Dell VPLEX currently requires Flash Player to access the GUI. It would be better to have a web-based HTML management interface. The encryption could also be improved. When the host writes data, it goes from VPLEX back to the physical storage. 

The physical storage device will do encryption or use an algorithm called Data Address Encryption. If there are vulnerabilities between the host and the storage device, you can lose your data. I suggest encrypting the data before it is sent from the host to the storage.

I would also recommend using the NVM protocol in VPLEX. It still has Flash Player and a local SATA disk built into the Flash Player. You need to Flash the disk to SAS and then SATA. The NVM protocol is better.

There is room for improvement with Dell VPLEX, but Dell EMC has also improved by incorporating some of VPLEX's features into the new PowerStore systems without requiring additional hardware such as Mitra notes. 

The additional hardware required for VPLEX is no longer needed with the new PowerStore systems. Everything is now inside the PM/PMEM feature of the storage system, so you no longer need VPLEX.

With Dell VPLEX, there are some bugs with Broadcom and old SAN fabrics. 

VPLEX is currently on Fiber Channel. The future is ethernet, not Fiber Channel.

Dell VPLEX should improve its integration and user interface and be easier to configure.

Any EMX product, be it PowerMax, VMAX, or DMAX, works based on the CLI. A person has to be very good at running the solution through commands. Even if you memorize the commands, some don't work with a few software versions EMC releases yearly, which is difficult to manage. From the data center perspective, installing drives is not easy. Those involve a lot of costs because you need to purchase many licenses.

Additionally, we still face administrative issues if a password expires, and we need to manage anything.

There are sometimes delays in getting performance reports. It would be great if VPLEX could be integrated with the cloud. 

The licensing model for enterprise storage (EMC VMAX) and integrating the solution into the actual storage frames instead of a separate product. I do believe Dell EMC is addressing both of these concerns in current and future product offerings.

The price is a problem with EMC due to the fact that it's more expensive than the other vendors. If we want to use VPLEX we need to purchase VPLEX and then we need to purchase VMAX. If we want to replicate we need to purchase another product. While you can do everything with EMC products, you need to purchase one box for each solution. It would be ideal if they had some sort of all-in-one solution, or if they lowered the price on their items.

If it can support more backend storage per VPLEX.

The administration is difficult, so we want to add hyper-converged infrastructure.

I would like to have site-to-site replication capability for applications. This is something that is available in other products and it would make new sites very easy and fast to set up.

Much room for improvement exists. For example:

• Storage tiering cannot be handled by VPLEX, as it is performed by back end arrays. It would be great if we can configure tiering between arrays!
• When configuring a mirror (RAID1) device on two devices A & B, performance of the mirror depends on A & B individual performances. The response time of this mirror will be equal to the lowest response time of the A or B devices. It would be preferable that the mirror response time is equal to greater performance of single components, by setting a preferred access path for example (this feature exists on IBM SVC).
• No native data service exists on VPLEX (I mean snapshotting, replication features, etc). We have to buy other products such as ViPR to be able to use those features.

Maybe setup a one-to-many cluster, instead of just a 1-to-1. If EMC could come up with a way to establish a cluster from one VPLEX to many VPLEX(s), that would allow organizations to be able to have more than one copy of their data, and therefore have one, or many, backup (or disaster recovery) sites.

Currently, a cluster can only be established between 2 VPLEX nodes. For example, if a customer has 3 sites, he can’t replicate data from Site #1 to both Site #2 and Site #3. Therefore, with VPLEX, only a 1-to-1 replication is possible.

If there was a way to set up a one-to-many or many-to-one replication, then it would allow customers to have more than one backup site.

It needs to improve the thin reclaim on certain arrays.

Cost. This is really expensive.

• VPLEX hardware migration to spare equipment in case of major disruption.
• Today, it needs a huge effort that is not acceptable during disaster recovery.

The production environment needs improvement.