Dell XtremIO Reviews and Pricing

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.

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable for SMBs.

How are customer service and 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.

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.

Buyer's Guide

Dell XtremIO

March 2025

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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.

Regtechmgr67

Regional Technical Manager CST at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 22, 2019

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Deduplication and auto-tiering are good, and it is easy to implement

Pros and Cons

"I like the deduplication and auto-tiering features."

"The product could be improved by reducing the pricing and having better organization in their technical support team."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case of this solution is for virtualization.

The deployment model used was on-premises.

What is most valuable?

I like the deduplication and auto-tiering features.

What needs improvement?

The product could be improved by reducing the pricing and having better organization in their technical support team.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This solution is stable. I would give it five out of six, not 100% only 90%.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of this solution is good.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is good but they are not well organized.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward.

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

There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

What other advice do I have?

I am a partner for Dell EMC.

My complaints are not about the features of this solution, it's more about the pricing and the support.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.

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

Report as inappropriate

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.

Mohammad Salman

Manager of Customer Services with 1,001-5,000 employees

Sep 27, 2019

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Enables us to have surveillance of our systems but the reporting and monitoring tools need improvement

Pros and Cons

"We mostly use it for backup, because we cannot measure anything, and we are afraid to use it for surveillance systems. We were planning to use it for mostly for surveillance systems."

"One thing that should be improved is the reporting and monitoring tools. It should use real time monitoring for storage, IOPS, latency, etc."

What is our primary use case?

We mostly use it for backup because we cannot measure anything and we are afraid to use it for surveillance systems. We were planning to use it mostly for surveillance systems.

What needs improvement?

The most important thing for the system engineer is to check if there is latency in the IOPS for any run. You cannot measure the number of IOPS or whether or not it is overloaded. You cannot measure anything in EMC about this. Most solutions, especially HP, improved our fall-over performance, with our database and servers. Most servers are HP, but we use EMC now only for backup.

One thing that should be improved is the reporting and monitoring tools. It should use real-time monitoring for storage, IOPS, latency, etc.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using it for seven years.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support was good, especially for upgrading, which we did four times. It was straightforward and easy.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was simple for us.

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

The initial purchase price was good but when you need to upgrade, it's a different story.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, including the format, support, and technical performance, I would rate it as seven of ten.

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

it_user351513

Manager, EMEA Datacenter and Database Operations at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

Nov 1, 2018

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The stability needs improvement. And, it is expensive as you scale.

Pros and Cons

"The most valuable features are: complete performance and ease of use."
"It was very easy and straightforward to setup."

"It is very expensive to scale. You have to buy an additional system to extend from one disc, for instance. It is scalable, but extremely expensive to do so."
"I am not too impressed with XtremeIO because we had a major failure."

What is our primary use case?

The performance very good, and the use case is actually we decided to have all flash a couple years ago and Xtreme IO was one of the vendors that your EMC partner reccomended so there was no discussion of what kind of storage we would buy.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are:

Complete performance
Ease of use

What needs improvement?

The stability of the product needs improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I am not too impressed with XtremeIO because we had a major failure.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very expensive to scale. You have to buy an additional system to extend from one disc, for instance. It is scalable, but extremely expensive to do so.

How is customer service and technical support?

The technical support was very good, but since the merger with Dell, it is very bad. It went from very good to very bad.

How was the initial setup?

It was very easy and straightforward to setup. We plugged it in, connected, and then started. Simple. Our technical team had no problem with it.

What about the implementation team?

When choosing a vendor, we we value known companies, as a solution. In addition, we value Blue technology.

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

It is expensive if you need to increase scalability.

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

it_user6186

Independent Analyst and Advisory Consultant at Server StorageIO - www.storageio.com

Feb 22, 2017

XtremIO, XtremSW and XtremSF EMC flash SSD portfolio redefined

EMC (@EMCflash) today announced some new, enhanced, renamed and a rebrand flash solid-state device (SSD) storage portfolio around theme of XtremIO. XtremIO was the startup company with a new all flash SSD storage array that EMC announced they were buying in May 2012.

Since that announcement, Project “X” has been used when referring to the product now known as XtremIO (e.g. all flash new storage array).

Synopsis of announcement

- Product rollout and selective availability of the new all flash SSD array XtremIO
- Rename server-side PCIe ssd flash cards from VFCache to XtremSF
- New XtremSF models including enhanced multi-level cell (eMLC) with larger capacities
- Rename VFCache caching software to XtremSW (enables cache mode vs. target mode)

What was previously announced:

-Buying the company XtremeIO
-Productizing the new all flash array as part of Project “X”
-It would formally announce the new product in 2013 (which is now)
- VFCache and later enhancements during 2012.

Overall, I give an Atta boy and Atta girl to the EMC crew for a Product Defined Announcement (PDA) extending their flash portfolio to complement their different customers and prospects various environment needs. Now let us sit back and watch EMC, NetApp and others step up their flash dance moves to see who will out flash the others in the eXtreme flash games, including software defined storage, software defined data centers, software defined flash, and software defined cache.

Some updates:

http://storageioblog.com/emc-announces-xtremio-general-availability-part/

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