Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

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.

We use it for block storage for our entire VMware environment, which runs Windows, Exchange, and SQL Server. The Unity also provides block storage for bare metal Windows Server that run our backup software. We also use file storage primarily to store images.

I use it with three projects that I directly work with. Each of those projects has 80 to 100 virtual servers. We have sysadmins who are dedicated to each project and do all the admin tasks, like checking VMs, servers, storage, etc. There is a larger team of five or six systems engineers who backstop all three of those projects. We focus on architecting and configuring any servers, storage, and networking. We may also be called in to resolve performance concerns.

Unity/Unity XT is significantly more user friendly than VNX.

We can do both block and file storage on one unit. For our projects, we use both of those functions. This is a key feature for us, along with very solid, predictable performance.

We use VMware in a number of projects but there isn't very good visualization of the storage from VMware or vice versa. I'm hopeful this improves in the follow on product, PowerStore.

I have been using this solution for the past seven years, previously at Dell and three years with my current company.

Stability has been very good, even the older models of Unity are quite good. The non-XTs and the XTs have been absolutely stable. We have had a couple of small hardware glitches, e.g., I have had to replace an LCC. That is literally it over the last three years.

This is a newer model for us. Out of the three projects that I have worked on, two of them are using the older model and the XT is primarily in another project. We have tons of scalability in it. We have a whole rack dedicated to Unity, and it is pretty much empty. We have probably close to a petabyte of storage in there, and it is still pretty much empty. Scalability looks really good.

Where we would run into a scalability problem, we are going to do a lot of image storage, and that doesn't compress well. So, flash drives wouldn't really help us. We need a big, scalable object storage system. That is where Isilon comes in. We have about three and a half petabytes of Isilon at each of that project's sites.

The technical support has been really great. I have never had a problem that they were not able to get to the bottom of pretty quickly.

Positive

We do have Dell EMC SC storage, which is very simple and straightforward, which is good for our small remote locations. However, it doesn't have the performance or features that the XT would. As far as block storage, Unity XT is probably the best bank for the buck for us because we can get block and file storage in one package. We don't have to buy a separate Isilon for object storage.

Including VNX, SC, and Unity/Unity XT, Dell EMC has provided all the storage solutions at the company for the last 20 years. 

The initial setup was super easy for the most part. 

I will note one issue. This might be on the sales team, but we had a need for encryption that I am sure we mentioned. However, the Unity that showed up at our data center did not have the licenses for encryption at rest. I would love to see Data At Rest Encryption (D@RE) be just the default since I can't imagine anyone wouldn't want it at this point. It would have made life easier for me. I definitely had to completely wipe out an array three days after we set it up, because it didn't have encryption, then redo it with a new license.

Vendor did initial install. I reinitialized it and did the final install.

There are cost savings from having a single solution that does both file and block storage.

Pricing could always be better. Dell likes to charge a premium price for these products.

I would say the major complaint with pricing is that Dell EMC comes to us and gives us a an initially high price. We usually need to go back and forth to negotiate the price to a more reasonable level. We are not going to just say, 'Yes,' because we are out of time." 

I don't know if the discounting structure needs to be better or more consistent. 

Having worked at Dell EMC previously, I know they have discount floors, etc. I just wish they would note, "This company gets a 55% discount." Just be consistent with it. Company-wide, we buy all our storage from them. They should be able to give us something a little more structured.

In one project, we needed more scalability that the Unity can provide so we are using Dell EMC Isilon for it. In that case, I needed multiple PB of object storage.

Otherwise, we have not looked at much else. In the future, however, we will probably transition to Dell PowerStore.

I would rate it as nine out of 10. It is definitely one of the most robust, solid, well-performing products that I have dealt with. It is set it and forget it, which is wonderful for my piece of mind.

Unity is utilized primarily for our vSphere/vCenter environment. It is where we keep all of our data stores and all of our LUNs and anything to do with our vSphere environment. We really don't usually assign any LUNs directly to servers.

We have a large cluster environment and these are active clusters. There are times where the SQL cluster environment starts to get full and it's really easy to add a LUN or space without interruption. The customer is not even aware that the volume is about to run out of space. We can always just add more space and do data recovery for DRs without the customer's knowledge.

One of the features that I find most valuable is that it is easy to access. We're able to access it from just about anywhere, as long as we have access to a browser. That feature is really neat because sometimes we will go to a different data center or a different site, and if we need to access it to see a LUN or to see any type of storage, we can do that. That's one of the big takeaways with Unity.

The solution has been around in our environment for about five years. I've only been exposed to it for the past year and a half.

My impression of the stability is all positive.

We can always add more storage or more devices or more disks. There's always room for growth and it's easy to implement.

This is our primary source of storage and we plan to increase our usage. There's an objective coming in 2022 to increase storage. We have several terabytes and we are constantly chewing that up so there is an effort underway to expand.

I would like it to be a little bit easier to contact support. We can contact support, but we have to go through a phone tree. We get routed to different places. I might call support to say that I need a drive replaced and get transferred to three different groups before I get to the group I actually need.

Once we are able to get in touch with someone, and we have an engineer working with us, it's great the way they follow up. They constantly keep in touch with us whenever we have issues. They help schedule any type of upgrades and get them implemented. Overall, support has been very helpful.

And anytime there are notices of updates and upgrades, support keeps us involved and engaged.

Positive

We went to the Unity because of cost. I wasn't involved in the purchase of it, but the VPLEX maintenance was getting costly and it felt like the Unity was newer technology. The technology was better, the interface was better, interacting with it was better. It is a lot easier to use than the VPLEX. We figured it was a better solution than what we had and one that gave us more flexibility

The initial setup was straightforward. It was very easy to set up.

Ours was a pretty large deployment. The Unity replaced our VPLEX environment so when we put the Unity in we had to do a lot of migration conversion from VPLEX to Unity. That was a process because we had a lot of VMs and data stores move. It took us about a day and a half to do everything.

We have five engineers who work on it, or who actually touch it or provide hands-on support for it. As far as the end-users go, we have about 500, and they have no idea they're on a Unity. What they know is that when they pull their machines up, they have storage and data.

We used CDW. Our experience with them was outstanding. They're great. I have no issues at all. CDW just did an outstanding job.

The return on investment is in the fact that it meets all of our storage needs and in the ease of expanding it. It's also seen through the fact that we can work on the environment without interruption to the end-user.

Do your due diligence. Check it out to see if Unity is something you can use for your environment. It is definitely worth looking into. Give it a try.

As far as the solution's functionality goes, I see no areas in need of improvement. Everything is functioning completely adequately. I have no complaints and no issues. I have no negative feedback. The implementation was easy and straightforward. Doing our recovery points is pretty straightforward. It is easy to access through a browser. We can add and remove LUNs on-the-fly with no impact at all to our environment.

I provide support for these storage products.

I like that the performance is very good.

It would be better if there were more integrations.

We have been using Dell Unity XT for two and a half years. 

Dell Unity XT is a stable solution.

Dell Unity XT is a scalable solution. 

Technical support is very good. The response from technical support was very good.

Depending on the hardware, it takes about three to four hours to deploy this solution. 

We sometimes use third-party help because we are facing many hardware issues.

We have to apply for a license for each system. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Dell Unity XT a nine.

We propose this solution when customers need to expand their workload or storage.

It is great because it can work as a SAN and net storage.

It is expensive, and the pricing could be better.

We have been using this solution for three years, and most companies in Egypt partner with Dell EMC. It is the main storage solution that we sell to customers. It is deployed on-premises.

I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

I rate the scalability a nine out of ten, and we have more than 80 customers in Egypt.

There is a good ROI if the customer has critical applications and file storage.

The licensing is included in the appliance, and I rate the licensing costs an eight out of ten.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten and recommend it to others.

Dell Unity XT is used via iSCSI as a storage system for our infrastructure.

The most valuable features of Dell Unity XT are the data compression for all of our VMs up to four times and the performance is good.

The price of Dell Unity XT could improve.

I have been using Dell Unity XT for approximately one year.

Dell Unity XT is a stable solution.

The scalability of Dell Unity XT is good, it can scale well.

We have many VMs that are using the solution. We have plans to increase the usage of the solution.

I have not used the support from Dell Unity XT.

We used other Dell solutions prior to Dell Unity XT and we use Synology for more simple projects.

The initial setup of Dell Unity XT is straightforward.

We did the deployment of Dell Unity XT in-house. We have three engineers that do the maintenance and support of the solution.

The price of Dell Unity XT could improve. However, it is a one-time purchase.

I rate Dell Unity XT a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for customers who are looking for a cost-effective option that provides an end-to-end solution for servers, backups, and storage.

The unified storage feature is valuable because it means my customers don't require the setup of a separate mass. They can use the existing storage system as a mass.

Using this solution has meant that I do not need to look for different partners to provide me with solutions like a backup service. Dell provides end-to-end solutions.

This solution could be improved by offering containerization. This is something many of my customers are looking for. 

I have a limited budget for IT solutions so it would be great to provide Dell's solutions at a lower cost. 

I have been using this solution for five years. 

This is a scalable solution. 

I would rate the customer service for this solution an eight out of ten. 

Positive

I have previously used HPE. HPE only offers hardware and so we needed to find a cloud-based solution. 

From a pricing perspective, this solution is comparable to others on the market. 

This solution requires regular maintenance from a dedicated team. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

What I found most valuable from Dell EMC Unity XT is its easy management through its multi-cloud support. They also offer remote support or secure remote services, which I also find valuable. The support they provide their users is very good, and they'll really help whenever you need support.

I've been working with Dell EMC Unity XT for six years.

This product is stable on production.

Dell EMC Unity XT has some scalability issues which they need to address.

Before you can get support for Dell EMC Unity XT and other Dell EMC products, you have to spend time looking for the service tag number on your product, and this is a process that makes it difficult to access support, but once you gain access, they'll provide you with very good support.

The initial setup for this product was easy and didn't involve any complexity.

Dell EMC Unity XT is being used both in our company and the companies of our customers. We work with our customers, though I'm moving to another company, but I'm still integrating this product, e.g. it's being used in-house.

There is some dependency on the storage side.

We only have two people in the company working on this product.

The price for Dell EMC Unity XT being higher or lower depends on the partner negotiations.

I'm giving Dell EMC Unity XT a rating of 10 out of 10. It's stable and it's a very innovative product.