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DDN IntelliFlash vs Dell Unity XT comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
213
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
DDN IntelliFlash
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
26th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (11th)
Dell Unity XT
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.9%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DDN IntelliFlash is 1.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 5.9%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray7.9%
Dell Unity XT5.9%
DDN IntelliFlash1.1%
Other85.1%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2393595 - PeerSpot reviewer
L3 Storage Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Good customer service and support and suitable for large environments
It is very easy to install. Users don't need to remember anything while deploying IntelliFlash because everything will be taken care of by tech support. They can easily modify the installation or change the password with the help of the tech support. It is very easy to integrate IntelliFlash with other solutions. We have plugins that can be integrated with other solutions. It will require maintenance. It is the same as any other storage solution: updates and upgrades, firmware upgrades, and drive upgrades.
DK
Sales Account Manager - BFSI Sector at Frontier Business systems
Customer needs are addressed effectively with collaborative sales and service support
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. NetApp's FSA model 2750 comes with an inbuilt cloud tiering option. In the future, if Dell storages include this option, especially for Unity, it would help us target SME or medium enterprises for quicker closures and support the sales team.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Both the ease of setup and the reliability of the array makes it quite simple to manage for the customer."
"The most valuable features are the replication of data and the continuous snapshot that we can take from the disc."
"It has a small footprint, as the current system is only four units per rack, it's got good speed for the price as it uses eMLC, an advanced type of SSD, and it's very scalable, and we're not paying for capacity as we get free controllers every three years."
"Redundancy and the fault tolerance of the platform are the most impressive."
"We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression."
"I would recommend Pure Storage, as it is well-established."
"This solution has improved our organization in the way that we used to see latency but now with this solution we don't. It also has good performance. Latencies have come down for our performance in the SQL databases. We can put a lot more in a lot less in terms of space savings. We also save data center space have good deduplication."
"At this point, I don't know anything that they could provide in a better way."
"It has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the amount of disks needed for the virtual environment."
"With so much technological advancement and more coming, the world is their oyster."
"It performed great originally, and when it performed great, it was awesome."
"High performance and ease-of-management are the most valuable features."
"EasyTier/hotcaching: Valuable because it allows greater performance than standard SAS disks"
"Once we got this solution in there, we were able to get the reporting down from eight hours to under 20 minutes."
"It's very fast. We were seeing read latencies of less than one millisecond. It is robust."
"Ease of Use: Someone can learn it in only few hours Performance: Easy Tier is doing miracles Data Compression: Up to 80% space reduction in the database"
"It is simple to use and easy to manage. We don't touch it after we set it up."
"The valuable features of Unity include that it's flexible, has a friendly user-interface, and provides good performance."
"It is great because it can work as a SAN and net storage."
"It hasn't missed a beat; we haven't had any issues with it whatsoever, speed has been great, it does everything we need, there has been no downtime, and with built-in redundancy upon redundancy I feel very confident with it."
"We're using Dell EMC Unity as our primary storage for our production and for our DR site, we've had no performance issues with it whatsoever and we're using it for everything."
"The most valuable features are its performance and simplicity."
"When comparing them all in their strengths for implementation, the lifecycle of the product, and the support they provide, I would rank Dell number one, IBM second, and third would be Fujitsu."
"Being all-flash makes everything super-fast. It's also great to manage. That's the easiest part. We also have another SAN, from Pure, and the Unity is easier to manage than the Pure."
 

Cons

"Just some nit picky stuff, like allowing servers and volumes to be grouped. Therefore, it would easier to work with them in the GUI."
"I would rate this solution an eight. To make it a ten it would have to be a little cheaper."
"The solution is not cheap. It's much more expensive than DataCore."
"Beyond a certain amount of petabytes, you have to have a separate system. Basically, it's not infinitely scalable."
"I would like to get a weekly report of how our storage has been used, and if there is any storage sitting there not being used."
"The internal garbage collection process has been fixed recently in some OS updates so it is more efficient but that could be just a little better."
"Pure Storage will have issues with positioning in the near future since its a relatively new company. For now, customers need a PoC to trust using the solution, as it can't stand on its brand name alone. They need to improve Pure Storage's marketing."
"I recognize it's a difficult challenge, but I would like to see them make the pricing more reasonable."
"Snapshots are not as easy to access as on a NetApp device."
"They need to offer better integration for a virtual platform to enable you to create hyper-converged solution."
"I would say it's somewhat scalable, maybe not so much as some of the competition, but we don't really care."
"Performance is horrible now. Our original intent was to buy new storage in about two years. But since it became a critical urgency for us, we decided to purchase a new one in two or three months."
"Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible."
"In the proxy section you can’t choose a user account and password, so it is not allowed at the moment to go out, if customer has such constellation."
"It's annoying that if you turn on SMB3 (as opposed to the earlier CIFS protocol), then it is not possible to access a file store using a mixture of SMB and NFS."
"The monitoring matrix and its dashboard need work."
"We have only used this solution for less than one year so I don't have any improvements suggestions yet."
"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."
"It should be lighter. It takes up a ton of rack space."
"More integration with VMware would always be helpful, plugins that go directly into the vSphere management. A single pane of glass is always beneficial."
"VNX used to have some features that Unity still doesn't have, so the progress is not that advanced compared to what customers might expect."
"There are some features in VNX that I wish were in the Unity. For example, Storage Groups for isolating LANs and hosts. That is a big issue."
"There is an ESRS problem that we're facing where, for some reason, the other Unity has not been able to register to EMC."
"Currently, the protocol SNMP is not implemented. That's a problem, as we follow this protocol and I can't check the integrity of this equipment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could always improve. They are still more expensive than some alternative offerings. Cost is always a concern and when there is a battle they tend to be more expensive."
"There is always room for negotiation."
"I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing. It could be improved."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
"We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
"It's a good price point and it's a solid product for the price."
"It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
"I think we pay around 100 grand per year for three arrays or four arrays."
"I recommend the full bundle software in order to have all the functionality. It is more expensive to purchase it one by one."
"At the end of the day, the licensing cost is key, because every customer has a pain point, that the cost of each piece is high. So if they would bundle everything in a package, that is how the competitors are selling their footprint."
"It is a good return on investment."
"All the licenses are included from day one of your purchase of the product, so you don't have to buy licenses separately. There are no additional costs to be paid for the maintenance of the solution."
"Licensing is easy since all the software is included."
"The solution’s pricing is competitive."
"The license is not required, but we must renew the support every year, every two years."
"The price of Dell Unity XT could improve. However, it is a one-time purchase."
"The price of Dell EMC Unity XT is higher compared to other solutions. The price should be less expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise145
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise94
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I don't really know much about the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray in terms of the absolute cost. Regarding Everg...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Despite liking Pure Storage FlashArray, there is room for improvement in automation. Pure Storage FlashArray needs to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IntelliFlash?
It is a bit cheaper than other products, 10% to 20% cheaper.
What needs improvement with IntelliFlash?
DDN IntelliFlash should improve in terms of sales. In future releases, I look forward to more features about AI and M...
What is your primary use case for IntelliFlash?
We use IntelliFlash products for larger environments, like Qatar Airways. They have large scalability and use more th...
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...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Tegile, IntelliFlash N-Series, IntelliFlash T-Series, IntelliFlash HD-Series
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Bank of Stockton, Barnsley College, Boyes Turner, Brigham Young University
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Find out what your peers are saying about DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell Unity XT and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
889,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.