Dell Compellent (discontinued) vs. DDN IntelliFlash vs. SnapServer NAS

All in all this series great in addressing issues applications that need flash storage as a backend storage supply. It addresses the need for fast, responsive servers that need to boot quickly. It is easy to use and for the most part there are few issues and none that can't be addressed/fixed quickly.

Incentivized

SMB business Tegile pricing and performance is particularly well suited. BC/DR scenarios are also enhanced as they are extremely good at upgrading each side and failing over for upgrades. I don't know any situations where these would not be appropriate.

Incentivized

• Dell Compellent support (Co-Pilot) and the add-on service (Optimize) are critical services that Dell Compellent does very well. Alerts from the array are sent to Co-Pilot where tickets are automatically generated and customers are notified of events. Of greater importance at times is the proactive support Co-Pilot and Optimize provide by contacting us of inefficiencies in the array and consulting on resolutions.
• Enterprise Manager (Dell's "single pane of glass" management framework) is a useful tool for configuration/evaluation of the array and other Compellent products.
• Ease of management. From firmware upgrades to managing server volumes the process is much simpler than with other arrays.

Incentivized

• Fast writes to and retrieves from the disks.
• Fast ethernet communication and full support for Vmware.
• NFS storage means no LUN rebuilding or painful LUN migrations.

Incentivized

• The GUI could be a little more updated with a lot more information regarding usage.
• There could be some assistance with high I/O times where snapshots go to consolidate. There seems to be issues when that attempts to occur, and there will times where the virtual machine stuns due to the I/O intensity.
• Modification of multiple volumes or the creation of multiple volumes is a pain in the DSM management console.

Incentivized

• I would like to see every update to be able to be reached via either partial or full updates. In the past we had progressed to one level of software and then found we could not get to a later version from that level, though they did address that.

Incentivized

Because when something works this well you don't change it

Incentivized

It just works, and works very well. The GUI is clean and easy to understand, and the dashboard gives vital information at a glance. It also gives a very comprehensive view of what all the moving parts are doing. It is so clear and matches the view in real life that I can have a non-technical person looking at it and talking to me on the phone and we both see the same things, instantly.

Incentivized

This is not solely based on the support engineers themselves but more so that the logging and gotcha's that their array has. There have been multiple times where logs are pulled, but the folder is not large enough, and it crashes the array. Other times there are certain aspects that support either does not know of or isn't knowledgable about how to look at particular issues that could be causing problems.

Incentivized

WE always get an answer right away, and help is available 24/7/365.

Incentivized

Be sure you have your networking right and you are golden.

Incentivized

We selected Compellent solely based on price. Honestly I would rate it only slightly better than a QNAP we used (which was even cheaper). If performance and reliability are factors in your decision (and they should be) I would recommend looking at something like a VNXe.

Incentivized

We used to have both Nimble and Compellant in the past, and there is no comparison with the Tegile offerings. The Tegiles outperform them in every area and are easier to use.

Incentivized

• The SC9000 has been able to serve our current and futures needs well enough to not need to upgrade anytime soon.

Incentivized

• It has increased our productivity in our database users by about 40%

Incentivized