We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and SolidFire 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.
"It's very fast and very easy to use. It performs well and is both flexible and compatible. We like it because it's easy to use."
"We find the ease of usability and setup valuable."
"Performance is the most valuable feature."
"The ease of use. That's what our customers love. They say it's very easy, they don't need special training, they don't need to call us or any other company or integrator to help them do their job. That's the main reason they purchase Pure."
"This is the best all-flash storage array on the market."
"It is an easy to use product for all of my team members."
"The predictive performance analytics is a very good feature, as our system is performing better than before."
"I have seen a huge increase in speed and performance on our databases."
"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."
"I have had no problem at all. I think this is one of the most important things. It is very good. Maintaining it and deploying updates require very low maintenance. We haven't had problems. We had to replace a couple of disks in all these years, but it was pretty straightforward."
"We can sleep at night because the support is great."
"I like that the performance is very good."
"It is lightning fast, low on power and heat, and has a small footprint with great performance."
"Using this solution has meant that I do not need to look for different partners to provide me with solutions like a backup service. Dell provides end to end solutions."
"It is simple to use and easy to manage. We don't touch it after we set it up."
"It is nice the way ESRS works with remote support, being able to remote in and take a look at problems proactively."
"We can add a node, we add compute, we add storage, and we've had really good luck with that."
"The square footage for doing development is at a premium when dealing with government networks. To be able to put a lot of IOPS in a lot of high-speed performing drives in a very small location which requires very little HVAC with very little power, it is very valuable to us."
"The quality of service for minimum iOS, to maximum iOS in a multi-terminal environment is very powerful. The SQL service feature is the best part of SolidFire."
"We can just buy them, scale them as we need on demand, and we don't have to spend so many front end cycles on designing the architecture."
"Greater IOPS, speed, it's all-flash. So seeing that everything is going to all-flash, all SSDs, SolidFire fits right in there with the emerging trend in IT."
"I would say in terms of architecture and in terms of functionality, the product is quite good."
"The dashboard is such that you don't need to be a storage expert to administer it."
"The most valuable feature is the performance, as well as how you manage performance on the system."
"I would like to migrate to the cloud in the future and know how that would actually work with this product."
"I would like to see data tiering to AWS."
"It would be good to have metrics of the box's performance so we can see what it delivers, but currently, I can't see what it's actually doing."
"We need to add more storage in Pure Storage FlashArray with the cluster mode activated for us to have better performance."
"I would like to see them lower the costs."
"The price should be lower."
"I would like to have an easy way to determine the cost per VM so that I can present a solution to our customers."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve by being more secure."
"I would like to see more compression and deduplication added to the solution. Today, our compression is about 2:1 and other solutions give us about 4:1 or 5:1."
"We've also encountered an issue when it comes to migrating to compressed LANs on the Unity, and during the Storage vMotion. It appears that the compression algorithm is overwhelmed, and when it becomes overwhelmed it just stops compressing and writes the raw data to the destination. We later copied internally another Storage vMotion to another compressed LAN and achieved much higher compressions on that internal copy. It would be really nice if there was a way to automatically throttle, as a part of a Storage vMotion, to say, "I want to gain the maximum benefits from the compression algorithm, so throttle back the Storage vMotion to implement 100 percent compression.""
"In the dashboard there could be notification of duplicate files and the like, so we don't have to rely on Windows to do that."
"Licensing has been quite difficult. It doesn't always auto-license. About half the time, when I provision one, I have to contact Service to get a license, or even go to our account manager to help get it straightened out."
"It's an expensive solution, particularly for medium companies. One device costs about 30,000 euros. The support contract is quite expensive as well. We are currently looking for other lower-cost solutions."
"Dell Unity XT could add a unit-to-unit replication. We haven't seen that because we don't have an additional one to test. However, it is not an improvement, but something that we would like to have visibility on how it's done or how it works."
"We would like to see more advanced integration capability added to this solution."
"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."
"When you set up the nodes, we have to serial into each one of these nodes to configure the IP ranges. It's still very easy, but it's time consuming."
"You don't have business continuity with SolidFire. I think it could be a nice feature to have in the future."
"This solution would be improved if it were made to be more compatible with other products."
"It would be good to provide administrative access at the root level to be able to do things with the system, if need be."
"A little better segregation of the multi-tenancy. Right now, it's just VLAN-specific, that's all you can do."
"SolidFire could improve in terms of hardware robustness."
"It's a very good Windows-type solution. But we do a lot of legacy systems and the like. So it's getting that incorporated into it that would help us."
"We have a large fiber channel infrastructure, and that's one area that we haven't seen implemented in SolidFire, its more iSCSI."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 186 reviews while SolidFire is ranked 19th in All-Flash Storage with 33 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while SolidFire is rated 8.2. 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 SolidFire writes "A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas SolidFire is most compared with NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore and VMware vSAN. See our Dell Unity XT vs. SolidFire report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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