We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The main difference between the two products is speed. Dell EMC Unity XT users say the speed of the solution should be improved, while NetApp AFF users find the solution’s speed to be impressive.
"Technical support has been amazing."
"The speed is the most valuable feature, along with the ease of getting it connected. We were able to get it online in less than a day."
"One of the lesser sung advantages was when we started running our interface engine on Pure Storage. The ability to process messages and pass them through in our organization skyrocketed purely because of a disk that I owned which we were getting out of Pure Storage."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is its high stability level."
"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both."
"We've been using FlashArray's snapshot for backups. Their replication across sites and response time are also excellent."
"The ease of management is one of the most valuable features of this solution. I would have also said that it's pretty fast but now our SQL servers are starting to beat it up pretty bad."
"The best feature is consistently lower latency, even when IOPS crank up to over 75K. The product maintains submillisecond response time, which is incredible."
"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."
"We've never had an issue with storage."
"It’s helped with the overall stability of our VMware environment."
"After migration to Unity 300F, we were able to put more DBs on flash, reducing latency. The results were visible in the front-end systems, and all users noticed the improvement."
"My storage team likes Unity's replication features. Three-site replication is a unique feature that EMC offers us."
"It's the simplicity part of it. It's the ease of management, it's the call home, the CloudIQ functionality. It's all built in. I think Dell EMC has put a lot of thought into it."
"I like the easy management with the new Unisphere management and the HTML5 interface."
"They've integrated NAS and SAN pretty well. It made replication very simple. Because one of our systems has a lot of LANs, for it to replicate we have Consistency Groups in there. That's something that is really helpful, making sure that everything is working not just for replication but for backups as well."
"I like NetApp AFF's deduplication."
"Using System Manager for green management or command line interface, we have a single point for managing the cluster. It is much easier to manage. It is very seamless. The product is robust and solid."
"NetApp is like a one-point central management. For example, one can put everything on the right version and control the whole environment from one software solution."
"The most valuable features of this solution are snapshotting and cloning."
"The most valuable feature of AFF is that it offers better visibility and control over performance, ensuring it meets customer needs effectively."
"MetroCluster provides business continuity and is a critical part of our contingency setup."
"The most valuable features are the speed and performance for our transactional workloads for our databases."
"Its consistent stability is one of the things that I like, and the performance is also very good."
"I would like to see active replication. I know that it's available now but I haven't tried it yet. I hope that it works."
"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."
"We have not seen a reduction in our TCO nor have we seen ROI."
"I feel like there is too much automation; the user doesn't have any manual input."
"One thing I'd like to see in a future release is integration between their main storage array and what they call their FlashBlade product; to be able to snapshot directly from the primary array into multiple different backup copies on FlashBlade."
"The technical support is okay, but could be improved."
"I would like to see support for NVMe, end-to-end."
"The internal garbage collection process has been fixed recently in some OS updates so it is more efficient but that could be just a little better."
"Dell Unity XT could improve the compatibility of some of the features. Some of my customers had some problems. Additionally, it would be beneficial for the solution to have advanced AI and ML features."
"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."
"The pricing is a bit high. We'd like it to come down."
"You can't use every feature, because it costs in performance. Therefore, you have to choose which features to use to achieve a better environment. That is why customers do not use every feature in Unity."
"What I'd like to see is a little more detail on the networking side. I can go into where it's showing me the replication, but when I go into the network it just gives me broad-based information. I don't know which replication job is actually feeding it. I have to go in and rely on other apps."
"Perhaps if they added more 10GB ports to the back of the system, so you have more IOPS out of the box itself to the network, that would help."
"I think that they could do a better job of testing on the back-end, for the code revisions. I've heard of some issues down the line where people have upgraded to the latest code and there were bugs in it, and they had to release a subsequent code fix."
"It could always use native replication. Then I could get rid of RecoverPoint."
"We would like to have NVMe on FabricPool working because it broke our backups. We enabled FabricPool to do the tiering from our AFFs to our Webscale but it sort of broke our Cobalt backups."
"The system is pretty stable but most of the ONTAP versions are not really stable. There have been multiple bugs in different ONTAP versions."
"Tech support is a place where there is room to improve the product experience. The response time when they are busy is not very good."
"FC and ATTO bridges are still needed for cross datacenter replication."
"The bad part about having scalability is the expense. It is currently extremely expensive, to be able to scale so fast on flash."
"It would be very useful if we could do the NFS to CIFS file transfer, but it is not supported at this time."
"I need faster Fibre Channel over Ethernet. They top out at 10GBs today and I would like that to go to 40 or 100."
"I would like there to be a way to break out the 40 gig ports on them. We have a lot of 10 gigs in our environment. It is a big challenge breaking out the 40 gig coming out of the filer. It would be nice to have good old 10 gig ports again, or a card that has just 10 gig ports on it."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 186 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. 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 NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem, HPE 3PAR StoreServ and Dell PowerMax NVMe, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN, NetApp FAS Series and VAST Data. See our Dell Unity XT vs. NetApp AFF 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.
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 by Dell and you have to deploy all types of workload from block to file. You can also rely on the native cash and fast cache functionality for increasing application performance
This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended cost is decisively based on the Gartner magic quadrant storage 2020 Net app company and Dell EMC are leaders. But we can say NetApp is First in Queue.
One of the superiority NetApp working on NVMeOF
The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matters more than IOPS for your needs, Netapp AFF is the right choice. You can approach the max. Performance by equipping Unity with SSDs but maybe this costs more. I would recommend Netapp AFF all the time if your budget is ok.
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 are designed to do in different ways.
I say, compare apples to apples on models and get them fighting on price.
You win.
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 chosen by distributor to be in the price range for capacity):
1. Comparing 2 systems with the same capacity and performance: pricing is the first to look at:
1a. Cost per GB, war capacity and usable capacity (+Unity)
1b. Cost of adding capacity (+Unity)
1c. Cost of licensing per GB / per added capacity (+Unity all included)
1d. Cost of maintenance after initial contract (+Unity same for all life )
2. Comparison of CPU/MEM, we choose Unity XT because of better CPU cores/frequency and memory per controller
3. Percentage of space lost in various configurations. Our goal was to use Dynamic disk pools, available on Unity. Easier upgrades/downgrades.
4. If virtual volumes are considered, Unity has a VASA provider included in the controller, Netapp is using external VM.
5. Product lifecycle
6. Inline compression / deduplication, performance,
From the above 1=80%, 2=5%, 3=10%, 4+5=5%
We went to Unity XT480 where on the same budget we got 20% more usable flash capacity, while enough slots remain for future upgrades.
My experience was with DELL EMC Unity Hybrid Storage and it was amazing cost-wise. Are you sure you need an All-flash solution?
EMC definitely.