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DDN IntelliFlash vs Dell Unity XT comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
227
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
DDN IntelliFlash
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
25th
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
6th
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 June 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.4%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DDN IntelliFlash is 1.4%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 6.2%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray7.4%
Dell Unity XT6.2%
DDN IntelliFlash1.4%
Other85.0%
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.
NR
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"They can provide a lot of performance, so there is not a lot of difference, but efficiency is something customers value because the compression can be up to twice of the second competitor."
"After installing Pure, the processes that would take 40 minutes to two hours to complete are now done in five minutes."
"Pure support is very proactive, they monitor our infrastructure in real-time, so they respond before we even open a ticket."
"Pure Storage FlashArray offers numerous valuable features, such as low latency and high throughput."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is its high stability level."
"Everpure FlashArray is probably not cheap storage, but it provides great performance, scalability, and everything a customer needs."
"For me, right now, it is the best storage solution in the market, by far."
"The pricing of the product is very competitive to others in the market for Flash and NVMe storage, and from an ROI standpoint, if you consider compression and de-duplication and all that, you get a pretty good ratio."
"We have been able to realize storage space savings for our virtualization environment and it has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the number of disks needed for the virtual environment."
"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's very fast. We were seeing read latencies of less than one millisecond. It is robust."
"After five years, the cost decreases over 30% and the performance increases over 50%."
"Data Compression: Up to 80% space reduction in the database"
"EasyTier/hotcaching: Valuable because it allows greater performance than standard SAS disks Cheaper than pure solid state without needing to actively manage where the data is located."
"It provides a combination of all the protocols that you need, without losing deduplication and compression."
"It performed great originally, and when it performed great, it was awesome."
"Fully automated storage tiering (FAST) cache capabilities allows some FLASH drives to be used to improve the overall performance and reduce the cost of the array versus an all flash or old style spinning disk array."
"VMware integration: Grants both the Storage and Virtual Administrator the ability to create and mount datastores, or even to check how much space each VM is consuming."
"For our customers, the benefits are that it's not too expensive and it has almost all of the features from the beginning."
"My advice is to take this solution."
"The benefits are the simplicity, flexibility and the ease of integration between the Unity platform and VMware, for example, and Microsoft platforms; the integration tools and the simplicity of management."
"Replication and ease of storage setup for block LUN’s and VMware."
"Unity is very stable."
"Via a click, we can deploy a data store or LUN to the ESX host. We can also deploy VVOLs to the ESX server."
 

Cons

"They need to find another way of doing data protection, RAID is not working very well."
"The only thing is that we've had to upgrade controllers a few times because we ended up wanting to use more stuff on here."
"The primary drawback is the cost, which can be prohibitive for small configurations."
"We need to add more storage in Pure Storage FlashArray with the cluster mode activated for us to have better performance."
"We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform. The idea is that they would run a basic NFS or CIF share from the controllers. FlashBlade is the powerhouse for File and Object storage, but if you don't need all that power, a lightweight file function would make FlashArrays more versatile."
"Reports of performance and LUN utilization could be improved."
"There's always an opportunity for new feature functionality."
"The best way to improve Pure Storage FlashArray is the active DR because that can get very confusing, especially when you're trying to test a failover and replicate back; better instructions on how to do that would help because we actually lost an entire volume when we were testing out some stuff as the fingerprint got reinitialized, and when you replicated back, it didn't know about that volume, causing a failure in that process."
"The monitoring matrix and its dashboard need work."
"The solution as it is right now is not very stable. The stability seems to have eroded."
"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."
"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."
"They need to offer better integration for a virtual platform to enable you to create hyper-converged solution."
"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."
"It only keeps one hour of real-time data without the ability to do deep analysis of each element."
"What we noticed was that the SP utilization is quite high, although the main load is on a VMAX."
"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."
"Our request to Dell EMC for improvement was in the reporting and monitoring areas. Dell EMC built up a cloud ID so that we could see the overall storage numbers. We needed to have the proper KPIs to be able to see and manage things."
"We've also encountered an issue when it comes to migrating to compressed LANs on the Unity, and during the Storage vMotion. It appears that the compression algorithm is overwhelmed, and when it becomes overwhelmed it just stops compressing and writes the raw data to the destination. We later copied internally another Storage vMotion to another compressed LAN and achieved much higher compressions on that internal copy. It would be really nice if there was a way to automatically throttle, as a part of a Storage vMotion, to say, "I want to gain the maximum benefits from the compression algorithm, so throttle back the Storage vMotion to implement 100 percent compression.""
"This solution would be improved with the addition of flexible raid volumes."
"The product’s pricing should be improved."
"We'd like to see a cheaper version of an all-flash array in that footprint."
"Dell EMC Unity is not sexy. It doesn't have all the flash and pizzazz of some of the other storage vendors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure came in at a better price point than EMC and performed better than Compellent."
"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it. A little bit better pricing would be great."
"Pure has been flexible with us on the pricing models."
"The price is reasonable."
"We have seen a reduction in the TCO, because Pure Storage is partnering with Belfrics. This partnership reduces our latency and space."
"The guaranty that Pure Storage provides when you purchase it doesn't meet the overall capacity needs to provide extra storage, if needed. Thus, it is not meeting our expectations."
"It's a good price point and it's a solid product for the price."
"I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing. It could be improved."
"I recommend the full bundle software in order to have all the functionality. It is more expensive to purchase it one by one."
"I think we pay around 100 grand per year for three arrays or four arrays."
"It scales, but then you have to buy additional stuff."
"From a pricing perspective, this solution is comparable to others on the market."
"As far as licensing goes, I love how VMware works with Dell EMC Unity. It's great. They work hand in hand. They have made it so simple."
"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'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."
"Just from an overall power and heating usage, it costs substantially less than some of our existing solutions"
"Licensing is easy since all the software is included."
"This product is cheaper than the EMC VNX solution. It is good for small businesses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
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 Business69
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise157
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise96
 

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 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.
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.
896,803 professionals have used our research since 2012.