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Dell Unity XT vs Dell VMAX All Flash comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell Unity XT
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell VMAX All Flash
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
30th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 6.7%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 6.2%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell VMAX All Flash is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray6.7%
Dell Unity XT6.2%
Dell VMAX All Flash0.7%
Other86.4%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
TH
Assistant Manager, Technology Support & Services at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Managing data protection has become consistent and analytics now drive reliable performance
The most valuable features I find in Dell Unity XT include its robust performance and reliability. My thoughts about its in-line deduplication feature are positive. I would assess the value of Dell Unity XT multi-cloud support for my IT environment as highly beneficial. I do utilize Dell Unity XT data protection features. These features have assisted in ensuring data integrity by providing reliable backup and recovery options. Dell Unity XT integration with VMware helps scalability and availability through seamless operations and enhanced performance. My opinion on its Cloud IQ analytics is that it delivers insightful data that aids in operational efficiency.
AS
Solution Architect at a agriculture with 10,001+ employees
Performance and interface improve data processing speeds but require complex configuration
The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface. We have seen significant improvements in technology over the last four to five years. The snap feature, along with deduplication, has notably enhanced our data processing speeds. We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It reduces space and the polar consumption. It also accelerates the application."
"If you're interested in using this solution, I recommend that you do the same — see if you like it."
"Data reduction and compression. Sub millisecond latency."
"Cost, racial per terabyte, and speed is why we chose PureStorage. It was no brainer."
"The first set up we had was really straight forward and simple."
"The GUI is very easy to use and intuitive."
"At this point, I don't know anything that they could provide in a better way."
"The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Pure FlashArray is that it's user-friendly, easy to manage, and very flexible."
"The most valuable feature of Dell Unity XT is data duplication. Additionally, the management interface is simple, and is not a hassle using it. You don't need too much to learn or to be familiarized with it."
"We are replacing legacy hardware and hardware that is going out of support, and we are consolidating two or three systems into one."
"It's easy to use, easy to manage, easy to troubleshoot, and the process support is good."
"We have adopted the all-flash array; it eliminates all the overhead of tiering and a lot of the data structuring overhead involved, and it gives us a lot of operational efficiencies."
"The fact that it reduces our downtime gives us incredible cost savings."
"I like that when you log in it gives you a dashboard of what your storage looks like."
"The most valuable features include snapshots, Thin Clones, and deduplication and compression."
"This robust solution fulfills block and file storage as it is designed to do."
"It works very well."
"The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface."
"The product's initial setup phase was good."
"The ransomware protection feature is housed in a separate unit, specifically addressing the top twenty most critical threats."
"We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution."
"The snapshot feature has been precious for our testing processes, application development, and managing testing environments due to its efficiency and ease of use."
 

Cons

"It was a little costly. The price was ultimately higher than both of the other solutions that we evaluated. I'd say that's the only downside."
"In some cases, we get into very in-depth conversations around the movement of specific data and, what's more, chunk sizes. The documentation lacked any description or information on that."
"The main disadvantage of Pure Storage FlashArray is the price."
"What I dislike about Everpure FlashArray is that in the replication, if it is in the pod, we cannot directly add devices to the pod without breaking the relationship."
"There is not a great need for improvement, but better pricing could be beneficial."
"When we were doing some tests, we found that there was an I/O freeze when they were switching the controller."
"I would rate this a seven out of ten because it's a good performance storage, but the price is a little bit high."
"I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliability and features are commendable."
"We need to improve the controller to work as active-active. We also need to improve the snapshot on the Unity site."
"It would be great if the solution could integrate an NVMe disk."
"There is room for improvement in manufacturing."
"We have had a lot of issues. We've got massive issues at the moment with IBM AIX, it's not stable, we have a lot of disk errors, production crashes sometimes, and that's not good for a retailer."
"As the solution continues to grow and gain more traction, things will come up that will just continue to deepen the integration between VMware, vCenter, and all those other components. Anything in the divisibility there and additional tools is always great."
"Thick provisioning of LUNs."
"The price has room for improvement."
"My only complaint would be some of the CLI Help files could be a little more detailed, but that's very minor complaint."
"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additional engines to address this limitation."
"There is room for improvement in the centralized administration."
"We encountered some challenges during large data migrations that could be addressed for smoother transitions."
"Improvements are needed in both partition recovery and scalability."
"The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"Pure Storage has not helped us to reduce our licensing costs."
"We have 16 or 18 arrays. We like to do the three-year support model so that we get Evergreen and therefore, we get free upgrades. We pay around more than 1.5 million dollars."
"It is a cheaper solution."
"I have had a couple of customers who have complained about the cost. It can be a little more expensive than some of the other platforms. After it has been installed, I have never had a customer say, "I wish we wouldn't have spent all that extra money." They have always been happy with the product after it has been installed. They might be on the fence about it because of the price, but everybody who I have ever seen install it, they are always happy with it."
"All storage is expensive so any price improvement would help."
"Because of the SSD, it is cheaper because I am not purchasing so many disks."
"Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"The price in our country is very expensive and some of our customers opt for lower-cost alternatives."
"The Dell EMC Data Protection license covers everything, like a one stop shop. All our options are covered."
"We checked both HP and Dell and we determined that Dell EMC was a better option."
"Here is our major complaint with pricing. Dell EMC comes to us and gives us a price. We are like, "Well, this doesn't even compare to what we got on the last project." We say, "No, you should bring it down to this level." Then, they come back again and we are sort of in the middle again. I am like, You already sold us other stuff at a better price. We are not going to just say, 'Yes,' because we are out of time.""
"We have to apply for a license for each system."
"It is priced at around or under $50,000."
"The price is up a little bit from what we used to pay so I'm hoping that it's a little bit of a better system than the VNXe was. But I still think it's a good value. It's new, so I'm sure there's room for the pricing to drop."
"We integrated it with VMware vSphere at no additional cost. As we moved into VMware vSphere, this is what we bought to go with it for our storage performance."
"The price falls within the mid-range, neither inexpensive nor high-priced."
"It is not a cheap product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise96
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
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 reco...
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...
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 sh...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC VMax?
The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additiona...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC VMax?
We use the solution for SAP ERP applications. We utilize both VMAX and PowerMax for different aspects of our operations.
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Dell VMAX All Flash and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.