Dell SC Series / Compellent (discontinued) vs. Quantum DXi Series

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

It is good hardware/software to do VMWare backup, very reliable and convenient device. Hyper-V backup may be less appropriate to do due to specific software needs.

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

• A perfect solution for D2D backups. We are seeing a large savings with the de-duplication piece.
• Very versatile device. We like being able to use any backup protocol we need to for the many diverse jobs we have in the medical industry.
• Interface is simple and easy to use.

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

• Every feature on the Quantum requires a license purchase, this is seriously annoying and drives the cost of the device up
• The cost of the device is somewhat high
• Active Directory integration is a bit of a pain

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

Support from Quantum was okay, they performed FW upgrade and replaced few faulty disks without any problem. Some old-style connections and requirements from them produced additional loads on our IT team.

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

The only aleternative looked at prior to the DXi was ExGrid, while both are great options the DXi offered a little more versatility and the support has been terrific.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Storage Target for data that can be Deduped
• Using accent to do inline dedupe is great
• Works well with netbackup accelerator and netbackup

Incentivized