Dell XtremIO Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

it_user1175643

Snr. Build Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Sep 16, 2019

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Good inline data reduction and deduplication for enterprise-level organizations

Pros and Cons

"The solution's most valuable features are the inline data reduction and deduplication."

"This solution is geared toward enterprise-level companies. Small and medium-sized businesses would find it extremely expensive."

How has it helped my organization?

I'm able to deploy a scalable amount of virtual machines from images of hundreds of gigabytes per second.

What is most valuable?

The solution's most valuable features are the inline data reduction and deduplication.

What needs improvement?

It's not an improvement so much as a query. What I'm curious about is whether or not the feature has the ability to do inline data reduction between two physical storage solutions. If we have one storage solution in the UK and the other in Australia, will the system be able to tell us what we have already, so we aren't sending 95% of our data across the world unnecessarily? I know that the feature works locally on the source solution. What I'm curious about is, would that data reduction feature work between two instances of XtremIO in two different places.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for almost three years.

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Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

It was the company's choice to switch to this solution. I don't remember what we had beforehand. I think that they made the switch because we knew we were going to have a large amount of data. The data reduction deduplication that this solution offered was very valuable. We knew that if we were going to be doing an extremely high amount of the right operation, the inline data reduction would be valuable as well.

What other advice do I have?

The performance of some of the features of the solution is very powerful. XtremIO was powerful enough to allow us to disable features of other items.

If I didn't have to think about the cost, I would rate the solution ten out of ten. This solution is geared toward enterprise-level companies. Small and medium-sized businesses would find it extremely expensive.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user184665

Independent IT Analyst with 51-200 employees

Jan 22, 2015

It clearly needs some improvements here and there but this product is maturing very quickly.

EMC XtremIO most interesting characteristic? Predictability.

Last week, thanks to Tech Field Day Extra, I attended a presentation from the EMC’s XtremIO team. Some of my concerns about this array are still there but there is no doubt that this product is maturing very quickly and enhancements are released almost on a monthly basis… and it’s clear that it has something to say.

A rant about All Flash

In these days, contrary to the general (and Gartner?) thinking, I’m developing the idea that considering All Flash Arrays a separate category is a totally non sense ( you can also find an interesting post from Chris Evans about this topic). Flash memory is only a media and storage should be always categorized looking at its characteristics, features and functionalities. For example, I could build a USB-keys based array at home, it’s AFA after all… but would you dare saving your primary data into it? Will it be fast? (you don’t have to answer, of course!)
The fact that a vendor uses Flash, Disks, RAM or a combination of them to deliver its promises is only a consequence of designing choices and we have to look at the architecture (both hardware/software) as a whole to understand its real world positioning. Resiliency, availability, data services, performance, scalability, power consumption and so on, are the characteristics you still have to consider to evaluate if an array is good for a job or another.

Back to XtremIO

In this particular case, If we go back and look deeply into XtremIO design we will find that the system is equipped with plenty of RAM which is heavily leveraged to grant better constant performance and the highest predictability. In fact, looking at the charts shown during the presentation (around minute 14 of the video below), you’ll find that the system, no matter the workload, delivers constant latency well under the 1ms barrier.

The product, which has finally received updates enabling all common data services expected on a modern storage array (replication is still missing though), doesn’t shine for power consumption, used rack space or other kinds of efficiencies (at this time it’s also impossibile to mix different type of disks for example). But again, granting first class performance and predictability is always the result of a give-and-take.

XtremIO is based on a scale-out architecture with a redundant infiniband backend. Different configurations are available starting from a single brick (a dual controller system and its tray populated with 12 eMLC drives, out of the 25 available) up to a six-brick configuration for a total of 90TB (usable capacity before deduplication/compression). No one gave me prices… but you know, if you ask the price you can’t afford it (and, of course, they are very careful to that because $/GB really depends on the size of the array and deduplication ratio you can obtain from your data).

Why it is important

XtremIO is strongly focused on performance and on how it’s delivered. From this point of view it clearly targets traditional enterprise tier 1 applications and it can be considered a good competitor in that space. It clearly needs some improvements here and there but EMC is showing all its power with the impressive quantity of enhancements that are continuously added.

You know what? From my point of view, the worst part of EMC XtremIO story is that there isn’t a simple and transparent migration path from the VMAX/VNX, which would be of great help for the end user (and EMC salesforce)…

First published here.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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Dell XtremIO

November 2024

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Clovis Oliveira

Director at STORAGECORP Tecnologia

Jan 20, 2022

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Simple to implement with good integration and interface

Pros and Cons

"Xtrem10's features are more simple to implement. The integration and interface are also good."

"XtremIO needs to be lower priced. It also needs better endpoints and scalability."

What is our primary use case?

We are a partner with Dell and our specialization is storage.

What is most valuable?

Xtrem10's features are more simple to implement. The integration and interface are also good.

What needs improvement?

XtremIO needs to be lower priced. It also needs better endpoints and scalability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scability of Dell EMC XtremIO could be better.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We also use PowerStore which we find easier to implement.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

XtremIO is too high priced, especially in Brazil.

What other advice do I have?

XtremIO is a good solution. I would rate it an 8 out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user234747

Practice Manager - Cloud, Automation & DevOps at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

May 17, 2015

This is the first time I have witnessed 400,000 IOPS in any kind of enterprise lab.

Originally posted at vcdx133.com.

Today I completed the initial performance testing of my EMC XtremIO PoC system. I wanted to take a shot at it myself before the EMC SMEs come in to tune and optimise the configuration. In a single word, “Wow!” This is the first time I have witnessed 400,000 IOPS in any kind of enterprise lab. I look forward to seeing what additional tricks the experts can make my “X-bricks” perform.

Business Requirement for XtremIO

I can imagine people reading this and asking, “Why? It is so expensive!”. Well, the organisation I work for uses monolithic storage (EMC Symmetrix VMAX) which has been sized for capacity, and after 2 years of use we are feeling the impact of performance degradation as we consume the total capacity of the solution. My business requirement is to create a small but powerful “High Performance” cluster of compute, network and storage that will provide low latency, high I/O resources for my business critical applications that are currently suffering. This XtremeIO PoC is an attempt to meet that business requirement; I am also seriously considering hyper-converged infrastructure and server-side flash-cache acceleration as well.

Iometer Test Configuration

3 x HS22 blades with 2 x 4C Intel Xeon X5570 2.9GHz CPU, 96GB RAM and QLogic HBAs per blade running ESXi 5.5 Update 2 (Boot from DAS)
IBM BladeCenter Chassis with Brocade Switch modules connected to XtremIO chassis with 6 x 8Gb FC
IBM BladeCenter Cisco 1GE Switch Modules connected to Core switch network
EMC XtremIO X-bricks version 2.4.1 with EMC XtremIO Storage Management Application version 2.4.1
8 x 1TB Volumes (Encryption enabled) mounted as VMFS-5 Datastores with VMware NMP set to “Round Robin”
8 x Iometer Dynamos running on Windows Server 2008 R2 with 3 x 40GB vDisks connected to Paravirtual vSCSI Adapters (1:0, 2:0, 3:0)
1 x Iometer Manager running on Windows Server 2008 R2
Test 512b, 4K and All-in-one Access Specifications (Two variants: 100% Read 0% Random, 0% Read 100% Rand)

Iometer Test Results

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user213546Works with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Jun 24, 2015

Rene,
Great review did you alter any of the hosts setting IE round robin and queue depth. This will help bring down the latency times dramatically.

it_user186357

Solutions Architect with 51-200 employees

Jan 27, 2015

NetApp vs. XtremIO vs. HDS

Flash and Hybrid block arrays

Flash has changed storage forever and almost every new array purchase needs to have some degree of flash included, so the market now offers three distinct types of array:

Hybrid - Exploits the performance of flash and the lower cost of HDDs
All-Flash hybrid - Packaged to deliver a low cost per GB of flash
Ground-up design - Purely designed for flash with no support for HDDs

As always there is a huge range of price points, due to the architecture, features and performance scaling, for these arrays. Efficiency features are critical in some use cases (i.e. VDI), but less so in many others and performance scaling for the majority of solutions is substantially higher than legacy arrays built just for HDDs.

Historically array performance scaling was limited to the number of HDDs that it could support (i.e. the drives were the bottleneck), with Flash the drives are so fast the bottleneck moves to the controllers. The result of this is that the entry-level arrays will not scale performance beyond 20-30 SSDs so it is very important to have an idea of your ultimate performance scaling requirements.

For most use cases today a hybrid array that has been optimised for flash is the best fit, but there are certainly workloads that need the capabilities of a ground-up all-flash design. As always your requirements and budget will dictate the best fit so let’s take a look at what EMC, HDS and NetApp have to offer:

	EMC VNX	EMC XTREMIO	HDS HUS 100/VM	NETAPP FAS	NETAPP E/EF-SERIES
Type	Hybrid/All-Flash Hybrid	Ground-up Design	Hybrid	Hybrid/All-Flash Hybrid	Hybrid/All-Flash Hybrid
Largest Flash Drive	800 GB eMLC	800 GB eMLC	400 GB eMLC 1.6 TB FMD (150)/3.2 TB FMD (VM)	1.6 TB eMLC	1.6 TB eMLC
Replacement of drives under maintenance when write limit reached	No	Yes	No (SSD) Yes (FMD)	Yes	Yes
FC, FCoE & iSCSI	Yes	FC and iSCSI	FC and iSCSI (100) FC (VM)	Yes	FC and iSCSI (E2700) FC or iSCSI (E5500/EF550)
Writeable Snapshots	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Integrated Remote Replication	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
De-duplication	Optional (Post)	Always On (Inline)	No	Optional (Post)	No
Compression	Optional (Post)	Always On (Inline)	No (Inline for FMDs)	Optional (Inline or Post)	No
Thin Provisioning	Optional	Always On	Optional	Optional	Optional
Flash Caching of HDDs	Yes	N/A	No	Yes	Reads (E-Series) N/A (EF-Series)
Auto-Tiering (Up to 3 tiers)	Yes	N/A	Yes	No	No (E-Series) N/A (EF-Series)

Read the rest of this post here.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are Partners with NetApp and EMC.

HassanZaki

Data Center Manager at overit

Sep 19, 2019

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A solution that offers high performance along with good stability and scalability

Pros and Cons

"The solution's most valuable feature is its high performance."

"The implementation isn't exactly complex, but the solution should have some enhancements in it to make the process more centralized."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for custom development and customer case studies.

What is most valuable?

The solution's most valuable feature is its high performance.

What needs improvement?

The deployment of the solution could be simplified.

The solution should be integrated into the system by default and not separately.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable for SMBs.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is okay.

How was the initial setup?

The implementation isn't exactly complex, but the solution should have some enhancements in it to make the process more centralized.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is okay. It tends to offer some of the best pricing, but I still think it could be better.

What other advice do I have?

We are using the on-premises deployment model.

My advice to those who plan on implementing the solution is to make sure you are doing accurate sizing. Don't just size for your current use only.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Cela

Solutions Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Jun 30, 2017

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Moved and zoned our Prod Client facing Applications. Quicker response to the business and more efficiency.

What is most valuable?

Newer version V6 (XtremIO Data Protection XDP) increases performance with built-in data protection.

Improved density with ability to scale out to eight X-Bricks if necessary / more density on capacity.

In memory Space / Efficient Copies.

How has it helped my organization?

Moved and zoned our Prod Client facing Applications. Quicker response to the business and more efficiency.

Also assisted with large datasets, thus dramatically reducing our batch runs.

What needs improvement?

Newer HTML 5, no more JAVA required.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In the very beginning, with the old version 4, we had issues around Snap and clones.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Yes , I do recall we had an issue with a version of code on XtremeIO before we could Scale.

How are customer service and technical support?

Seven out of 10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We are using HDS and EMC.

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved with setup.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I was not involved.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

HDS, IBM and Pure storage.

What other advice do I have?

A proof of concept will provide the best results for determining what solution you should go for.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user651834

Technology Solutions Director, Converged Infrastructure at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 17, 2017

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It can run workloads with little design consideration.

Pros and Cons

"XtremIO’s capability to run any workload without much in the way of design considerations makes this very easy to use and size."

"Right now, external appliances are needed to replicate XtremIO to XtremIO, or to another EMC system."

How has it helped my organization?

The fact that we can put up to five times more data on the XtremIO X-Brick prevents us from having to buy large amounts of disks.

This enclosure occupies six rack units of space, which means we aren’t paying a lot of money for rack space in our co-location facility.

What is most valuable?

XtremIO’s capability to run any workload without much in the way of design considerations makes this very easy to use and size. The configuration of the product is simple, as is creating and presenting volumes.

The snapshot capabilities, that hardly consume any disk space, are also impressive.

What needs improvement?

If Dell/EMC were to add native replication to the XtremIO, that would be a great improvement.

Right now, external appliances are needed to replicate XtremIO to XtremIO, or to another EMC system.

Having built-in replication will cut the cost of data recovery solutions by removing the expensive appliances and the software required to make the data flow between the two sites.

Until the release of XtremIO X2 this summer, there is currently no “built-in” replication capabilities between XtremIO appliances. This is a feature that some competitors have that XtremIO Gen 1 does not.

In order to replicate block data from XtremIO to XtremIO, or XtremIO to another EMC product, a customer must purchase RecoverPoint appliances and licenses.

To replicate virtual machines, you can either buy RecoverPoint appliances and licenses, vSphere replication and licenses, Zerto, Veeam, or another product.

Buying these add-ons increases the cost of maintaining redundant copies of XtremIO data.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have not encountered any stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have consumed ~756GB of disk on a 2-brick cluster and have much more than the physical capacity of the system provisioned. There have been no problems with scalability at all.

How are customer service and technical support?

I would give technical support the highest rating. Dell/EMC appears to have employed the team that developed XtremIO. Deep product questions or operational questions make it to them.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using VNX. The compression and deduplication numbers, as well as the level of effort needed to build RAID groups on this storage processor array to support workloads, caused us to consider XtremIO.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was totally as expected.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

This is the best flash array on the market for high-end workloads, so expect to pay for that. But the support subscription cost is fixed for seven years, which made it easier for us to plan on the maintenance costs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate other options.

What other advice do I have?

If you have the workloads that require the performance that XtremIO provides, without having to consider what workloads you are throwing at this array, then this solution is for you.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are a Titanium Partner with Dell | EMC.