Dell EqualLogic PS Series vs. Dell SC Series / Compellent (discontinued)

Dell EqualLogic is well suited in a virtual environment where the ability to quickly create new volumes is important. Also, being able to back-up and restore data pools is a key factor, as well as automating your storage environment. Smaller businesses would be less suited in this scenario and would be better off with a less expensive NAS solution.

Incentivized

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

• Provides a hybrid mixture of SAS and SSD disks
• Different raid levels allowed across shelves
• Daisy chain SAN controllers

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

• Be nice to use a hybrid of drives. Solid state and hard disk drives.
• Configuration was easy, but the maintaining of it can be a little difficult. We are a small shop. The system runs great, but when it comes to increasing storage space, etc., it can be difficult because we aren't in it daily. Some options are buried pretty well, which makes it tough to find.

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

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

Having used HP StorageWorks, I have found that the Dell EqualLogic works more smoothly in a VMware environment. There are plugins that work in vSphere that allow you to create volumes and provision new virtual servers with relative ease. The software and interface that the EqualLogic runs on is more straightforward as well.

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

• Easy deployment with assistance from Dell meant a quick turn around time
• Dell after support very good. Disk failures are dealt with quickly
• Management of the units and ease

Incentivized

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

Incentivized