Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Dell Unity XT comparison

Dell PowerMax NVMe and Dell Unity XT are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell PowerMax NVMe is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.5, while Dell Unity XT is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3. Dell PowerMax NVMe holds a 3.9% mindshare in AFS, compared to Dell Unity XT’s 10.3% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell PowerMax NVMe users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Dell Unity XT users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Both Dell Unity XT and Dell PowerMax NVMe are highly regarded storage solutions. Dell PowerMax NVMe seems to have the upper hand due to its superior features and long-term value despite higher pricing.

Features: Dell Unity XT users appreciate its efficient data reduction capabilities, ease of use, and favorable pricing. Dell PowerMax NVMe users value its superior speed, reliability thanks to its NVMe architecture, and advanced performance features that give it an edge.

Room for Improvement: Dell Unity XT could benefit from improved scalability, better performance during peak usage, and greater compatibility with other systems. Dell PowerMax NVMe users desire enhancements in interoperability with other systems, simplified management themes, and a more intuitive user interface.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell Unity XT is praised for smooth deployment and responsive customer service. Dell PowerMax NVMe, while receiving positive feedback on support, is noted to have a steeper learning curve and more complex initial setup.

Pricing and ROI: Dell Unity XT is considered more cost-effective with quicker ROI, making it ideal for budget-conscious buyers. Dell PowerMax NVMe, although more expensive, is viewed as a worthwhile investment due to its high performance and advanced technology, offering higher long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell Unity XT Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell Unity XT

January 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 January 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax NVMe is 3.9%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 10.3%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Q&A Highlights

reviewer931557

Storage Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

May 05, 2020

Any advice re Dell PowerMax? We are looking at Unity and PowerMax, and also HPE.

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.

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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.

Read full review

Haseeb Khalid Sheikh

Senior Manager Enterprise Solutions at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

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.

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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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The latency is good."

"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"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."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The smaller footprint of the device has been really nice. We have gone from eight bays to one bay. Having one floor tile in our data center has been pretty awesome. A lot less power and HVAC cooling is being consumed."

"We are happy with the monitoring that Dell EMC is doing for us. They have helped us to identify many issues during the routine checks, issues which we were not aware of."

"Key features include performance, replication time, and dedup and compression."

"It is a very stable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"The product is very fast and reliable."

"It has reduced our footprint in different physical locations."

"The NVMe technology improves input/output performance, making it a valuable asset for our organization's storage solutions."

"The stability is amazing. Zero downtime reported over the last years."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pros

"There are also DR and data protection functions that we found in the new Unity, now that we are stepping up from VNX and other storage appliances, that we've started implementing."

"The high availability of Dell EMC Unity XT has been the most important feature."

"To be programmatically administered is huge, it is one of the key features that we like about it."

"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."

"It is pretty stable. I like the stability, because everything works like it should. We made it all redundant. So, we don't have anything to worry about."

"All-flash array eliminates all the overhead of tiering and a lot of the data structuring overhead involved."

"We just started doing a bunch of automation where, if an end-user's home directory or departmental share gets filled, I can set certain things through a Unity API so that if it reaches 95 or 98 percent full, it will automatically expand. Now, instead of our getting a ticket and having to go in and do it manually, it does that for us."

"It has made deployment, configuration, and maintenance a lot simpler."

More Dell Unity XT pros

Cons

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

"We need better data deduplication."

"The software layer has to improve."

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

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"Remove the need for physical or hardwired virtual servers to run consistency groups, instead make the expensive array controllers handle that."

"Dell needs to offer more midrange storage options with enterprise-class features similar to the PowerMAX."

"The main feature that I personally want to see is the possibility to upgrade to the next generation without changing all the components and just change the engine, relying on the compatibility matrices between two different generations. Meaning that we could just keep the enclosure and upgrade the engine, integrating the enclosure to the existing pool, then adding automation tools for orchestration."

"I think management is where PowerMax is weakest. We're still managing it like we managed EMC arrays in the early 2000s. There's a slicker, fancier GUI that does more things, but at the end of the day, you still have to dig into the command line and issue a lot of the same commands that we still were using almost 20 years ago."

"The solution should include more AI features to make it smarter."

"Support of the product can be slow and an administrative challenge: planning, scheduling, and overseeing data center access for a Dell EMC rep. One improvement could be to enable a self-maintenance option. The requirements that we go through to get Dell EMC onsite to replace failed drives, power supplies, and other small redundant parts can be unnecessarily complex. If simplified, they could send us the parts, then we could replace them much faster, more easily, and truly within the SLA parameters."

"Setting up PowerMax with VMAX is always complex."

"When it comes to Oracle and database workloads, data reduction could be a little bit better. Some of the competition, like Pure, have post-processes which do additional deduplication and compression on the backside; everything is in-line and then they do a secondary process. It would be a good option if you could start getting 5:1 or 6:1 data reduction on database workloads."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe cons

"The support team is well-versed in the AMG solution, having received comprehensive training. They also boast strong partnerships in both VNAM and Korea. The system's user-friendliness is a primary consideration in their choice of solution, emphasizing the importance of service. They place a strong emphasis on service, occasionally requiring approvals. However, with full installations, they have achieved almost uniformity. Their storage approach differs from a consolidated business-based model; instead, it is application-centric. Their investment in solutions is geared towards specific needs, such as the banking or information system, acquiring smaller storage units individually."

"The only challenge I've ever had was with a Drive firmware upgrade."

"This product needs to have better integration with enterprise backup solutions and archiving devices."

"The user interface could use improvement."

"I think Dell EMC should be more careful in appointing partners, and they need to have better control over their partners. And if their partner has some problems with them, we should not suffer."

"Licensing has been quite difficult. It doesn't always auto-license. About half the time, when I provision one, I have to contact Service to get a license, or even go to our account manager to help get it straightened out."

"There are features still to come, like compression and deduplication on hybrid platforms, VDM improvements to be developed for NAS environments, and also improvements in the “self-migration” tools to push or pool information (to assist the migrations to and mostly from third-party arrays)."

"The price of Dell Unity XT could improve."

More Dell Unity XT cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

"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."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"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."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The price is on the market. It's not inexpensive, but it's available on the market."

"Support pricing is very high. Our support contract is about to expire and Dell EMC provided us with an extremely high renewal quote. It was four times more than the support contract for our previous EMC VNX solution."

"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 okay."

"The labor savings and support have been significant. If we're talking 100 hours of labor every three months, that is 100 hours of a database engineer costs. There are performance latency numbers as well as costs associated with recovering data that gets lost, and this system doesn't lose data. You can look at numbers that go around the cost of downtime, if data is not available. This system doesn't go down. Everyone's ROI is going to be unique, but the dependability and performance of the system combined with its ease of operation will definitely save businesses of all sizes money."

"Our costs for the product are three million."

"We hope that with the combination of both NVMe and SCM the next PowerMax will be much cheaper that the one which we acquired."

"From reclaiming data center space which is so tightly constrained these days, it will pay for itself in a short amount of time, which is fantastic. Anything we can do to get more out of our current physical data center space helps us a ton, and PowerMax has helped enable that."

More Dell PowerMax NVMe pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The price of Dell EMC Unity XT is higher compared to other solutions. The price should be less expensive."

"I rate Dell Unity XT’s pricing a nine out of ten."

"In the SQL Server instances in our data warehouse, we immediately saw a great return on investment."

"There is an annual charge for the license of this product. It has better pricing than its competitor: Pure Storage."

"One of the most valuable features is its cost. It was inexpensive compared to other arrays that we were looking at."

"With the large Unity that we bought, it has saved us about one and a half rack space. That's our return on investment on our flash array. We also need less Fibre Channel connectivity."

"The return on the investment was simply speeding up our entire vSphere stack, which allowed our developers and engineers to get their workloads done faster and simpler. We were experiencing VM snapshot times of 45 minutes to two or three hours, and it shrunk it down to under five minutes."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

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Answers from the Community

reviewer931557

Storage Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

May 5, 2020

Any advice re Dell PowerMax? We are looking at Unity and PowerMax, and also HPE.

2 out of 7 answers

it_user991506

Engineer / Architect at CenturyLink

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.

Read full answer

Muhammad Khaled

Senior Presales Engineer with 11-50 employees

May 23, 2019

Read full answer

See all 7 answers

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Educational Organization

71%

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive.

See all answers

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...

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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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

The price of Dell PowerMax depends on the project size. It is the best choice for large projects in terms of price an...

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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...

See all answers

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 38% 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 15% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 26% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 6% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs Dell PowerMax NVMe

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell PowerMax NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 41% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 6% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 3% of the time

More Dell Unity XT Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

January 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe

January 2025

Download Dell PowerMax NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

January 2025

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Also Known As

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

Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

Learn More

Pure Storage

Dell Technologies

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Dell Technologies

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.

Dell PowerMax is the industry’s most secure mission-critical storage platform. With NVMe Dynamic Fabric technology, PowerMax breaks from traditional storage limitations, enabling seamless integration with cloud-native and legacy applications. Designed with a powerful scale-up and scale-out architecture, PowerMax supports mission-critical applications at scale with zero downtime and ultra-low latency. The latest PowerMaxOS 10 release harnesses AI-driven efficiencies for trusted performance, capacity, and security. By choosing PowerMax, you can trust in a secure, intelligent, and always modern storage solution that unlocks the full potential of your data to drive business success.

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."

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell Unity XT

January 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax NVMe vs. Dell Unity XT

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