Dell Unity XT vs VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL] comparison

Dell Technologies and VIOLIN Systems are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VIOLIN Systems users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) and others in All-Flash Storage.

To learn more, read our detailed All-Flash Storage Report (Updated: May 2026).

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

May 2026

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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

Everpure FlashArray

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV

Technical Lead at Wipro Limited

Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades

The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.

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Dhandayudapani C

TSG Manager at Navigator Systems

Ease of implementation and robust performance enhance multi-OEM support experience

We are limited only to hardware replacement, not administration tasks. We work on AMC products through Annual Maintenance Contracts. We provide support up to the 680 model. The XT680F is a newer model, and we support from 380F to 680F. The FlashSystem 8000 series is all-flash, and there is also a 5000 series flash model. We can compare IBM DS series, including the 8000 series for recommendations. For NetApp, we can recommend the FAS 8000 series.

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Ramil Cerrada

Solution lead at Globe Mobile

Has high-speed data access and processing capabilities, distinguishing it as a leader in its storage solutions category

VIOLIN QV2020 lacks scalability. This affects both the timeframe for installation and the performance of end-users. Additionally, there's a challenge in deploying horizontally, either by deploying between different nodes or adding new ones. We have many customers. 50,000 users are using this solution. It depends on the projects being taken out of the operations team.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The features that are there now are really what we need."

"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."

"The GUI is very easy to use and intuitive."

"My rating of Pure Storage is a ten out of ten because of the price for performance and footprint - the overall value."

"It is an easy to use product for all of my team members."

"All updates, upgrades, and hardware work are all performed on-line with no impact."

"Data deduplication features make it easier to manage storage and forecast growth."

"The support team is available all the time and they seem to know what they are doing."

More Everpure FlashArray pros

"Overall, the feedback from my team has definitely been positive."

"The most valuable thing for our use case is the flexibility to have multiple-protocol support."

"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."

"The stability is good, and we are very happy with the Unity; it does what it says it does and it performs, so you never have performance problems with it."

"My experiences are generally positive with this product."

"I like the easy management with the new Unisphere management and the HTML5 interface."

"The scalability is really good now that they have the Dynamic Pools. We don't always have the money to buy complete write sets when we have to expand the storage, so now with the Dynamic Pools we can add disks on the go."

"Before the product went in, we did not have any centralized storage, and now it is a single source of knowledge and repository for all our data, making our lives a lot easier and improving our disaster recovery because we have two of them in place replicating."

More Dell Unity XT pros

"VIOLIN QV2020 is the latest in terms of performance. It has high-speed data access and processing capabilities, distinguishing it as a leader in its storage solutions category."

"It’s simple to use hardware to fix performance issues. Our issue is poor coding/queries. This greatly speeded things up. It’s too costly to track down poor programming in applications. The price of a developer’s time to scan through all the coding is high compared to buying Violin."

"It has lowered batch times from 14 hours to two hours."

Cons

"The 3PAR SSD arrays that we have are still failing a lot so even though we're under warranty, we still have to get someone out and usually have someone troubleshoot so that usually adds onto the cost. With Pure, we've had a disc fail and we pop it out and you pop it in and it's good to go."

"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services."

"The time-to-market could be better at times, but I think that's true for all vendors of hardware."

"We would like more extended historical data to help with some of the capacity planning. This is something that we are asking for all the time. E.g., what was the historical performance of this particular volume? So, we would like more historicals."

"I would like some form of QoS implemented. As a service provider, it would be beneficial to have it."

"The one major gripe I have is that there is no snapshotting enabled by default on the SAN."

"The overall scalability for this product could be improved as well as having a single console to management multiple arrays."

"I would like to see support for NVMe, end-to-end."

More Everpure FlashArray cons

"Replication with VMware - it's called the vSphere Metro Storage Cluster - is lacking in the Unity and is present in Compellent."

"For the integration of the VPLEX function for Cross IDC structure, they should integrate the function into the SP controller."

"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."

"I think there are a couple of things on the file side that we're lacking from the VNX world. It would be nice if we got some of those back. I think there are limitations on how many file systems you can back up at a time. Whereas you can do, I believe, eight continuous per data mover on the file side on the VNX, you can only do something like two or four on Unity. If they could step up to that, that would be good."

"Recently, customers have been asking for a cloud tiering option in storages. Some Dell storages do not have cloud tiering, which is an optional commercial feature."

"It would be nice to have been able to easily move off our old VNX system to this system. The process is very manual."

"A customer had to buy VMX because Unity didn't have WORM."

"It might be nice to have more integrated features instead of having everything as a separate module, like the networking. The networking is attached separately in the back. It would be nice if that was more integrated with less ports."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"VIMM replacement is poorly designed."

"I set up Wi-Fi for storage, and since then, we haven't experienced any interruptions in service."

"VIMM replacement is poorly designed. You have to slide out an entire drawer, remove the cover and then pop out the failed VIMM. I would like to see a front replacement just like with hard disks. This leaves room for error; for example, when you slide it out from the rack, you are moving cables along the cable management arm. This leaves the possibility of accidentally unplugging a cable from the array if it is not seated properly. Also, you might pinch the cables when sliding it back into the server rack."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Because of the SSD, it is cheaper because I am not purchasing so many disks."

"The pricing is very attractive and it delivers performance for the money."

"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."

"Pure came in at a better price point than EMC and performed better than Compellent."

"Pure Storage has not helped us to reduce our licensing costs."

"Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive."

"I would prefer that they lower their pricing."

"We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."

More Everpure FlashArray pricing and cost advice

"Our costs are roughly $200,000 a year."

"The solution is very expensive."

"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."

"Currently, we buy directly from Dell EMC. We've tried going through resellers before, but we've found that if we go directly through Dell EMC, we get a good a price from being with the government."

"The solution should be cheaper."

"Looking at it based on cost per gigabyte, it's certainly very effective."

"Because of the attractive price, we were able to get rid of more expensive arrays, standardize, and get rid of a lot of spinning disks. We also got rid of more expensive flash that we weren't properly utilizing."

"While Dell EMC is costly, I don't have any complaints about their licensing model."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

"They will beat anyone’s price right now. They are struggling and just need to get product out their doors."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Construction Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	69
Midsize Enterprise	37
Large Enterprise	157

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	62
Midsize Enterprise	48
Large Enterprise	96

No data available

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?

Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?

There were no issues with pricing, setup cost, and licensing.

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?

I do not have any improvements at the moment; I like how it is. I have nothing to add about needed improvements.

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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...

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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...

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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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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray

June 2026

Download Everpure FlashArray product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

June 2026

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

May 2026

Download VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL] product report

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

No data available

Overview

The FlashArray family delivers consistent, high-performance data services across block, file, and object workloads. As part of the Everpure Platform, it provides the foundation for a unified data plane, enabling applications to reliably access, protect, and manage data across environments with simplicity and predictability. With built-in capabilities such as inline data reduction, snapshots, replication, and ransomware resilience, FlashArray ensures efficient operations, protected data, and consistent application uptime.

As the foundation of the (unified) data plane, FlashArray enables policy-driven automation, monitoring, and centralized management while integrating across cloud and on-premises environments. Built on an Evergreen architecture, it supports non-disruptive upgrades and continuous performance improvements over time while simplifying operations at scale.

What Key Features Does FlashArray Offer?

Simplicity and Speed: Easy management and rapid performance enhancements.
Data Reduction: Effective deduplication and compression.
Flash Architecture: Seamless upgrades and outstanding resilience.
VMware Integration: Excellent compatibility with virtualization platforms.
Predictive Analytics: Strong insights for proactive management.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Reliability: Proactive support with minimal downtime.
Efficiency: Reduced storage footprint and enhanced data management.
Performance: Faster processing speeds and low latency.
User Experience: Simplified management with Evergreen model.

In industries like finance, banking, and healthcare, FlashArray supports high-performance storage needs focusing on virtualization and database environments. Employed for VMware workloads, disaster recovery, and storage provisioning, it ensures application performance in private or hybrid cloud setups while enhancing management of virtualized environments.

Everpure (formerly Pure Storage)

Dell Unity XT is renowned for its ease of use and management, high performance with all-flash arrays, and seamless integration with VMware. It's appreciated for robust data replication, multi-protocol support, inline compression, and deduplication capabilities, ideal for mid-range storage needs.

Known for its advanced HTML5 interface, Dell Unity XT offers unified block and file storage with rapid deployment and efficient storage utilization. Its scalability and cost-effectiveness make it appealing to users transitioning from older systems. The system supports databases like Oracle and SQL, alongside serving as network-attached storage (NAS). While recognized for performance, integration, and reliability in virtual environments, its deduplication, compression, and support quality are areas flagged for enhancement. There's a desire for improved synchronized replication and monitoring capabilities, enhanced VMware compatibility, and active-active controller functionality. Native cloud integration and better pre-sales support are also anticipated by users.

What are the main features of Dell Unity XT?

VMware Integration: Seamless operation within VMware environments.
Data Replication: Reliable and robust data replication features.
All-Flash Arrays: High-performance storage solution with all-flash capabilities.
Multi-Protocol Support: Flexible support for various storage protocols.
HTML5 Interface: Advanced and efficient management interface.

Where can users find ROI when evaluating Dell Unity XT?

Performance Optimization: Enhanced storage performance for demanding applications.
Scalability: Easily scales to meet growing business requirements.
Cost-Effectiveness: Competitive pricing for mid-range storage solutions.
Seamless Integration: Works smoothly with existing IT infrastructure.
Reliable Data Management: Secure and efficient handling of critical data.

In sectors relying heavily on virtualization and data-intensive applications, Dell Unity XT serves as a vital component in data centers. It plays crucial roles in hosting virtual machines, supporting extensive databases, and providing robust network-attached storage. This adaptability makes it a favored choice for organizations transitioning from traditional storage systems.

Dell Technologies

Quartet™ is the name of VIOLIN’s software-driven flash storage product portfolio. Quartet™ helps customers access and use more of their data, while reducing the complexity and expense of managing the infrastructure behind it. The Quartet Platform was purpose-built to the highest industry standards and has four components:

VIOLIN Systems

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

BlueScope Buildings, GameVil, VRT, IKYU Corporation

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: May 2026.

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