We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and IBM FlashSystem 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 system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"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 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."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"The latency is good."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"Via a click, we can deploy a data store or LUN to the ESX host. We can also deploy VVOLs to the ESX server."
"It has saved us time when provisioning new storage, so we're trying to automate that process."
"It is pretty stable. I like the stability, because everything works like it should. We made it all redundant. So, we don't have anything to worry about."
"The most valuable features of Dell Unity XT are the data compression for all of our VMs up to four times and the performance is good."
"The initial setup is very easy. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, with one being difficult and ten being easy."
"There has been no downtime. It has built-in redundancy upon redundancy."
"This solution makes it easy to manage storage, provision new workloads, and scale-up."
"It is lightning fast, low on power and heat, and has a small footprint with great performance."
"The power systems are very reliable if you are running 24/7 operations. For ongoing mission-critical applications, it's the best solution."
"It is simple to make an update."
"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem are performance and security."
"It's a mature product. It's like a BMW that evolves consistently."
"High availability and enhanced security; Proven dependability; Data compression with hardware acceleration; Advanced copy services features are all in this product."
"The installation is nice and easy."
"Data deduplication is one of the most valuable features of this solution."
"The initial customer technical support was efficient and effective."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"The software layer has to improve."
"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."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"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."
"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."
"The support team is well-versed in the AMG solution, having received comprehensive training. They also boast strong partnerships in both VNAM and Korea. The system's user-friendliness is a primary consideration in their choice of solution, emphasizing the importance of service. They place a strong emphasis on service, occasionally requiring approvals. However, with full installations, they have achieved almost uniformity. Their storage approach differs from a consolidated business-based model; instead, it is application-centric. Their investment in solutions is geared towards specific needs, such as the banking or information system, acquiring smaller storage units individually."
"There are a lot of things that can be done with it. It's got Cloud IQ, but I think it's not as mature as it could be, they could make it more effective. They could make it more comparable to some of the other products out there that have cloud analytics. The amount of insight that the Unity product is able to give, at this point, is okay, but not class-leading. Some of the other data-reduction technologies, like deduplication, are not to the level of other competitors and what their products provide."
"This solution could be improved by offering containerization. This is something many of my customers are looking for."
"This solution would be improved with the addition of flexible raid volumes."
"It's not as reliable as it should be, I think it was probably released a little early. We've had production problems with customers, and there are still some challenges at scale as well. Compression is a problem for the system. Once you enable dedupe and compression, the performance of the system, the capability, halves... It has to be right-sized and sized for compression, but even with that, because there are only two storage processors, you're ending up at almost 40 percent usage."
"We had one incident with a memory leak that led to controller reboot. Although it had no impact, when such things happens the storage should be more aware of it, send alerts, and propose corrective actions."
"Software updates have to be downloaded to the root of the device. This pushes the available space to 95% utilization."
"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."
"I have looked at a few pages of a report I download and I saw a graph there regarding software-defined vendors. IBM is not in a good position on this graph. I know that they are working very hard on this, to make it much better and to get to a level where it's not only hardware but also software to provide a complete solution."
"The design is a little old-fashioned and could be updated. The rack is very primitive and designed in an older style."
"The solution's infrastructure technology level could be PCI Express 5 instead of PCI Express 4 for the next version."
"In IBM FlashSystem, data reduction is an area with shortcomings where improvements can be made in the future."
"The data reduction pool feature sucks and is not recommended for use with heavy workloads."
"IBM FlashSystems is lagging in optimizing storage technologies."
"The GUI for monitoring performance metrics could provide better visibility. For example, it doesn't let me segregate the IOPS per volume."
"Enterprise data storage needs improvement. They should create a feature for data and file storage."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 190 reviews while IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 106 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2. 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 IBM FlashSystem writes "An easy GUI and simple provisioning but our model does not support compression". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, Pure Storage FlashArray and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, NetApp AFF and Huawei OceanStor Dorado. See our Dell Unity XT vs. IBM FlashSystem report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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As with any engineered solution, it depends on your needs.
However, the bottom line is that for their target markets Dell EMC Unity will generally have a better price at parity performance over IBM's FlashSystem.
Both are focused on All-Flash arrays and Dell EMC Unity is where I start with VMWare. If I have a dedicated IBM DB2 application, I would lean toward the IBM FlashSystem.
The problem in the VMWare environment is that IBM has done a poor job prioritizing this area and has several I/O bottlenecks and interface driver issues. I expect future resolution, but does that happen before current platforms evolve?
Depends what you're expecting. Full compatibility with VMware environment - DellEMC only, IBM FS has problems with iSCSI connections to vsphere 7.02 - it's not supported (FS5200 and vsphere 7.02 server with Intel cards - doesn't work fast (10Gbe - 300MB/s instead of 1,1-1,2 GB/s), no solution for now from IBM and VMware (08/2021). Integration - DellEMC and VMware are one company - everything goes smoothly. Space reclamation didn't work well on IBM systems when connected to vsphere (vsphere 6.5 and V7000 models). When using Microsoft virtualization - no difference - it's more complex to start system but when properly configured - it runs well (fast). But of both of them I would choose HPE systems,:-) (Nimble or Primera):-)