Dell Unity XT vs HPE Primera comparison

Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.4, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.8. Dell Technologies holds a 6.5% mindshare in AFS, compared to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 3.8% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Dell Unity XT and HPE Primera compete in the enterprise storage solutions category. HPE Primera appears superior due to its advanced features and higher operational efficiency despite higher pricing.

Features: Dell Unity XT is known for efficient data reduction, user-friendly management capabilities, and seamless integration with virtualized environments. HPE Primera stands out with intelligent predictive analytics, advanced reliability features, and enhanced operational efficiency.

Room for Improvement: Dell Unity XT could improve scalability, upgrade processes, and support response times. HPE Primera needs cost reduction, better integration with third-party tools, and users emphasize its cost aspect.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell Unity XT offers straightforward deployment but initial setup challenges. Customer service has mixed reviews. HPE Primera provides quicker setups, intuitive deployment, and highly rated proactive support.

Pricing and ROI: Dell Unity XT is cost-effective with a competitive initial setup cost, preferred by budget-conscious buyers. HPE Primera, though higher-priced, offers better ROI through fewer downtimes and superior long-term efficiency gains.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Primera Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Primera

July 2025

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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 August 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 6.5%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Primera is 3.8%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dell Unity XT	6.5%
HPE Primera	3.8%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	0.9%
Other	88.8%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

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Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

Efficient data replication and fast IOPS have improved operational performance

Dell and a partner jointly implemented this solution in Auvink. We installed the Flash, which makes our IO operations fast and efficient. Replication is available, allowing us to replicate data simultaneously from one site to another. All-flash technology and vTXT enhance speed, and the IOPS are faster. The cache's IOPS are much better. Snapshots provide a unique feature for testing and make management more comfortable and easy. The platform is multi-supported and certification is more convenient and easy to manage.

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Taufeeq Rauf

Head of IT at NATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL FACILITATION TECHNOLOGIES (PVT.) LTD.

Offers a simple user interface and is useful for data replication

I use HPE Primera for mission-critical applications. My company uses the product as a storage solution for our machines. The availability of HPE Primera in our company is critical for us, considering that we operate in an HA environment where we can't have downtime since we need to deal with cheque clearance for banks. The product's interface is simple to use. I am satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The ease of use of the product's interface has directly had an impact on our company's operations, along with the improvement in the availability and performance of machines. Compared to HPE Primera, I work with a much more reliable storage solution like Dell PowerStore. Compared to HPE Primera, Dell PowerStore's features related to deduplication are very good, and it also offers a physical storage capacity of eight TB, which can be expanded up to forty TB. I would recommend the product to others who plan to use it only after taking into consideration their usage and requirements. From the price and performance point of view, Dell PowerStore is a better choice. I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

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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

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

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

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

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

"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."

"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"It's easy for us to use because we use other solutions which are built for Unity, like VMware, which are recovery points. They work with the Dell EMC Unity system, as these products integrate well in our environment."

"The most valuable feature of Dell Unity XT is the GUI, it is very good. End users can manage using it. Additionally, the documentation is of high quality and it integrates well."

"Unity's are more easily administrated, so we need fewer people to do the administration. We have less overhead because of that."

"This solution makes it easy to manage storage, provision new workloads, and scale-up."

"It is a workhorse and will run even demanding workloads."

"It is a stable solution that sells a lot...The deployment phase of the product was very easy."

"We use it to implement all our VDI solutions."

"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."

More Dell Unity XT pros

"HPE Primera is used for shared storage."

"All of the capabilities of the hardware such as replication, snapshot, and the specific features are all included from the start as opposed to being on another license."

"It is a stable and scalable solution with quick and efficient storage capability."

"HPE Primera is scalable."

"The features that I have found most valuable are the artificial intelligence for the storage inside of the software and firmware because customers do not like functionalities which require manual interruption."

"The performance of the solution is good."

"The most important thing that we had found when we purchased this product around six months back was its 100% availability and uptime."

"HPE Primera is stable."

More HPE Primera pros

Cons

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

"We need better data deduplication."

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"I think Dell EMC should be more careful in appointing partners, and they need to have better control over their partners. And if their partner has some problems with them, we should not suffer."

"If there's anything Dell EMC could do to get the same performance for a cheaper price, that would be great."

"Stability is the problem. We've had stability issues with it. We've had problems with the iSCSI interface. We've had it for two years now and for two years we've had problems where a service processor will drop, we'll lose connectivity to LUNs, we'll lose connectivity to the storage, issues like that. No matter how we've tried to chase it down, everybody just points fingers at each other. The only thing that changed in our environment was that the Unity solution was installed."

"We cannot connect directly with Dell due to sanctions."

"We would like an AI feature that would protect the backup and minimize the consumed space so we can maintain the quality of the backup. This would help us minimize our IT cost in terms of the backup procedures."

"For the integration of the VPLEX function for Cross IDC structure, they should integrate the function into the SP controller."

"It could go faster. Make it bigger, better, and faster at a lower price, and I am there."

"We had some issues recently because of a bug in the system. We were presenting LANs to the Unity array but I think it caused a disruption to the host. EMC did acknowledge it and provided an alternative way to do it."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"The file server embedded in Pure, the GUI, and the tracking and reporting features are better with Pure Storage."

"When we asked for HPE support to resolve issues, their help was punctual and on time. However, the depth of root cause analysis provided was not satisfying."

"The product's stale snapshots feature needs improvement."

"This solution would be expensive for small business and it could be priced more competitively for that market."

"HPE Primera is not good enough as a storage solution as it does not provide a good NAS storage."

"The solution's compression ratio feature could be improved."

"There are certain features that require engineering-level access, which should be accessible to storage admins as well."

"On the controller side, I would like to see NAS capabilities."

More HPE Primera cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

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

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

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

"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."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"All the licenses are included from day one of your purchase of the product, so you don't have to buy licenses separately. There are no additional costs to be paid for the maintenance of the solution."

"It is shipped with all licensed, included for this product range, no need to buy additional licenses"

"This solution offers great pricing."

"What they really like is the easy licensing now - Dell EMC has caught up to a lot of their competitors - based on not having to charge for everything, and they can get everything in one bundle."

"When you look at what Dell EMC is compared to, like NetApp, they're all priced pretty similarly. I think the pricing of the hybrid model is good."

"The price of Dell EMC Unity XT is not reasonable. They should lower it because the trend is to move to the cloud. They have to protect their market by giving commercial or financial incentives."

"When I see other products—like HP, Huawei, and Lenovo—from competitors, I have seen a lot of disadvantages with EMC, price-wise. Huawei and Lenovo are very price competitive. Looking at the price point for a country like Sri Lanka, where we have a very low economy, I think you need to look at a pricing mechanism that is a bit more flexible."

"Looking at it based on cost per gigabyte, it's certainly very effective."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

"The solution is cost-effective. I rate it an eight out of ten, with ten being excellent."

"The price of HPE Primera could improve, it is expensive."

"HPE Primera service is cost-effective."

"The price of this solution is good for medium-sized and large businesses."

"HPE Primera is a little bit higher than Dell PowerStore...HPE Primera costs around 80,000 USD."

"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"The tool is expensive. I can say that HPE Primera is one of the costliest tools in the market."

"Licensing fees are billed on a yearly basis and the cost of GreenLake service is included."

More HPE Primera pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	61
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	94

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	12

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.

See all answers

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

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

See all answers

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...

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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...

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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...

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Which would you choose - HPE Nimble Storage or HPE Primera?

HPE Nimble is a versatile synced WAN San solution. It is easy to use and doesn’t require much training for admins. Th...

See all answers

What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?

HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspectiv...

See all answers

What do you like most about HPE Primera?

For over a year, I have not seen any downtime in the product.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 25% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 4% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 36% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 6% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell Unity XT Competitors

HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 35% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs HPE Primera

Compared 22% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE Primera

Compared 7% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs HPE Primera

Compared 3% of the time

More HPE Primera Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

August 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

July 2025

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Primera

August 2025

Download HPE Primera product report

Also Known As

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

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

Primera

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 Unity XT is one of the best all-flash storage arrays on the market today. Dell EMC Unity XT arrays are designed for performance, optimized for efficiency, and built for a multi-cloud world. In addition, they support digital transformation, enabling businesses to reach the full potential of their data capital quickly and easily. Dell EMC Unity’s All-Flash and Hybrid Flash storage platforms provide the performance, efficiency, enterprise-class software, and virtualization integrations required for running a wide range of virtualized applications.

Dell EMC Unity XT Features

Dell EMC Unity XT has many valuable key features, including:

Unified storage flexibility: With Dell EMC Unity XT you can consolidate separate storage platforms into a single Unity XT unified storage system via a simple and intuitive (HTML5) management GUI that also connects you to CloudIQ.
All-inclusive data protection: Dell EMC Unity XT offers a reliable way to protect application data with all-inclusive data protection services, including snapshots, data-at-rest drive encryption, replication, thin clones, and dynamic pools.
Software-defined solutions: Dell EMC Unity XT provides software-defined storage and HA for on-prem and in the cloud solutions.
Multi-cloud alignment: With Dell EMC Unity XT you have the ability to build and manage an effective data-first multi-cloud strategy. It allows you to consolidate public and private cloud resources that align with your business goals.
Metro node: This feature enables automated business continuity with zero RPO and RTO. It also provides greater flexibility through multi-platform support and replication to any array and has zero performance impact on the storage array.
Scalable file system: Dell EMC Unity XT is built with a robust 256TBu file system. The UFS64 file system includes up to 256 independent VMDK clones, 16 thin clones, space efficient snapshots with a simple space reclaim and low IO impact, file system shrink that can reclaim free blocks, simplified Quotas for User, and much more.
DevOps integrations: Dell EMC Unity XT supports the Container Storage Interface (CSI) plugin to run Kubernetes workloads.

Dell EMC Unity XT Benefits

Some of the benefits of using Dell EMC Unity XT include:

High-speed data access
Low latency
Dual-active controller architecture
Multi-cloud
Intuitive user interface
Cost efficient
Solid performance

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Dell EMC Unity XT users.

A Systems Engineering Manager at a manufacturing company says, "It is definitely one of the most robust, solid, well-performing products that I have dealt with. It is set it and forget it, which is pretty amazing." He also mentions, “We can do both block and file storage on one unit without purchasing a separate device.”

Peter S., Senior Technical Specialist at a healthcare company, states, “The most valuable feature is reliability. At the end of the day, it just runs. This solution is easy to work with and easy to maintain.”

PeerSpot user Melvin T., Senior Systems Engineer at Prosperity Bank, explains that the solution is “easy to use and we can add LUNs or space without interruption to end-users. We're able to access it from just about anywhere, as long as we have access to a browser. That feature is really neat because sometimes we will go to a different data center or a different site, and if we need to access it to see a LUN or to see any type of storage, we can do that. That's one of the big takeaways with Unity."

Dell Technologies

HPE introduces HPE Primera, a new storage platform designed to deliver superior simplicity, availability, and performance for mission-critical applications
HPE Primera advances the HPE Intelligent Data Platform, a portfolio of products and solutions designed to help customers transition from delivering storage to unlocking business value with intelligent data

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Primera

July 2025

Free Report: Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Primera

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Primera and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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