Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

All of the IT devices help production time. They make time "faster." But this device, in general, it is a money maker. It makes us a lot of money. That is what I like most about it. It is critical to the business.

The Snapshot feature.

Recently, they released products, sometimes without proper testing, it seems. I guess the way the market is going, the way technology is going, they are saying, "Hey, let's get it out there."

It was pretty buggy when we first got it, but they have improved it with some updates. They worked with us and addressed our concerns.

It will definitely meet our needs going forward. With all-flash it should be able to scale. You probably just need one 4U device and you have terabytes of space.

Technical support has dropped off over the years. It is what it is. It is probably a seven or eight out of 10. It is difficult to find the right person. 

It was straightforward. I cabled it up myself and racked it myself. Someone came out to help with the front-end side, the software side. That was it.

I rate it an eight out of 10, only because it started out buggy. Other than that, it has worked well for our company.

• Auto-tiering
• FAST Cache

Automatically, the cool data downgrades to slower disks and no human needs to intervene. The FAST Cache helps to have a large quantity of data in memory and speed up the presentation of new storage.

• We spend less time checking the solution.
• The presentation of new storage to the servers is very easy.

The reports could possibly export all the data at once.

10 months.

No issues.

No issues.

Low.

Yes, we previously used EMC VNX. We switched to upgrade.

The initial setup was very easy and intuitive.

It is a good value given the benefits it provides.

Yes, HPE 3PAR.

With a such a simple configuration you can add datastores on VMFS5 to any clusters on your vSphere organization.

• VMware integration: Grants both the Storage and Virtual Administrator the ability to create and mount datastores, or even to check how much space each VM is consuming.
• Block compression on F Models: Compression on F Models or in flash pools allows us to almost duplicate the available space on the array; more space for less money, everyone likes this.
• Simple management: The simple GUI implemented on the Unity arrays simplifies management.

Compression and block deduplication on non-all-flash solutions. I know it should not be easy to reach flash-like compression on mechanical disks, but it would bring this array to the top of the charts. And, of course, the block deduplication in mechanical pools. As I said above, everybody likes the "more space for less money" formula.

There were issues with the earlier releases, not now.

No issues.

• Use Replication function to build up cold or warm Disaster Recovery (DR) site.
• Use Auto-Tier and FAST VP to build up flexible space.

• Performance dashboard
• Because I always need to trouble shooting for IOPS & database (DB) performance issues. I can quickly focus on what is part of the issue. I can decrease downtime and can plan next year's extended capacity budget.
• Integration of the VPLEX function for Cross IDC structure.

For the integration of the VPLEX function for Cross IDC structure, they should integrate the function into the SP controller.

Yes, sometimes the DNS does not work out properly.

No, there have not been issues with the scalability.

Decreased administration efforts, improved manageability.

• User friendly interface
• Scalability
• It is shipped with all licensed, included for this product range, no need to buy additional licenses
• Flexible support plans 
• Prompt answers from EMC support

Thick provisioning of LUNs.

Firmware management form EMC. Strange way to populate firmware based on spread ratio among the customers of EMC Unity.

Yes, but did not affect systems which relay on it. Firmware patch was released by EMC.

Not for now.

We use it for virtualization. We have integrated it with Exchange and VMware vSphere.

This is actually part of a delivered solution. We have a VCV block, into which the Unity is embedded. The Unity is one of three components. We've got compute and networking in there. The overall product, with Unity being a component, is fine. And individual Vblocks are fine, but the stretched vCenter that we have was complex. Their product is called VPLEX and it was expensive.

It performs as expected.

• Stability
• Interoperability with the other components of the system

I would like to see better automation of upgrades, more seemless upgrades.

It's very stable.

It's fairly scalable. We went through a scale-up and it performed as expected.

The initial setup was moderately complex.

Hitachi.

If it's a value for your company then I'd recommend it. For us, it was expensive, but it was of value to us.

However, I wouldn't go through that again. We are targeting hyperconverged now, as opposed to converged. It was a bit overwhelming. From the VCE perspective, the individual Vblocks were very well executed, but they didn't seem to know the VPLEX product very well, and that was nail-biting.

This solution is our primary storage for all workloads.

It has good replication and integration with VMware.

This solution makes it easy to manage storage, provision new workloads, and scale-up.

The most valuable feature is the easy management with a great GUI. We can do a lot from there.

This solution would be improved with the addition of flexible raid volumes.

This is a very stable platform, so far zero issues.

Most of the systems are replacements for ancient VNXs. For most of the customers, we suggest they be replaced by Unity.

For our customers, the benefits are that it's not too expensive and it has almost all of the features from the beginning.

• Simplicity.
• Ease of management.
• It's still running on the ancient systems, so the customers know what they are getting.

I can't really think of any improvements for the next release.

The ease of installation, sometimes, for the customers, is not that positive because the customers think they can do it themselves. Sometimes that is a bit of an issue.

Very stable. Sometimes you can have issues, but they are usually solved with an upgrade of the system.

We have had two issues: replication between two Unity's, and when running several Snapshots on the Unity.

Scalability for us is not yet much of an issue because most of our customers are running on rather small systems.

Sometimes our customers use tech support but, generally, tech support is in order.

Setup is very straightforward. Compared to the VNXs, it's rather easy.

I would rate the Unity at eight out of 10, because of the ease of management compared to the ancient systems. For us, in Belgium, it is more small and medium businesses, so Unity is a good solution.

My advice is to choose the Unity.