Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

Dell EMC Unity XT is used for virtualization storage mainly with very few files and very little power consumption. We have on-premise deployment on our own organization. We have two Dell EMC Unity XT, and four IBM FlashSystems for our own consumption.  

Nowadays we implement Dell EMC Unity XT less and implement more Dell PowerStore solutions.

Dell EMC Unity XT has good integration with VMware.

I have been using Dell EMC Unity XT for many years.

Dell EMC Unity XT is stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have approximately 120 users using this solution when combining all the customers we have. If our capacity requirements increase we would be increasing the use of this solution.

The support from Dell EMC Unity XT is very good here in South Africa. It is important for us. 

The initial installation is straightforward and took approximately one hour. However, the full process was not as simple as IBM. 

I am certified to do the implementation of the solution.

There is a license required to use this solution, but it is a one-time purchase.

The price of the solution should be less expensive. However, at some point, you need to pay for facility and performance.

I have evaluated Pure Storage.

I would recommend this Dell EMC Unity XT to others. Overall it is a stable versatile solution.

I rate Dell EMC Unity XT an eight out of ten.

We used Dell EMC Unity XT for onsite storage.

We were moving from our HP3 power data center to a hybrid cloud solution. We still needed some onsite storage, but we wanted faster performance and a more efficient capacity. The flash storage generally outclasses older solutions, which was why we went down the flash storage route.

Having gone down the flash storage route, we liked Dell EMC Unity XT because of its speed and efficiency. We did compare it with Pure, but we liked Dell because Pure is more niche, while Dell EMC Unity XT is more general purpose. We can also buy other things from Dell, and we get better prices from them, compared to Pure. In Pure, you can only buy storage. These are the things we liked about this product.

Dell operates at the commodity end of the market, so if they really want to get into storage in a big way, they need to have better pre-sales technical support and engagement.

They do what they say, but if it was a really big implementation, I would be worried about recommending Dell EMC Unity XT, simply because we need to have a more technical understanding of it. The technical engagement can be a lot better.

Dell EMC Unity XT is a stable product.

Dell EMC Unity XT has good scalability.

The technical support for this product is fine.

There is an annual charge for the license of this product. It has better pricing than its competitor: Pure Storage.

We evaluated Pure Storage.

I'm in IT and my niche is digital transformation consulting. One of my customers needed a storage solution, so I recommended Dell EMC Unity XT. I'm not a storage consultant. I'm a digital transformation consultant, and one of my clients needed a storage solution.

I'm not a user of this product. My clients might need a solution from time to time, and what I do is I recommend solutions.

Dell EMC Unity XT is a good product.

I didn't get involved in the initial setup of this product, but I believe it was straightforward. It only took one to two days for the installation, then we were able to migrate our data.

I can recommend this product to others looking into implementing it.

I'm giving Dell EMC Unity XT a score of seven out of ten.

Unity is our central storage solution. All of our data is stored on this platform, so it's not just production servers in DR. We have two DR—near and far—so there are three sites in total. Unity holds all of our transactional data.

My storage team likes Unity's replication features. Three-site replication is a unique feature that EMC offers us.

We've been using Unity storage for almost 10 years.

Unity is very stable. 

Unity is scalable. 

I would rate Dell EMC support seven out of 10. We had to follow up a lot. We sent an email beforehand, so they knew the model and everything about our environment. We expected them to do better homework and engage with my team. If they had done the implementation like that we could have saved a lot of time. That is why I rate them seven and not nine or eight.

Implementing Unity isn't straightforward, but it's not that complex, either. There is still some room to expedite the implementation process a bit. We had support from EMC guys in India or Singapore. They worked with our bank's in-house storage team, which has about four members. 

Our contract included training, and we had to pay for that also. It was supposed to be on site, where our team visited EMC somewhere in India or Singapore to get training, but we couldn't do that because of the pandemic, so the training was online. If we get trained next time, we would like to do most of the implementation by ourselves.

We have a perpetual license for Unity and a support contract with Dell EMC. 

I rate Dell EMC Unity XT eight out of 10. We compared Unity with NetApp and HP also. In some areas, NetApp and HP have advantages over EMC. I think NetApp holds the top Gartner position. It's in the upper-right quadrant. 

Also, Dell EMC doesn't have a presence in Bangladesh, so they work through local partners. Previously, they had only one partner with sub-partners or sub-agents. This complicated the relationship with the end customer. We had been working with the same partner for the last eight years, but when we were upgrading, they told us they could no longer support us because they had some issues with EMC. We got caught in the feud between Dell EMC and their partner.

We had to get somebody else appointed as a new partner and then discontinue the earlier partner's agreement to make it commercially feasible. I think EMC should be more careful in appointing partners, and they need to have better control over their partners. And if their partner has some problems with them, we should not suffer. 

One advantage was the ability to use different types of disks and different types of disk solutions to increase the speed, first of all, and to take advantage of different storage costs across the life cycle of the data.

• One of the most useful features for us was the deduplication. It had been challenging for us to store certain types of data and to use patterns of storage to reduce storage size.
• The IOPS and the speed were also an important part of the solution.
• In addition, there was a Unity machine that offers block-level and NAS, and we used the block-level storage.
• We also use the side-to-side storage verification for the recovery site.
  
• Finally, the device was flexible and we could change the configuration to meet our needs.

Our request to Dell EMC for improvement was in the reporting and monitoring areas. Dell EMC built up a cloud ID so that we could see the overall storage numbers. We needed to have the proper KPIs to be able to see and manage things.

I worked with Dell EMC Unity XT for two to three months. My last role was IT director so I didn't do a lot of hands-on with the devices. I was overseeing the IT staff and doing project management for these kinds of solutions. At that time I was working for a manufacturing company for pharmaceutical life cycle products, and we were a customer of Dell EMC.

There was no problem with the stability. It was, as expected, very strong.

You can grow as much as you like. There is no limit. It's easy to scale.

We had about 1,000 users of the Unity XT.

We did not need to contact their technical support.

The initial setup for Unity XT was pretty straightforward. We knew exactly what we needed and our requirements were very easily applied to the box. With one day of hands-on training, my colleagues were able to manage things.

Maintenance required one person.

We used an integrator for the deployment. They had great knowledge of the product. We also did some additional integration with them in other parts of the storage, including backup and data domain devices, because we were very fond of the work they did.

The main factors to consider are space, availability, business continuity, performance, and IOPS. The Unity XT box is very strong. It doesn't break. The MTBF time is very large so you don't have to worry about faults or outages in your operations.

It is a very complete platform. Dell EMC wrote a new OS for storage, but I haven't seen it yet.

We looked at HPE Nimble but the price of the Unity XT was very good compared to the competition.

We use it for a virtualization environment based on VMware vSphere.

The most valuable features include

• Snapshots
• Thin Clones
• Deduplication and compression.

It could be improved in the area of management flexibility. For example, I really need to set read-only access for LUNs, and there's no such option with Unity XT.

I would also like to see more support for object storage for S3. NetApp includes basic support for S3 to the on-top array, so it would be great if DELL EMC would include S3 for the Unity XT.

I have been using Dell EMC Unity XT for three years.

The stability has completely satisfied us.

The scalability has also satisfied us. We use it extensively. We purchased an expansion last year and added about 150 terabytes and we're going to purchase another expansion next year. We plan to use it until the end of support.

The services on the Unity storage are used worldwide in our organization. We have about 1,500 employees.

Dell EMC's technical support is perfect.

The initial setup was completely straightforward. Anyone who can handle "next, next, next, finish" can deploy Unity. It was deployed within half an hour.

We installed it, connected it to fabric, updated the software, went through the initial configuration dialogue, and that was it. Most of the time in getting it up and running was spent on the data migration.

For deployment and maintenance it requires just one person. In our organization that person is our storage and virtual infrastructure administrator.

We did it ourselves.

It's a great product if it fits your specific needs.

We use it for user shares and VMs.

We have 200 people using it in our organization.

The snapshotting is slick.

I like how it separates the iSCSI drives from the standard shares. It has two different routes to it. I know most of the other solutions do this, but I just like the way that Dell EMC does it.

I like the dashboard, which gives me a quick reference on my monitor as to what is using what bandwidth.

It could go faster. Make it bigger, better, and faster at a lower price, and I am there.

Our solution is four- to five-years-old. We use it every day.

I have never had any stability issues. It has been solid and stable. The dual platform, i.e., how it sits one head on top of the other, has been rock-solid. I have never had an issue with it.

I have noticed there is another version that has come out.

I haven't scaled it yet. The way that I set it up was half the drive bays are being used. When I do need to scale up, I am just going to duplicate the other half of the drives, stick them in there, and then spin them up.

The technical support is good and quick.

I would like a little faster response, but I don't think that their response is really that slow. They respond fairly quickly, at least fast enough for most issues. If it was an emergency issue, it might be different, as they probably would move it up the ladder anyway.

It is a little bit of a pain at first to set up the snapshotting. However, once it is set up, and you figure it out, it is not that bad.

I needed one of the specialists to set it up initially, which is not surprising because the solutions are a pain in that way. Some of the menus, and how it is at first, are a little awkward. It takes a little while to get used to, then it all starts to make sense.

I liked the price point when we purchased it.

I don't know what other units have that Unity doesn't have. Though I would say to them, "Keep up with your competition."

Look at it online. If you can get a demo version in-house, give it a shot.

If you need to keep data safe and make sure it doesn't go anywhere, Dell EMC Unity is a good way to go.

I would rate them as nine out of 10.

We use it for software storage and factory structures for governmental structures, as well as in insurance companies and the financial sector.

I like that the solution is scalable.

The product’s pricing should be improved.

We have around 40 users for the solution, and the maintenance requires just one engineer.

If any issues arise, you can always contact a professional from Dell. However, we don't have any support problems because it's a great product. Also, we know everything about the product.

The initial setup is not complex. We send two engineers to visit the customer site, install the equipment into the rack cabinet, establish connections, and proceed to install the software. The first one handles the installation, while the other works on connecting everything, including setting up internet cabinets. The entire setup process takes a day or two.

The basic licenses and software are included in the package. If there's a need for additional recovery tools or anything else, you can order them separately. However, normally, all required software and licenses are already included.

I recommend this product. It’s a good product to buy or sell. The primary advantage is that this product has been thoroughly tested and proven over time. You won't encounter unexpected results. It's highly predictable. When making a purchase, you can be 100% sure there won't be any unforeseen issues. Overall, I rate it an eight out of ten.

The product is stable. Its most valuable feature is the storage alarm.

Dell Unity XT’s price needs improvement.

We have been using Dell Unity XT for five to six years. We are using version 380.

I rate the product’s stability nine out of ten.

We have 8000 Dell Unity XT users. I rate the product’s scalability an eight out of ten.

The product has an easy setup process. It requires two people to execute it and takes a day to complete.

I rate Dell Unity XT’s pricing a nine out of ten.

We evaluated HP and NetApp.

I rate Dell Unity XT an eight out of ten.