Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and Pure FlashArray X NVMe based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Dell Unity XT vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe Report (Updated: September 2023).
734,024 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Access speed and power consumption are most valuable.""The all-flash disc is the most valuable feature of this solution.""On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the most comfortable pricing, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.""I like FlashArray's ActiveCluster as well as its snapshot and cloning capabilities.""The compression and deduplication features help to make the best use of the capacity.""The availability and ease of use are the big features.""It's just very easy for general block storage.""I like the speed, and I like the API and how programmable it is."

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"The solution allows for easy, useful replication with good features for VPLEX and VIVO.""The complete block and file sharing are the most usable features.""The feature that I have found most valuable is the unified storage. Also, its capabilities for block-access, file access, and the center box.""I have found Dell EMC Unity XT to be stable.""The most valuable feature is that the solution is a hybrid system, so you can do both block and file storage.""I like how it separates the iSCSI drives from the standard shares. It has two different routes to it. I know most of the other solutions do this, but I just like the way that Dell EMC does it.""The Unity XT box is very strong. It doesn't break. The MTBF time is very large so you don't have to worry about faults or outages in your operations.""Its most valuable feature is the storage alarm."

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"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle.""The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone.""It has good, reliable, fast storage.""The solution is very straightforward to set up.""The solution is scalable.""Technical support has been helpful and responsive.""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.""Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

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Cons
"Pure Storage support could be a little better.""Self-backup is the only feature lacking in this solution.""Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features.""The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release.""From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable.""We would like to be able to connect to data tape for backup, specifically to the LTO backups.""Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations.""The solution could improve by having a multi-tenant feature."

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"The pre-sales technical support and technical engagement could be made better for this product.""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.""We would like to see more advanced integration capability added to this solution.""Dell Unity XT could improve the compatibility of some of the features. Some of my customers had some problems. Additionally, it would be beneficial for the solution to have advanced AI and ML features.""The solution can use improvement with the patch cluster like the Synchron and Active replication.""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.""It could go faster. Make it bigger, better, and faster at a lower price, and I am there.""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."

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"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI.""Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient.""They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage.""We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly.""Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe.""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.""It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
  • "We consume it as a service, and that's actually something we really like, or at least I really like from the technical perspective. That's because it means there is no hassle when we need to upgrade arrays to add capacity. We just interact directly with technical counterparts, and we say, "Hey, we're filling up," and they say, "All right, here's another data pack." They ship it in, and we install it. So, the as-a-service model has worked very well. Given the outstanding data reduction rates, it has improved our profitability because we're selling allocated volumes as part of the cloud service or recovering those costs from our tenants. It is very efficient, but that has offset the premium price. It started out that way, but over time, as we've added capacity, the price per gig has gone down a lot because we have a lot of it."
  • "There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
  • "I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."
  • "You can pay extra for Evergreen support, which gives you free upgrades when new features are introduced."
  • "The best features come included without any additional cost."
  • "We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
  • "The price of the solution is not expensive."
  • More Pure Storage FlashArray Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The price of Dell EMC Unity XT is higher compared to other solutions. The price should be less expensive."
  • "Pricing for this product is manageable, though slightly higher than comparable products."
  • "The solution is very expensive."
  • "The solution is very expensive."
  • "This solution is a good price for what you get."
  • "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.""
  • "I liked the price point when we purchased it."
  • "We looked at HPE Nimble but the price of the Unity XT was very good compared to the competition."
  • More Dell Unity XT 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 support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
  • "Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
  • More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure… more »
    Top Answer:Data deduplication is one feature I found to be the most valuable in the tool...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a… more »
    Top Answer:FlashArray is a premium solution, having all-inclusive licensing including future functionalities, and being end/to/end… more »
    Top Answer:I saw that you have doubts about what you chose. I have a lot of experience with the constructor, honestly I can… more »
    Top Answer:They’re both great solutions and I’ve used both. EMC is being VERY aggressive on pricing which may be the undoing of… more »
    Top Answer:First of all the decision should be taken looking at similar products in terms of capacity and performance. I will show… more »
    Top Answer:Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues.
    Top Answer:Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products.
    Top Answer:We need to get more information about the performance fine-tuning that we are doing. Many options to check performance… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
    Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray is the world’s first enterprise-class storage array that runs exclusively on the nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) protocol for memory access and storage. It represents a totally state-of-the-art type of storage technology. It offers users shared accelerated storage that delivers cutting-edge features in the realms of performance, simplicity, and consolidation. Pure Storage is fresh and modern today and will be for the next decade. Without forklift upgrades or planned downtime, Pure Storage takes the work out of storage ownership and delivers unprecedented customer satisfaction.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is built with simplicity and reliability in mind. The solution can be implemented and optimized in hours, as opposed to other similar solutions that can take days. It has no moving parts, which removes areas where it could potentially be vulnerable to suffering errors. It is highly stable and gives users the ability to manage system shutdowns in a way that  prevents data loss.

    Benefits of Pure Storage FlashArray

    Some of the benefits of using Pure Storage FlashArray include:

    • A much higher level of speed than similar pieces of technology. Pure Storage FlashArray maximizes the speed at which data can be transferred while at the same time minimizing system latencies that might slow the transfer down. Additionally, it offers users quick memory read and data access speeds.

    • A higher bang for your buck in terms of the storage capabilities you get for the money you pay. They are smaller in size than more standard storage technologies, but they offer flash memory, which enables users to store larger amounts of data than the current standard.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Pure Storage FlashArray is a highly effective piece of storage technology which stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its overall robustness and the value that it offers by way of its reliability and ease of use. It provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with this solution. Pure Storage FlashArray’s reliability and ease of use make it a highly valuable solution. 

    PeerSpot user Prabakaran K., a technical consultant at Injazat Data Systems, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."

    PeerSpot user Jason D., a cloud solutions architect at a tech services company, notes three features that make this solution valuable when he writes, "We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."

    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."

    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.

    Offer
    Learn more about Pure Storage FlashArray
    Learn more about Dell Unity XT
    Learn more about Pure FlashArray X NVMe
    Sample Customers
    Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
    Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
    Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization37%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Healthcare Company15%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Energy/Utilities Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization62%
    Computer Software Company7%
    Government4%
    Manufacturing Company3%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Comms Service Provider18%
    Manufacturing Company12%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise44%
    Large Enterprise40%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise48%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business10%
    Midsize Enterprise67%
    Large Enterprise23%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise36%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise61%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell Unity XT vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe
    September 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe and other solutions. Updated: September 2023.
    734,024 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell Unity XT is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 48 reviews while Pure FlashArray X NVMe is ranked 16th in All-Flash Storage with 8 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while Pure FlashArray X NVMe is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Dell Unity XT writes "Price / Quality ratio is good and since OE 5.03 code the array family reached a rather good maturity level". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure FlashArray X NVMe writes "We can monitor our storage from anywhere, and it is light in maintenance and very stable". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas Pure FlashArray X NVMe is most compared with HPE Nimble Storage, Dell PowerStore, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, Dell PowerMax NVMe and Pavilion HyperParallel Flash Array. See our Dell Unity XT vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe report.

    See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.

    We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.