Dell Unity XT vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.6, while NetApp is ranked #26 with an average rating of 9.5. Dell Technologies holds a 6.3% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and Dell Unity XT are popular storage solutions for enterprises. Dell Unity XT appears superior due to its advanced features and users believe it is worth the price.

Features: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are praised for high performance, reliability, and data protection features. Dell Unity XT is recognized for its comprehensive feature set including data reduction, seamless scalability, and robust integration capabilities. Users find that Dell Unity XT offers a richer feature set overall.

Room for Improvement: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays need enhancements in orchestration tools and reporting features. Dell Unity XT requires better integration with third-party services and an improved provisioning process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are noted for straightforward deployment and strong customer support. Dell Unity XT deployment is more complex but benefits from excellent customer service.

Pricing and ROI: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays provide competitive pricing and a favorable ROI for straightforward use cases. Dell Unity XT, though more expensive, offers a high ROI due to its extensive features.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Unity XT vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

September 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 October 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 6.3%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 0.7%, up from 0.6% 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	6.3%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.0%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays	0.7%
Other	92.0%

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.

Read full review

Tayo Olubanke

Managing Director at GCET

Offers flexibility and top-notch technology

You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Read full review

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."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."

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

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

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

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"It has reduced complexity."

"It is easy to scale, maintain, and manage."

"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."

"Snapshots provide a unique feature for testing and make management more comfortable and easy."

"It has a very intuitive web console that runs in HTML5 and makes navigation and administration fairly easy."

"On the Data Domain side, the most attractive feature is the compression ratio, which none of the other products in the market are currently able to provide. On the Unity side, what customers mostly like is the availability guarantee."

"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."

"My storage team likes Unity's replication features. Three-site replication is a unique feature that EMC offers us."

More Dell Unity XT pros

"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"Compared to Dell Unity XT, what I see as an advantage in NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is the fact that it is more scalable...The performance of the product is good."

"I like the performance aspect of EF Series. It basically provides everything that we are looking for as a solution, very low latency and very high performance."

"Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market."

"The speed is the most valuable feature."

"I would have to say performance at this point, because the application it is based on is so diverse."

"The replication and mirroring features are very good."

"The product's initial setup phase can be managed easily and completed in 20 to 30 minutes. It is one of the fastest storage tools that you can implement."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pros

Cons

"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."

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

"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."

"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."

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

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

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The initial setup is not so straightforward if you don't have experience with storage arrays."

"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 costs could be reduced."

"On the data domains - for the Unity product, but specifically for data domain - I would like a much easier interface for managing, for actually going in and having one place where I could get all of the different parts of the overall unit. And I would also like to be able to identify individual disks a lot more easily."

"It would be better if there were more integrations."

"VNX used to have some features that Unity still doesn't have. From that perspective, the progress is not that advanced."

"The EMC VNX Virtual Data Mover (VDM) software needs more improvement."

"It would be great if the solution could integrate an NVMe disk."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"This solution has limited storage."

"We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily."

"We need a center related to NetApp in Egypt so that we can deal with them directly."

"There could be an improvement when it comes to SLA support, it could be faster."

"The management interface, while very reliable, it seems a little old now and could maybe use a little modernization."

"Better integration with other brands is important so we would like to see it easier to integrate."

"Better support technicians for CAPP."

"I've observed an issue when creating a new storage solution with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The product is expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"We checked both HP and Dell and we determined that Dell EMC was a better option."

"Go with the virtual appliance versus the hardware."

"The ROI is right where we need it to be. It's a reasonably priced array."

"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."

"Licensing is easy since all the software is included."

"Obtaining a warranty is easy."

"The price of Dell Unity XT is reasonable. However, if you are buying a custom solution, it can come at a considerable price."

"The license is not required, but we must renew the support every year, every two years."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

"The price point for EF is considerably lower than the alternatives."

"The pricing of this solution is competitive with other vendors here in Egypt."

"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."

"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."

"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."

"They provide licenses upon purchase, so there's no need for additional licenses. Regarding additional expenses apart from the standard licensing fees, such as for support or maintenance, there aren't any. Updates take around twenty to thirty minutes, including rebooting the systems, and we haven't faced any problems with the NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We utilize various other storages like Fujitsu, IBM, and Dalian SIP, but the NetApp EF-Series stands out as we've had no issues throughout the entire year of usage."

"The cost of our license is approximately $200,000 over three years for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. There can be additional costs for storage. For example, if you want to have eight terabytes."

"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Performing Arts

12%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

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	12
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	18

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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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What do you like most about NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to rene...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's supp...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 22% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 34% 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

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell Unity XT Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 23% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 16% of the time

NetApp ASA vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 9% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 9% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 8% of the time

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

October 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

October 2025

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

October 2025

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report

Download NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays product report

Also Known As

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

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series

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

The NetApp EF560 all-flash array is an all-SSD storage system for applications that demand extremely high levels of performance and reliability. Requiring just 2U of rack space, the EF560 all-flash array combines extreme IOPS, microsecond response times, and up to 12GBps of bandwidth with leading, enterprise-proven availability features.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

September 2025

Free Report: Dell Unity XT vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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