What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?

If Dell SC Series wasn't being phased out, adding an NVMe tier and secure snapshots like those on the PowerStore platform would be beneficial. Secure snapshots are immutable and serve as a good security feature in case a unit gets compromised, such as by hackers or ransomware.

The interface could be better.

The tool's pricing is high and not suitable for medium companies.

I would like to improve the processing ability.

The SC Series doesn't support NVMe storage.

The model of the device is quite old. They need to update it a bit. From a performance point of view, it's getting a bit old. Although I know that the storage that we are using is a bit old as well. Beyond that, I don't see any other features that I'm exactly missing.

This solution could be improved if overall performance was improved and operated with a higher speed and supported a higher volume of RAM.

What I understand is that this is a 13 year old architecture, so it has lived its life and they're phasing it out. Honestly, we were initially struggling with the integration with VMware (but it was fixed with the VMware 6.5) and, then, it was around a 10GB network. At that time, it had the longevity to go to 100GB as well. It got us thinking about, when we go into the containerized architecture, what do we need to do to fix the infrastructure?

The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series.

The solution is automated, but we still don't get a complete speech from the disc. The flash speed should be addressed. While the scalability is good, there are certain limitations. Our racks are at their limit, so we do not have the requisite scalability to expand. We would like to see replication of the data storage without the need to resort to third party tools. Storage to storage repetition would be a nice feature.

In terms of what could be improved, I would say the lack of reporting would be the main issue.

Dell will discontinue this storage. That's the main pain point for clients right now. They will focus on Power Store and the SC Series will be at end-of-life soon - possibly as soon as one or two months from now. In some customer cases, customers experienced more performance or latency. The performance overall could be better.

Dell could improve the upgrading process. It was the lifecycle that made it very short. You'd upgrade the disk, and in eight, nine months, it would be obsolete. They cancelled an enhancement that included an all-flash unit. This would have improved the product.

This product should be a lot more user-friendly. A central management system should be put in place to make it easier to configure.

There's always room for improvement in the operating code; minor improvements here and there. We haven't had any real requests for them lately. I can't really think of anything. Support for Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVME). Most of the newer storage systems support it, but this one doesn't because of its age. Support for that was something we had looked at, but they said, "No, we're not offering that with this. It's going to be in the next product, not in this product because the architecture is just too old." I'd look for that — support for NVME. That's really the only supportable or new feature that I'd really be looking for.

The initial setup is somewhat complex and should be made simpler to do.

While there's always room for improvement in everything, I can't really think of a specific feature of the solution that requires immediate attention.

I would prefer to have NVME, at least on the back-end and inline deduplication. Anyhow as Dell EMC has announced the new product - Power Store these features will not be available for Compellent.

The interface could be improved. It should have an application point of view. In the next release, I would for them to improve their application feature. I would also like to see some cloud integration.

Technical support should respond more quickly because the turnaround time is very high. Although the pricing is competitive, it is a concern because competitors such as HP are also competitive.

Compellent is a nice technology, but it's not very efficient anymore. There are better products out there.

I think it would be nice if the connection were better integrated with the network so I could get a broader view of both the network and the system. This would be good in order for us to be able to troubleshoot anything that is going wrong. The product has improved so much over the years that it is hard to think of something else that it really needs to be improved now in comparison to where it was. It is actually kind of good the way it is. Nothing is really annoying me right now. It is really just working and you hardly have to know it is there.

Compared to other solutions, Compellent comes in the form of a component that's not true of a unified storage platform, for instance, to block a level of support can only be done through two different platforms.

It is difficult to say where this solution needs improvement because it is very good. While the price is competitive, in the next release it would be better if they could reduce the fees.

The solution could use more integration with popular backup systems. Dell storage solutions are not very integrated. There are no dedicated models for, for example, Veeam backup or Redhouse backup, etc. The lower model, the 3000, should have duplication. It doesn't right now. It's only from 5000 that this is offered, but it depends on the performance. It could be they don't offer it on lower models because the duplication is too much of a burden to the performance.

The interface could be simplified. The cost of the solution could be better.

It would be great if they could increase the compression and dedupe ratio.

We've had failures with disks, but no downtime. We were able to change them before they caused a problem.

Something that has been needed should be coming out with the 6.7 version of vSphere: You don't need a hot spare, so that should give you more IOPS. They've figured out how to do a RAID across all the drives, rather than using a hot spare. So the hot spare can be used too. You won't need a dedicated hot spare any longer.

They've actually already done something that I think is needed, which is integration with Unisphere, which is the Dell EMC management platform, and then CloudIQ is their performance analytics solution. So they've actually implemented things that people have been asking for. In addition, in any platform, there is always room for improvement. We're always looking for performance increases and keeping up with flash devices, and new products that are coming out.

In particular, for us, we have two primary data centers. The hospital is located in New York but we have two data centers in New Jersey. So geo clustering is a big thing for us, for our active-active environment.

They need to make it a little cheaper.

The issue we had was that the controller went down during an upgrade because of their upgrading the code. One side of the switch was down. In terms of additional features, I would like to see some kind of I/O meter, to indicate what we are using in terms of performance. I would like to see automation with that, where it would give me the trends. I want to know these things easily, to help me know where issues are going to occur. We want to see the trends, performance-wise.

One option I would like to see is, when you're up on the view-screen, to be able to incorporate getting to what HPE calls the iLO, the Integrated Lights-Out. To be able to get that instead of having to go back and trying to find IP addresses and re-institute those would be good. It would be good to be able to that put on the initial splash screen.

Overall, I'd like to see more synergy between Dell EMC's higher-tier platforms and their mid-tier platforms. What I have said, constantly, to my partners at Dell EMC is that the clear articulation of the path is really important to us. In that vein, what I'd also like to see is, with the migration strategy that's built into this product, a lot more attention paid to Dell's - in particular - legacy platforms and how we get from some of our legacy EMC platforms onto this platform with a straight-through migration and scaling strategy, not host-based migrations and not piecemeal. What I've found is that when it comes to the "enablement wrapper," that's what I like to call it, or the "services wrapper," that is wrapped around this whole idea of a transition from legacy to new, Dell EMC would do well to focus more on my ability to skip a generation, rather than having me take individual hops because I can't greenfield my way into a software-defined data center fast enough. This journey of multiple hops is not helpful.

For what it's doing today there isn't too much that I think they need to add to it. It's doing what it needs to do.

We have seen some degraded throughput with mixed workloads. We have been working with Dell EMC to correct some of these latency issues.

We can definitely see a need for it being a multi-controller system for customers who want to scale beyond the current capability. That's always a downside. A lot of the new systems are scaling vertically, they scale out, and the Compellent, of course, is controllers with shelves under it, so you don't scale out with it, unless you add another one. But if you do, they don't talk to each other, like some of the other solutions that we sell.

We had times that we needed a file service solution. We've used FluidFS, but it's a solution that is being transitioned out.

I would like to see an integrated key manager in the controllers. Currently, it's an external product. It would be nice to have the option of having a built-in key for self-encrypting drive features.

* I would like the ability to monitor and manage the storage. * The web GUI is not fully there. * I would like to have 100% functionality through the web app.

Customer support could be improved. It takes five or six reps to finally get someone who can help us. I would also like to see a better ability to capture driver firmware, compatibility, and upgrade metrics to be compliant.

I would like to see higher compression, dedupe, faster I/O, and bigger drives.

The ease of use could be improved. It took me a while to learn it. I would also like to see all-in-one appliances. That's what I'm here, at VMworld 2018, to look at.

Going into the unit itself, to manage, takes a little more intuition. But when you integrate it into the Dell Storage Manager it gives a much more GUI, user-friendly area to manage, provision volumes, etc.

The administration and support (on the way that they delivered) was a little bit slow.