Dell SC Series Reviews

It is used for storage purposes.

I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits my customers. It's highly advantageous due to its affordability. The operational aspect is also noteworthy. Additionally, its availability and performance are commendable. The speaker are also equally powerful.           

I would like to improve the processing ability. 

I have been using Dell SC Series for three years.

I would rate the stability of this solution eight out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability nine out of ten.

The customer support is very fast and reliable. 

Positive

The setup is easy comparatively and I would rate it seven out of ten.I engaged in researching vendor reports and comparing outputs with other options. I also attend vendor seminars to gather knowledge. So, while I'm responsible for the necessary preparation leading up to deployment, I'm not directly engaged in the deployment process itself.

There are costs involving the solution, vendor fees and product safety which are additional.

I would rate this solution nine out of ten and recommend it to bigger organizations.

Performance

Dell EMC SC Series has many valuable features.

We are very satisfied with Dell EMC SC Series.

The user interface is good, I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We had some issues with the battery in the previous version that we were unable to resolve. We are unable to resolve this issue, despite the fact that we have been using this product for over five years.

The price could be improved.

We have been working with Dell EMC SC Series and storage for more than 10 years.

We work with both the MD3620F and PowerStore 1000T versions.

Technical support is good. We have received good next-day technical support from them.

We are also working with NetApp.

The pricing is reasonable, but it is expensive.

We are partners with both NetApp, and Dell EMC.

I would rate Dell EMC SC Series a nine out of ten.

The flexibility of this solution has been valuable for our business. 

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

I have used this solution for one year. 

The initial setup was complex, specifically when integrating this solution with other technology. The deployment was easier and offered flexibility. Before deployment, I would suggest checking other technology to ensure there is compatibility. 

This solution could be better priced in comparison with other vendors. 

I would recommend this solution for customers looking for Unity or PowerStore functionality.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

It is a global storage solution for all our servers.

What is most valuable about the Dell EMC SC Series system was its reliability. It did serve us well. Overall it was a good product for us.

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

I have been using Dell EMC SC Series for at least 10 - 12 years.

We keep it up to date, so it is the latest version. The hardware is not the latest, but the firmware and the controllers are the latest.

We use Compellent and we're looking at other products at this point. The Compellent is going to be phased out in a year or so or maybe two years. I don't know, but it has to be replaced sooner than later which is why I was looking for another product.

Component support was great. On a scale of one to ten they were a ten, they were always helpful.

It does the work for us. If you're on SSD, it is going to do the the work. Obviously working with tiering at tier 1, 2, 3 was a pain when we got it, because the data is always moving around but since we're using only one tier SSD, there's no management to do with it and we are just checking to see if everything is working well on that. Otherwise, outside of the reporting, I would not complain about that system. If we could extend the support another five years we would have done so because the support is perfect. When you call them, there is always someone.

Because this product is going to be phased out I wouldn't recommend anyone to start with it. But I'm looking at the PowerStore to see if it is a fit for us. I would assume that PowerStore is going to be the next step after the Compellent.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Dell EMC SC Series an eight.

The solution is mainly used for primary storage and in more than half of the cases, we use the Live Volume, the Synchronous Replication - this Automatic Failover. Its function is for primary storage on two sites.

The customers really appreciate that the storage is cost-effective and that has enterprise features. The Synchronous Replication and the Live Volume, for example, are excellent. The storage is flexible. If you want to upgrade the storage with more capacity you can add one or two drives. It is very easy to upgrade in the future if you need to. 

The setup is straightforward.

The solution has very good stability.

The scalability is excellent.

We find the pricing to be quite fair.

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.

I've been working with the solution for more than five years at this point. It's been a while.

The stability is okay, however, the performance could be better, as there have been a few issues surrounding latency. In most cases, the customer feedback is positive. It's only in extreme situations where there have been problems. 

The scalability is great. If a customer needs more storage, they can simply add more drives. It's very flexible and very easy to expand.

I've gotten positive feedback in terms of technical support. My understanding is that they have been very helpful and responsive and customers have been happy with the service they receive. 

There is no complexity in the setup. It's very straightforward. A company shouldn't have any issues with the setup process.

We are integrators and can help a customer with the installation of the product.

All the models and especially the entry model, the SC30/20, have a competitive price that is fair and offers very good value for money. It's reasonably and competitively priced. 

I'm an integrator. Our company is a company that is delivering solutions in IT for other customers. So, I'm not using some solution like this storage. I'm an architect, so I'm architecting these solutions for our customers. The solutions which we are using are mainly from Dell EMC.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

This is our SAN product for use with a traditional VMware setup, using VMware clusters. We have the 150 terabyte enclosure.

This product should be a lot more user-friendly.

A central management system should be put in place to make it easier to configure.

I have been using this solution for two years.

The technical support is great. We have 24/7 support with a four-hour response. They are responsive and they stay to help until the problem is resolved.

One time, we had a drive fail and we were notified before we even saw it on the device. Then, the new hardware was shipped to us the next day.

I also use HPE Nimble and I find that it is a lot easier to use and offers us more features.

I inherited this solution when I joined the company. In terms of setting it up, we add this SAN into a VMware cluster. The initial setup is unnecessarily complex, and much more so than a solution like HPE Nimble.

This product is too expensive compared to others, and I don't see any value in using it.

In summary, it's a nice product but it's too expensive and too complicated to set up.

If I were rating this product solely on the management or administrative side, I would rate it a one out of ten because it's just ridiculous. Performance-wise, I can rate it a four or five out of ten.

Overall, I would rate this solution a four out of ten.

We are a solution provider and the Dell EMC SC Series is one of the products that we implement for our customers. Our clients often use this product in a virtualized server environment for mid-range database use.

Once it's put in place, it becomes a vital tool.

Its leading feature is the price-performance ratio, which is very good.

The management is pretty good.

It has good expandability options.

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

I have about five years' experience with this product.

I have not heard any feedback about bugs or glitches in the system. Once it's in place, it's solid.

It's fairly scalable, as long as you size it properly, to begin with. The expansion options are pretty good. Our clients for this product range in size from small to large businesses.

Technical support for this product is excellent and I would rate them a ten out of ten.

When you have questions, you get them answered

We have deployed HPE storage in some cases where it was what the customer already had installed. Some of these customers switched to Dell because their technical staff was more familiar with it.

My understanding from our engineers is that the initial setup is on the complex side. There are things that are not intuitive that make it a little more complex.

This is a solution with good performance that I recommend, and for anybody who is considering it, I would tell them to give it a shot.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

It's easy to expand. Back in the day, if you wanted to expand, you would have to buy a block of disk from somebody or a new shelf. Here, if you have open spots, you buy some more disk and you expand.

What I really like, from the model line starting with the 3000 all the way up, is the flexibility. You can have spinning disk, you can have flash, you can have a combination. 

Another valuable feature is the performance of the auto-tiering. It will move hot data up to your fastest Tier 1 or move your slow data down. Data progression is what it's called. With the auto-tiering you can have multiple tiers, you can have your Tier 1 be either spinning or flash, all the way down to 7.2K. It will change the RAID on the fly so your writes come in at RAID 10. After they sit for a while, they get converted to RAID 5, then they'll cool off and move down the tiers. Your performance is kept going, while the cold data is moved to your slow, non-performance tiers.

With federation, you can have multiple systems across sites. You can treat them as one, and with a live migration, volumes don't go down. You can move them from site to site, doing maintenance, and keep your environment up.

They already integrate with Dell Storage Manager, so you can manage multiple, you can set up replication, you've got monitoring, vSphere, Hyper-V.

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.

It's very stable.

It's very scalable, especially with federation. If you outgrow the number of spindles that a unit can support, depending on the model, you can go into federation.

Copilot support is next to none. I've dealt with a lot of support before. With Copilot, you're usually on the phone if you have a problem. Even as a customer, not a partner, if you have an issue or you're planning on upgrading code, you call Copilot, they do a system check, they give you the thumbs up. The support is very helfpul.

The 3000 Series are user-installable but, as a certified installer, I have found that customers, if they're not used to the interface, like to come in and have a tutorial to see the interface and how it's done. Anything in 5000 Series and above requires a certified installer. You want to make sure that you get your networking and zoning set up properly; and to get a walk-through on setting up the environment and for getting used to it.

It does not have a steep learning curve. Especially in the SMB, the front-end is not hard. You set up the Storage Manager, it gives you the dashboard and tells you when you're over-provisioned, and shows performance and the like.

It's very affordable. Anything from an SMB on up to the large enterprise - from a 3000 Series all the way up to a 9000 Series - with federation and you name it.

You should definitely have a partner come in. If you're going to do a multi-tier environment, look at your IOPS: What are your hot IOPS, what's your total storage need? You need to plan out those different tiers because that's where it saves you money. You don't have to go all-flash if you don't need it. You only need to be able to deliver your performance and most places have tons of cold data that they aren't aware of. So, having someone come in and do an assessment of your current storage environment and see what performance you really do need - what you're getting now and what your projected growth will be - is important, so that a system can be properly sized. That should be a pre-sales process. Your engineer should understand Compellent and be able to size it properly.

I just deployed a 3000 Series in a small VDI environment and, during a bunch of huge data copies, I was seeing 15,000 IOPS at less than about 7 or 8 milliseconds of latency and that was on 10K disk. I was really impressed with that.

The most important factor when looking at a vendor is, are they there to sell you a box or are they there to help you? Are they there for the long term?

From my dealings with it, it's right up there at ten out of ten. Obviously, there are more expensive systems out there but, for all the deployments that I've seen or done, its been a rock solid platform.