We performed a comparison between Dell SC Series and Dell Unity XT based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The tool is simple and easy to use. It has neat features like protection from device removal. Moreover, you can undo the deletes. The solution is easy to work with and not as complicated as CAC"
"We've been using FlashArray's snapshot for backups. Their replication across sites and response time are also excellent."
"It allows engineers to focus on other things rather than doing the more manual tasks. It automates tasks, so the ease of use is extreme. It simplifies the storage."
"The availability and ease of use are the big features."
"The most valuable feature is it never goes down. We can expand and create volumes."
"The most valuable feature is its upgradeability."
"Our storage phones home. It is smart and intelligent in that aspect, which has been huge for us. We don't have to be storage administrators."
"It is easy to manage. You don't have to have the same people who used to manage the Dell EMC arrays because the solution is more intuitive."
"The performance benefits weren't surprising, we expected that. What we didn't expect were the densification benefits that we got out of going all-flash. We're able to put more applications on the arrays because of how all-flash performs. The way some of the application profiles have responded to all-flash has been really pleasing."
"The product offers good performance and is quite powerful."
"The solution is stable."
"It's very scalable, especially with federation. If you outgrow the number of spindles that a unit can support, depending on the model, you can go into federation."
"One time, we had a drive fail and we were notified before we even saw it on the device."
"In terms of stability, it's good enough. It's okay."
"One of the most valuable features is the capability to switch between all-flash to hybrid, which have have actually done for one of our arrays. We started with the hybrid, with the limited if I'm not mistaken, and then over a period of time, we swapped all the hybrids with the SSDs. This was one of the big features because it gave us the capability to not stick with just one kind of media. Secondly, since it has sorted clustering, we were able to bring in the newer boxes and have it all clustered together. These were the two main features that we really looked into, which benefited our use case from an expansion/growth perspective. Another valuable feature is the ease of management."
"It is just as stable as any other high-end solution."
"It is lightning fast, low on power and heat, and has a small footprint with great performance."
"It is completely reliable. The plugins for it are quite mature. I don't really have any issues with the interactions with vSphere, they all work as intended."
"Setup is simple."
"Stable data storage platform which promotes ease of management through its multi-cloud support. Remote support provided to users to address issues is very good."
"It's very reliable. I have not had an issue with Dell EMC Unity."
"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."
"It has made deployment, configuration, and maintenance a lot simpler."
"Initial setup is a simple process."
"If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it."
"We've had it in place for about a year and a half and have had zero complaints, other than that box-to-box replication is not encrypted."
"The time-to-market could be better at times, but I think that's true for all vendors of hardware."
"We did have one hiccup with the integration of vCenter. When we were installing Pure Storage, we were using vCenter 6.7, which defaults to the HTML5 Web Client. The current plugin for Pure Storage doesn't show up in that client at all. You have to go and use the legacy FlexFlash client to see the Pure Storage plugin in vCenter."
"I would love for them to have a hyper-converged solution."
"The connectivity needs improvement. You do not have the possibility to have a file and block connectivity at the same time on the same machine. It has limited ability to do so."
"They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth."
"In the configuration, which we brought in or tested it in, it has a very limited config as far as the array goes. That said, it still did more than our anticipation."
"Licensing, especially on the storage line, could use some simplification. It's not terrible, but, for example, with the Isilon series, they've gone to completely a la carte. A la carte is very difficult to traverse, as to what you need. It would be more beneficial, at least from my point of view as a customer, if they did it more like car companies do, where there are package lines"
"There's always room for improvement in the operating code."
"This solution could be improved if overall performance was improved and operated with a higher speed and supported a higher volume of RAM."
"Technical support should respond more quickly because the turnaround time is very high."
"While the price is competitive, in the next release it would be better if they could reduce the fees."
"Compellent comes in the form of a component that's not true of a unified storage platform."
"The lower model, the 3000, should have duplication. It doesn't right now. It's only from 5000 that this is offered, but it depends on the performance. It could be they don't offer it on lower models because the duplication is too much of a burden to the performance."
"One option I would like to see is, when you're up on the view-screen, to be able to incorporate getting to what HPE call the iLO, the Integrated Lights-Out. To be able to get that instead of having to go back and trying to find IP addresses and re-institute those would be good. It would be good to be able to that put on the initial splash screen."
"This product lacks deduplication and compression at the current version 4.1.0. LACP is not available for iSCSI either."
"Scalability is not good. We have a Unity 300, now we have to do a data-in-place conversion for the next upgrade because only 150 slots are supported, not drives, only slots."
"On the data domains - for the Unity product, but specifically for data domain - I would like a much easier interface for managing, for actually going in and having one place where I could get all of the different parts of the overall unit. And I would also like to be able to identify individual disks a lot more easily."
"Dell EMC Unity XT should present a path or a roadmap on how they could put their products on the cloud. This would have some value for their current customers."
"It isn't easy to find trusted partners for the product. The solution has issues with mid-level storage and does not come with enterprise storage."
"The interface and configuration could improve."
"Dell could improve Unity XT by adding support for NVMe."
"There are a lot of things that can be done with it. It's got Cloud IQ, but I think it's not as mature as it could be, they could make it more effective. They could make it more comparable to some of the other products out there that have cloud analytics. The amount of insight that the Unity product is able to give, at this point, is okay, but not class-leading. Some of the other data-reduction technologies, like deduplication, are not to the level of other competitors and what their products provide."
Dell SC Series is ranked 24th in All-Flash Storage with 49 reviews while Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 186 reviews. Dell SC Series is rated 8.4, while Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Dell SC Series writes "Automated architecture that proactively optimizes your database ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Dell Unity XT writes "Easy to set up with good data compression technology and useful deduplication". Dell SC Series is most compared with Dell PowerStore, IBM FlashSystem, Huawei OceanStor, HPE Nimble Storage and NetApp AFF, whereas Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage and IBM FlashSystem. See our Dell SC Series vs. Dell Unity XT report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.