Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

We use it for user shares and VMs.

We have 200 people using it in our organization.

The snapshotting is slick.

I like how it separates the iSCSI drives from the standard shares. It has two different routes to it. I know most of the other solutions do this, but I just like the way that Dell EMC does it.

I like the dashboard, which gives me a quick reference on my monitor as to what is using what bandwidth.

It could go faster. Make it bigger, better, and faster at a lower price, and I am there.

Our solution is four- to five-years-old. We use it every day.

I have never had any stability issues. It has been solid and stable. The dual platform, i.e., how it sits one head on top of the other, has been rock-solid. I have never had an issue with it.

I have noticed there is another version that has come out.

I haven't scaled it yet. The way that I set it up was half the drive bays are being used. When I do need to scale up, I am just going to duplicate the other half of the drives, stick them in there, and then spin them up.

The technical support is good and quick.

I would like a little faster response, but I don't think that their response is really that slow. They respond fairly quickly, at least fast enough for most issues. If it was an emergency issue, it might be different, as they probably would move it up the ladder anyway.

It is a little bit of a pain at first to set up the snapshotting. However, once it is set up, and you figure it out, it is not that bad.

I needed one of the specialists to set it up initially, which is not surprising because the solutions are a pain in that way. Some of the menus, and how it is at first, are a little awkward. It takes a little while to get used to, then it all starts to make sense.

I liked the price point when we purchased it.

I don't know what other units have that Unity doesn't have. Though I would say to them, "Keep up with your competition."

Look at it online. If you can get a demo version in-house, give it a shot.

If you need to keep data safe and make sure it doesn't go anywhere, Dell EMC Unity is a good way to go.

I would rate them as nine out of 10.

We are using it as a unified storage solution for different workloads, databases, and data backup.

It provides simplified deployment, monitoring and management of storage resources. It is very user-friendly. 

Facilitated optimization of the storage utilization is a really good benefit. 

One of the major challenges we faced with this solution was regarding DPE. When the failure of DPE happens, it needs to be replaced with another part as Dell Unity XT offers a single data processor. Finding the replacement can be a complex task because it's hard to search for the exact part number since that information is not as public as other solutions, such as HPE, provide. Also, since it requires extensive research of the product, it's not very secure. Working on the complexity of these issues would be helpful.

I have been using Dell Unity XT for approximately four years. 

We are highly pleased with the level of the stability so I am rating it ten out of ten. 

Dell Unity XT offers good performance in general with minor limitations regarding mid-level storage. I don't think it's suitable for large enterprise models. I rate it seven out of ten.

Dell Unity XT offers reasonable support, but due to political reasons, my company is under sanctions, so I rate it five out of ten.

Neutral

When I started working with databases, I immediately started with Dell EMC. Later on, I discovered different solutions and choices such as Fujitsu, HPE, Hitachi, NetApp, and Sophos, but it is not possible to implement any of the mentioned solutions due to geopolitical reasons and issues with licensing. 

The initial setup was very easy. This solution is a good fit due to its user-friendly nature regarding implementing and managing the operations. It took approximately two hours to complete the whole process.

The deployment process went really easy with two specialists from our IT department. It is important to note that the efficiency and effectiveness also depend on the expertise of the people operating the solution. 

The pricing structure offers a favorable balance between the cost and the variety of features offered.

I am fairly satisfied with this solution. It is a good choice for small or medium enterprises. I rate it seven out of ten. 

I've been working with this solution for about six to seven years. It is deployed on-premises and on the cloud.

It is scalable, and we usually recommend Dell Unity XT to small and medium companies.

I would rate technical support at eight out of ten.

Positive

It takes about eight hours to get Dell Unity XT up and running. Fine tuning may take longer.

The installation can be managed by two people and the configuration by one person.

It's an expensive solution, particularly for medium companies. One device costs about 30,000 euros. The support contract is quite expensive as well. We are currently looking for other lower-cost solutions.

Overall, I would rate Dell Unity XT at six out of ten because it's an expensive solution.

We primarily use the solution for storage for our online services.

The response time is good. It is suitable. 

The product is easy to use. It's not complicated at all.

We do have some sanctions in our country, and this solution is one of the options we have available to us. 

It is easy to set up the solution. 

You need to self-study. We'd like, however, to get professional training. It would be ideal to have some online sources available to us to help us understand its capabilities.

We cannot connect directly with Dell due to sanctions. We'd like to be able to connect to the distributor directly as sometimes we sometimes get the wrong information. It would help with transparency.

I've been dealing with the solution for about six months. 

It has been really stable up to this point. There are no bugs or glitches. It does not crash or freeze. 

There are three of us using the solution. We have more than 3,000 customers using the product. 

It's scalable. Everyone has been pretty happy with its capabilities. 

I've never dealt with technical support in the past. 

The product is not complicated to set up. The implementation is simple. 

It is quick to deploy. It took us about three weeks. 

We gathered the hardware, and we used the servers to connect to the host. It was pretty simple. 

We handled the deployment in-house with instructions or by looking at YouTube for direction. 

We have not witnessed an ROI at this point. That said, we do see that it is worth the money.

I'm not sure of the exact licensing cost of the solution. 

We are a broker. We're users. We are medium-sized, not enterprise-sized. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. It is easy to use, scalable, and easy to set up.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We use it as block storage for a couple sites. 

The performance is fine for what it does. It is flash and spinning media.

For sites that we use it on, it gives us more flexibility and high availability solutions. It is easier to expand the site, if needed.

It is simple to use and easy to manage. We don't touch it after we set it up. It is not something you constantly have to go in everyday and tweak, which makes it beneficial.

• Ease of use: The GUI management is very easy to use.
• The management is easy for us. We rarely touch it now. It just runs.

I would like the UI to look better.

Stability is very good. It has been running for over a year now without problems. We haven't had any dropped layers.

The growth is difficult to forecast, but it's easy for the unit to grow when needed. It is very scalable.

The technical support does alright.

We didn't have a solution in place for the size that we needed to have a high availability solution. Dell EMC is our preferred storage provider, so we went out and worked with them to get a solution where we have a cluster environment to VMware and a failover with the other node along with shared storage.

The initial setup was very straightforward. This was not our first SAN array, so I just racked and stacked it, and they gave us the IPs and turned it over to us. 

The purchasing has been simple. When you do need storage, you spec it out. Then, you receive a quote back and make a decision from there. 

The last purchase was in China, so I was more on the config, less on the purchase side.

The solution should be cheaper.

We evaluated NetApp. We decided on Dell EMC because we are more familiar with them.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Reliability
• Price.

• Fiber channel connectivity
• Fast cache features
• Support of VVOLS
• 10GB NICs
• Support of high performance and rapid provisioning/expansion options
• Deployment time is quick from unboxing to setup
• Scalable
• Supports both small environments and larger deployments
• Supports hosts connected via fiber channel directly to the unit without the need for fabric switches

Unity 300 is now the go-to storage device we use as we virtualize our infrastructure.

The SAN currently exceeds our requirements in terms of performance. We have estimated for 30% growth per year for three years. The configuration purchased had storage capacity and performance to match these requirements.

EMC provided a slightly alternative solution using all-flash negating all disk I/O, latency, and contention issues. We have seen a huge performance increase due to all-flash that is beyond what was anticipated. In three years, when the storage is close to its limits capacity-wise, performance will be greater than necessary.

The SAN provided by EMC exceeded our expectations. The only room for improvement I can see would be a faster leader time and lower cost. However, even with the lead time we had (which was approximately 10 days at the time of order) and cost we are very satisfied with the product.

I have used EMC Unity since June, 2016.

We have not had any stability problems.

We have not had any scalability problems.

Technical support is excellent. They have rapid response teams, ESRs, and the EMC account managers are always available.

We had no previous SAN solution.

The initial setup was very simple and instructions were provided in both documents and video tutorials.

Licensing ranges from $20K plus for a decent configuration. AFA configurations start at about $25K.

We looked at multiple vendors including NetApp, HPE, IBM, and Nimble.

There is currently a long lead time on 3TB SSD disks due to a shortage of materials in the USA.

We were able to consolidate from multiple types of disks into a single group of disks of the same speed. Now, we do not have to worry about preparing pools of disks for each server application. Instead, they are all using the same disks but getting a faster response due to the nature of the solid-state drives.

I like the fact that you can use a solid-state array (all-flash array) for your servers. It has a very intuitive web console that runs in HTML5 and makes navigation and administration fairly easy.

This product lacks deduplication and compression at the current version 4.1.0. LACP is not available for iSCSI either.

The previous version to 4.1.0 caused the array to stop responding during the code upgrade.

We have had no scalability issues so far.

The merger between Dell and EMC caused some issues with support tickets not getting assigned properly. The last few months the support has improved.

Although, we cannot compare them one to one, we were using Celerra NS-480 and now we are using EMC Unity. The main reason, we switched platforms was due to EMC end-of-life support for the Celerra NS-480 as December 31, 2016.

The initial configuration was quick since we took time to prepare the project plan that states what we need to start the installation. We had some challenges when connecting the ESRS gateways to monitor and manage these arrays.

This unit is one of the cheapest storage all-flash arrays in the market and it does well for what it is intended. It can be combined for both file and block storage.

I looked into EMC VNX, NetApp, Isilon, Qumulo, Pure Storage, Nimble Storage, and Tegile.

Learn about the product and its capabilities. If you are unsure whether this will handle your workload, my suggestion is to get a proof-of-concept with your preferred value added reseller. Move some workload to it and test the performance. There is nothing worse than buying a unit that won’t perform as you expect it.

We use it for the hosted data store in VMware environments. I also work with it as a solution itself.

It's easy to use, easy to manage, easy to troubleshoot, and the process support is good. 

We can run our environment as we need and run it in the whole flash. Unity is dynamic. We can only save the usable capacity on Unity. 

We need to improve the controller to work as active-active. We also need to improve the snapshot on the Unity site.

I have been using Dell Unity XT for eight years. 

It is a scalable solution. One engineer and one technician work on this solution.

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment takes three to four hours.

The technical support team is fast and responsive. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten.