Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

We are resellers and deploy the solution for our clients as a guard for storage on virtual machines, databases, and their VDI. 

The solution allows for easy, useful replication with good features for VPLEX and VIVO. 

The solution should include a free process in the HPE portal that uses serial numbers to verify that hardware is genuine. We find Chinese hardware easily but it is difficult to determine if it is genuine which causes problems. 

The solution should allow for connection and replication with other storage models such as HPE, IBM, and Hitachi.

I have been using the solution for two years. 

The solution is very stable and I rate it a ten out of ten. 

The solution is scalable within the storage limitations for each model.

For example, category 380 allows for one device. To scale up, you need to add additional software or hardware like VPLEX.

I rate the scalability a ten out of ten. 

Our company handles software issues but uses technical support for hardware replacements. 

Due to sanctions in Iran, I am not permitted to contact technical support directly but must submit issue tickets through authorized agents. I am unable to rate technical support because I do not have direct access to them. 

The initial setup is very easy. 

Depending on the size of the project, we assign two to ten engineers for setup and deployment which can take a total of one to three hours. 

We also provide six hours administrative training to our customers via small, on-the-job courses we have created. 

Most licenses for the solution are free but upgrades are available when adding additional software or storage. 

The solution little or no cost so I rate it a ten out of ten. 

Supply of genuine hardware is challenging and there should be more availability in the market. I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We use this solution for block storage delivery to the cloud.

This solution provided us with the capability to manage expiring equipment that we didn't have before.

This is a tier-three solution and it gives us what we need for archiving and backups.

We have used this solution for less than one year so I don't have any improvement suggestions yet.

I have used this solution for less than one year. 

The technical support for this solution is good. I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Positive

I have previously used HPE 3PAR 7400. We switched over to Dell Unity because 7400 was being retired and did not offer two-factor authentication. The biggest difference between the two solutions is security and Dell is offered at a lower price point. 

The initial setup was straightforward. Deployment took less than two days. However, to get all the paperwork through the government officials took about six weeks.

We evaluated HPE Nimble.

Generally, one person is required to do the maintenance. There are eight of us that can do the maintenance in our company. Overall this solution provides exactly what we needed, which is fiber channel block storage in the cloud.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

We use it for data storage, for file.

When it comes to provisioning and management, the solution has reduced complexity because we combined several systems down into one. We're utilizing that technology to see what we have available for file, instead of multiple technologies, and trying to converge all of that together to understand what our capacity management meets are.

Also, Unity's are more easily administrated, so we need fewer people to do the administration. We have less overhead because of that.

We do replication and snapshotting. We're using that as a backup technology to leverage snapshotting.

We went to the PowerMax because of the needs that we have for the business. We're doing true enterprise-level storage. So we went from Unity to PowerMax to give us that tier that we were looking for.

It's stable. It works well.

We had a lot of different solutions. They were all piecemeal'ed. We have manufacturing sites in 80 countries and every site did their own thing until corporate brought it back in. That's when we started to go with Unity. And now we're making the transition to PowerMax.

We use Dell EMC because they're the premier player.

We used one of our premier partners to implement it. 

My advice is to take this solution. It does what it tells you it's going to do.

Instead of using multiple types of backup or file storage, we were trying to combine all of that into Unity. Now we're trying to refresh that again and go with the newer technology, the enterprise-level storage. Unity met our overall performance expectations for what it is, and then we obviously needed the enterprise level, so we're going with the PowerMax now.

I would rate Unity at eight out of ten. Any application or product has room for improvement. I don't see anything out there that's a ten. Unity is functional for what it needs to be.

We use it for mass and block storage. 

We have not had issues nor performance problems with it.

It has saved us time when provisioning new storage, so we're trying to automate that process.

It's pretty easy to use compared to the older version of the product, which was called VNX. This product is way easier to use.

It performs well. 

They have a Unity REST API that I use to automate some of the storage stuff. I'm just getting started with it, but it seems pretty easy to use.

Dell EMC Unity's competitor, NetApp, has a similar product. However, it has a clustering technology where you can group multiple systems together, then you can move data from one system to another seamlessly. I would like the Unity to do that.

It would be nice to have been able to easily move off our old VNX system to this system. The process is very manual.

The stability is fine.

We haven't really upgraded yet, but I know we can scale to about 500 drives with the system that we have. We are about halfway full. The scalability seems fine.

Technical support has been good and responsive. They know how to fix an issue.

Compared to our old platform, everything is more tightly integrated. I don't have to go to different sections to do something. A lot of it is wizard-driven, so it's an easy to use system.

The initial setup is straightforward and easy.

Deployment was pretty easy. We had a guy come in who did all the work.

Licensing is fine. We worked with a sales rep to purchase our Unity.

It's a good product.

We use the product with VMware, and also use it with Syft for home directory and departmental shares.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Support.
• How long the company has existed.
• Is it an established company and product?
• Performance.

We use it for enterprise SAN. We have multiple units. We just started getting them in and the performance has been good. It back-ends our enterprise Oracle, which is for our financials. We have some Mission-Support applications that it supports as well. We have both structured and unstructured data.

The most valuable feature is the ease of integrating it into our current environment. It works within our enterprise management application. The NAS is also extremely easy to set up.

On the data domains - for the Unity product, but specifically for data domains - I would like a much easier interface for managing, for actually going in and having one place where I could get all of the different parts of the overall unit. And I would also like to be able to identify individual disks a lot more easily.

In terms of stability, so far everything has been fine.

The scalability has been pretty easy too, as opposed to some other vendors that we've had in the past.

We have only used tech support to replace drives that have gone bad. But our experience has not been so good. The biggest problem has been having the right equipment in the right category that our support people can have access to. We have multiple accounts, and unfortunately, equipment is across them. So we'll call it in and they'll say, "Well, that's not under your account," so they can't actually go in online and put an SR against it. We're working on fixing that, but that's been extremely frustrating. Once we get past it, and if they understand that, yes, we do own it, and where the site is, etc., getting the part is easy.

We are replacing our VNX2s with the Unity storage. The VNXs were end-of-life and it was our normal tech refresh. We also had new requirements come in for larger storage so we bought the Unity.

The initial set up was more difficult than the original VNX2s. My Storage Admin said that it was just different.

Three years is probably the best that we get for the return on our investment. It takes three years to actually get it back.

Regarding the licensing, that was easy. As far as recurring costs go, all that is understood, what we need to keep in place. If we grow and scale, we also understand a license comes with that, too. In terms of integrating it with our existing apps, there was no additional cost, nothing we didn't expect.

Primarily we're Dell EMC. We do have NetApp and they're pretty big, they're petabyte systems and they're primarily for a business-level project, not for enterprise storage. After using them, we definitely wanted to stick with Dell EMC.

It's a good product and you should definitely evaluate it. We're concerned about standardization, so even if a product has something that's better - one item, one capability that's better - we probably wouldn't go with it and would rather standardize across, for support and everything else. That's important to us.

For the purchasing process, we'll go to the vendor, we'll give them our requirements, and we'll work out the final design. They'll give us a quote and then we'll get two more quotes from two other vendors. We're required to get three quotes. I then put that in through my finance and then it goes through contracting. Contracting goes out and they get the true quote. And then, once the equipment is purchased, it comes directly to me onsite.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. Improving the interface for managing it would help make it a ten.

We currently provide data solutions to both HP and a banking client. The banking client utilizes our DNS solution. I have introduced our kit for selling the smart technology integrated into our offerings.

Scheduled components are sourced from Korea based on their quality selection, with the actual purchase taking place in Vietnam.  

The storage dynamics are managed uniformly on a global scale, whether it is a simple or wide-ranging configuration.

They place a strong emphasis on service, occasionally requiring approvals. However, with full installations, they have achieved almost uniformity. Their storage approach differs from a consolidated business-based model; instead, it is application-centric. Their investment in solutions is geared towards specific needs, such as the banking or information system, acquiring smaller storage units individually.

I have been using this solution for 15 years. 

The discussion revolves around the Ports program, which has been implemented and operates as a single system based on my direction. Additionally, adherence to government requirements is necessary.

The preference for Unity arises from its investor-driven segmentation, specifically tailored for application data systems, eschewing any consolidation. Despite possessing numerous units, there is doubt whether it is feasible to invest exclusive authority for each application separately, eliminating the need for consolidation.

The consideration of scalability introduces the ability to simply add on hardware, particularly with SaaS and HTTP. However, certain aspects, such as metadata or previous HTTP pages, present challenges that necessitate careful attention.

The initial support for the second job from PA in Vietnam is highly commendable and competes well. Moreover, my NDA has proven to be exceptionally effective.

Positive

We are currently undergoing a conversion involving the installation of hardware and configuration. Initially, the focus was on infrastructure areas, specifically addressing endpoint agents. Subsequently, the emphasis shifted towards application-centric operations. I oversee the configuration and setup, encompassing both hardware and software aspects. 

The hardware setup is primarily based on production, involving tasks such as TCDR for the production environment. They initially acquired storage from Zero Ten, utilizing EMC. Over time, they transitioned to HTTP storage, and presently, they are considering a comprehensive replacement of their storage solution. The ongoing shift is towards a more advanced data system, albeit not classified as high-end.

It is an average priced solution.

I would rate it 8 out of 10. 

We are using Dell EMC Unity XT for our Oracle EBS on-premise ERP solution for storage. Primarily, for our database needs. We are quite happy with the performance of our SQL Server. 70% of OLTP and 30% reporting is the workload on that particular storage.

The solution overall has high performance.

Dell EMC Unity XT improvement point should be in the area of enhancements or innovation. It would be a benefit to have some kind of intelligence built into the solution with respect to the workload of their firmware. For example, if Dell EMC Unity XT is running an Oracle load or SQL application, we have to do other functions on it, find self remedies, or find self alerts to allow the administrator of the database to good insight into what exactly is happening in the storage layer. We are using different tools to retrieve partial information from the storage.

Having more artificial intelligence tools built into the solution would be a great benefit. This would allow us to see more about the workloads and higher visibility, such as performance degradation. 

I have been using Dell EMC Unity XT for approximately 20 years.

The Dell EMC Unity XT 450F is in production in our organization for the last three years, we have not faced any problems. The new version has been quite stable.

We are quite happy with the performance. The workload we are receiving on this storage solution is 70% for OLTP and 30% for reporting.

We have found the solution to be very scalable. We are in the process of receiving more enclosures that to increase the storage capacity.

We have approximately 1,500 users across the country that are using Dell EMC Unity XT and an additional 200 indirect users using it.

The technical support team from Dell EMC Unity XT has a proactive approach. We don't need to worry about what is going wrong we have them to support us. We have not to need to contact them frequently. They contact us in case of any alert that comes.

We have not used a solution previously.

The installation of Dell EMC Unity XT is not difficult. You only need to do the rack mounting and plug it into the environment. However, configuring it for the application is quite tedious because it doesn't have any built-in templates for different workloads. Installation is plain and the solution is not a challenge but configuring it for the workload is the challenge.

The time it took for the implementation to have the solution to a level we can use for production was approximately 48 hours.

We had support to do the implementation, we did not do it ourselves. We had a couple of engineers from Dell do the implementation and we managed the solution using our onsite team.

There is not a license required for the use of the solution. We purchased a maintenance contract.

We did a thorough evaluation of other solutions and it was clear after the performance evaluation, Dell EMC Unity XT was the best choice. We did a migration of Oracle Storage to different storage. There are other commercial advantages with Dell.

I would highly recommend Dell EMC Unity XT to others. I have experience with several sorts of workloads.

I rate Dell EMC Unity XT a nine out of ten.

I work as an integrator and this is one of the products that I have implemented in different locations. Most customers choose this product because they want to have faster storage. The XT series is all-flash, so it's fast.

I recommend it for ERP systems and for people running Oracle Database. I have implemented both of these. Most applications these days are implemented in a VM environment with a Hypervisor, and this product is well suited for virtualization.

The setup and installation procedures are easy.

The management is done using a single console, which is good. You don't have to use a separate VM to manage the storage.

The most valuable feature of Dell storage systems is the tiering. However, with an all-flash system, there is no tiering.

The monitoring capabilities should be improved.

The reporting should be better. In other systems, you can create many different kinds of reports but this is not the case with Dell.

Dell Unity is going out of support soon, which is bad. They should continue to support it, rather than have it end after five years.

I have been working with the Dell EMC Unity XT series for three years.

Unity had a lot of trouble with stability in the beginning, but it is stable now.

This is a scalable product. I have set up the device in a lot of different locations.

The Unity technical support is very good.

I have also implemented Dell EMC PowerStore and Unity is better. The PowerStore had a lot of issues when I deployed it.

I also work with HPE 3PAR and I find that it has better monitoring capabilities, a better GUI, and better reporting. Reports with different views can be exported. In Dell products, the reporting is not as good

With 3PAR, there is another appliance required to operate the storage but with Dell, it's good because you can manage it from the same console. You don't need another VM to manage the storage.

The initial setup is very easy to do and there are no prerequisites.

Installing the license is easy. You just have to download it from the portal.

Upgrading the product is also easy to do.

This is a great storage solution and a product that I recommend. That said, it's not perfect. More can be done from Dell to improve the Unity series.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.