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Dell PowerMax NVMe 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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell PowerMax NVMe
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (3rd)
Dell Unity XT
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
194
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Dell PowerMax NVMe is 4.0%, down from 4.2% 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
 

Q&A Highlights

reviewer931557 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 05, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Haseeb Khalid Sheikh - PeerSpot reviewer
End-to-end NVMe capabilities helps improve availability, performance, and capacity
The solution's most valuable feature is the data reduction ratio. You can store a 5:1 ratio of your data in Dell PowerMax NVMe. For example, if you have 200 terabytes of usable capacity, you can save up to five times of data on that capacity. That means you can save one petabyte of data on just 200 terabytes of usable capacity. The solution's end-to-end NVMe capabilities have improved our operations. Everything is fast, and you don't have to map your storage to old hybrid storage technologies. Our organization has experienced positive change, and the solution has improved our uptime, availability, performance, and capacity.
Syed Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"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."
"I appreciate the performance."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"It has reduced our footprint in different physical locations."
"It is efficient and very simple for our administrators to use."
"Dell PowerMax NVMe has been a significant enhancement for data handling in my industry. Its improved security features and data calculation capabilities make it a valuable solution for our customers. The most critical feature of Dell PowerMax NVMe for performance enhancement is its strong network support and integration with other vendors, along with its efficient use of hardware components like CPU and memory. Data reduction technologies in PowerMax have been highly beneficial for our company, allowing us to optimize storage and reduce costs by consolidating files"
"We are most interested in cloud utilization."
"It is easy to manage and upgrade."
"The tool is a fast-performing asset. It can perform millions of transactions within a second. I like the tool's architecture as well."
"The PowerMax software and CloudIQ let us get an inside view of our compression and compaction, as well as our usage of the storage."
"It is a very stable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"One of the things that I like the most about it is how they have changed the Unisphere GUI, and how it is now HTML5. It is so easy to use. Also, the array itself is so simple, easy to set up and easy to use, but it still has that great Dell EMC technology behind it."
"The most valuable feature is that the solution is a hybrid system, so you can do both block and file storage."
"I like the easy management with the new Unisphere management and the HTML5 interface."
"Compared to older generations of arrays there is quite an improvement, compared to the older VNXs, for example. It depends on you use it, but for our purposes, we find Unity simple to use."
"It has compression, which allows you to store more data than you would normally under the arrays."
"We use replication for disaster recovery (DR), making our DR process much easier."
"Purchasing; We worked with a sales rep to purchase our Unity."
"The high availability of Dell EMC Unity XT has been the most important feature."
 

Cons

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"It is on the expensive side."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."
"The software layer has to improve."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"The main challenge with the product was to have control over the simultaneous failures of controllers. For recovery, manual intervention is required."
"Dell PowerMax NVMe is costly compared to other solutions."
"We had challenges again with the initial setup. I don't know if there was a gap during the requirement-collection phase, but the box was partially delivered to us with missing parts and it delayed the implementation by about 60 days. It was not as smooth as I would have hoped."
"They should work with the storage engineers to better tweak the management tools to give them improved visibility into their data."
"The disadvantage of PowerMax is its cost."
"We have had some trouble with the VMAX-to-PowerMax migration, but the VMAX box will be powered down after the migration. The PowerMax boxes are working fine and we don't have any issues with them."
"There are so many configurations in the tool that cannot be done by anyone who is not a Dell personnel."
"I believe it would be of great benefit to work on the customization of the pricing structure for different enterprises and their specific needs."
"The monitoring part could be better. With EMC storage systems - or Unity and VPLEX, because I'm using them, for the moment - the monitoring part is very difficult. They should improve this to have a better reporting system."
"Unity only does compression. It would be nice if there was a deduplication feature as well. At my previous job, we used XtremIO and that was deduplication and not compression, and I think we got more out of it because the more OSs you have that are the same, the fewer copies it needs to keep of all that data. So, the deduplication would be a nice feature to have."
"Having more artificial intelligence tools built into the solution would be a great benefit. This would allow us to see more about the workloads and higher visibility, such as performance degradation."
"I would like the device to have the ability to pull down its own firmware. That would be a great thing."
"On the data domains - for the Unity product, but specifically for data domain - I would like a much easier interface for managing, for actually going in and having one place where I could get all of the different parts of the overall unit. And I would also like to be able to identify individual disks a lot more easily."
"It is expensive, and the pricing could be better."
"This solution would be improved with the addition of flexible raid volumes."
"​Improve the interface and provide more management capability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Dell is expensive compared to other products and I would rate its pricing a four out of ten."
"The price is starting from $500,000."
"The pricing is competitive. I would rate the pricing of the solution a six out of ten."
"The price is really high."
"It is high-end storage and it is a bit expensive, but it is doing what it is meant for: running business-critical applications or latency-sensitive applications..."
"The price is on the market. It's not inexpensive, but it's available on the market."
"I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe a five out of ten for pricing."
"In terms of price-performance, it beat out other competitors when we were taking a look and comparing it to the market. That was one of the biggest driving points for us."
"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."
"The pricing was quite okay compared to others. We probably got it cheaper because we were the first ones out of the gate, but I would say that it's good value for the money."
"The price of the solution should be less expensive. However, at some point, you need to pay for facility and performance."
"It is a good return on investment."
"Obtaining a warranty is easy."
"Compared to other EMC platforms, Unity is nice because it is all-inclusive, in terms of the licensing model. That's unique for them, compared to other manufacturers. It is beneficial. We could use replication, native, right out-of-the-box."
"Looking at it based on cost per gigabyte, it's certainly very effective."
"It's the performance combined with the gig-per-dollar value. That combination is superior to other storage options."
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Answers from the Community

reviewer931557 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 5, 2020
May 5, 2020
The PowerMax NVMe is the high-end storage fromDellEMC it can provide up to 10M IOPS, however, if you need less, you can go with the new Unity XT which is going to have NVMe as well. The new Unity XT is going to be ready for order in June 2019.
2 out of 7 answers
it_user991506 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 22, 2019
I have used all, EMC, and HPE 3Par, VNX, Unity, etc. All are OK. But for long term Flash Storage, I would take a look at Hitachi F Series. Best reliability hands down and they provide non-disruptive migrations, no server downtime, no scheduling with users, etc. NDM makes Hitachi a no brainer.
MK
May 23, 2019
The PowerMax NVMe is the high-end storage fromDellEMC it can provide up to 10M IOPS, however, if you need less, you can go with the new Unity XT which is going to have NVMe as well. The new Unity XT is going to be ready for order in June 2019.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
72%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
3%
Government
2%
 

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.
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 ...
What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell of...
What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?
First, it's an enterprise storage solution. This is very important for us. Another important feature is replication.
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 FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Rackspace, Open Line
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell Unity XT and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
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