- Scalability
- High performance
- Easy administration
Senior Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
We're able to copy in more than two data centers, but setup with more than three data centers was complex.
Pros and Cons
- "If you have a banking and finance domain, then go for EMC products as they offer better performance and scalability."
- "EMC products are costly when compared to other vendors such HP, Hitachi, Dell, and NetApp."
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
We need, in real time, to be able copy in more than two data centers, and EMC gave us a better solution with great performance.
What needs improvement?
We get good performance from all our applications like Oracle DB, SAP, Sybase DB, Exchange, and SharePoint which are running on the backend of my storage device.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've used it for one year, alongside RPA, VMAX, and VPLEX, all by EMC.
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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
No issues encountered.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No issues encountered.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No issues encountered.
How are customer service and support?
Customer Service:
9/10 - we get immediate support from EMC.
Technical Support:9/10 - we get immediate support from EMC.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
There was no previous solution in place.
How was the initial setup?
It's a complex setup as we have three different data centers, which are far from each other.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation was done by a team from EMC who were 9/10.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
EMC products are costly when compared to other vendors such HP, Hitachi, Dell, and NetApp.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
No other options were evaluated.
What other advice do I have?
If you have a banking and finance domain, then go for EMC products as they offer better performance and scalability.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. We are global partners of EMC.
Technical Manager / Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
This SAN series provides us with vendor-specific features in our VMware Hypervisor-based virtualized infrastructure. However, it needs ASIC-based functions.
Pros and Cons
- "It would be a good choice for midrange businesses due to the performance/features and cost."
- "Storage processor architect for real active/active HA ASIC based functions are needed"
What is most valuable?
They have more different/flexible models in the midrange storage area In comparison with other vendors . They have also built in VMware specific features . Lastly, it has reasonable performance/cost.
How has it helped my organization?
In a virtualized infrastructure based on VMware Hypervisor, the VNX series SANs provide some useful vendor specific features for us.
What needs improvement?
- Storage processor architect for real active/active HA
- ASIC based functions are needed
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for about four years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
No issues encountered.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No issues encountered.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In comparison to other products, VNX scales out well.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
It's satisfactory. This company really care for their customers.
Technical Support:So far, we have had a response to all our queries from tech support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
No previous solution was in place.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment procedures are very simple, and based on a step-by-step installation guide.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented our device ourselves .
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We have preloaded/license free vendor specific feature for VMware infrastructure with EMC VNX Series SAN Systems. It would be a good choice for midrange businesses due to the performance/features and cost. The licensing terms and conditions are a flowing Pay-As-You-Grow method and it's a good option for long term planning.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We only compared different VNX models.
What other advice do I have?
Pay attention to the initialization procedure. Also, the reinitialization procedures are very complex after the initial VNX product .
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
VNX [EOL]
May 2026
Learn what your peers think about VNX [EOL]. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Storage admin (Server Support Team) at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It's got some great features, such as fast caching and RecoverPoint, but it's expensive.
Pros and Cons
- "I have worked on CLARiiON and all series of VNX."
- "EMC pricing is too expensive, like the Apple brand iPhone in the cellphone market."
Valuable Features:
- Fast VP
- Fast cache
- Snap clone
- Snap shot
- RecoverPoint
- SAN copy
- Mirror copy
- Access Logix
Use of Solution:
I have worked on CLARiiON and all series of VNX.
Implementation Team:
I implemented and performed the migration myself.
Cost and Licensing Advice:
EMC pricing is too expensive, like the Apple brand iPhone in the cellphone market.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
How does licensing work when an underlying array like VNX is abstracted by, say, ViPR. If a licensed feature exists in ViPR and the same feature exists at the array level, then do we need to pay for the array level feature also.
System Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
With raid pools, you aren't limited with RAID size, but caching needs to be improved.
Pros and Cons
- "Customer Service: It's great. Technical Support: It's great."
- "HP EVA and once NetApp, but they both had slow performance and a lack of features so we switched."
What is most valuable?
- Raid pools
- Snapshots
How has it helped my organization?
- With raid pools, you aren't limited with RAID size.
- Snapshots will ease your testing on the applications.
What needs improvement?
- Caching
- Auto-tiering
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using block OE 5.32 and file level 7 and the VNX 2 series, block OE 5.33 and file level 8 for six years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Not really.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
If it's configured properly after sizing, then no.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No, it's easy to upgrade and expand.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
It's great.
Technical Support:It's great.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
HP EVA and once NetApp, but they both had slow performance and a lack of features so we switched.
How was the initial setup?
The first time was easy, as it was a simple design.
What about the implementation team?
We did it in-house.
What was our ROI?
It's around 250% over 12 months due to the amount of data that we have.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Start with the basic licensing and add upon need. In our market, we need keep the cost of 1TB at less than $1000.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
NetApp is better with CIFS and file shares.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. We are considered as a special customer, as we can do implementation as a man in the middle.
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
We're able to over-provision and have had plenty of storage for the past two years, but it only supports 10Gb copper and not 10Gb fiber.
Pros and Cons
- "Stability has been rock solid, as we have been running both units for over two years with no major problems."
- "It only supports 10Gb copper, and cannot do 10Gb fiber."
Valuable Features
The cost of the product, because it's considered an entry level product for what it does, but it had everything we needed for a great price.
Improvements to My Organization
All our storage is now in two places, a primary site and a DR site. Network shares, VM storage, etc. all come from the same physical infrastructure at both locations. Instead of getting more servers for storage, we were able to over-provision this and have had plenty of storage for the past two years. We recently just added another DAE to both locations pretty easily which extends the storage even more.
Room for Improvement
It only supports 10Gb copper, and cannot do 10Gb fiber. The system health screen could be more useful and show more important information. No support for flash drives.
Use of Solution
I've used it for two years.
Stability Issues
Stability has been rock solid, as we have been running both units for over two years with no major problems. There are redundant power supplies for everything. We have lost a DAE because of a double power failure and the unit still was fully functional, once the DAE came back online it meshed back into the array seamlessly.
Customer Service and Technical Support
Customer Service:
EMC customer service has always been spot on. Any issues we have are dealt with right away.
Technical Support:EMC has great online support and tech support over the phone. Their knowledge base is pretty easy to use and updates are easy to find.
Initial Setup
Deployment was quite straight forward, we did not need any assistance from EMC. Any small questions we had could easily be found online or via YouTube.
It was very straightforward as long as you have a basic knowledge of networks and network storage. The instructions provide a great starting point and you can continue online for more and better information.
Implementation Team
It was done in-house, with just a single deployment person with a second person helping with ISCSI and other configuration options.
ROI
We have not done any calculations, but the costs we have saved in power consumption, data center space, and cooling cannot be ignored. We went from three full racks of servers, to a half rack (not all EMC, the rest is a Cisco UCS deployment). The savings alone on the three factors above over the past two years have probably paid for this investment already.
Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing
Pricing is very good, especially for educational institutions. Licensing is pretty straight forward really, it's just a support contract that is needed to keep everything up to date but there are no extra license fees or anything once you get the unit.
Other Solutions Considered
We evalulated HP, Dell, and NetApp storage products in the same class
Other Advice
Use Google and YouTube when implementing, there are lots of tips and advice out there, along with best practices. There's lots of stuff not on EMC's site but other helpful sites as well. There is a pretty large community now for this product line.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Sr System Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Huge performance improvements when we switched from CX. But requires expert help for minor troubleshooting.
Pros and Cons
- "We moved from CX with FC/SATA to VNX with SSD, SAS, NL-SAS and using SSD as Fast Cache we have seen huge performance gains in certain operations."
- "Due to very complex structure and sophisticated architecture, it needs experts for trivial troubleshooting also."
Valuable Features:
A new ST VP is significant change introduced with VNX which makes data access considerably fast.
Performance is noticeably great as compared to other Celera and Clarion models.
SSD are used for caching due to which data reading /writing is quite fast.
Database operations are quite fast over this storage with cache and FC channeled connection.
It has extremely large and flexible storage size as per the need.
Room for Improvement:
Due to very complex structure and sophisticated architecture, it needs experts for trivial troubleshooting also.
It’s bulky and expensive.
Other Advice:
We moved from CX with FC/SATA to VNX with SSD, SAS, NL-SAS. Using SSD as Fast Cache (and for VDI boot images) we have seen huge performance gains in certain operations. Our exchange admin reported that db defrag operations that ran for hours per db were now able to complete for all dbs in under 2 hours. We like the Fast Cache and see over 50% of the IOs from the VNX being provided by those two disks.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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Updated: May 2026
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what are those VMWARE specific features of VNX ?