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Dell SC Series 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
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell SC Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Frame-Based Disk 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 February 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell SC Series is 0.8%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 8.7%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

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.
Steven McClendon - PeerSpot reviewer
Superior platform with excellent snapshots and cost-saving auto-tiering
I'm a big fan of the SC Series platform. Its feature set is superior to some of the other platforms. The snapshots on SC are excellent, allowing for multiple snapshot schedules for any one system. The auto-tiering functionality intelligently moves new data to the highest performance tier and then progresses it down to less expensive tiers over time, providing cost savings for customers.
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 offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."
"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"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."
"I appreciate the performance."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"Connecting it up, you can run it within a few hours."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to replicate. We are running a financial company and it needs to be available 24/7. We can't afford any downtime."
"With auto-tiering, it's easier to understand than most arrays, knowing that all of your writes go to the tier that you specify, with easy-to-create storage profiles."
"The performance benefits weren't surprising, we expected that. What we didn't expect were the densification benefits that we got out of going all-flash. We're able to put more applications on the arrays because of how all-flash performs. The way some of the application profiles have responded to all-flash has been really pleasing."
"Everything is sub-5 MS for us. What I've found is that, with all-flash, when an app from my business is slow, I pretty much know it's them and not me. It leads to a performance conversation that has really hit an interesting threshold point where we are better than what they need. So now we get to have that "refactoring your application" conversation a lot quicker because now the performance on the infrastructure side isn't in question anymore."
"In terms of stability, it's good enough. It's okay."
"The user interface is good, I would rate it a nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is the speed for the end-user."
"With all-flash it should be able to scale. You probably just need one 4U device and you have terabytes of space."
"It is a stable solution that sells a lot...The deployment phase of the product was very easy."
"It has saved us time when provisioning new storage, so we're trying to automate that process."
"The most valuable features of Dell Unity XT are the data compression for all of our VMs up to four times and the performance is good."
"There has been no downtime. It has built-in redundancy upon redundancy."
"The valuable features of Unity include that it's flexible, has a friendly user-interface, and provides good performance."
"We were able to integrate it very quickly with other solutions."
"The inline deduplication and data reduction capabilities have been the most valuable."
 

Cons

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"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."
"We need better data deduplication."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"I don't think the solution is very scalable."
"While the price is competitive, in the next release it would be better if they could reduce the fees."
"The configuration could be easier in Dell EMC SC Series."
"If Dell SC Series wasn't being phased out, adding an NVMe tier and secure snapshots like those on the PowerStore platform would be beneficial."
"Snapshots in VMware. You can’t do snapshots since the storage itself does that. Therefore, some apps (Veeam, for example) don’t work well with this kind of tiering storage."
"In terms of additional features, I would like to see some kind of I/O meter, to indicate what we are using in terms of performance. I would like to see automation with that, where it would give me the trends. I want to know those things easily, to help me know where issues are going to occur."
"Technical support should respond more quickly because the turnaround time is very high."
"What I understand is that this is a 13 year old architecture, so it has lived its life and they're phasing it out. Honestly, we were initially struggling with the integration with VMware (but it was fixed with the VMware 6.5) and, then, it was around a 10GB network. At that time, it had the longevity to go to 100GB as well. It got us thinking about, when we go into the containerized architecture, what do we need to do to fix the infrastructure?"
"Scalability is not good. We have a Unity 300, now we have to do a data-in-place conversion for the next upgrade because only 150 slots are supported, not drives, only slots."
"Dell EMC Unity XT should present a path or a roadmap on how they could put their products on the cloud. This would have some value for their current customers."
"If you compare it with VMAX, where we communicate with the box through Solutions Enabler and there are a lot of commands and a lot of flexibility, the command line for Unity needs to enhanced."
"I would like to see better compression, better dedupe. It's not nearly as good as what is built into the XtremIO. I understand why that is the case, but if they can take some of that technology and leverage that a little bit better in the Unity array, that would be great."
"I would like better integration with RecoverPoint. My major issue with the solution, all around, has been RecoverPoint more than Unity. While I like the easy user interface, I would like some more advanced features for troubleshooting built into the product, so that we can do more in-depth problem-solving."
"The one thing that we would look at would be if they were to expand the file level features, just to give us a balance or a tier between it and Isilon options out there, for unstructured data."
"Perhaps if they added more 10GB ports to the back of the system, so you have more IOPS out of the box itself to the network, that would help."
"I have a problem because between the Unity XT and the PowerMax, sometimes we need another product between these two products. There could be better integrated and the capacity of the size could be larger."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"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."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"We were able to afford two tiers of flash storage at a price where the competition was giving us one tier or just a handful of discs."
"It's a very affordable solution."
"Compared to other solutions out there, it's affordable."
"The scalability seems a bit more expensive than even buying a brand new one so far. That has been kind of a drawback."
"We have found it to be affordable. Comparing the cost with other hardware, it seems to be right in line with the compute and the storage that we get with it."
"The SC Series was priced fairly. I wouldn't call it either expensive or cheap because we had a very tight budget, so if they were able to fit in that type of budget, they met our expectations."
"The maintenance is usually pretty good. It's not like some of the others where they increase it in the fourth, fifth, or sixth years."
"Support typically depends on the array. It can range anywhere from $7,000 to a couple of hundred thousand dollars."
"The price of the solution should be less expensive. However, at some point, you need to pay for facility and performance."
"The ROI is right where we need it to be. It's a reasonably priced array."
"Our CAPEX was close to $42,000 and operating costs are below $1000."
"The price of Dell EMC Unity XT is not reasonable. They should lower it because the trend is to move to the cloud. They have to protect their market by giving commercial or financial incentives."
"Our costs are roughly $200,000 a year."
"Looking at it based on cost per gigabyte, it's certainly very effective."
"We purchased a five-year warranty."
"It is a good return on investment."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
23%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
72%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
3%
Financial Services Firm
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 do you like most about Dell SC Series?
I find this version to be more budget-friendly compared to products from other vendors. This aspect greatly benefits ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell SC Series?
Cost considerations are crucial when choosing between solutions like Dell and NetApp. Sometimes Dell offers better pe...
What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?
In the future, I want any box that comes on-premises to have the provision to integrate with cloud storage. If I want...
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
SC Series Storage, Compellent
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. Dell Unity XT and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.