Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

The storage solution has all our data from all systems, including our new ERP; the whole organization depends on the storage to work. All data is in one location.

Real Unified Storage (Block, File, VVols) in a unique 2U hardware. 

LUN mask. The Host LUN ID is sequential by access in the hosts. When one LUN needs access by many hosts (for cluster purposes), in some cases the Host LUN ID remains different on each host. Storage groups or global IDs for LUNs could be a good solution for this.

No stablility issues.

No scalability issues.

Very good.

The initial setup was very simple.

The licensing process is very simple and it has many features. I can't talk about pricing because I'm in a technical position and I do not have access to costs.

Yes, we still have a VNX5400 (block), before it was at a production storage site, today it is at a disaster recovery site. The change from VNX to Unity was because of the build of the DR site, a new ERP implementation, and to update the storage technology.

Other storage solutions need additional hardware to support file storage and the integration sometimes fails; or they offer fewer features.

We were EMC partners for some time, now Dell EMC partners. Our choices are based in Dell EMC products because we understand that the EMC technology is better when it comes to storage solutions. Among the EMC storage options, the Unity is the best choice when we analyze price, scalability, performance and  features.

The Dell EMC Unity is a small but powerful storage solution. With the "unified" concept it is possible get many features for less.

Replication: Disaster Recovery (DR) plans, RPO and RTO. Replication and ease of storage setup for block LUN’s and VMware.

Same answer as most valuable features.

GUI updates. I had several hours helping support troubleshoot the difference in what the system was doing compared to what the GUI said.

Less than a year.

Sure did.

No.

• Auto-tiering
• FAST Cache

Automatically, the cool data downgrades to slower disks and no human needs to intervene. The FAST Cache helps to have a large quantity of data in memory and speed up the presentation of new storage.

• We spend less time checking the solution.
• The presentation of new storage to the servers is very easy.

The reports could possibly export all the data at once.

10 months.

No issues.

No issues.

Low.

Yes, we previously used EMC VNX. We switched to upgrade.

The initial setup was very easy and intuitive.

It is a good value given the benefits it provides.

Yes, HPE 3PAR.

• The performance
• Ease of use

Before the product went in, we did not have any centralized storage. All our service storage was supported separately. We had multiple machines which added administration and maintenance costs. Whereas now, it is a single source of knowledge and repository for all our data. It has made our lives a lot easier. It also has improved our disaster recovery because we have two of them in place replicating. 

• The virtual appliance is limited to 4TB in storage. This should be unlimited for paying customers.
• The front panel is too fiddly to take off and on.
• The support model would be better within Australia. Support has been great, but onshore support would be minorly beneficial.
• Troubleshooting LUN replication can be difficult.
• When making changes to replicated LUNs (Async in our case), perhaps some measures to prevent us making mistakes. (One of our engineers modified the block storage size and it did not follow the proper procedure, and this broke the replication awkwardly. This was the subject of our most recent support ticket.)

We started using it last November, so going on just about 12 months.

No issues. A very stable product. In previous roles, I have also used the earlier models. The VNX Series and EMC do a really good job. 

No issues. It has been a year, and at the moment, I am having a schedule of work put together to increase the capacity. It will be a very easy job. A matter of adding extra disks to existing slots. Very easy to do. So, a very scalable product.

I have not personally worked with the tech support, but the engineers who installed it have worked with EMC's support. It has been very good. EMC has at times reached out to us, flagging that they have noticed a problem with some of the array configurations. That level of support has been very good. 

No, as there was no central storage solution beforehand. We went to market straight away. 

I got professional services in to do the initial installation. If you get the right people to do the installation, they make it a lot easier.

Pay for the training. At least negotiate with EMC to get the training done, because it is a good product and it is even better once you are shown how to use it properly.

I was debating between the Unity 300 and a NetApp Solution. We ended up picking the Unity only because the administration is a lot easier. 

Also, I had used the earlier model in the past, and it was recommended by the supplier as well. 

It is absolutely a good solution. It does have the ability for expansion into Cloud services, which I would like to use one day, but we have not tried that yet.

• Storage
• Easy to manage and configure.
• I can easily setup and configure the LUN and host without support.

Alert notification via SMS. If the product could only send alert notification via SMS, it would be much better. This is needed mostly when you are not in the office and have no access to email. Therefore, you could check immediately if there was an issue.

Nine months.

No issues.

No issues.

100%. They are very accommodating, and it is easy to contact them.

This solution is much better than the previous one.

The initial setup is straightforward. All I need to do is to configure the LUN and host.

This device is worth it.

No.

The product is easy to use and configure. The support is also superb.

The ease of use, which makes it very good.

We use it to backup our storage, and also positioning LANs by using the file option, then the block. It is very easy and convenient.

The payment account area.

For approximately a year.

At the moment, there are no issues.

We once had an issue where one LAN was full, and because it was full it was making the SP reboot. But with the upgrade, we decide it was a non-issue, and with the upgrade, it was fixed. The upgrade fixed it.

There are no issues with the scalability.

They have been helpful and knowledgeable.

We used DNX, but we needed to buy something for the backup solution. That is why we went for Unity.

The initial setup is simple, okay, and easy.

The pricing is fine and licensing is okay.

Yes, we looked at Hitachi.

We are partners with this vendor.

By having ease of management in central management, this means that our company no longer needs to hire a dedicated storage engineer. The administration of it can be passed over to existing team members without us spending on additional resources.

On the capacity side, by having compression available from the All-Flash storage, we are in a position where we are no longer running out of space, so if we are, we are notified well in advance, and the ease of expansion means that it can be done remotely without an engineer configuring it on site. So, the disk can just be inserted, and we can support it all remotely.

Cost-effectiveness means we are actually able to provide the sums in pairs to have disaster recovery (DR) as opposed to buying one single larger solution. We can have multiples.

• Expandability for capacity management is pretty important.
• It has compression, which allows you to store more data than you would normally under the arrays.
• The ease of use in central management by Unisphere Central.
• Cost-effectiveness, when compared to other products.

The uses of tools to communicate with EMC directly. With EMC, I am not able to connect and resolve issues without assistance, so they can't do unattended maintenance on devices, which would be a massive benefit if they could.

They need a resource available to like grant them access or privileges onto the devices, so it can delay upgrades and fixes being put in places because we might not have a resource available who can assist them at that time.

If they could manage it remotely as they were, completely remotely without off-switching it, that would be a massive asset.

It is very stable. We have never had an issue with it.

The scalability is exceeding expectations.

I would give them an eight out of 10. They are knowledgeable and solve my issues in a timely manner.

We used an older EMC product, and we switched over because this was a newer model that they had released. We moved from a VNXe to the Unity devices.

It was straightforward. It was very easy to set up. Every single step of the process was well documented, intuitive, and easy to follow. There were no caveats or any extra things we had to do to get it to work. It worked out-of-the-box.

From a functionality perspective on cost-effectiveness, it is exceeding all expectations.

For costing, you have to have a budget in mind because SANs can be fairly expensive and EMC offers a wide range of products. It is important that you know your requirements exactly before you go ahead and purchase one of those devices. Because it could be either under or over your requirements.

We checked out Nimble Storage and HPE MSL.

We evaluated based on performance, scalability, availability, security options, and costs. The Unity was either equal to or better than the other products in all those areas, plus the staff already had previous familiarity with using EMC products, which is why we kept using it.

For someone researching whether to implement Unity: If they have familiarity using EMC devices previously, then it is really a no-brainer. You would use this because you will be able to install, setup, and configure it without any additional training required for your current staff. If you're a new customer, and you have another product, the Unity offers several features that other products do not. I would advise just looking at the technical specifications or ask EMC to give you a preview because they are very helpful over the phone, and they can do a live demo for you.

It's flexible and we've been doing a decentralization exercise for the last number of years, so we've used the Unity 300 for our remote sites as a storage box.

The multiprotocol support. It's supporting NFS, fiber channel, CIFS, and these kinds of things. The multiprotocol is very attractive.

There is something that comes to mind. We've deployed these systems in a virtualized environment. We are running VMware, and with the VNXe it was possible to restore. We're using Veeam for VMware backups and with the predecessor, it was possible to mount a backup or restore a backup from a storage snapshot. With the Unity 300, this is not possible.

So far it's proven very reliable and very flexible.

So far we have no issues. But we are currently doing disaster recovery tests so we've deployed the Unity 300 with an expansion in our disaster recovery sites. Now we're going to do some serious tests, so we'll be able to tell you that in a few weeks, whether or not it holds its own.

I think I called once, when I deployed the first box myself, to validate whether the setup was correct.

And also with some call-back issues, the ESRS. We had some issues with that, the call-back support. Whenever a box encounters an issue, we automatically contact Dell EMC and log a call automatically. This function has proven somewhat problematic. But it doesn't affect any of the normal day to day operations of it.

As I said, we'd been using its predecessor, the VNXe. It's because the VNXe is being phased out that we switched to the successor, the Unity 300. But apart from that, we've been using EMC solutions for the last four years now. That's why we've stuck with EMC, ever since.

Some points are frustrating. There's no quick setup guides included with the box itself on paper, so you have to connect to EMC support for that. But apart from that, it's very straightforward, quite easy, intuitive. It's proven fairly easy.

As I mentioned before, we've used this product to deploy in remote sites, so as an alternative we were contemplating VMware vSAN. But in the end we didn't choose that option. We chose the shared storage option using the Unity 300.

My experiences are generally positive with this product. I would definitely recommend to others to go for it unless they choose an alternative.

The VNX5300 was a good all-around device, which we used for our VMware-based workloads along with CIFS-based file access. After our transition to HCI, we needed a dedicated, non-virtual machine-based CIFS solution that was easily scalable to fit our needs. The Unity 300 fit that and has not caused any issues since being in production.

We currently deploy the Unitys for CIFS-based file access to supplement our VxRail deployment, which was installed around the same time.

I would like the device to have the ability to pull down its own firmware. That would be a great thing.

We have had no stability issues with the product, including when adding replication on the fly, customer installed code updates, and customer installed DAEs.

We have had no issues of scalability with the product. The product has been upgraded with additional drives and enclosures multiple times without incident.

• Small device
• Using few U's on rack
• Small consumption of energy
• Fast access on data

The best improvement will happen in the future. We will hopefully not be replacing the HDD with failure.

The price has room for improvement.

I have used this product since May 2017.

Not at all. No issues with stability.

I will need to see in the future. I do not have time for scalability for the time being to determine whether it can scale out.