Dell SC Series vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) comparison

Dell SC Series vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

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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 June 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 0.8%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

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Steven McClendon

Data Center Server & Storage Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Superior platform with excellent snapshots and cost-saving auto-tiering

I'm a big fan of the SC Series platform. Its feature set is superior to some of the other platforms. The snapshots on SC are excellent, allowing for multiple snapshot schedules for any one system. The auto-tiering functionality intelligently moves new data to the highest performance tier and then progresses it down to less expensive tiers over time, providing cost savings for customers.

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Vipin Kumar Sha

Cloud Engineer at CtrlS Datacenters Ltd

Pricing challenges overshadow efficient data handling and fast deployment

In terms of improvement areas for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), pricing is a significant issue, and another aspect is that the export of Nutanix backups does not support CD-ROMs, which is a disadvantage. Currently, it only supports QZ bus types for backups, which limits compatibility. When comparing Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) with other solutions in the market, it falls short because it only supports iSCSI backups, while competitors also support QZ, iSCSI, fiber channel, and NVMe storage. The solution requires no maintenance for patching since it is designed effectively, but Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) does not support fiber channel connectivity or external attached storage through NAS, limiting its compatibility. Additionally, technical support response time and efficiency are lacking in comparison to competitors.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

"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."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"With auto-tiering, it's easier to understand than most arrays, knowing that all of your writes go to the tier that you specify, with easy-to-create storage profiles."

"It is just as stable as any other high-end solution."

"It has good dedupe and compression. Also, the built-in data migration capabilities are pretty good, as is the federation. When we started migrating the workloads from different storage platforms, like NetApp and XtremeIO, it helped us in moving to that direction."

"A valuable feature is the performance of the auto-tiering. It will move hot data up to your fastest Tier 1 or move your slow data down. Data progression is what it's called. With the auto-tiering you can have multiple tiers, you can have your Tier 1 be either spinning or flash, all the way down to 7.2K. It will change the RAID on the fly so your writes come in at RAID 10. After they sit for a while, they get converted to RAID 5, then they'll cool off and move down the tiers. Your performance is kept going, while the cold data is moved to your slow, non-performance tiers."

"The most valuable feature is the no-forklift upgrade. While the thing is running, I can change out the controllers one at a time and keep the customer up and running. I can add shelves and storage and SSD drives or spinning drives to the system, while it's running. I can bring all that in and rebalance the load across the new disks or, if we take disks away, rebalance the load across what's remaining, and it just works."

"Easy management of volumes: You can create volumes and easily assign them to VMware clusters, increasing their size."

"It is suitable for small or medium businesses."

"This solution is easy to use."

More Dell SC Series pros

"I find that Nutanix’s resilience is the most valuable because it is a feature that is not found in other technologies."

"The availability of the environment is incredible, and with Prism Central, you're able to diagnose and go over issues quickly."

"Unified Storage's centralized management features enable us to accomplish whatever we want in terms of operations and migrations."

"The solution is very easy to manage."

"Some of the features that we use include replication and snapshot capabilities, especially from remote locations to our data centers. The main benefit our company sees from using Nutanix Unified Storage is simplification. In the past, we used three-tier solutions with a lot of complexity and operational overhead. Now, we want to focus on the layers above. I want to have storage available, but I don't want to have to think about it. I want it to work without any issues."

"The biggest advantage we find with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is the performance, due to it being hyper-converged and using all-flash nodes. The storage is very responsive, and it's significantly easier to manage from the Nutanix Files platform that comes along with NUS Pro."

"The real-time alerts generated by this system enable us to swiftly address and mitigate such threats."

"The Nutanix block files are the most valuable feature."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pros

Cons

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

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

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"I would like to have 100% functionality through the web app."

"Technical support should respond more quickly because the turnaround time is very high."

"An issue we had was that the controller went down during an upgrade because of their upgrading the code. One side of the switch was down."

"In some customer cases, customers experienced more performance or latency."

"The SC Series doesn't support NVMe storage."

"While the price is competitive, in the next release it would be better if they could reduce the fees."

"The lack of reporting would be the main issue."

"If Dell SC Series wasn't being phased out, adding an NVMe tier and secure snapshots like those on the PowerStore platform would be beneficial."

More Dell SC Series cons

"There should be more information. If it gets used more by more people, they will have a bigger community to share ideas. It is still kind of newer. It is not as big as Dell and other companies."

"The pricing can be quite high."

"I think Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) can be improved with integration with vendors other than VMware or Dell, seeking more integrations with other storage vendors."

"The implementation is a little bit complex and should be made easier."

"Regarding areas where Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) could improve, they should focus on pricing transparency and reducing licensing complexity."

"From a management side, the one thing I would prefer is if it were a bit less expensive for smaller enterprises. It's a bit costly. If they provided flexible modules where you could pick and choose features, and only pay for what you use, that would be an improvement."

"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) can be improved involve the limitations I've seen in Files Analytics, specifically to the number of FSVMs today that File Analytics can analyze."

"The feature request I have is for the consistent improvement of how user account permissions are assigned in Nutanix Unified Storage."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

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

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"We have reviewed many platforms over the years. It is probably the best solution for its value."

"The pricing of Dell EMC Compellent is competitive."

"The scalability seems a bit more expensive than even buying a brand new one so far. That has been kind of a drawback."

"Pricing depends on varying life cycles."

"It is one of the most cost effective systems for us. We have been able to run it longer than most, getting the most benefit and money out of it."

"We were able to afford two tiers of flash storage at a price where the competition was giving us one tier or just a handful of discs."

"The SC Series was priced fairly. I wouldn't call it either expensive or cheap because we had a very tight budget, so if they were able to fit in that type of budget, they met our expectations."

"This solution could be better priced in comparison with other vendors."

More Dell SC Series pricing and cost advice

"For clients running Nutanix, the licensing cost for Files is a small add-on cost."

"If we compare the cost of Nutanix Objects Storage to other solutions such as VMware licenses, our current choice is Nutanix Objects Storage. This solution is more cost-effective. However, adding VMware to Nutanix would not be a cost-efficient decision, which is why we do not use it anymore."

"It's competitive and attractive for moving things to it and then prioritizing those newly freed up resources for something else."

"The pricing is a bit too high."

"The cost of Nutanix Unified Storage can be prohibitive for some small and medium-sized businesses, making it challenging for them to adopt the product."

"The price of the license is expensive when comparing it to traditional storage."

"It's not the cheapest solution. It's in line with other solutions, but it offers features that the competitors don't have at any price point, especially with regard to analytics and ransomware prevention. No one else has any sort of object-based storage available. Nutanix Unified Storage is a lot more feature-rich. This is a situation where you get what you pay for."

"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

22%

University

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

32%

Educational Organization

14%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

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

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

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 ...

What do you like most about Dell SC Series?

I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell SC Series?

Cost considerations are crucial when choosing between solutions like Dell and NetApp. Sometimes Dell offers better pe...

What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?

In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage. If I want...

What do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?

Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?

Nutanix solutions are often perceived as premium-priced, but they deliver substantial ROI in terms of performance, re...

What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?

Nutanix Unified Storage is already a robust and forward-thinking platform. That said, one area for potential improvem...

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Comparisons

Compared 29% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 19% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell SC Series

Compared 60% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Dell SC Series

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell SC Series

Compared 9% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell SC Series

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell SC Series

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell SC Series Competitors

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 16% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 16% of the time

MinIO vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 5% of the time

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Competitors

Product Reports

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Dell SC Series

Download Dell SC Series product report

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Download Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) product report

Also Known As

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

SC Series Storage, Compellent

Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage

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

Dell EMC SC Series arrays provide a unified platform for the ultimate in performance, adaptability and machine-driven efficiency. SC Series software delivers modern features that help you meet aggressive workload demands using the fewest drives necessary. With an open, future-ready design, SC Series storage integrates seamlessly with applications and infrastructure, enabling you to scale on a single platform and add capabilities without forklift upgrades.

Dell Technologies

Nutanix Unified Storage provides high availability and seamless cloud platform integration, ensuring robust redundancy, scalability, and streamlined management. It supports hybrid cloud connectivity, enhancing storage security and performance.

Nutanix Unified Storage is designed for effective data protection across block, file, and object storage, offering features like ransomware detection and a centralized management interface through Prism Central. Users gain improved SLAs and IT cost savings through its efficient performance. Despite its user-friendly interface, there is a demand for enhanced security measures such as Multi-Factor Authentication and DLP. While its resilience is notable, users seek improvements in protocol compatibility, storage capabilities, pricing, and support processes.

What are the most important features of Nutanix Unified Storage?

User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies storage management and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures continuous operation and reliability.
Seamless Cloud Integration: Compatible with platforms like Azure and AWS.
Robust Redundancy: Protects data against hardware failures.
Scalable Architecture: Easily adapts to growing data storage needs.
Ransomware Detection: Enhances data protection measures.

What benefits and ROI might users find in reviews?

Improved SLAs: Increased service reliability and performance.
IT Cost Savings: Reduces expenses through efficient resource use.
Enhanced Security: Stronger data protection and reduced risk.
Centralized Management: Easier control and monitoring from one dashboard.

Industries implement Nutanix Unified Storage for tasks such as file storage, database performance improvement, and storage solution consolidation. Companies deploying virtual machines, securing against ransomware, connecting hybrid clouds, and backing up data find it useful. It supports workloads like Citrix VDI, Kubernetes, and research data, assisting many organizations migrating from legacy storage for better cost efficiency and reduced data center footprints.

Nutanix

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco

Dell SC Series vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)