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.

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.

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.

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.

We are customers of Dell and I'm head of the team.

I like that you can add volume and it is automatically registered in VMware. It's easy to integrate XT with other solutions.

It's not a feature, but I'd like to see licensing costs reduced. 

I've been using this solution for a year. 

The solution is stable. 

I haven't tried scaling it because my work is a fixed requirement but it seems to be scalable.

I previously worked with Sequel Logic and a little with NetApp. We switched because it was a natural upgrade. I don't think either of those solutions is better than XT. I like it a lot although I think Unity does a pretty decent job as well.

The initial setup was straightforward and I think it took a couple of days. 

I think everything is overpriced in the storage area so it's difficult to know what reasonable means for these products. 

I rate this solution nine out of 10.