Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

We primarily use Dell EMC Unity XT for SAN storage for ESX data stores. It has been performing okay. We have integrated it with VMware. We do have iSCSI LUNs for some Microsoft Windows servers as well, but not many.

It allows junior engineers to administer it a lot, so senior engineers, like myself, don't have to do hands-on stuff. It's less complex.

The most valuable feature is the interface. It is really usable, easy to manage.

Looking at that ease of management, for LUN creation, I like the integration into VirtualCenter. I used to have to add LUNs manually, then scan them in and format them. It does that all for you, all in one, immediate deployment of LUNs. Also, for replication, we use RecoverPoint. It's a little clunky but, overall, the Unity part of that product works in a very simplistic manner. It's easy to manage.

I would like better integration with RecoverPoint. My major issue with the solution, all around, has been RecoverPoint more than Unity. While I like the easy user interface, I would like some more advanced features for troubleshooting built into the product, so that we can do more in-depth problem-solving.

The issue we're having right now is that we can't really see much in the interface. Support can see more, but we can't see what's going on, so we have to rely on support to send us things. I would like something that a power user, an advanced user, a subject matter expert, could actually look at and say, "Okay, this is what's going on here," to make troubleshooting easier, instead of just the happy, bubbly alerts.

One to three years.

Stability is the problem. We've had stability issues with it. We've had problems with the iSCSI interface. We've had it for two years now and for two years we've had problems where a service processor will drop, we'll lose connectivity to LUNs, we'll lose connectivity to the storage, issues like that. No matter how we've tried to chase it down, everybody just points fingers at each other. The only thing that changed in our environment was that the Unity solution was installed. It's the "least common factor."

The scalability is great. If we need to expand, it's very easy to expand.

Aside from the finger-pointing, they're generally pretty easy to work with. But in my opinion, it's hard to get up to higher levels of support. For a complex problem like we've had, it's been very difficult for us to get ahold of the right type of people. We almost need engineers or someone at a higher level. When you call in, you get the base-level people. What I always say whenever it comes to tech support is, if I'm calling you, it's not a problem that's easily solved. Because if it was easy, I would have fixed it myself. So getting to those higher levels of support has been very problematic for us. They just want to say, "It's not our issue," instead of someone actually tackling the problem.

We had a VNX before and the one that we were using was starting to be phased out. We needed to keep on support and we need to stay with a solution, for our clients, that is newer and cutting edge. We were aimed towards Unity.

When selecting a vendor, the most important criterion is interoperability. It has to be able to integrate really well.

Deployment was complicated when we did it initially and we still have problems with it. We had a VAR come out to do the initial install.

As far as cost is concerned, it does great deduplication. From a storage perspective, we save money being able to dedupe right on the disk. It's easy to manage, which saves us time. Overall, that time is money; it saves us money. It has a pretty good ROI.

As far as simplicity of ownership goes, I don't think there is anything aside from the maintenance licensing.

We were aiming more towards Dell EMC because that's what we had previously.

Test it really well first, and get somebody who knows what they're doing to set it up. The VAR that we were referred to was terrible. That was the root of a lot of our problems.

If we didn't have the problems that we had with it - all the problems that I highlighted above - it would be definitely a ten out of ten. But given those problems, and the fact that one of them has been going on for two years and we still don't have a solution, and the Unity is the only factor that changed in the environment...

The primary use case is block storage for ESX and structured data, SQL Database primarily.

We have adopted the all-flash array. It eliminates all the overhead of tiering and a lot of the data structuring overhead involved. It gives us a lot of operational efficiencies.

Being able to bring those multiple groups into a central solution. From a storage perspective, that is a bit of a challenge. 

There are also DR and data protection functions that we found in the new Unity, now that we are stepping up from VNX and other storage appliances, that we've started implementing.

The one thing that we would look at would be if they were to expand the file level features, just to give us a balance or a tier between it and Isilon options out there, for unstructured data.

We have never had any problem beyond that which you would assume you might get out of a storage system.

It will scale as much as we want or need. Scalability is not a concern.

We have not had to use tech support often, beyond the normal occasional drive, standard part replacement. The support has been good.

We've been a long time EMC customer. For us, though, it's been a journey of modernization and standardization. We took a couple different storage platforms and then centralized it on the Unity.

When selecting a vendor, from my perspective, I like to come up with the technically best solution possible, and then work retroactively into the price. Then, obviously, the business will make that decision based on price point and other things. But we try not make that one of the deciding factors.

My advice would be, if you're looking for this kind of solution, one of the challenges we had was clearly defining the use case. There is a lot of preparation in clearly identifying the workloads that you're going to put on it.

It takes a lot less time to manage. Setting up new storage for virtualization is really easy, so it saves a lot of time creating file shares. So, it does save us time, and cost when compared to any other storage solutions.

Ease of use is probably number one, compared to the previous storage that we've had. Easy scalability, easy set up. Compared to everything else, the Unity is, well, you could call it child's play. As long as you know what you're doing storage-wise, Unity is really easy to use.

Maybe deduplication would be something that would be better to have. Also, it's a fairly new management interface, so work is still being done on that. But compared to other vendors and previous EMC storage, the Unity is really good.

At the moment actually, it does everything it needs to do; I don't have any improvement requests.

No stability issues. Absolutely none.

For our needs, it's more than capable. We run about 100 virtual servers on it. We have about 100 users accessing the file shares from there, and I've seen no problem with that. We have about a 10GB backbone. Whatever we throw at it, it hasn't shown any sign of weakness or anything. It's been really good.

On a scale from one to 10, I'd probably give EMC customer support an 11. It's been really good. We do have premium support, which means if we have a problem, it gets solved really quickly. 

At one time, we had an issue with multi-protocol storage which was solved in about two days. It wasn't even that critical. It was something that was in testing, and for testing purposes I got it solved in two days. So, customer support has been just marvelous, splendid.

We used VNX previously. This was an upgrade from VNX. We've also used EqualLogic which, of course, is part of the same company today. But EqualLogic was just for simple file storage and more of a scratch storage because it was really cheap and we needed more storage quickly at one time. The EqualLogic was the easiest to get access to at that time.

Compared to VNX, the Unity is a lot easier to use. I could have kept on going with the VNX, but since the Unity was more or less the replacement for this size of storage, the Unity was the logical next step.

Dead simple. Comparing both EqualLogic and VNX, which basically are fairly simple themselves also, the Unity - as long as you know something about storage and what kind of storage or what kind of hardware you have below - it was just "Next, next, next," because it just uses the drives that you have. It sets them up automatically, creates everything more or less without almost knowing anything. It was very easy.

Perhaps I could have gotten some instruction online. The thing was that when I set it up, it had just entered the market. It was just about one week old when we got it. So, I don't think I would have found that much online, but then again, having worked with storage for the last 15 years, in essence I took a 15-year-long course before I got the Unity. But it was so simple, I didn't need any help setting it up.

More or less, I am the team. I do have three other guys, but yes, I was the one who decided to get this. The pricing was quite okay compared to others. We probably got it cheaper because we were the first ones out of the gate, but I would say that it's good value for the money.

I wouldn't say that I actually did look at anything else because I'm familiar with EMC and have been really satisfied with them.

It's really simple to use, set up, manage. Just be sure to know something about storage before you start, but that goes for any kind of storage solution that you use.

I actually want to give it a 10 out of 10 because it's been really easy to manage. It just does what it's supposed to do and it doesn't bother me. 

We saved money by moving off old storage and we gained extra capacity and speed.

• I appreciate the great performance with flash drives, 12Gb SAS connections, and the 16Gb fibre channel.
• I like the easy management with the new Unisphere management and the HTML5 interface.
• All this comes with a smaller footprint, with the main unit taking 2U instead of 8U.

The storage processors have less port expansion than previous high-end VNX arrays. Data compression is only available in all-flash pools.

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

Technical support was good. I can create a case online or have a chat with an EMC support engineer.

We used to deploy EMC VNX. But we needed more speed and capacity.

The initial setup was straightforward. Disk Array Enclosure (DAE) cabling is different than VNX. Otherwise, it is easy.

Licensing is easy since all the software is included.

We evaluated Nimble, NetApp, and Compellent.

I recommend that you purchase five years of maintenance up front. EMC tends to increase maintenance significantly in years four and five.

It's used for general storage or backup storage throughout the environment.

Inline data reduction is pretty impressive.

The user interface could be improved. The Dell Compellent user interface is fantastic, but the Unity user interface is, in comparison, pretty lousy. It's functional, and I can do what I need, but the Dell Compellent user interface is so much more intuitive and user-friendly.

I wish that the product had some more flexibility. It seems it's purposely designed to not have a lot of flexibility, and as a customer, I don't appreciate it.

I have been using this solution for three years or so.

I've had some unexpected quirkiness, but for the most part, it's pretty good. Its stability is an eight out of ten.

As long as you're buying the right product, it's probably an eight out of ten in terms of scalability. What you don't want to do is get locked into something you don't want. If you want a hybrid, such as a spinning disk in a solid state, you have to know that upfront. That's because some of the models restrict to only SSD. Later on or down the road, if you want the spinning disk for cold storage, it doesn't happen. You can't convert it. You have to get a different array or something else.

Their technical support can be very good. It depends on who you get, but that's how it's with any support organization. The individual makes a difference, but generally, their support has been pretty good. The only thing that I don't like is that you sometimes have to wait to get to a support engineer, but they've gotten better at that.

I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of the ease of the setup.

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

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.

It is for a customer who does virtualization.

We use replication for disaster recovery (DR), making our DR process much easier.

Price and performance are its most valuable features.

It streamlines processes.

I haven't seen the roadmap for this solution.

It has met our overall performance expectations. The solution runs as we need it to, without any issues. It hasn't failed.

We haven't tried scaling yet.

The technical support is good.

We had performance issues with our previous product, which is why we started to search for a new solution when we did a reorganization. We decided on this solution because of the performance that we receive from the solution.

The initial setup is straightforward: Just connect, plug in everything, then do the configuration wizard.

We are integrators.

Our CAPEX was close to $42,000 and operating costs are below $1000.

We also evaluated HPE and Lenovo.

The product has met all our expectations.

Take a closer look at the price per gigabyte and the performance that you are getting with the solution.

We use it for replacing legacy storage. It's just a one-for-one.

This is primarily for storage and the data aspect of it.

Dell EMC Unity XT keeps us up and running. That is the big thing.

• Affordability
• Scalability
• Simplicity of use

I don't have any complaints from the customers or end users, who are using this solution. It's up and running with no worries.

We are very fond of the scalability. We are using the Unity 300, which has a limitation. However, if we needed more, we could go to the Unity 400, 500 or 600. We could go down the series until we get the one that meets the size that we need. It has very impressive scalability.

We're not cloud ready yet, but we like the option for the expandability.

We have Dell EMC engineers helping us out and doing some over the shoulder training. They are working with our customer right now doing data migration over to Unities from the legacy Oracle stuff. While they're doing this, they're showing people how the Unities work and the ins and outs of the software interface. 

It's been a really beneficial relationship. We work a lot with Dell EMC, because they are very accommodating. Our Dell EMC representative does what our team doesn't have the capability of doing yet, because they don't have exposure to the product. I look forward to seeing how it works out. 

Our experience recently, with newer products, has been that once they're installed, we haven't had to worry about them. If there has been an issue, like we pulled something out of a box, it's replaced within a matter of days. It's really quick. 

We really push Dell EMC with our customers because of the customer support. It's been very flexible. We always need a lot of data on the stuff that's purchased because we have people buying it on behalf of the customer. They are very good on the customer support acquisition side to provide that data. Also, the technical support that we get is fabulous.

We replaced our legacy storage, which was Oracle. We couldn't afford the maintenance agreement for it any longer. We saved millions of dollars by not going back with Oracle.

This solution has meet our overall performance expectations. We were going for form fit function. We had to meet certain guidelines. We couldn't put anything in bigger. Physically, we couldn't put in any additional capabilities. We had to meet the existing network connectivity without modifying the other systems. The versatility of the product, with the optional PCI inputs allowed us to get that. We are able to scale it up or down, for actual storage, to meet the capacity that we need. We're using it in two cases where we're doing a form fit function. One for replacement, then another for overall modernization of the same systems. We're able to take the same product and scale it up to almost three times its size with very little effort.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. We had a technician helping with migration because of the legacy aspect of the servers, and what they were connecting to. Once the the over the shoulder training is done, the process is fairly straightforward.

We used a reseller and had a consultant. The consultant had worked for Dell EMC and went to work for a consulting company. He is now back to work at Dell EMC. He actually recommended the product based on his knowledge of our program. He flushed the whole system out, as far as the build. Regarding the flexibility of the product, we have other programs within our larger branch which are starting to take on and use the Unities for storage.

The benefit that we have seen is in uptime.

While it has a good price to start, they could always make it cheaper.

We bought extended warranties out of the box because our customer has a bad habit of managing warranties. The service for the small things that we have had are always handled very quickly. 

We were on old Oracle storage and are still on some old Oracle storage. 

There are lots of options for storage solutions, but our technical and customer support team's experience with Dell EMC makes it a no-brainer for us. 

I hate to speak bad of folks, but we can't even get HPE to return our phone calls, in most cases.

Do the due diligence and look at the details: the specs of the product and scalability. There are multiple series of products in the Unity line, which are very simple to use.

It's met all of our expectations. Our users don't have any technical needs because it's up and running. Overall, we are very excited about the product.