We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and Pure Storage FlashArray 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."The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The latency is good."
"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."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"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 system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"The flash aspects of the Unity make it incredibly fast. The fact that you get that much storage directly on what is basically a 3U box to us, that density has been really useful."
"We just started doing a bunch of automation where, if an end-user's home directory or departmental share gets filled, I can set certain things through a Unity API so that if it reaches 95 or 98 percent full, it will automatically expand. Now, instead of our getting a ticket and having to go in and do it manually, it does that for us."
"The All-Flash models are pretty fast for the vast majority of our remote workloads."
"It has reduced the latency in application and database reads and writes... All-flash, it's fast. We have the 650 model which is all-flash, upgraded from VNX. It just flies."
"We are happy with the way we have Dell EMC Unity XT configured."
"It's very reliable. I have not had an issue with Dell EMC Unity."
"The Snapshot feature is key."
"It does great deduplication. From a storage perspective, we save money being able to dedupe right on the disk"
"I use all the features of this solution and I find them to be easy to use and functional, such as the compression and capacity to expand."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has significantly improved our data center performance. It handles high workloads efficiently, providing better performance in the environment. With increased storage capacity, it has led to improved overall system performance. The tool's technology is a standout feature. It has helped me reduce storage costs by 15 percent."
"I find two features of Pure Storage most valuable. The first is the "safe mode" function, and the second is its simplicity."
"The tool has reduced our power consumption."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the all-flash storage performance, low latency, and efficiency of their de-duplication technology. Additionally, the ease of use is good compared to other storage systems. The features in data protection, snapshotting, and replication between data centers and sites are superior to other solutions."
"It helps us maintain uptime much better than other solutions we've used in the past, and the support is extremely quick and responsive."
"The deduplication in the array combined with its snap technologies allows the product to be remotely/manually controlled or scheduled."
"It helps to simplify storage because it has an easy front-end to access everything."
"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."
"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."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"It is on the expensive side."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"It's an expensive solution, particularly for medium companies. One device costs about 30,000 euros. The support contract is quite expensive as well. We are currently looking for other lower-cost solutions."
"My only complaint would be some of the CLI Help files could be a little more detailed, but that's very minor complaint. We were trying to run some commands just to see how the storage snaps were interacting with the storage array, and it was a little difficult to look up exactly what commands should be run. The Help files detailing what exactly the commands did wasn't as detailed as we would have wanted them to be."
"The VNX reporting is much more granular, versus the Unity reporting."
"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."
"I would like the UI to look better."
"A customer had to buy VMX because Unity didn't have WORM."
"The price of this product can be more cost-effective."
"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."
"The primary drawback is the cost, which can be prohibitive for small configurations."
"In some cases, we get into very in-depth conversations around movement of specific data and, what's more, chunk sizes. The documentation lacked any description or information on that."
"I would rate this solution an eight. To make it a ten it would have to be a little cheaper."
"Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases."
"The price should be lower."
"Part of our company works on Dell EMC because Pure Storage did not have synchronous applications when we were purchasing our products."
"The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features."
"They have a product, FlashBlade, which is their object storage integration, and that's something that we haven't integrated with yet. This might be an area for additional focus as it would play into scalability, because the very nature of object storage is that it's infinitely scalable."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 186 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of Dell Unity XT writes "Easy to set up with good data compression technology and useful deduplication". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and Pure Storage FlashBlade. See our Dell Unity XT vs. Pure Storage FlashArray 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.
