We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and Pure Storage FlashArray based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"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."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"The replication is big for us. We use file services on Unity and it has a really nice file services interface. It's also easy to manage. It's really easy in terms of provisioning, replication. There are no real tricks to it. It's just easy."
"It has reduced the latency in application and database reads and writes... All-flash, it's fast. We have the 650 model which is all-flash, upgraded from VNX. It just flies."
"It is completely reliable. The plugins for it are quite mature. I don't really have any issues with the interactions with vSphere, they all work as intended."
"For sites that we use it on, it gives us more flexibility and high availability solutions. It is easier to expand the site, if needed."
"Unity's are more easily administrated, so we need fewer people to do the administration. We have less overhead because of that."
"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."
"The setup and installation procedures are easy."
"The NAS capability is mainly what we're looking for from this product, and being able to recover fast in DR."
"Most of the problems that we had in the past with the performance in IOPS have disappeared. It has been a great improvement for our customers' services."
"The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"The most valuable features in Pure Storage FlashArray are deduplication and active cluster."
"I have seen a huge increase in speed and performance on our databases."
"The most valuable feature is how it simplifies the management of the SAN."
"This solution has improved our organization in the way that we used to see latency but now with this solution we don't. It also has good performance. Latencies have come down for our performance in the SQL databases. We can put a lot more in a lot less in terms of space savings. We also save data center space have good deduplication."
"Pure Storage technology allowed us to automate tasks, reducing something which started as a 12-hour turnaround down to about 15 minutes."
"It is always out of the box, and ready to use."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"It's very frustrating that it's not backward-compatible with the previous platforms, so it's a struggle for a lot of our customers."
"Dell Unity XT’s price needs improvement."
"One of the issues we've had is that controllers have crashed several times... We've had a lot of problems with the storage processor, SPBs. We've actually had them crash."
"A customer had to buy VMX because Unity didn't have WORM."
"Improve the administrative user interface so it is easier to work with. Currently, a simple task, such as removing a host from 100 LUNS, takes a lot of time. If they could improve LUN to host model to be more like the EMC VPLEX, for example, it would be great."
"I rate the scalability of Dell Unity XT a nine out of ten."
"It might be nice to have more integrated features instead of having everything as a separate module, like the networking. The networking is attached separately in the back. It would be nice if that was more integrated with less ports."
"The user interface could use improvement."
"I would like to migrate to the cloud in the future and know how that would actually work with this product."
"It would be nice to have a better view of the allocated capacity on their Platform as a Service solution because we have to do some manual calculations to understand how much we are going to pay every month to use the storage that is allocated."
"The price could be better."
"I had to contact customer support when a drive failed as I was doing a couple of OS upgrades."
"It needs to improve its price."
"I like what they're doing, but some of my customers complain that they do not have all the bells and whistles and knobs to fine-tune workloads that some of the competitors have. In my opinion, that's good. All customers don't have dedicated storage gurus, and they can get themselves into trouble if they fine-tune too many of those high-performance knobs, but they do get knocked down. Pure Storage takes a hit in the minds and opinions of some of the customers because they cannot customize things as much as compared to a legacy storage provider's appliance such as NetApp, Dell EMC, or even HPE. I personally think 95% of my customers are better off letting the system fine-tune itself. That was something that you needed to do 12 or 15 years ago, but now with all-flash, the technology can handle what it needs to handle. Customers just end up shooting themselves in the foot if they are tweaking too many default settings."
"I would like some performance analytics which go deeper than today. It should be specific to some hosts and applications. This would be good."
"It took us a year to get it to stabilize and to get the best out of Pure."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 189 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. 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 Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and Pure Storage FlashBlade. See our Dell Unity XT vs. Pure Storage FlashArray report.
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