Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

The primary use case is NAS.

We use it for its quality and NAS.

It has good performance.

The solution is extremely functional for the price that we pay for it. It is worth the investment.

The application's administration needs improvement and become better. It previously was better.

It is not stable enough.

Dell EMC has good technical support. We haven't had to use it for this product, but we have use it for other products and not had any problems.

The initial setup and migration were straightforward.

The cost of it is good for us.

We purchased a five-year warranty.

We picked Unity, as it is a mature, established solution.

Research the other products that Dell EMC offers, as there is a wide variety.

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. 

My primary use cases of this solution are to install storage and perform tech refreshment.  

The most valuable features of this product are its reliable storage and its archiving feature.

An area for improvement is the available capacity. If a customer goes with a base model, which would have its own limit, they could not go beyond the model-supported capacity, so an increase would be good.

I have been using this solution for two years.

My impression is that the solution is stable and reliable.

The solution is scalable to whatever capacity the model allows.

We have had customers reporting issues with slow responses from the support team.

The initial setup is a simple process, taking around half a day at most.

The pricing for this product is manageable, though slightly higher than comparable products.

I trust this product, compared to other vendors. It is best suited to small to medium-sized companies. When implementing Unity XT, make sure that the installation team is clear on the under-storage concepts and product knowledge. I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

With a such a simple configuration you can add datastores on VMFS5 to any clusters on your vSphere organization.

• VMware integration: Grants both the Storage and Virtual Administrator the ability to create and mount datastores, or even to check how much space each VM is consuming.
• Block compression on F Models: Compression on F Models or in flash pools allows us to almost duplicate the available space on the array; more space for less money, everyone likes this.
• Simple management: The simple GUI implemented on the Unity arrays simplifies management.

Compression and block deduplication on non-all-flash solutions. I know it should not be easy to reach flash-like compression on mechanical disks, but it would bring this array to the top of the charts. And, of course, the block deduplication in mechanical pools. As I said above, everybody likes the "more space for less money" formula.

There were issues with the earlier releases, not now.

No issues.

All of our servers are Dell EMC servers. We have it integrated with SharePoint and all of our applications.

It's been a great infrastructure to build upon.

For me, the best thing is the reliability. Even some of ours that are somewhat old or out of warranty have a very solid, excellent reliability.

I love the systems management of the servers. It's easy to set up, easy to monitor.

Excellent stability. A lot of ours are older, even past what would be considered end-of-life, but they still have a very low failure rate.

Scalability is good. We use some Dell EMC blade servers, so it's easy to add another blade server without a lot of cabling or setup.

Good tech support. We can usually get a parts dispatch without too much fuss.

The initial setup was easy.

The pricing is right in line with competitors.

I always recommend Dell EMC servers in general, as far as their reliability goes and the management software built in.

I rate it at nine out of ten. Overall, we're very happy with the product. It's not perfect, there are little bits of improvement that could be made to things that we use such as Dell EMC OpenManage Essentials, minor things. It's good, just not perfect.

The ease of use, which makes it very good.

We use it to backup our storage, and also positioning LANs by using the file option, then the block. It is very easy and convenient.

The payment account area.

For approximately a year.

At the moment, there are no issues.

We once had an issue where one LAN was full, and because it was full it was making the SP reboot. But with the upgrade, we decide it was a non-issue, and with the upgrade, it was fixed. The upgrade fixed it.

There are no issues with the scalability.

They have been helpful and knowledgeable.

We used DNX, but we needed to buy something for the backup solution. That is why we went for Unity.

The initial setup is simple, okay, and easy.

The pricing is fine and licensing is okay.

Yes, we looked at Hitachi.

We are partners with this vendor.

• Use Replication function to build up cold or warm Disaster Recovery (DR) site.
• Use Auto-Tier and FAST VP to build up flexible space.

• Performance dashboard
• Because I always need to trouble shooting for IOPS & database (DB) performance issues. I can quickly focus on what is part of the issue. I can decrease downtime and can plan next year's extended capacity budget.
• Integration of the VPLEX function for Cross IDC structure.

For the integration of the VPLEX function for Cross IDC structure, they should integrate the function into the SP controller.

Yes, sometimes the DNS does not work out properly.

No, there have not been issues with the scalability.

I have a few customers who are using Dell EMC products for storage, backup, and other different purposes. 

On the Data Domain side, the most attractive feature is the compression ratio, which none of the other products in the market are currently able to provide. On the Unity side, what customers mostly like is the availability guarantee. 

I have been working with Dell EMC Unity XT for three years. 

This product has been stable. 

Dell EMC Unity is scalable. 

This product does bring a ROI. As I have seen, it helps them to protect their investment since it is future-proof and scalable, so they don't have to change products every year or so. Because of those things, I have seen customers using the EMC product for more than three years. 

When I see other products—like HP, Huawei, and Lenovo—from competitors, I have seen a lot of disadvantages with EMC, price-wise. Huawei and Lenovo are very price competitive. 

Looking at the price point for a country like Sri Lanka, where we have a very low economy, I think you need to look at a pricing mechanism that is a bit more flexible. 

I rate Dell EMC Unity an eight out of ten because, economically, there are a few things that Dell needs to improve.