Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

It's our primary storage array. We have a public cloud hosted internally, and it's our primary storage array for our customer virtual machines. It has performed very well. There have been no problems with it. We've had it for about nine months and it has performed well.

Obviously, our customers rely on us for uptime. We've had no problems with it so far. Migration to it went very smoothly, so in terms of value to us, it's been very good at keeping our workload and our uptime going.

Also, it has definitely provided much faster performance.

Storage Snapshots have been really nice. They allow us to do backups without impacting our production workload that much.

The scalability, the ability to add disks dynamically and adjust our workload as needed, has also been really helpful. That definitely makes my job easier.

The interface for managing Unity is very easy. The integrations between VMware Hypervisor and Dell EMC are top-notch, so it's been really easy to use and manage. We already had solutions in place, so it was more just a matter of buying the hardware and migrating workloads over to it. There was no cost other than the purchase of the hardware and software licenses.

We had a couple issues, but they were very minor, related to storage Snapshots and our backup product, which is Veeam. That turned out to be a Veeam issue.

My only complaint would be some of the CLI Help files could be a little more detailed, but that's very minor complaint. We were trying to run some commands just to see how the storage snaps were interacting with the storage array, and it was a little difficult to look up exactly what commands should be run. The Help files detailing what exactly the commands did wasn't as detailed as we would have wanted them to be. They were very limited in scope. They could have been more detailed.

More integration with VMware would always be helpful, plugins that go directly into the vSphere management. A single pane of glass is always beneficial.

It's been very good at scaling when we've needed it to. It's been a good solution so far.

We have used technical support occasionally. There really have been no issues, we haven't had it that long. But just for implementation and licensing, we did contact support a couple of times. There were no issues with it. They were helpful.

We were using a VNX array, which was fine for the time when we had it, but we've expanded. The business is growing and we decided to invest in something a little more heavy-duty to handle the kind of IOPS that we're dealing with now. We are a Dell EMC partner. Obviously, that is who we wanted to go with.

The most important criterion when selecting a vendor is their relationship with us. In addition, easy use of the product and reliability are important. We rely on uptime, so we look for redundancy and reliability.

I didn't install the hardware, but I definitely assisted in setting it up: migrating workloads to it, setting up data stores, etc. The process was pretty straightforward. It was stuff I've done a hundred times before, so it was what I expected. It was not more complicated than what I would have hoped for.

We don't have many numbers in terms of ROI because we've only had it about nine months, but we definitely see the performance value.

We looked at a couple. We looked at Rubrik a little bit and we looked at some HPE arrays, but we decided to go with Dell EMC to keep up our partnership with them.

Ownership simplicity is there. Licensing was straightforward. We've always had good support from Dell EMC, we've never had a problem with them. Their solution engineers are always very helpful. So overall, no problems with ownership.

I give the Unity a nine out of ten. The Help files and a little more integration would be nice.

We use our Dell EMC Unities to store the bank's data. We have one Unity in our production environment and another Unity at our disaster recovery site.

We use it in conjunction with VMware. We store all our virtual machines on Unity. 

The Dell EMC unity interface is simple to manage. We manage it by ourselves. We create logs to store data. It's also easy for us to use because we use other solutions which are built for Unity, like VMware, which are recovery points. They work with the Dell EMC Unity system, as these products integrate well in our environment. 

All our applications have been migrated to VMware.

It's very reliable. I have not had an issue with Dell EMC Unity. 

Their service is good. If there is an issue with our Unity, Dell will sometimes call me before I even know I received a notification. They will tell me that some disks are bad and needed replacement. Whenever we have issues, they respond very quickly. 

We are using all-flash disk, so the speed is very good.

The solution is stable.

We are a small bank. It is very scalable whenever we want to expand the disk storage. 

Dell EMC technical support is very good. I would rate them a 10 out of 10. They take you by the hand and walk you through every issue. They explain the issue and follow up on it.

Whenever we need help to service the system or apply any upgrades, their customer service is good.

We used Dell EMC for the setup. We had a Dell EMC engineer and a third-party engineer come in. The Dell EMC engineer came and set up what he had for the disk. He took away the complexity from us, so I didn't see it. We had a third-party help us as well during the installation. 

My part was mainly just administering the system. If I had an issue, I just made a short phone call to Dell EMC.

In the past, we used to have a physical server dedicated for Exchange or SQL. We have been able to virtualize those systems. Therefore, we cut our costs on the hardware and the backup is simpler in a VM environment. With Unity, we can easily replicate all our data to our production. 

For DR, the solution is very efficient for us. It has also allowed us to centralize our data repository.

While Dell EMC is costly, I don't have any complaints about their licensing model.

We have also used Dell EMC CLARiiON and Symmetrix within the Dell EMC shop. What attracted to us to Dell EMC Unity was its flash disk technology.

Outside of Dell EMC, we looked at IBM and HPE. However, we have VMware as a recovery point for replication, and those VMware solutions work together well with Unity.

The purchasing process was uncomplicated. We went through a third-party reseller who has a relationship with Dell. They know the product well, so they specialize in it. We gave them our needs and they were able to recommend the appropriate solution to Dell, the sizing, etc. This helped us out. 

We can sleep at night because the support is great.

I've been working with this solution for about six to seven years. It is deployed on-premises and on the cloud.

It is scalable, and we usually recommend Dell Unity XT to small and medium companies.

I would rate technical support at eight out of ten.

Positive

It takes about eight hours to get Dell Unity XT up and running. Fine tuning may take longer.

The installation can be managed by two people and the configuration by one person.

It's an expensive solution, particularly for medium companies. One device costs about 30,000 euros. The support contract is quite expensive as well. We are currently looking for other lower-cost solutions.

Overall, I would rate Dell Unity XT at six out of ten because it's an expensive solution.

We have different models of VNX and we have Unity. We use them for file sharing and for block serving in non-production systems.

We don't have a dedicated application running on Unity, but we are using it and file sharing to run multiple systems, but it is not the core. It's used by a lot of applications, but we use it to share files between different applications on different platforms.

We have multiple systems, a heterogeneous environment with Unix and Windows. It's not easy to share multiple files through different platforms. Unity solves this issue.

Also, replication gives us high-availability, and thus quick recovery, and snapshots give us faster recovery within the box, in case there are problems within the box itself.

The valuable features of Unity include:

• it's flexible
• friendly user-interface
• good performance.

It's not complicated. Any beginner can work with this environment.

It is not an enterprise-level solution, it's for mid-range companies, but it includes a lot of features like compression and encryption.

If you compare it with VMAX, where we communicate with the box through Solutions Enabler and there are a lot of commands and a lot of flexibility, the command line for Unity needs to enhanced.

We cannot compare the stability with VMAX or PowerMax, but so far, so good.

The scalability is okay, it's fine. It's not powerful though. We have another product that is more scalable than Unity. It needs to be able to scale out, like the Isilon system and other systems.

Dell EMC has one of the best support organizations, worldwide. We have multiple vendors, but Dell EMC is one of the best. Regardless of whether it's Unity, VMAX, etc., it's fine. We have had very special support from Dell EMC.

We have a good relationship with multiple vendors, but especially with Dell EMC, which is one of the big players. Our main storage is Dell EMC for many reasons. We got Unity because we are happy with the support and with products like VMAX and Isilon. We didn't want to change the technology we are going with.

I was involved in the initial setup with my engineers. It was straightforward. Most products from Dell EMC are straightforward to set up.

We have Dell EMC Unity XT in one of our branch office data centers, and we use it for a small number of users. It's a first step into the flash storage system for us. It has worked very well for us. We're very happy with how it works.

We're a VMware house, so we've integrated it into ESX and we use it as our target environment for vRA. It's worked really well.

We've had it just about over two years now, and it's performing very well. It has fulfilled all our needs. We've had none of the I/O issues that we had seen on our previous SAN. It's worked really well.

In terms of service and deployment, it was done easily. It was a big SAN beforehand, so being flash, it was configured quickly. The footprint that it left in the data center was small, so it has definitely consolidated everything that we've put in there. Across-the-board, our first step into flash went really well.

Ease of use would really be the best feature. We were easily able to get the correct performance details from it. And the configuration was great, it was relatively easy as well; that was brilliant.

In terms of managing it, the performance metrics that it gives, generic stuff, it does everything that we need it to do. We didn't have to create any custom reporting. It all went well.

It has ticked all the boxes for us so far. A fourth year of maintenance at a good price would be good.

One to three years.

From the beginning, we've had no issues. Since it's been turned on, it's worked flawlessly.

We probably overcompensated with the numbers that we put into it in the beginning, so we've not had to upscale anything yet. We're still using it two-and-a-half years later, which is proof that it works.

We have the Call Home feature, which is a kind of preemptive alert for us. So Dell EMC has been telling us when there have been issues. There really haven't been any big ones; minor things, maybe firmware needed to be upgraded. But other than that, it's been fine.

We were using something different. We were coming from the typical fiber background. We needed to get something new, so we looked at a few different options at the time. We went with Dell EMC Unity because we were seeing a higher I/O through the data center, and we thought flash would be the one for us. That's why we went with the Unity box. Also, we went from a 20U footprint down to an 8U footprint. At the time, it was a massive consolidation, space-wise. It did everything else to fill all the proper metrics that we were looking at.

The other criterion we had for vendor selection was ease of use, that was a big thing for us. We've used Dell EMC everywhere else, so we thought it would be a good model to fit in with everything that we have. Going that way was the right step for us.

From the beginning, I worked with Dell EMC on getting it set up the way we wanted it, carved out the way we needed it. It was easy. They got it done in a few hours and it's worked really well since.

The ROI comes down to the level of effort that we've had to put in to make it work, which has been relatively small. That's a massive return on investment for any team.

NetApp was one that we had, they were in contention. We had an IBM solution that they were going to put in place. EqualLogic was also on the shortlist. But we thought Dell EMC Unity would be a good choice for us.

If you're looking at a flash-based system, one that you want to work and not to have to play around with it - to be sure it's working all the time - Unity is definitely a step in the right direction for any company, going forward.

In terms of the purchasing process, we came from the EMC side. It was our first branch into flash after using EMC for so long. It's worked flawlessly, so we have no issues there.

I rate this solution at eight out of ten. Nothing's perfect. It's very hard to make something perfect. Being an eight, it's a really good model for any company to choose. It's a realistic metric to put against something, rather than saying it's perfect.

Primary use is mid-range storage. We have two variants, we have the hybrid version and the all-flash version. It's for general use. For high performance, we have different systems.

For the hybrid version, the benefit is that data is stored on relatively cheap storage. Hot data is on faster storage. On the all-flash version, lower energy costs help, if you want to pursue green IT.

In the hybrid version, I would say they are fast. They have fully automated storage tiering. In the all-flash version, higher performance, compression, data replication.

• One-to-many replication.
• Data deduplication.
• Asynchronous Fibre Channel replication. It is asynchronous on iSCSI and I would like to have that on the Fibre Channel.
• Unisphere-wise, I have to log in to each Unity as a unique environment. In VNX, I logged in to the domain and I was logged in to every VNX. So that's missing.
• I miss storage groups. Now, if I have to add a LUN to a cluster, multiple host, I have to know which host is in that cluster. I have to write it down and that makes it hard. In VNX and earlier, I could simply put a LUN on a storage group and every host in the group had the LUN. This lack bothers me a lot because it takes a lot of time and mistakes are made. Sometimes, a Hyper-V host gets a VMware LUN and vice-versa. Not good.

Stability could be better. I've had a few storage processor reboots; not as often as with VNX. And Clariion was a disaster. So, it has improved.

The scalability is less than with VNX. In the VNX, I could replicate out to more than one storage system. On Unity, it's one on one. If I could migrate one to many, that would be helpful, but that is missing now.

I'm certified myself. We have certified colleagues. But we use technical support. The problem is that some of the time we are more knowledgeable than them.

VNX1/2

Tech-refresh

The setup is straightforward.

in-house

no clue

no clue. I'm technical, I don't do prices

No. We only use EMC

The hardware is fine, a nine or a 10 out of 10. Manageability is a seven or eight out of 10, because of the storage group and the domain absence. Overall, if I put the two together, the solution is a nine out of 10.

My advice would be to stick with VNX. If the developers come up with a solution for single sign-on for multiple Unity's, and if they bring back the storage groups, I'm fine with it. It's a good solution.

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 primarily use the solution for NAS network storage for the Microsoft environment.

Overall, I've had a very good experience with the solution so far.

Integration is easy with this product.

Currently, the protocol SNMP is not implemented. That's a problem, as we follow this protocol and I can't check the integrity of this equipment.

I've been using the solution for two months at this point.

We haven't used the solution for very long, so it may be hard to gauge the stability. However, so far, we haven't had any issues whatsoever. It doesn't crash or freeze. It doesn't have bugs or glitches. It seems quite stable.

Having only used it a short time, we haven't tried to scale it just yet. We don't foresee any limitations, however, without actually doing it, we can't really tell.

We needed to contact technical support in regards to an IAS error in automatic services. We didn't have any issues reaching them or getting the help we needed. So far, we've been satisfied with their level of service. They seem knowledgable and responsive.

We found the implementation to be very straightforward. It's not complex in any way.

The deployment didn't take too long. We had everything up and running in two days or so. It's pretty quick.

We have 12 technicians for the maintenance of all of our equipment in the enterprise. They would also handle any maintenance required for this product.

The pricing is quite good. We find it fair. It's not too expensive.

We're just a Dell client. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

I have four Unity products. Two were already installed in September, and one just last week. While two are already in production, the other two are not up and running yet.

I'd recommend the product to others.

Overall, I'd rate it nine out of ten. We haven't worked with it too long, however, everything seems to be going quite well.