Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Dell Unity XT offers cost savings, increased efficiency, and quick ROI with improved performance and simplified management.
Sentiment score
1.0
Organizations reduced costs and improved performance with Pure FlashArray X NVMe, achieving quick ROI and efficient resource management.
By opting for the gold subscription every three years, you get a free upgrade to the latest controller release.
If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Dell Unity XT customer service is praised for responsiveness but criticized for slow response times and support inconsistencies.
Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe's technical support is praised for responsiveness, despite occasional follow-up issues, earning high customer satisfaction.
The support team is familiar with the product and is available on-site during support times, which improves our experience.
Dell solutions are backed by excellent service and support.
The technical support sometimes takes three to four days to get hardware to facilities.
With Pure FlashArray X NVMe, we need to escalate the issue and get an account manager for its resolution.
We also had one outage where a controller of one of the products had failed and had to be replaced on-site.
Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Dell Unity XT's scalability, modular upgrades, and robust architecture receive high satisfaction from medium to large businesses.
Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers scalable storage with low latency, easy upgrades, though capacity customization and high costs are noted.
Dell Unity XT is quite scalable and can be scaled up to the petabyte level.
You cannot increase capacity if latency is present.
It is highly scalable.
It is suitable for both medium-sized and enterprise businesses.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.8
Dell Unity XT is praised for strong stability and reliability, with minor issues infrequently affecting its consistent performance.
Sentiment score
8.1
Pure Storage offers exceptional stability and reliability with outstanding support, consistently achieving high user ratings for performance and service.
I would rate the overall stability of Dell Unity XT an eight out of ten.
During the eight years, there have been no problems such as hardware failure or stopping.
I would rate the stability of the solution as a ten out of ten.
I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell Unity XT requires improvements in deduplication, user interface, migration, automation, scalability, and support for better efficiency.
Pure FlashArray X requires cost-effective improvements in UI, integration, cloud features, multitenancy, analytics, backup, AI, and scalability.
In the future, if Dell storages include this option, especially for Unity, it would help us target SME or medium enterprises for quicker closures and support the sales team.
I believe if Dell can integrate AI to predict potential failures, especially in hardware like hard disks, that would be very useful for proper maintenance.
The pricing is a bit higher than expected.
Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe.
We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.
I'm eagerly anticipating the roadmap's promise of introducing multiple controllers, which could significantly boost scalability and resilience.
 

Setup Cost

Dell Unity XT provides cost-effective pricing and all-inclusive licensing, balancing cost and features effectively against competitors.
Enterprise buyers see Pure FlashArray X NVMe as a justified premium investment due to performance and comprehensive licensing.
It is priced at around or under $50,000.
The cost is not cheap nor expensive.
Commercially, Dell Unity XT is viable and competitively priced.
While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.
The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.
Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products.
 

Valuable Features

Dell Unity XT delivers unified storage with easy management, strong VMware integration, rapid deployment, and cost-effective data solutions.
Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers exceptional performance, reliability, scalability, and seamless VMware integration, enhancing workload efficiency and user experience.
It helps with data cost management and is seen as a mid-range product with good performance.
We installed the Flash, which makes our IO operations fast and efficient.
If their growth is not significant, we might suggest mid-level Unity storage like Unity 300.
Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator.
The platform's robust features include excellent sustainability tracking, and a comprehensive dashboard offering insights into IOPS, bandwidth, performance, and virtual activities.
Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell Unity XT
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
196
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 6.7%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 recommend Dell EMC Unity XT All-flash which can guarantee you a ratio of 3:1 signed ...
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 NetApp. Differences are in the user interface mostly, they both do what they a...
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 show a few aspects helping the decision, comparing Unity Xt480f and AFF220 (both ...
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.
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges. This is one of the main things organizations need.
 

Also Known As

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.