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Dell Unity XT vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado 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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell Unity XT
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
196
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Huawei OceanStor Dorado
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Unity XT is 7.0%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huawei OceanStor Dorado is 4.5%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Syed Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
TOLGA ALNIAK - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers ransomware protection for files stored on servers
Data processing is the most important feature. We are using Huawei OceanStor Dorado, which employs SSD storage on the hardware side. No reported performance issues or improvements are required for our systems because all of the systems run on memory on the host side. The Oracle data and Oracle virtual machines also operate from memory. Additionally, we use Oracle for patching systems, with all data residing in memory. There is some latency during backup times, typically at night, but this is acceptable for us. These latencies occur outside of office hours, so they do not impact our operations during normal times when there is no noticeable latency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"I like its performance and support."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to provision storage from the CLI, versus having to go in and use the GUI every time. I can just script it out and it will create what I need. That makes it super-easy to manage. Also, for us, it's a set-and-forget. Once we provisioned it out, we haven't had to mess with it."
"I don't think I've ever seen latencies above 10 milliseconds unless it was something that wasn't the array that was messing up. The thing is rock-solid."
"Using this solution has meant that I do not need to look for different partners to provide me with solutions like a backup service. Dell provides end to end solutions."
"Dell Unity XT is a unified box, and it is integrated with VVOL, our software-defined storage."
"The inline deduplication and data reduction capabilities have been the most valuable."
"The storage management is superb, with a user-friendly graphical interface and dashboards. The performance is good. The integration, dashboards, and analytics are excellent. It gives me immediate output and quick access to the reports I need promptly. It's an excellent product with high stability. The solution is scalable. The support team is highly supportive, responsive, and efficient in providing solutions. This product is highly useful and well-suited for all types of automation."
"All-flash is a game changer. If you need performance, simple operations, and you plan to use it with VMware, it is a good choice."
"The majority of our customers find this solution simple to use."
"Huawei OceanStor Dorado is fast and has significantly improved data storage efficiency."
"The support team is responsive and effective in addressing any issues that arise."
"Has good capacity, is effective and easy to manage."
"The integrated Huawei Flash technology within OceanStor Dorado stands out as one of the most valuable features."
"The platform's most valuable features are reliability, intelligence, and fast performance speed."
"There are plenty of features available in this solution."
"We can use Huawei OceanStor Dorado capacity storage for many different purposes."
 

Cons

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."
"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."
"We need better data deduplication."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the deduplication part, because for large deduplications, you need an extra appliance to do it in order to avoid having problems in performance. I think that could be improved, because everything should be included in the product, not with an appliance from the outside."
"Maybe deduplication would be something that would be better to have. Also, it's a fairly new management interface, so work is still being done on that. But compared to other vendors and previous EMC storage, the Unity is really good."
"Licensing has been quite difficult. It doesn't always auto-license. About half the time, when I provision one, I have to contact Service to get a license, or even go to our account manager to help get it straightened out."
"I'd like to see more of the NVMe back-end for the flash. And the big deal with the PowerMax is that they've used all U2 drives so that they can avoid having to take it down. I see using M.2 and modular sections as being a real nice alternative that could be implemented in Unity at a fairly low cost."
"There are features still to come, like compression and deduplication on hybrid platforms, VDM improvements to be developed for NAS environments, and also improvements in the “self-migration” tools to push or pool information (to assist the migrations to and mostly from third-party arrays)."
"It is expensive, and the pricing could be better."
"It could be improved in the area of management flexibility. For example, I really need to set read-only access for LUNs, and there's no such option with Unity XT."
"I would like better integration with RecoverPoint. My major issue with the solution, all around, has been RecoverPoint more than Unity. While I like the easy user interface, I would like some more advanced features for troubleshooting built into the product, so that we can do more in-depth problem-solving."
"The product should be better aligned with the virtual environments"
"The initial setup was very complex."
"Some customers have reported not understanding how the immutable part can be unlocked."
"Having distinct modules for data compression and encryption features enhances flexibility and performance optimization for users with varying requirements."
"Huawei OceanStor Dorado's biggest weakness is its lack of cloud integration."
"For future releases, it would be beneficial for OceanStor Dorado to integrate advanced analytics and AI-driven functionalities for predictive maintenance and performance optimization."
"It should have easy connectivity with the AIX, however, I've found that with AIX, it has some issues and due to this, we need to remove the exact fiber card sometimes and then plug it in again so that it can connect with the AIX systems."
"There are some limitations to this product because they do not have unified storage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"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."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"We bought extended warranties out of the box because our customer has a bad habit of managing warranties."
"The pricing of Dell Unity XT is good."
"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 solution is very expensive."
"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.""
"Our CAPEX was close to $42,000 and operating costs are below $1000."
"It is priced at around or under $50,000."
"While it has a good price to start, they could always make it cheaper."
"We saw ROI in terms of both money and time saved. It is worth the price."
"I rate the pricing a six on a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive, not cost-effective, and ten is cheap."
"Huawei OceanStor Dorado has a competitive price compared to other solutions."
"The pricing is very competitive."
"The solution's licensing structure needs improvement."
"It stands out as the fastest purpose-built storage solution available on the market, and the pricing is highly competitive and excellent."
"The price of the solution is reasonable. There is not a vendor that offers an All-Flash Storage Array at the price of Huawei OceanStor Dorado. The other solutions are approximately 50% higher."
"There are lots of features included with this solution and some of them require additional licensing, such as creating high availability storage using a cluster."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
55%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Government
3%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

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 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 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 do you like most about Huawei OceanStor Dorado?
The product has the best compression and encryption features. The most valuable features I have found in the tool are...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Huawei OceanStor Dorado?
The products they offer are quite cheap. However, I do not have much information about licensing since we don't buy t...
What needs improvement with Huawei OceanStor Dorado?
Some customers have reported not understanding how the immutable part can be unlocked. From my perspective, it's not ...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
OceanStor Dorado V3 All-Flash Storage System
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Telecom Italia, Hi3G Sweden, KPN
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.