DDN IntelliFlash vs Dell Unity XT comparison

DataDirect Networks and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. DataDirect Networks is ranked #29 with an average rating of 9.0, while Dell Technologies is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.6. DataDirect Networks holds a 0.6% mindshare in AFS, compared to Dell Technologies’s 6.3% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of DataDirect Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

DDN IntelliFlash and Dell Unity XT are competitive products in the storage solutions market. Dell Unity XT seems to have a superior feature set, making it worth the price for users despite pricing and support being favored for DDN IntelliFlash.

Features: DDN IntelliFlash offers high performance, advanced data management, and flexible configurations. Dell Unity XT provides comprehensive data protection, seamless cloud integration, and robust performance. Users find Dell Unity XT’s feature set more extensive, while DDN IntelliFlash offers notable efficiency.

Room for Improvement: DDN IntelliFlash users suggest enhancing integration capabilities and scalability options. Dell Unity XT users recommend better documentation and improvements in reporting tools. Both products have specific technical aspects needing enhancement to better meet user expectations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DDN IntelliFlash deployment is praised for simplicity and responsive customer service. Dell Unity XT deployment is straightforward but receives mixed reviews regarding customer service efficiency and support responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: DDN IntelliFlash is seen as cost-effective with a quicker ROI, appealing to budget-conscious buyers. Dell Unity XT, while more expensive, offers strong long-term value and return on investment due to its advanced features. Pricing varies, but users find Dell Unity XT's higher cost justified by its capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell Unity XT Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell Unity XT

September 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DDN IntelliFlash is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 6.3%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dell Unity XT	6.3%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.0%
DDN IntelliFlash	0.6%
Other	92.1%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

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Anil Rahulwar

Storage Engineer at Movate

Good customer service and support and suitable for large environments

It is very easy to install. Users don't need to remember anything while deploying IntelliFlash because everything will be taken care of by tech support. They can easily modify the installation or change the password with the help of the tech support. It is very easy to integrate IntelliFlash with other solutions. We have plugins that can be integrated with other solutions. It will require maintenance. It is the same as any other storage solution: updates and upgrades, firmware upgrades, and drive upgrades.

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Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

Efficient data replication and fast IOPS have improved operational performance

Dell and a partner jointly implemented this solution in Auvink. We installed the Flash, which makes our IO operations fast and efficient. Replication is available, allowing us to replicate data simultaneously from one site to another. All-flash technology and vTXT enhance speed, and the IOPS are faster. The cache's IOPS are much better. Snapshots provide a unique feature for testing and make management more comfortable and easy. The platform is multi-supported and certification is more convenient and easy to manage.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"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."

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"Data Compression: Up to 80% space reduction in the database"

"EasyTier/hotcaching: Valuable because it allows greater performance than standard SAS disks"

"We use IntelliFlash products for larger environments, like Qatar Airways."

"High performance and ease-of-management are the most valuable features."

"It's very fast. We were seeing read latencies of less than one millisecond. It is robust."

"It performed great originally, and when it performed great, it was awesome."

"It has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the amount of disks needed for the virtual environment."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

More DDN IntelliFlash pros

"Unity's are more easily administrated, so we need fewer people to do the administration. We have less overhead because of that."

"Dell Unity XT offers data integration features."

"It will certainly help us scale bigger. If I look at the footprint, the VNX's was multi-rack. Now, all of a sudden, we're only at a portion of a rack. And, obviously, if we can scale within the same rack - we can certainly see that by the number of hard drives we've had to put in - we can scale a lot more easily."

"It can be simple to deploy, the standup time is quite quick. The interface is quite quick. The terms are simple, intuitive, it's similar what was there in the VNXE before it. It's very simple to navigate and administer from the console."

"The most valuable thing for our use case is the flexibility to have multiple-protocol support."

"The performance is great. We have four or five different Unity arrays, and they have all run flawlessly."

"Ease of use is probably number one, compared to the previous storage that we've had. Easy scalability, easy set up. Compared to everything else, the Unity is, well, you could call it child's play. As long as you know what you're doing storage-wise, Unity is really easy to use."

"The most valuable aspects of this solution are its stability, performance, and ease of updating."

More Dell Unity XT pros

Cons

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"They need to offer better integration for a virtual platform to enable you to create hyper-converged solution."

"In the proxy section you can’t choose a user account and password, so it is not allowed at the moment to go out, if customer has such constellation."

"It's somewhat scalable, but maybe not so much as some of the competition."

"Snapshots are not as easy to access as on a NetApp device."

"We had just one small stability problem with power flapping and it did not start up again automatically. We had to access service ports and manually restart the storage processors."

"Performance is horrible now. Our original intent was to buy new storage in about two years. But since it became a critical urgency for us, we decided to purchase a new one in two or three months."

"It only keeps one hour of real-time data without the ability to do deep analysis of each element."

"Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible."

More DDN IntelliFlash cons

"Include cloud-based replication for blocks"

"I rate the scalability of Dell Unity XT a nine out of ten."

"I'd like to see more of the NVMe back-end for the flash. And the big deal with the PowerMax is that they've used all U2 drives so that they can avoid having to take it down. I see using M.2 and modular sections as being a real nice alternative that could be implemented in Unity at a fairly low cost."

"This is a tier-three solution and it gives us what we need for archiving and backups."

"It would be great if the solution could integrate an NVMe disk."

"I would like the device to have the ability to pull down its own firmware. That would be a great thing."

"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the deduplication part, because for large deduplications, you need an extra appliance to do it in order to avoid having problems in performance. I think that could be improved, because everything should be included in the product, not with an appliance from the outside."

"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."

More Dell Unity XT cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"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."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"I recommend the full bundle software in order to have all the functionality. It is more expensive to purchase it one by one."

"I think we pay around 100 grand per year for three arrays or four arrays."

"It scales, but then you have to buy additional stuff."

"The support you're getting with it is probably an underestimated value that comes with the box you're buying."

"The ROI is right where we need it to be. It's a reasonably priced array."

"The solution’s pricing is competitive."

"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 return on the investment was simply speeding up our entire vSphere stack, which allowed our developers and engineers to get their workloads done faster and simpler. We were experiencing VM snapshot times of 45 minutes to two or three hours, and it shrunk it down to under five minutes."

"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."

"Its biggest valuable feature is its price point for the amount of storage and performance you get. It's a sweet spot. It's cheaper than the other SANs out there, but performs well enough. It fits that nice, middle-ground portfolio."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	61
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	94

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

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What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IntelliFlash?

It is a bit cheaper than other products, 10% to 20% cheaper.

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What needs improvement with IntelliFlash?

DDN IntelliFlash should improve in terms of sales. In future releases, I look forward to more features about AI and M...

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What is your primary use case for IntelliFlash?

We use IntelliFlash products for larger environments, like Qatar Airways. They have large scalability and use more th...

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What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?

I saw that you have doubts about what you chose. I have a lot of experience with the constructor, honestly I can reco...

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What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?

They’re both great solutions and I’ve used both. EMC is being VERY aggressive on pricing which may be the undoing of...

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What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?

First of all the decision should be taken looking at similar products in terms of capacity and performance. I will sh...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 24% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

VAST Data vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 47% of the time

NetApp AFF vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 25% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 16% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 12% of the time

More DDN IntelliFlash Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 36% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 6% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell Unity XT Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

August 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash

September 2025

Download DDN IntelliFlash product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

September 2025

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

Tegile, IntelliFlash N-Series, IntelliFlash T-Series, IntelliFlash HD-Series

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

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.

Pure Storage

Western Digital through its IntelliFlash arrays delivers high-performance storage with a complete range of features and connectivity options, including inline compression and deduplication, application and VM consistent snapshots, replication, RAID, data encryption, VMware vCenter integration, and multi-protocol support for SAN (FC, iSCSI) and NAS (NFS, SMBv3). IntelliFlash arrays deliver high availability through dualredundant and hot-swappable components, active/active or active/passive controllers, non-disruptive software upgrades, eMLC flash, and proactive cloud-based monitoring, analytics, and intelligence. A RESTful API provides scripted or programmatic control.

DataDirect Networks

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."

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Bank of Stockton, Barnsley College, Boyes Turner, Brigham Young University

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell Unity XT

September 2025

Free Report: DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell Unity XT

Find out what your peers are saying about DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell Unity XT and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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