Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

I'm a data center solution architect at Merdasco and based on our customers' needs, we build solutions for them. This product is very flexible, powerful, and suitable for many environments.

Dell EMC Unity OE provides block LUN, VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols), and NAS file system storage access. Multiple, different storage resources can reside in the same storage pool, and multiple storage pools can be configured within the same DPE/DAE array.

Dell EMC Unity is designed for performance and optimized for efficiency. This product is perfect for small, and mid-range customers who need to pay less, but still, get enterprise-level capabilities.

This product needs to have better integration with enterprise backup solutions and archiving devices. Also, it would be improved with better flexibility for replicating with third-party SAN storage products. There are some SAN solutions that help customers to manage their data centers easier than the past.

I've been using this product since 2016 in my customer's data centers.

Small and medium-sized companies can benefit from this product.

Today's mid-range SAN storage is designed with a mixture of some high-end features and enhancement can address new IT demands and EMC Unity XT is also one of them.

If you have access to customers service EMC is one of the best and you could benefit from the knowledge center of EMC and its community 

Based on my experiences there are some SAN products, same quality as Dell EMC Unity. and two parameters help to choose witch SAN solution for which company.
First: What are the requirements of the customer?
Second: What are the differences between storage solutions?

The initial setup of this product is very easy and after some steps, everything is ready to start provisioning it for datacenter servers.

I have implemented this solution through the in-house team. 

This solution has just released and time can say how it could be valuable and stabe in the customer's area.

This product is suitable for customers who are looking for simplicity and cost-effective SAN storage products

I have compared some similar solutions such as 3par and HDS VSP G Series. Among all the mid-range I have known EMC Unity XT series are designed for new IT requirements such as cloud compatibility, NVME ready, and capacity growth.

It's a good idea to add some features to this storage such as better integration with container-based services.

It is for users of VDI solutions.

• We use it to implement all our VDI solutions.
• It is easy to deploy and manage.
• We were able to integrate it very quickly with other solutions.

• Cheaper
• Its consumption of kVA

I would like to see more compression and deduplication added to the solution. Today, our compression is about 2:1 and other solutions give us about 4:1 or 5:1.

Technical support is good.

The initial setup is good.

Ordering is easy, but the processing site and working with those companies was difficult.

Right now, we're using it as overflow storage. We initially had a VNX and an Isilon. We needed to grow out further, and we thought that Unity would be a good way to do that. Right now, we're using it a secondary storage platform, VVols across it, and using it directly for VMware storage.

The flash aspects of the Unity make it incredibly fast. The fact that you get that much storage directly on what is basically a 3U box to us, that density has been really useful.

• The easy setup.
• We really enjoy the HTML5. 
• The VVols have worked seamlessly with VMware.

We haven't gotten that deep into it yet to suggest improvements, but based on what we've been seeing here at the Dell EMC World 2018 conference, we'll be looking to make sure CloudIQ is set up for it.

We haven't seen an issue with it since the day we installed. It has been only two months but it's good.

We really enjoy the scalability, absolutely. We're running one box right now, but the fact that we can add additional compartments as needed is extremely useful, and we will probably go that way in the future.

We've had to use very little tech support, but so far it has been fine. Mostly we had some assistance with it during setup and haven't needed it since. When we needed them they were there for us, helpful, on schedule.

We've been using Isilon and VNX. We heard about Unity here, at the conference, two years ago, and had started to look into it. Obviously, as flash has continued to get cheaper compared to spinning disk, it makes a natural choice.

When selecting a vendor, responsiveness and accountability are incredibly useful. A really important part was the support we got out of EMC for Isilon. Often, we'll hear from them that disks are ready to be replaced. They're getting to us, setting their pace, getting out there without much interference from us.

In terms of price, I would say that the support you're getting with it is probably an underestimated value that comes with the box you're buying.

I would tell a colleague this makes a very sound investment. It's very reasonable density for space. The extendability is extremely useful. It's hard to choose a competitor at that level that would do it better.

It is primarily for block storage for VMware in our Americas data centers, and it is also used for block storage and file storage in our European data centers.

It's a much smaller footprint than our older storage arrays, which take up some six tiles, a lot of space in the data center. The Unity's are a lot smaller, and they're a lot faster.

We use the all-flash arrays so the performance is probably the most valuable feature. As features go, deduplication and compression are important too.

I would like to see them add Storage Groups, like we have had in Clariions and VNXs. Storage Groups would be a great addition.

We've had no issues with it whatsoever, as far as stability goes.

We have not had to add capacity to them. I would imagine it's going to scale well, we just haven't had to add capacity.

The support is very good.

It was just a refresh.

When selecting a vendor, the criteria for us would be 

• track record
• stability
• support.

I work for a rather large law firm and they're not typically that price sensitive but, obviously, we need to be good stewards of the firm's money as well.

The setup was pretty quick, pretty easy.

At this point, I would give the Unity an eight out of 10. I think it's a little bit early on in the development of features. But overall, it has performed well.

There are some alternatives, but what we've found, working with our partners, for mid-range storage it's probably the best one you could choose. There are other offerings from other vendors, but it's a good choice.

It can improve your TCO. When you buy a Unity box, you can consolidate a lot in a very small frame. You can save energy and, if you're arranging a room for your equipment, it can help you reduce costs in tiles and flooring, energy, and so on. It is pretty easy to use, so your storage admins don't have to put a lot of effort into managing it. It's easy and practical to use.

I like the idea that it can compress and dedupe inline. That is quite a stunning feature for mid-range customers. That is something that is much better than the expectation that we have with VNX, which does that post-processing, and is not recommended for databases. So it's a big step for Unity. When we position Unity, that is one of the first things we say, that it is prepared to work things inline with dedupe and compress.

I believe this product lacks some things that are extremely valuable for customers, especially VNX customers. The NAS capabilities of Unity - I have to say there are a lot of things I miss. For example, deduplication for hybrid. I have tons of customers with VNX and dedupe. These customers achieve around 50% dedupe efficiency and they mostly use them for archive. If you're talking about 50TB of NAS, which is stored in a 25TB repository, which is very economical, and you can not provide that in a Unity hybrid box, you have problems. That has caused us a lot of problems. 

The other problem I have with the NAS capabilities in Unity is the WORM feature. We were working with a government company that has a public bid and they were buying storage for 13 remote sites. All of them required WORM. Since this is a government customer they took two years or so to establish the project. And they required the WORM feature to securely store records, and they had to be unmodified records. They bought that the idea and they implemented a NAS solution that was going to be consulted by an Oracle Database. They had to buy VMX because Unity didn't have WORM. That would be the most important thing. It's very problematic.

Migrating from VNX to Unity was not so straightforward in the beginning. You could not migrate NAS servers from CIFs. They began with NFS. they recently added CIF support. So, lots of problems there.

I would say it is stable now. Of course, the first releases had some issues but I believe it is fine now.

Peru is a very different market from the U.S. or Europe. A company that is mid-range in the U.S., for instance, could be using an enterprise solution in Peru. For Latin America in general, it is a perfect product for mid-range and for some enterprise-grade, big, transactional businesses.

Technical support is pretty good. It always has been. In Peru, we have a senior engineer that has been with the company for 32 years. He has a lot of knowledge. We have three field engineers. For a small business, like the Peruvian one, it's more than enough, because these machines never fail. You just turn it on and that's it.

We had some issues installing these machines at the beginning, but overall it is really easy. It's done exactly the way the manual says.

I would rate Unity a seven out of 10. I know these products since Clariion, and I believe they hit a great peak with VNX2. It was a product customers loved. When Unity arrived, the ability to consolidate NAS and SAN in a 2U box was pretty cool. But the NAS part didn't follow. That's why I give it a seven.

Mostly, it is used for the storage of a fertilization environment. It performs fine.

All the features are okay, but not all of our customers are using all the features.

The features are nice, but you can't use every feature, because it costs in performance. Therefore, you have to choose which features to use to achieve a better environment. That is why customers do not use every feature in Unity.

It is very stable. While I have had downtime, it has mostly been due to a bug in the MCX version.

Scalability is good.

Since Dell took over EMC, the support has been very bad. Before, the support was fine. Now, the support is slow or they don't react.

As a partner company, if EMC does not react immediately, it is not good. Because if there are any issues with the customer, then we need assistance. However, it is getting better and could be better.

The VNX is also a good system, but Unity is a little better. I am not saying it is much better, but it is better than the VNX. 

Just use EMC.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

1. The product itself.
2. How the product is used.

It saves us time, it does not require a lot of admin from us. We are looking for things that we don't have to spend a lot of time managing. This solution falls into that category.

It is easy to use. Setting up replication is pretty simple. We just set it and forget it.

I'm not sure if it has a single pane of glass management console. That would be something we would like to see. Managing as many platforms as we do, as many physical devices as we have, anything that can provide a single pane of glass would be a huge benefit.

We're happy with the stability. We have not had any issues with it. We run all-flash on two of them and, so far, we have not had any complaints about performance issues.

Other than upgrades, I have not had to use tech support. When I have had to do upgrades, they have been responsive, and easy to get to.

We are replacing our VNXs with it. Performance-wise, it has been pretty stable. The code upgrades are fairly simple and straightforward. I can't say it has had any issues so far. 

When selecting a vendor, product stability is the big thing, but support is probably right up there with it.

I would use this solution over most VNX solutions. It is right up there. We have some Pure Storage, so it is somewhat in contention with that. We are mostly an EMC shop, so that's probably our biggest deciding factor. If you're an EMC shop, I would definitely go with Unity. If not, which you go for will probably be in the middle. Pure probably has the ease of use down a little bit better than Unity, but I would ding their support much more than anything I've done with EMC. 

Easy to use. For beginners, it is very interactive.

The company migrated data from an older NetApp storage. The entire environment is virtualized. The amount of fast cache is great for meeting all demands.

All areas, since the entire environment is virtualized. In Brazil, price and native unity migration tools are not very good yet.

Still using.

No, but I found some articles about a code upgrade that solved some issues.

No problem. During installation, I added more disks and this activity ran without problem.

EMC technical support is great. With support, chat works well to talk with someone about any kind of problem. The only problem is some support agents take a lot of time to understand your issue.

I have worked implementing storage for at least 10 years. So yes, I used a huge number of solutions before. In this case, the customer changed because the warranty of his older storage expired.

The implementation went smoothly. The startup tool is very easy to use.

I believe there are other cheaper options, but you are not paying just for the "iron". The support in storage environment is a crucial thing to consider. Also, consider buying more flash disks for fast cache.

HPE 3PAR

Implement views using consistency groups. It is easier to replicate LUNs, take snapshots, etc. Also, you can't use fast cache with SSD storage pools.