Item: Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use the Dell EMC Unity as a NAS file server hosting file shares for the majority of our users. Prior the unity we were using a Physical server running Windows OS to host the file shares. We were looking for a solution that would replicated the file data between two data centers with very low RPO. The EMC unity's hosted in both datacenters allows for a 60 minute RPO in case of a DR event.

Pros and Cons

High availability
Data Replication
Ease of use and management

Some administrative settings can only be changed using CLI
Some version do not allow for de-duplication
Upgrades through support have long lead times

Return on Investment

Replication between datacenters instead of setting up DFS (ease of use)
Non-Flash version does not have dedupe capability resulting in constant space management
Enabling File integrity monitoring diffucult

Key Insights

Do you think Dell Unity XT Unified Storage delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Dell Unity XT Unified Storage's feature set?

Yes

Did Dell Unity XT Unified Storage live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Dell Unity XT Unified Storage go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Dell Unity XT Unified Storage again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

The Dell EMC Unity is best suited for SMB workloads where ease of use and administration needs to be the focus. For our specific use case it is perfectly suited as a NAS file server and is easy to upgrade storage when required (although not inexpensive). In prior positions it was also used for vmware datastores which worked similarly as the older VNX models.

Dell EMC Unity non-flash

Overall Satisfaction with Dell EMC Unity