretty much every customer and, if not, we start talking about VNX; but only for a couple of the biggest companies in Argentina. We are a small market.

Sometimes our customers are switching from an installed base of a competitors' solution, for example, IBM, or HPE. Some are users of VNX and are migrating to Unity.

EMC is the leader in the storage market so our customers see that, of course. Maybe they trust more in Unity than, for example, Compellent, because it is a product that comes from EMC. At least in Argentina, it is seen that way. Maybe Compellent products are good, but Dell's storage name is not the best.

I don't do setups myself. But I've heard that it's standard, it's not that complex. In a couple of weeks, the program is fully configured.

I would rate it a seven out of 10, mostly because of what I mentioned already, the features that aren't ready yet that previous products had. I think it is seen as not that mature. That's why it could be better. Maybe they should have stayed with the VNX until Unity was ready to be the natural replacement, and seen as the next step. I don't think that they can show big improvements in the Unity compared to what the VNX was.

We're actually in the first stages of getting it implemented. One of the ways it is really going to help in our organization is that we had to rely on VPLEX to do our replication for X-IO. We're going to be able to take several products out, which, I'm sure, Dell doesn't like too much. But being able to take some of those pieces out is just going to make it simpler for us to administer.

One of the things that I like the most about it is how they have changed the Unisphere GUI, and how it is now HTML5. It is so easy to use.

The array itself is so simple, easy to set up and easy to use, but it still has that great Dell EMC technology behind it.

I haven't found anything that has jumped out at me that they need to improve on. I have been very impressed with how it has gone out, because we use RecoverPoint in our environment and we're 99 percent VMware. Things just seem to show up, with very minimal setup on our side to get it to work.

I haven't run across any bugs in it yet, even from the implementation I did previously. We have had it in place in our environment for approximately three months now. I did an upgrade - the project manager wasn't happy that I did it - but the upgrade was very simple. It has performed like it is supposed to.

I think it will meet our needs going forward. I don't think we would ever max out the Unity that we bought, based on our business model.

I think the support from Dell EMC has improved greatly from what I received from EMC before they were purchased. They have been very responsive and very helpful.

I used to be on the VAR side, so I did an implementation in Texas, and then I went to Farm Bureau Health Plans. They were in the first stages of purchasing Unity to replace VNX, X-IO, and VPLEX.

It is very straightforward. It is like the old Geico commercial: "Even a caveman could do it."

I hardly ever rate anything perfect and best, so I would have to give this is a 9.9 out of 10. Nothing is absolutely perfect, but it's very high up there. I would recommend it to anyone.

We use it for software storage and factory structures for governmental structures, as well as in insurance companies and the financial sector.

I like that the solution is scalable.

The product’s pricing should be improved.

We have around 40 users for the solution, and the maintenance requires just one engineer.

If any issues arise, you can always contact a professional from Dell. However, we don't have any support problems because it's a great product. Also, we know everything about the product.

The initial setup is not complex. We send two engineers to visit the customer site, install the equipment into the rack cabinet, establish connections, and proceed to install the software. The first one handles the installation, while the other works on connecting everything, including setting up internet cabinets. The entire setup process takes a day or two.

The basic licenses and software are included in the package. If there's a need for additional recovery tools or anything else, you can order them separately. However, normally, all required software and licenses are already included.

I recommend this product. It’s a good product to buy or sell. The primary advantage is that this product has been thoroughly tested and proven over time. You won't encounter unexpected results. It's highly predictable. When making a purchase, you can be 100% sure there won't be any unforeseen issues. Overall, I rate it an eight out of ten.

We primarily use it for backup.

It is a good backup product.

• It is easy to manage. A lot of the system manages itself.
• It is nice the way ESRS works with remote support, being able to remote in and take a look at problems proactively.

• I would like to see more integration with other products.
• The interface can be a little challenging for someone new.

It is pretty reliable.

You can just add nodes and shelves to it.

The remote support is excellent.

We had a case automatically opened last night, and it is being handled.

Dell EMC has been around for a long time. Owning VMware is a big plus.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Support long-term
• Longevity
• Cost is always an issue.

Primary use case is block storage for healthcare IT. 

It has performed very well.

It has allowed us to be more scalable on the solution that we are buying, not having to overbuy a solution that we can't scale out.

The compression and deduplication which will be coming in version 4.3. With just those features, we will be reducing the amount of data and footprint on our hardware.

Among the biggest features that I wanted was deduplication, looking at the zeros coming in, in-line, and those will be available in version 4.3. There is nothing else I can think of at the moment.

Stability has been pretty rock solid for us. We actually did have one outage that was due to a bug in the code which caused the kernel to just run off on itself. It was a known bug. We probably should have been up on the newer code. We were a level behind. Although that bug was known, it caught us off guard.

Since then, we have had no issues with the stability. We have had 100 percent uptime.

Scalability is great, anywhere from upgrading the SPs to adding disks.

I would evaluate the technical support as doing pretty well. I have never really had an issue with Unity's support.

We were using a VNX solution, and the reinvestment was partially due to its age as well as support contract renewals.

When selecting a vendor, it often comes down to price, but we have been pretty much a Dell EMC customer for years. We look for their products, and it is traditionally pretty easy to move from product to product.

Very straightforward; simple. No Professional Services were needed on our install.

I give it a 10 out of 10. I like it for what our application does.

I would recommend it.

The primary use of the solution is 80% block storage and 20% file storage.

The most valuable feature is that the solution is a hybrid system, so you can do both block and file storage.

The solution can use improvement with the patch cluster like the Synchron and Active replication.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

Technical support for the solution is good.

The initial setup is straightforward.

As a partner, we provide the implementation service for our customers.

I give this solution an eight out of ten.

Only one admin person is required for maintenance. 

This robust solution fulfills block and file storage as it is designed to do. I 100% recommend this solution for block storage. There are some limitations with the file storage.

This solution will eventually be changed to a newer solution called PowerStore which will have a new range of storage options.