DDN IntelliFlash vs Dell Unity XT comparison

DataDirect Networks and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. DataDirect Networks is ranked #29 with an average rating of 9.0, while Dell Technologies is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.2. DataDirect Networks holds a 0.4% mindshare in AFS, compared to Dell Technologies’s 7.8% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of DataDirect Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

DDN IntelliFlash and Dell Unity XT are competitive products in the storage solutions market. Dell Unity XT seems to have a superior feature set, making it worth the price for users despite pricing and support being favored for DDN IntelliFlash.

Features: DDN IntelliFlash offers high performance, advanced data management, and flexible configurations. Dell Unity XT provides comprehensive data protection, seamless cloud integration, and robust performance. Users find Dell Unity XT’s feature set more extensive, while DDN IntelliFlash offers notable efficiency.

Room for Improvement: DDN IntelliFlash users suggest enhancing integration capabilities and scalability options. Dell Unity XT users recommend better documentation and improvements in reporting tools. Both products have specific technical aspects needing enhancement to better meet user expectations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DDN IntelliFlash deployment is praised for simplicity and responsive customer service. Dell Unity XT deployment is straightforward but receives mixed reviews regarding customer service efficiency and support responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: DDN IntelliFlash is seen as cost-effective with a quicker ROI, appealing to budget-conscious buyers. Dell Unity XT, while more expensive, offers strong long-term value and return on investment due to its advanced features. Pricing varies, but users find Dell Unity XT's higher cost justified by its capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell Unity XT Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell Unity XT

April 2025

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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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DDN IntelliFlash is 0.4%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 7.8%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

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Anil Rahulwar

Storage Engineer at Movate

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.

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Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

Efficient data replication and fast IOPS have improved operational performance

Dell and a partner jointly implemented this solution in Auvink. We installed the Flash, which makes our IO operations fast and efficient. Replication is available, allowing us to replicate data simultaneously from one site to another. All-flash technology and vTXT enhance speed, and the IOPS are faster. The cache's IOPS are much better. Snapshots provide a unique feature for testing and make management more comfortable and easy. The platform is multi-supported and certification is more convenient and easy to manage.

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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 initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"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 most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."

"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."

"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"EasyTier/hotcaching: Valuable because it allows greater performance than standard SAS disks"

"Data Compression: Up to 80% space reduction in the database"

"It performed great originally, and when it performed great, it was awesome."

"It provides a combination of all the protocols that you need, without losing deduplication and compression."

"High performance and ease-of-management are the most valuable features."

"It's very fast. We were seeing read latencies of less than one millisecond. It is robust."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"We use IntelliFlash products for larger environments, like Qatar Airways."

More DDN IntelliFlash pros

"Purchasing; We worked with a sales rep to purchase our Unity."

"Provides good provisioning, allowing us to save space."

"It will certainly help us scale bigger. If I look at the footprint, the VNX's was multi-rack. Now, all of a sudden, we're only at a portion of a rack. And, obviously, if we can scale within the same rack - we can certainly see that by the number of hard drives we've had to put in - we can scale a lot more easily."

"With all-flash it should be able to scale. You probably just need one 4U device and you have terabytes of space."

"Dell Unity XT is user-friendly and easy to use."

"It has compression, which allows you to store more data than you would normally under the arrays."

"We put the Unity on one of the file servers and the backup performance improved quite a lot."

"I like the idea that it can compress and dedupe inline. That is quite a stunning feature for mid-range customers."

More Dell Unity XT pros

Cons

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

"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."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"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 somewhat scalable, but maybe not so much as some of the competition."

"In future releases, I look forward to more AI features."

"They need to offer better integration for a virtual platform to enable you to create hyper-converged solution."

"It only keeps one hour of real-time data without the ability to do deep analysis of each element."

"Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible."

"We had just one small stability problem with power flapping and it did not start up again automatically. We had to access service ports and manually restart the storage processors."

"Snapshots are not as easy to access as on a NetApp device."

More DDN IntelliFlash cons

"They should update to the cloud."

"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."

"Improve the interface and provide more management capability."

"It could be a little easier to attach it to a network file system."

"We are running VMware, and with the VNXe it was possible to restore. We're using Veeam for VMware backups and with the predecessor, it was possible to mount a backup or restore a backup from a storage snapshot. With the Unity 300, this is not possible."

"Our customers are mostly happy with Unity except for the price. We primarily sell to enterprise companies because small companies cannot afford it."

"I miss storage groups. Now, if I have to add a LUN to a cluster, multiple host, I have to know which host is in that cluster. I have to write it down and that makes it hard. In VNX and earlier, I could simply put a LUN on a storage group and every host in the group had the LUN. This lack bothers me a lot because it takes a lot of time and mistakes are made. Sometimes, a Hyper-V host gets a VMware LUN and vice-versa. Not good."

"In terms of what could be improved, I would say its capacity and its connection."

More Dell Unity XT cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The Dell EMC Data Protection license covers everything, like a one stop shop. All our options are covered."

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

"Its biggest valuable feature is its price point for the amount of storage and performance you get. It's a sweet spot. It's cheaper than the other SANs out there, but performs well enough. It fits that nice, middle-ground portfolio."

"There is not a license required for the use of the solution. We purchased a maintenance contract."

"The pricing is competitive. We miss some of the feature functionality that we had with the XtremeIOs but it's certainly suitable for the purpose."

"It is shipped with all licensed, included for this product range, no need to buy additional licenses"

"From an ROI perspective, I'll put it this way: When we've tried to buy other SANs, the Unity ROI makes it impossible to buy them. So usually, the only time we buy another SAN is when the ROI isn't a factor, because Unity can't do the job. From an ROI perspective, it's great because it beats everything else out. We've tried to look at other options but, at the end of the day, when you price it out, the Unity wins."

"Our big return of investment is the ability to scale and not add FTE counts nor extra administration."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Real Estate/Law Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

68%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

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

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

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What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IntelliFlash?

It is a bit cheaper than other products, 10% to 20% cheaper.

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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...

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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...

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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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Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 32% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

VAST Data vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 31% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 26% of the time

NetApp AFF vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 15% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 14% of the time

More DDN IntelliFlash Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 39% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell Unity XT Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

April 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash

April 2025

Download DDN IntelliFlash product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

April 2025

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

Tegile, IntelliFlash N-Series, IntelliFlash T-Series, IntelliFlash HD-Series

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

Western Digital through its IntelliFlash arrays delivers high-performance storage with a complete range of features and connectivity options, including inline compression and deduplication, application and VM consistent snapshots, replication, RAID, data encryption, VMware vCenter integration, and multi-protocol support for SAN (FC, iSCSI) and NAS (NFS, SMBv3). IntelliFlash arrays deliver high availability through dualredundant and hot-swappable components, active/active or active/passive controllers, non-disruptive software upgrades, eMLC flash, and proactive cloud-based monitoring, analytics, and intelligence. A RESTful API provides scripted or programmatic control.

DataDirect Networks

Dell EMC Unity XT is one of the best all-flash storage arrays on the market today. Dell EMC Unity XT arrays are designed for performance, optimized for efficiency, and built for a multi-cloud world. In addition, they support digital transformation, enabling businesses to reach the full potential of their data capital quickly and easily. Dell EMC Unity’s All-Flash and Hybrid Flash storage platforms provide the performance, efficiency, enterprise-class software, and virtualization integrations required for running a wide range of virtualized applications.

Dell EMC Unity XT Features

Dell EMC Unity XT has many valuable key features, including:

Unified storage flexibility: With Dell EMC Unity XT you can consolidate separate storage platforms into a single Unity XT unified storage system via a simple and intuitive (HTML5) management GUI that also connects you to CloudIQ.
All-inclusive data protection: Dell EMC Unity XT offers a reliable way to protect application data with all-inclusive data protection services, including snapshots, data-at-rest drive encryption, replication, thin clones, and dynamic pools.
Software-defined solutions: Dell EMC Unity XT provides software-defined storage and HA for on-prem and in the cloud solutions.
Multi-cloud alignment: With Dell EMC Unity XT you have the ability to build and manage an effective data-first multi-cloud strategy. It allows you to consolidate public and private cloud resources that align with your business goals.
Metro node: This feature enables automated business continuity with zero RPO and RTO. It also provides greater flexibility through multi-platform support and replication to any array and has zero performance impact on the storage array.
Scalable file system: Dell EMC Unity XT is built with a robust 256TBu file system. The UFS64 file system includes up to 256 independent VMDK clones, 16 thin clones, space efficient snapshots with a simple space reclaim and low IO impact, file system shrink that can reclaim free blocks, simplified Quotas for User, and much more.
DevOps integrations: Dell EMC Unity XT supports the Container Storage Interface (CSI) plugin to run Kubernetes workloads.

Dell EMC Unity XT Benefits

Some of the benefits of using Dell EMC Unity XT include:

High-speed data access
Low latency
Dual-active controller architecture
Multi-cloud
Intuitive user interface
Cost efficient
Solid performance

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Dell EMC Unity XT users.

A Systems Engineering Manager at a manufacturing company says, "It is definitely one of the most robust, solid, well-performing products that I have dealt with. It is set it and forget it, which is pretty amazing." He also mentions, “We can do both block and file storage on one unit without purchasing a separate device.”

Peter S., Senior Technical Specialist at a healthcare company, states, “The most valuable feature is reliability. At the end of the day, it just runs. This solution is easy to work with and easy to maintain.”

PeerSpot user Melvin T., Senior Systems Engineer at Prosperity Bank, explains that the solution is “easy to use and we can add LUNs or space without interruption to end-users. 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."

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Bank of Stockton, Barnsley College, Boyes Turner, Brigham Young University

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell Unity XT

April 2025

Free Report: DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell Unity XT

Find out what your peers are saying about DDN IntelliFlash vs. Dell Unity XT and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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