We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The main difference between the two products is speed. Dell EMC Unity XT users say the speed of the solution should be improved, while NetApp AFF users find the solution’s speed to be impressive.
"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 latency is good."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"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."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"The most valuable feature is the fast cache with functionality rewrite."
"For me, the most valuable feature is the ease of management."
"Integration is easy with this product."
"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."
"Storage Snapshots have been really nice. They allow us to do backups without impacting our production workload that much. The scalability, the ability to add disks dynamically and adjust our workload as needed, has also been really helpful. That definitely makes my job easier. And the interface for managing Unity is very easy. The integrations between VMware Hypervisor and Dell EMC are top-notch, so it's been really easy to use and manage."
"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."
"This solution makes it easy to manage storage, provision new workloads, and scale-up."
"I like Unity XT's software-defined storage. It's a new feature that isn't widely used yet, but customers are impressed with it."
"The most valuable features are the low latency and high-performance."
"In terms of the footprint, it is far more efficient. It has smaller, higher-capacity drives than our older unit. In terms of space, power, and cooling, it has simplified things."
"Over the past 18 years, it has been extremely easy to upgrade to newer products and technology. We can upgrade as we move along. So, we have been able to keep up with the newest technology with zero downtime."
"The business copy solution has become faster using SnapMirror."
"The stability is solid. It doesn't fail on us, which is exactly what we want. We are in a critical business that we can't have any percentage of downtime."
"High availability"
"Supports file formatting, the main protocols, and the hot swapping of disks and features."
"Efficient and easily scalable all-flash storage solution, significantly reducing latency, optimizing data management, and providing cost savings for businesses"
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"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."
"Last (and I understand that it has a low chance of being implemented) the copy services currently are redirect on write. It would be great if the administrator could choose between redirect on write and copy on write, when configuring copy job."
"The EMC VNX Virtual Data Mover (VDM) software needs more improvement."
"Support Responsiveness & time to fix bugs should be improved."
"VNX used to have some features that Unity still doesn't have. From that perspective, the progress is not that advanced."
"They should have more wizards for customers so they can do more of the self-service types of functions, in terms of upgrades and patching, although it's pretty easy right now."
"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."
"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."
"Improve the administrative user interface so it is easier to work with. Currently, a simple task, such as removing a host from 100 LUNS, takes a lot of time. If they could improve LUN to host model to be more like the EMC VPLEX, for example, it would be great."
"I really don't have anything to ask for in this regard, because we're not really pushing the envelope on any of our use cases. NetApp is really staying out ahead of all of our needs. I believe that there were firmware issues. I think it was just a mismatch of things that were going on. It could have possibly been something in the deployment process that wasn't done exactly right."
"I would like to see better tutorials available, beyond the basics, that cover subjects like MetroCluster and automation."
"The NetApp support could be better."
"The product should be more competitive and come up with additional features. They should keep the client always in mind and as the top priority. This would be the best way to compete with other solutions."
"It has not reduced our data center costs. NetApp charges a pretty penny for their stuff."
"In terms of improvement, the support could be a little better."
"With some of the larger clusters being able to do a patch upgrade is helping. They still take three, four hours by the time you get the night started, finish things up, do the upgrade."
"There needs to be compatibility with upgraded applications. We don't want the system to be upgraded, but not have backwards compatible to existing applications."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 189 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 281 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. 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 NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, HPE Nimble Storage, Pure Storage FlashArray, IBM FlashSystem and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Pure Storage FlashArray, VMware vSAN and NetApp FAS Series. See our Dell Unity XT vs. NetApp AFF 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.
I saw that you have doubts about what you chose. I have a lot of experience with the constructor, honestly I can recommend Dell EMC Unity XT All-flash which can guarantee you a ratio of 3:1 signed by Dell and you have to deploy all types of workload from block to file. You can also rely on the native cash and fast cache functionality for increasing application performance
This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended cost is decisively based on the Gartner magic quadrant storage 2020 Net app company and Dell EMC are leaders. But we can say NetApp is First in Queue.
One of the superiority NetApp working on NVMeOF
The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matters more than IOPS for your needs, Netapp AFF is the right choice. You can approach the max. Performance by equipping Unity with SSDs but maybe this costs more. I would recommend Netapp AFF all the time if your budget is ok.
They’re both great solutions and I’ve used both.
EMC is being VERY aggressive on pricing which may be the undoing of NetApp.
Differences are in the user interface mostly, they both do what they are designed to do in different ways.
I say, compare apples to apples on models and get them fighting on price.
You win.
First of all the decision should be taken looking at similar products in terms of capacity and performance.
I will show a few aspects helping the decision, comparing Unity Xt480f and AFF220 (both chosen by distributor to be in the price range for capacity):
1. Comparing 2 systems with the same capacity and performance: pricing is the first to look at:
1a. Cost per GB, war capacity and usable capacity (+Unity)
1b. Cost of adding capacity (+Unity)
1c. Cost of licensing per GB / per added capacity (+Unity all included)
1d. Cost of maintenance after initial contract (+Unity same for all life )
2. Comparison of CPU/MEM, we choose Unity XT because of better CPU cores/frequency and memory per controller
3. Percentage of space lost in various configurations. Our goal was to use Dynamic disk pools, available on Unity. Easier upgrades/downgrades.
4. If virtual volumes are considered, Unity has a VASA provider included in the controller, Netapp is using external VM.
5. Product lifecycle
6. Inline compression / deduplication, performance,
From the above 1=80%, 2=5%, 3=10%, 4+5=5%
We went to Unity XT480 where on the same budget we got 20% more usable flash capacity, while enough slots remain for future upgrades.
My experience was with DELL EMC Unity Hybrid Storage and it was amazing cost-wise. Are you sure you need an All-flash solution?
EMC definitely.