Dell Unity XT Room for Improvement

ST
Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The uemcli is not an object-oriented CLI and the more object-rich PowerCLI has been discontinued. Only people with bash experience possibly can operate it. Still, nowadays, feeding object from one command into another is still a burden with such CLI. When adding a few disks to a cluster, the CLI is actually standing in the queue for one disk to be added to all, requiring multiple scans on each member host, before proceeding with the second and scanning all hosts once again. One could add all disks at once and stand in the queue once for a rescan all.

There isn't a means to add volume groups or host groups. A feature that any solution I worked with so far has. It's a burden to assure each host has the same LUN ID on each host in this manner. As of the June 2021 release, code OE 5.1, seems to offer the option to have host groups in the end!

===> Review 01/2023: Unity OE 5.1 came out with the notion of a host group

The integration with vCenter comes with a side effect, in that it will take control of the vSphere scan process, moreover, every esx host is scanned multiple times. It takes easily a few hours to add a few LUNS to a few hosts. This is rather painful. Even when adding LUNs using the Unisphere GUI, you can keep up with the pace of your script.

Support Responsiveness and time to fix bugs should be improved. Over the past 1.5 years, we had occasional controller reboots and we went all the way from OE 4.5 over 5.02 to 5.03, 5.1, and 5.2.1, and eliminated the most common causes. We still face a stress-triggered cache merge issue and though we provided the dumps and engineering acknowledged the bug, it has been told that addressing the bug requires substantial code rewriting and the problem will be fixed in the next major code release (OE 6.x). We are now two years later, still no fix, but fortunately, face the condition occasionally, and among even other bug checks.

===> Review update 01/2023

There was also a problem of a  Storage Processor Panic condition that could unveil after uptime in days had been reached. We had two such crashes and the uptime of our five units (ten controllers) showed they all bypassed the uptime, which had the potential to even crash the remaining eight controllers. Without much explanation on the cause (Typical at Dell EMC), it seems like a memory leak issue to me. We decided to reboot them all as a quick reply and later on to patch them on a more convenient maintenance window.

It was only until this summer that the issue is known and formalized to the public and listed as DTA 205836: Dell Unity: Storage Processors Running 5.1.X Code May Panic After 275-300 Days of Runtime (User Correctable)

All Unity systems running Unity Operating Environment (OE) version 5.1.X, but primarily Unity XT systems (480, 680, or 880, including F models), may experience SP panics after 275-300 days of runtime.

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Srikanth Purushothaman - PeerSpot reviewer
DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems

We haven't faced any issues so far.

The pricing is a bit high. We'd like it to come down.

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FG
Management Information System Officer at a mining and metals company with 501-1,000 employees

Dell Unity XT could add a unit-to-unit replication. We haven't seen that because we don't have an additional one to test. However, it is not an improvement, but something that we would like to have visibility on how it's done or how it works.

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Buyer's Guide
Dell Unity XT
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Dell Unity XT. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
PA
System Senior Engineer at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

There is no de-duplication. Unity used to be Bionics, which had de-duplication; however, in Dell Unity XT, the de-duplication was deprecated and is no longer available. 

The de-duplication function is back in the new Dell PowerStore, but it is missing in Dell Unity XT.

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RP
Owner at FORE SOLUTIONS

I don't see any weaknesses in the product, nor did any of our company's clients report any issues. The only issue is with the product's scalability because it's not as scalable as the other polished tools in the market.

It would be good if Dell could work a little bit on the scalability front and make sure that they increase the bandwidth at the back end as well as make the product a more capacity-oriented one, and provide one petabyte to make the solution easier to use.

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Muhammed Imran - PeerSpot reviewer
Officer, System Administrator at SKGH

They can certainly improve in terms of monitoring. The monitoring could be improved, and more features could be added.

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MS
IT expert/sys admin at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

One of the major challenges we faced with this solution was regarding DPE. When the failure of DPE happens, it needs to be replaced with another part as Dell Unity XT offers a single data processor. Finding the replacement can be a complex task because it's hard to search for the exact part number since that information is not as public as other solutions, such as HPE, provide. Also, since it requires extensive research of the product, it's not very secure. Working on the complexity of these issues would be helpful.

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CL
Consultant at TechData BIMA JSC

They place a strong emphasis on service, occasionally requiring approvals. However, with full installations, they have achieved almost uniformity. Their storage approach differs from a consolidated business-based model; instead, it is application-centric. Their investment in solutions is geared towards specific needs, such as the banking or information system, acquiring smaller storage units individually.

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Nagendra Nekkala. - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager ICT & Innovations at Bangalore International Airport Limited

There is an issue with data duplication occurring on the flash memory. It should be improved. Also, timely updates and upgrades to the latest versions would be great.

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MG
Network manager at Farabi

You need to self-study. We'd like, however, to get professional training. It would be ideal to have some online sources available to us to help us understand its capabilities.

We cannot connect directly with Dell due to sanctions. We'd like to be able to connect to the distributor directly as sometimes we sometimes get the wrong information. It would help with transparency.

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SV
Technical Specialist at Pouyan Pardazesh Tehran Co

The solution should include a free process in the HPE portal that uses serial numbers to verify that hardware is genuine. We find Chinese hardware easily but it is difficult to determine if it is genuine which causes problems. 

The solution should allow for connection and replication with other storage models such as HPE, IBM, and Hitachi.

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Steve McClendon - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a mining and metals company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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Ricky Winandityo - PeerSpot reviewer
IT system infrastructure manager at Anabatic Technologies

Its replication technology could be better. There is no option to postpone the replication after a failure. 

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HS
Works at a media company with 10,001+ employees

This solution could be improved by offering containerization. This is something many of my customers are looking for. 

I have a limited budget for IT solutions so it would be great to provide Dell's solutions at a lower cost. 

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MB
Works

We have used this solution for less than one year so I don't have any improvement suggestions yet.

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OI
General Director at miromix unitedMiroMIX United

The product’s pricing should be improved.

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CS
Managing Director at Infowhiz

Our customers are mostly happy with Unity except for the price. We primarily sell to enterprise companies because small companies cannot afford it. 

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GeorgeKaravitis - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at Digital Horizon

The price of Dell Unity XT could improve.

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SC
Technical Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

We would like to see more advanced integration capability added to this solution.

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CK
Head of Team at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees

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

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Shashika Rathnayaka - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Manager at OAK integrated System Pvt Ltd

Dell Unity XT could improve the compatibility of some of the features. Some of my customers had some problems. Additionally, it would be beneficial for the solution to have advanced AI and ML features.

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Systemarchi67 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Architect at Tebicom SA

The solution can use improvement with the patch cluster like the Synchron and Active replication.

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Dragan Knezevic - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Presales System Engineer at OBLAK tehnologije

Dell could improve Unity XT by adding support for NVMe.

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Eslam El-Sayaad - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Solution Architect at BARQ Systems

It is expensive, and the pricing could be better.

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VR
Customer support engineer at Al Khalili Technology LLC

It would be better if there were more integrations.

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JC
System Engineer at Duke Kunshan University

Dell Unity XT’s price needs improvement.

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Buyer's Guide
Dell Unity XT
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Dell Unity XT. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.