Dell Unity XT vs Huawei OceanStor comparison

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95% willing to recommend
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100% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 1, 2023

We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and Huawei OceanStor based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Users describe Dell Unity XT and Huawei OceanStor as easy and straightforward to deploy.
  • Features: Reviewers like Dell Unity XT because it has good performance and reliable replication, deduplication, compression, snapshots, vCenter integration, and Unity XT box features. The areas of the product that require improvement are related to monitoring and reporting. Huawei OceanStor is a scalable solution with valuable management, hybrid applications and storage, data performance, bandwidth, availability, and flexibility features. Its drawbacks include integration with other vendors, the user interface, and configuration.
  • Pricing: Dell Unity XT is an expensive solution but its users find that it is worth it because of the features it offers. According to its reviewers, Huawei OceanStor has a complex licensing model that can make the product a lot more expensive than competitors.

  • Service and Support: The support for both Dell Unity XT and Huawei OceanStor is good but requires improvements in their communication speed and quality.

Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Dell Unity XT came out ahead of Huawei OceanStor. Both products have similar deployment difficulty and support quality, but Huawei OceanStor has more features that need improvement and can get expensive, depending on the chosen licensing.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Unity XT vs. Huawei OceanStor Report (Updated: March 2024).
771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues.""The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly.""The latency is good.""Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates.""The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability.""One of the best features is the support, which is excellent.""Technical support has been helpful and responsive.""The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Pros →

"Purchasing; We worked with a sales rep to purchase our Unity.""We're able to access it from just about anywhere, as long as we have access to a browser. That feature is really neat because sometimes we will go to a different data center or a different site, and if we need to access it to see a LUN or to see any type of storage, we can do that. That's one of the big takeaways with Unity.""Unity's are more easily administrated, so we need fewer people to do the administration. We have less overhead because of that.""We run about 100 virtual servers on it. We have about 100 users accessing the file shares from there, and I've seen no problem with that. We have about a 10GB backbone. Whatever we throw at it, it hasn't shown any sign of weakness or anything. It's been really good.""The Unity XT box is very strong. It doesn't break. The MTBF time is very large so you don't have to worry about faults or outages in your operations.""They have a Unity REST API that I use to automate some of the storage stuff. I'm just getting started with it, but it seems pretty easy to use.""We use the solution for site recovery manager, DR, and endpoint penetration.""Storage Snapshots have been really nice. They allow us to do backups without impacting our production workload that much. The scalability, the ability to add disks dynamically and adjust our workload as needed, has also been really helpful. That definitely makes my job easier. And the interface for managing Unity is very easy. The integrations between VMware Hypervisor and Dell EMC are top-notch, so it's been really easy to use and manage."

More Dell Unity XT Pros →

"The solution works well for non-critical applications that do not require a heavy workload. The tool's all features are valuable.""The solution is easy to scale as needed.""Excellent and efficient support, and the product is a good price.""It is easy to use, deploy, communicate and manage this solution.""The performance and ease of management are the most valuable features.""Generally stable with good technical support.""OceanStor is cheaper than Dell EMC, and its management interface is quite simple.""The solution is easy to use."

More Huawei OceanStor Pros →

Cons
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me.""Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services.""The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive.""The tool's pricing is higher than competitors.""We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency.""Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution.""The UI for this solution needs to be improved.""If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Cons →

"More integration with VMware would always be helpful, plugins that go directly into the vSphere management. A single pane of glass is always beneficial.""The solution should include a free process in the HPE portal that uses serial numbers to verify that hardware is genuine.""We are running VMware, and with the VNXe it was possible to restore. We're using Veeam for VMware backups and with the predecessor, it was possible to mount a backup or restore a backup from a storage snapshot. With the Unity 300, this is not possible.""It is expensive, and the pricing could be better.""​Improve the interface and provide more management capability.""Last (and I understand that it has a low chance of being implemented) the copy services currently are redirect on write. It would be great if the administrator could choose between redirect on write and copy on write, when configuring copy job.""The one thing that we would look at would be if they were to expand the file level features, just to give us a balance or a tier between it and Isilon options out there, for unstructured data.""Ordering is easy, but the processing site and working with those companies was difficult."

More Dell Unity XT Cons →

"Unfortunately, this product doesn't support Flash Disks, but it's IOPS capacity is a great compromise.""The solution needs to improve the compression side of the application.""Integration with mainstream solution technologies could be better.""The security could be a bit more robust.""Huawei OceanStor should work on its saturation level and should be able to take up more load. It should give the same performance that it gives at 20 or 30 percent load for 80 percent as well.""The solution’s reporting could be improved.""I would like to see more integration features with different platforms.""Its data replication features work slowly for nodes."

More Huawei OceanStor Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
  • "We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
  • "With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
  • "Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
  • "As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
  • "They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."
  • "Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
  • "The licensing is on a yearly basis."
  • More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The price is good for commercial grade storage arrays."
  • "This unit is one of the cheapest storage all-flash arrays in the market and it does well for what it is intended. It can be combined for both file and block storage."
  • "Licensing is easy since all the software is included."
  • "This product is cheaper than the EMC VNX solution. It is good for small businesses."
  • "It is shipped with all licensed, included for this product range, no need to buy additional licenses"
  • "The only improvement would be a lower cost per unit/disks, however on the whole we are very pleased with this product."
  • "For costing, you have to have a budget in mind because SANs can be fairly expensive and EMC offers a wide range of products."
  • "The pricing was quite okay compared to others. We probably got it cheaper because we were the first ones out of the gate, but I would say that it's good value for the money."
  • More Dell Unity XT Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "This product value matches its price."
  • "It's roughly affordable."
  • "Pricing is very fair."
  • "Huawei OceanStor is priced very well but is a bit complicated."
  • "The price of the solution could be less expensive. However, there are not any licensing costs."
  • "We pay a monthly licensing fee for this solution. The price could be less expensive."
  • "The pricing depends on the features the customer wants, such as storage, RAM, and processors, but in general, Huawei is much cheaper compared to Dell and Cisco."
  • "The price of Huawei OceanStor should be less expensive. It is expensive at the moment."
  • More Huawei OceanStor Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover… more »
    Top Answer:I would rate the solution as an eight out of ten in terms of costliness.
    Top Answer:There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class… more »
    Top Answer:I saw that you have doubts about what you chose. I have a lot of experience with the constructor, honestly I can… more »
    Top Answer:They’re both great solutions and I’ve used both EMC is being VERY aggressive on pricing which may be the undoing of… more »
    Top Answer:First of all the decision should be taken looking at similar products in terms of capacity and performance I will show… more »
    Top Answer:Huawei OceanStor has the capability of SSDs, high-performance disks, and higher disk support.
    Top Answer:Overall, the solution's pricing was cheaper. We need to pay for the solution's license. Users can configure the licenses… more »
    Top Answer:The solution’s reporting could be improved.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
    EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
    OceanStor Dorado V3 All-Flash Storage System, OceanStor 18000 V3 Series Storage Systems, OceanStor 6800 V3 Storage System
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

    Dell EMC Unity XT is one of the best all-flash storage arrays on the market today. Dell EMC Unity XT arrays are designed for performance, optimized for efficiency, and built for a multi-cloud world. In addition, they support digital transformation, enabling businesses to reach the full potential of their data capital quickly and easily. Dell EMC Unity’s All-Flash and Hybrid Flash storage platforms provide the performance, efficiency, enterprise-class software, and virtualization integrations required for running a wide range of virtualized applications.

    Dell EMC Unity XT Features

    Dell EMC Unity XT has many valuable key features, including:

    • Unified storage flexibility: With Dell EMC Unity XT you can consolidate separate storage platforms into a single Unity XT unified storage system via a simple and intuitive (HTML5) management GUI that also connects you to CloudIQ.

    • All-inclusive data protection: Dell EMC Unity XT offers a reliable way to protect application data with all-inclusive data protection services, including snapshots, data-at-rest drive encryption, replication, thin clones, and dynamic pools.

    • Software-defined solutions: Dell EMC Unity XT provides software-defined storage and HA for on-prem and in the cloud solutions.

    • Multi-cloud alignment: With Dell EMC Unity XT you have the ability to build and manage an effective data-first multi-cloud strategy. It allows you to consolidate public and private cloud resources that align with your business goals.

    • Metro node: This feature enables automated business continuity with zero RPO and RTO. It also provides greater flexibility through multi-platform support and replication to any array and has zero performance impact on the storage array.

    • Scalable file system: Dell EMC Unity XT is built with a robust 256TBu file system. The UFS64 file system includes up to 256 independent VMDK clones, 16 thin clones, space efficient snapshots with a simple space reclaim and low IO impact, file system shrink that can reclaim free blocks, simplified Quotas for User, and much more.

    • DevOps integrations: Dell EMC Unity XT supports the Container Storage Interface (CSI) plugin to run Kubernetes workloads.

    Dell EMC Unity XT Benefits

    Some of the benefits of using Dell EMC Unity XT include:

    • High-speed data access
    • Low latency
    • Dual-active controller architecture
    • Multi-cloud
    • Intuitive user interface
    • Cost efficient
    • Solid performance

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Dell EMC Unity XT users.

    A Systems Engineering Manager at a manufacturing company says, "It is definitely one of the most robust, solid, well-performing products that I have dealt with. It is set it and forget it, which is pretty amazing." He also mentions, “We can do both block and file storage on one unit without purchasing a separate device.”

    Peter S., Senior Technical Specialist at a healthcare company, states, “The most valuable feature is reliability. At the end of the day, it just runs. This solution is easy to work with and easy to maintain.”

    PeerSpot user Melvin T., Senior Systems Engineer at Prosperity Bank, explains that the solution is “easy to use and we can add LUNs or space without interruption to end-users. We're able to access it from just about anywhere, as long as we have access to a browser. That feature is really neat because sometimes we will go to a different data center or a different site, and if we need to access it to see a LUN or to see any type of storage, we can do that. That's one of the big takeaways with Unity."

    OceanStor Dorado V3 is the industry's first all-flash storage that puts NVMe into commercial use. It is specially designed for enterprises' mission-critical businesses, meeting the most-demanding performance and reliability requirements of databases, VDI, server virtualization, and SAP HANA.

    Sample Customers
    Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
    Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
    Piraeus, Clinique Univeritaires Saint-Luc
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Manufacturing Company18%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Healthcare Company13%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Energy/Utilities Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization65%
    Computer Software Company6%
    Manufacturing Company4%
    Government3%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider21%
    Manufacturing Company21%
    Recreational Facilities/Services Company16%
    Computer Software Company16%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise28%
    Large Enterprise34%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise60%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise46%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise70%
    Large Enterprise21%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business65%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise15%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise61%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell Unity XT vs. Huawei OceanStor
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Huawei OceanStor and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 189 reviews while Huawei OceanStor is ranked 12th in All-Flash Storage with 31 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while Huawei OceanStor is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Dell Unity XT writes "Easy to set up with good data compression technology and useful deduplication". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Huawei OceanStor writes "User-friendly and robust storage solution with good performance and easy setup". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, Pure Storage FlashArray and Huawei OceanStor Dorado, whereas Huawei OceanStor is most compared with Huawei OceanStor Dorado, NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore, IBM FlashSystem and HPE Primera. See our Dell Unity XT vs. Huawei OceanStor report.

    See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.

    We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.