We performed a comparison between Dell EMC PowerStore and Dell EMC Unity XT based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The two products received similar reviews in most categories. According to reviews, Dell EMC PowerStore appears to be a bit more robust and therefore more appropriate for larger environments.
"The most valuable feature is that maintenance is free."
"As soon as we introduced our first Pure Storage FlashArray, the first benefit was at least twice the performance increase. Our production databases simply ran twice as fast with no other change."
"Non-disruptive upgrades: You can upgrade at anytime without worry."
"The initial setup was very straightforward and very quick. It was up and running in our data center within 24 hours of receiving it."
"The scalability is good."
"I use all the features of this solution and I find them to be easy to use and functional, such as the compression and capacity to expand."
"The security operating system is its most valuable feature because it's very simple, easy to use, and operate. You don't have to do very serious training to operate this equipment. It's user-friendly and pretty straightforward."
"Their REST API is wonderful, well-documented, and easy to use."
"The solution's technical support is excellent. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is that it is easy to use this frame. I am a SAN administrator, but I was able to train my colleague, who had only been a VMware administrator, on the PowerStore in about half a day. Now he's autonomous in assigning volumes and creating data stores..."
"For access from virtual machines, iSCSI, and NFS, it is very good. It helps increase performance."
"Overall, we're quite happy with the product because we can move the data that is stored on more than 10 of our current storage devices to a single PowerStore."
"Typically, high-performance and high-availability features, such as application snapshots and remote and local replication, are highly valued."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerStore is the all-NVMe flash storage. This is the most powerful feature of this series. It supports compression and duplication leads."
"The simplicity and ease of use have been very valuable features. I have a very small team, and only half of the team is well versed in the HP product. Whereas if I bring PowerStore in, everyone can learn it because it will be new on the floor."
"PowerStore is easy to use. All the drives use soft encryption. To upgrade it, you download the app, and it runs by itself. It's very easy to deploy, share, and create volumes."
"We use replication for disaster recovery (DR), making our DR process much easier."
"The most valuable aspects of this solution are its stability, performance, and ease of updating."
"It has improved the utilization of our own internal resources and performance across our managed service platform, meeting our customers SLAs."
"It's unified, it does block and file, so that is pretty important to my customers who might have file servers around their environment. I can roll them all up into a single array, as well as provide block storage for them on one array."
"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."
"My storage team likes Unity's replication features. Three-site replication is a unique feature that EMC offers us."
"Purchasing; We worked with a sales rep to purchase our Unity."
"It is great because it can work as a SAN and net storage."
"I feel like there is too much automation; the user doesn't have any manual input."
"I want to learn more about command line usage which I have not explored much yet. However, there are many automated solutions for repetitive tasks. I would like to see additional features like performance monitoring, configuring of alerts, and the customization of alert thresholds in the next release."
"A three wave application or multi wave application synchronization would be an improvement."
"I would like to see support for NVMe, end-to-end."
"The initial setup was a little complex. We had some initial issues with the design and had to help correct some of the white papers for it, but it wasn't your standard use case."
"I would like to get a weekly report of how our storage has been used, and if there is any storage sitting there not being used."
"The data reduction that we had initially anticipated when we bought Pure and we move over, is way lower than the expected reduction. It depends on the workloads, of course. But that has been a challenge at times."
"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."
"While using Dell PowerStore's interface in our organization, we sometimes miss out on some information."
"The only thing is that with PowerStore, we don't have a solution for the file object."
"Many customers are looking for a cyber recovery feature included in PowerStore. We would like to see this added in a future release."
"Dell PowerStore is a good solution overall, but some models could support hypervisors better by allowing for more customization and flexibility for customer needs."
"When you create a case on Dell's support website, you don't always get someone who is experienced in the kind of systems you need help with...making it an area where Dell's support team needs to make improvements."
"Could use some additional automation."
"With PowerStore, we have to choose between block storage and NAS functionality."
"I would like to see a Snapshot feature. Currently, it is unable to occupy the capacity."
"It is expensive, and the pricing could be better."
"We would like to see more advanced integration capability added to this solution."
"Dell Unity XT’s price needs improvement."
"I called about an issue where I couldn't get VVOLs registered. It turns out it is a bug in the code and that there is no information about when it will be fixed. It's just not going to work. I was a little miffed about that."
"The price of Dell Unity XT could improve."
"If there's anything Dell EMC could do to get the same performance for a cheaper price, that would be great."
"It should be lighter. It takes up a ton of rack space. It would be nice to have a smaller footprint."
"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."
Dell PowerStore is ranked 1st in All-Flash Storage with 46 reviews while Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 186 reviews. Dell PowerStore is rated 8.6, while Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Dell PowerStore writes "It has a very strong NAS that can support a lot of big, heavy environments". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Dell Unity XT writes "Easy to set up with good data compression technology and useful deduplication". Dell PowerStore is most compared with IBM FlashSystem, NetApp AFF, Dell PowerMax NVMe, HPE Nimble Storage and Huawei OceanStor Dorado, whereas Dell Unity XT is most compared with NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem, HPE 3PAR StoreServ and Dell PowerMax NVMe. See our Dell PowerStore vs. Dell Unity XT report.
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Hello Yasin,
The best solution depends upon your host environment. In general, PowerStore is more powerful than Unity but Unity is also a very good Storage solution.
The Unity 400 is a rather old, a much less powerfull solution and at its best holds ssd flashdrives if at all. Currently you have the Unity 8xx model, which has more CPU punch and therefore maxes out less fast on CPU utilisation. What this means is that you can add more shelves and disks and workloads to it before you hit the roof.
The powerstore 1200 is an nvme storage, is 60% more powerfull (compared to FC/SCSI-SSD on Unity) in our case, and has higher datareduction rates. If the unity reaches out to a datareduction rate of 1.5 or 2, the Powerstore T1200 is capable of 3 to 3.5 datareduction, probably due to half its blocksize. The price of the device is pretty much dependant on the price of its media, and therefore the Powerstore T1200 is the absolute winner.
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Another aspect is that the Powerstore can be used to build a cluster of arrays compared to the sync/asynch replication only feature of the Unity series, rendering the mirrored volumes unuseable unless one fails over to it, like in a disaster recovery scenario.
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The Powerstore also allows true A/A volumes on both sides . What this means is that one can build stretched vSphere clusters and the loss of your array in one site will still allow writing to the alternate protected disk, transparently ! You can have site local writes to your volumes and remain in sync without a need to cross site write.
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There is not much of a reason to settle for the Unity anymore, though some still prefer the Unity for NAS compared to Powerstore, but honestly speaking I won't recommend to use any of both for that purpose unless for limitted useage. Unity allocates RAM ressources dynamically when used for FC/SCSI AND NAS , whereas the Powerstore is initialized in a kind of split off of RAM ressources between NAS/FC SCSI at installation time. The ressource allocation is fixed and can't be altered lateron. Thats a hard call. So I'd favour the Unity only if you use it for low/moderate NAS needs in combination with FC/SCSI or block data and you don't have the budget nor the size to use a NAS optimised array on top.