![Dell SRDF (Symmetrix Remote Data Facility ) [EOL] Logo](https://images.peerspot.com/image/upload/c_scale,dpr_3.0,f_auto,q_100,w_100/nb70b5ansummme9cc5q5ymwyalbv.png?_a=BACAGSGT)
| Author info | Rating | Review Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Storage Consultant at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees | 5.0 | I find this highly stable solution provides excellent high availability and very good support. While the initial setup can be challenging for new users, it otherwise performs reliably and meets our needs very well, earning a 10/10 rating. |
| AGT Infrastructure Operations at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees | 5.0 | SRDF drastically improved our DR RPO/RTO, replacing tape with replication and snapshots for testing. However, new device creation is complex and error-prone due to numerous steps, requiring careful setup to avoid issues. |
| Sr. Solutions Architect at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees | 5.0 | I found SRDF to be a solid product with great replication for DR, offering excellent customer service. It was straightforward to set up, provided good ROI, and is more reliable than Recoverpoint, which we previously used. |
| IT & Comm Infrastructure Operations at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees | 4.0 | I found SRDF reliable and stable, with excellent support. However, it lacks CDP and is limited to EMC assets, making its TCO higher than IBM SVC or EMC VPLEX. I'd consider alternatives next time. |
| System Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees | 4.0 | I found SRDF robust and stable for critical data replication and disaster recovery, appreciating its command line scripting. However, setup was complex, ROI minimal, and I desire more meaningful command line status outputs. |
| Senior Storage Consultant at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees | 5.0 | I find this product reliable, easy to use, and excellent for disaster recovery and migrations. Its stability, scalability, and 10/10 customer support are unparalleled, though data compression could improve. I've used it since 2001. |
| Core Cloud System Specialist at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees | 4.0 | I used SRDF for 7 years for disaster recovery, finding it generally stable and scalable, successfully restoring data. However, customer service and security need improvement, and SRDF can misbehave with unstable links. |
We primarily use the solution for its high availability.
The general stability on offer has been a great help to the organization.
We've found the support to be very good overall.
The features that are available to us are good.
The solution is pretty stable.
I cannot recall us requesting any changes or new features. It does what we need it to do for the most part.
If you are new to the product, the initial setup might be a bit difficult.
There could be some new management or monitoring tools added to the solution. Those need a separate license. It would be nice if they were on the basic configuration.
I've been using this solution at the same company for about two and a half years at this point. It's been a while.
The stability of the solution is quite good. I can't recall coming across any issues. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable in terms of the performance on offer.
I have not seen any such opportunities where there was a demand for scaling just yet. When I say scalable, I mean that they are customizing the build of new storage, based on the customer requirement. It's not fully populated. Once we understand the demand, we can put the correct solution in place. If we don't understand the demand, it's hard to line up a deliverable.
The technical support on offer is very good. They have been helpful and responsive. We are quite satisfied with their level of service.
Presently, the client is also using Dell EMC.
The ease of the initial setup depends on how knowledgeable the user is. First-time users may find it difficult, or complex. however, users who know the product well, or have handled an implementation previously, will find it to be pretty stainghtforard. It's just a bit of a learning curve.
The clients cover the cost of the solution. I don't have any visibility on the actual cost of the solution. I'm basically just an admin.
I've looked at NetApp and Hitachi Replication, however, I have not yet had a chance to actually use them, and therefore it makes it hard to compare them against this solution fairly. However, the client has chosen this particular solution and therefore I had no say in which solution they should choose or work with.
I would rate the solution at a ten out of ten. We've been very happy with its capabilities, and the client is pretty happy as well.
The solution does need a trained person. They need to have a logical understanding of the architecture and how other things work on Symmetrix. It requires a lot of experience, and good knowledge, to support everything and to manage the administration. Companies considering using the solution should keep this in mind.
SRDF is used our disaster recovery service by using replication from our production site to our DR site. We have two different production and DR site pairs in two different global geographies. One use case has got SRDF asynchronous replication and another has SRDF synchronous replication primarily due to business requirements and the location of the DR sites. At the DR sites, snapshots of replicated volumes are created and provisioned to hosts facilitating periodic DR tests.
RPO and RTO have improved drastically with the SRDF solution which has replaced a tape based recovery solution. Before the SRDF solution was deployed, backup tapes were shipped to the DR site and recovery was made from tapes during DR tests. This was largely error prone because the applications were not able to obtain a consistent point of recovery and RTO was very longer. This didn't fit our business requirements for disaster recovery. The SRDF solution has improved our disaster recovery RPO to near zero or less than 15 minutes with RTO getting drastically reduced.
SRDF has a lot of features that are valuable for us in the enhanced DR solution. The feature of taking snapshots from the replicated volumes has allowed us to use them for DR testing to validate the application consistent point of recovery. Device groups and replication groups help us to group the replicated volumes by DR recovery tier. Integration with VMware SRM vis Dell EMC SRDF SRA adapter has enabled us to perform automated recovery testing. The rest of the open systems platforms have automated the recovery process.
The main pain point that we experienced is during device creation. For every newly provisioned volume, creating replication relationships between production and DR site, creating snapshots for third copy at DR site, and configuring them in appropriate replication groups and device groups means that there are lot of steps involved and a lot of room for error. There has to be a lot of checks and balances which need to be incorporated to make sure that the solution is set up correctly.
More than eight years.
Good.
Good.
Could be better.
Our tape recovery solution was replaced by SRDF.
Straightforward.
Vendor team and in-house resources
Good.
Not applicable.
None.
Replication, once it's setup it can just run.
The replication works great from prod site to DR site.
It's a solid product and that's been out on the market for over a decade.
6 years.
Some minor issues but not really any big ones.
As of late I have seen the replication drop but this was not due to the SRDF, it was due to the high rate of IO changes on the OS side.
None.
Top notch.
Technical Support:Excellent.
We did use recoverpoint initially and then switched to SRDF. As Recoverpoint needs 20% more space for journals and is not really a reliable solution for DR purposes.
It was straight forward.
In-house.
DR was a major initiative from the higher management and that was fulfilled.
Yes, Recoverpoint. And with SRDF you don't need any outside appliance to do the replication. Everything is handled by the engine with dedicated cache for replication.
Reliability and stability, 3 SAN storage star replication (1 box only with storage cache, no disks).
Currently is not used but was implemented 4 years ago for UNIX filesystems and Oracle DB replication.
SRDF compared with EMC Recover Point has less capabilities, for ex. CDP (local or remote) is missing, only EMC assets compatibility, as a TCO is more expensive than implementing IBM SVC or EMC VPLEX virtualization and replication (more supported assets).
2 years.
No.
No.
No.
Very good.
Technical Support:Very good.
Because lack in systems heterogeneous support, only EMC storage, no CDP, no visual planned/unplanned switch framework for failover/failback.
No, very easy but need to understand differences compatible with IBM SAN Storages.
Yes we used a local vendor S&T SRL.
I cannot say SRDF has a ROI because its role is to mitigate the risks such as system unavailability or system loss (DR).
This info is confidential but the TCO is very good compared with other vendors.
In the past we used IBM Remote replication and mirroring.
My advice in nowadays is to look first inside current infrastructure and decide if SRDF is the only choice, for ex. we use mixed data replication: DB replication or application aware replication or filesystem/block level. We use CDP features where is available but we are oriented for app level replication and integrity.
The ability to control functionality with a command line utility for ease of scripting.
SRDF has served as a robust method of providing a golden, point-in-time copy of our most critical data.
I would like to see command line status queries give higher level, more meaningful results; i.e. data synchronizing, completely synced or split and write ready.
I have used iterations of SRDF for approximately 10 years.
There were missteps made in the order in which job steps had to occur for the integrity of data when using scripts.
I do not recall any issues with SRDF stability.
In the early days of SRDF, licensing was on an disk array by disk array basis. The license model has changed, so scalability is now limited to the amount you've purchased in the array.
Customer service for this product was top notch.
Technical Support:Technical support has always been attentive and helpful. We found they also have a thorough knowledgebase.
Our team made the decision to make a change to IBM's XIV asynchronous data replication. The switch was made due to cost.
Initial setup was a bit complex. Tools focused on a deep-level knowledge of configuration.
We had a vendor team help with the initial setup. Their expertise did not dive past the disk array technology, so we had to provide the proper configuration from our host side.
Our ROI was minimal, because we use it for a cold, disaster recovery method.
Cost was rolled into a much bigger purchase. Ongoing cost was not that detailed.
Log shipping methods by Oracle and Sequel.
Most valuable features of the product are :
- Reliability
- Ease of use
- Different purposes and usability available
In all the companies in which I have used the product the ease of Disaster Recovery was implemented in such a manner that the Risk of a Site Disaster was mitigated in a efficient way. Furthermore it made the migrations of complete DataCenters to other (new Data Centers at other locations) a piece of cake (although the complexity of the old Data Center and Infrastructures it self made it often time consuming).
I could only think of maybe some better data compression.
I have been using the product since 2001, in different companies and for different purposes.
I didn't encounter any deployment issues I can recall, and if there were any issues the vendor fixed most of them in no time!
The stability is one of the strong features of the Product, so no issues worth mentioning.
As far as scalability goes, it surpasses all other vendors as far as you ask me!
On a scale of 1 to 10 : A 10
Technical Support:On a scale of 1 to 10 : A 10
EMC is as far as I am concerned the only organization in which the Support organization is an essential part of the overall organization and Products !
None other companies and vendors can even get close to the level EMC delivers Technical Support if you ask me!
In some of the Companies for which I have worked they used other products, but these were not nearly as good, so often they switched to EMC and SRDF.
The initial setup is straightforward, although it expects a certain level of technical knowledge and intelligence.
All Implementations were done and executed as a joint venture, which is and was the strength of the implementation.
By use of this kind of implementation the in-house team immediately got a learning on the job experience of the new versions and possibilities.
It depends on the amount of strorage which needs to be replicated by the SRDF product.
No most of the Companies for which I have worked had EMC storage and the logical step is and was SRDF.
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