We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage Arrays solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The most valuable feature is the integration with vCenter."
"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."
"The most valuable aspects of this solution are its stability, performance, and ease of updating."
"The complete block and file sharing are the most usable features."
"The most valuable feature is the fast cache with functionality rewrite."
"I have had no problem at all. I think this is one of the most important things. It is very good. Maintaining it and deploying updates require very low maintenance. We haven't had problems. We had to replace a couple of disks in all these years, but it was pretty straightforward."
"This solution is easy to work with and easy to maintain."
"My storage team likes Unity's replication features. Three-site replication is a unique feature that EMC offers us."
"Good performance with a user-friendly UI."
"A key feature is that compared to storage systems that we've been familiar with over decades, IBM simply does not fail. The reason is that IBM is the only manufacturer that engineers its own flash module, and there is a key architectural difference from everything else that we have seen in the market. The difference is that the flash module has the computational capability, which allows reliability and capacity enhancements to be uploaded from the main controllers and run in each module. So, each of the flash drives becomes its own little storage system, and that is extremely effective architecture. In this field, with this type of system, IBM has made a statement. They've never had one of these modules cause an outage. So, the failure rates on these things are just in a whole different universe from what we were accustomed to."
"One area of improvement is replication. We are also using Oracle virtual machines, and when you are using systems from other vendors, the process of replicating from Unity through OLVM is more laborious than when we were using VPLEX."
"I would like it to be a little bit easier to contact support. We can contact support, but we have to go through a phone tree. We get routed to different places. I might call support to say that I need a drive replaced and get transferred to three different groups before I get to the group I actually need."
"There is no de-duplication. Unity used to be Bionics, which had de-duplication; however, in Dell Unity XT, the de-duplication was deprecated and is no longer available."
"Dell Unity XT could add a unit-to-unit replication. We haven't seen that because we don't have an additional one to test. However, it is not an improvement, but something that we would like to have visibility on how it's done or how it works."
"The solution should include a free process in the HPE portal that uses serial numbers to verify that hardware is genuine."
"Our request to Dell EMC for improvement was in the reporting and monitoring areas. Dell EMC built up a cloud ID so that we could see the overall storage numbers. We needed to have the proper KPIs to be able to see and manage things."
"We have only used this solution for less than one year so I don't have any improvements suggestions yet."
"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."
"I'd like to be able to connect to tape drives behind the storage device to back up the tape if need be. We have all of our storage running in all-flash, and we make a copy on tape. Currently, when we want to hook up tape drives, we have to add some extra equipment, which is a little bit complex. We want IBM to add a feature where we could install a tape into the storage so that we can connect it through a single pane of glass. We'd like to have a feature in the IBM flash storage system so that we can connect backup tape drives through the IBM storage system and we can manage the backup tape from the storage system."
"Deduplication and compression should be improved."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage Arrays with 34 reviews while IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is ranked 20th in All-Flash Storage Arrays with 2 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell Unity XT writes "We can do both block and file storage on one unit without purchasing a separate device". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe writes "A game-changer product that doesn't fail, and as compared to the prior generation products, takes about 20% of space and uses about 85% less energy". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS), HPE Nimble Storage, Pure Storage FlashArray and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell PowerMax NVMe, HPE Primera, IBM FlashSystem and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Dell Unity XT vs. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe report.
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