Dell SC Series vs Dell Unity XT comparison

Dell SC Series and Dell Unity XT are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell SC Series is ranked #27 with an average rating of 9.3, while Dell Unity XT is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3. Dell SC Series holds a 0.9% mindshare in AFS, compared to Dell Unity XT’s 10.3% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Dell SC Series users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Dell Unity XT users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

The Dell Unity XT and Dell SC Series are competing storage solutions targeting enterprise needs. User reviews suggest the Dell Unity XT holds an advantage with its advanced features and efficient operations, while Dell SC Series is preferred for flexibility and initial cost-effectiveness.

Features: Dell Unity XT is known for its robust data reduction capabilities, high performance, and excellent scalability. Dell SC Series is highlighted for its flexibility and solid performance in mixed workloads. Unity XT offers superior data reduction, while the SC Series stands out for workload versatility.

Room for Improvement: Dell Unity XT could improve hardware compatibility and firmware upgrades. Dell SC Series users indicate a need for better system diagnostics and reporting tools. Unity XT requires smoother hardware integrations, while SC Series needs enhanced diagnostic features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell Unity XT is praised for straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. Dell SC Series also receives high marks for deployment but has mixed reviews regarding customer service response times. Unity XT is noted for easy deployment and support; SC Series deploys easily but may lag in service responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: Dell Unity XT delivers good value for its price, with a favorable return on investment due to efficient operations. Dell SC Series users find the initial setup cost is affordable and appreciate the long-term ROI through performance efficiency. Unity XT offers value through operational efficiency, while SC Series is cost-effective upfront with solid ROI over time.

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

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series 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 SC Series is 0.9%, down from 1.4% 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

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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Steven McClendon

Data Center Server & Storage Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

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.

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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

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

"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"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."

"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The process of reallocating data from fast disks (SSD or SAS) to slow disks (SATA) gives you better performance and better use of resources."

"Technical support is very good. I do use it from time to time and it's always excellent."

"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."

"A valuable feature is the performance of the auto-tiering. It will move hot data up to your fastest Tier 1 or move your slow data down. Data progression is what it's called. With the auto-tiering you can have multiple tiers, you can have your Tier 1 be either spinning or flash, all the way down to 7.2K. It will change the RAID on the fly so your writes come in at RAID 10. After they sit for a while, they get converted to RAID 5, then they'll cool off and move down the tiers. Your performance is kept going, while the cold data is moved to your slow, non-performance tiers."

"The most valuable feature is the speed for the end-user."

"The solution has a wide variety of valuable features. The data progression works well. We use the snapshot functionality quite a bit and really like it."

"The interface is easy to use which makes the product user-friendly."

"It has been one of the most stable products in our data center."

More Dell SC Series pros

"The hardware itself, it differs from Compellent and differs from the VNX before it. It doesn't have a separate file harbor that goes with it, there are no separate NAS heads. It's 2U, you have file and block storage, so you get a quite a lot of services for a small footprint."

"Real Unified Storage (Block, File, VVols) in a unique 2U hardware."

"It is scalable, and we usually recommend Dell Unity XT to small and medium companies."

"The most valuable feature is the dynamic cache of this product. It is very important. We have the physical cache and we can boost this cache using disks. All the products are mainly flash now and this is one of the main characteristics which our customers like."

"The Unity XT box is very strong. It doesn't break. The MTBF time is very large so you don't have to worry about faults or outages in your operations."

"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."

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

"It is easy to set up the solution."

More Dell Unity XT pros

Cons

"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."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

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

"It is on the expensive side."

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

"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."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The initial setup is somewhat complex and should be made simpler to do."

"The SC Series doesn't support NVMe storage."

"Overall, I'd like to see more synergy between Dell EMC's higher-tier platforms and their mid-tier platforms. What I have said, constantly, to my partners at Dell EMC is that the clear articulation of the path is really important to us. In that vein, what I'd also like to see is, with the migration strategy that's built into this product, a lot more attention paid to Dell's - in particular - legacy platforms and how we get from some of our legacy EMC platforms onto this platform with a straight-through migration and scaling strategy, not host-based migrations and not piecemeal... Dell EMC would do well to focus more on my ability to skip a generation, rather than having me take individual hops because I can't greenfield my way into a software-defined data center fast enough. This journey of multiple hops is not helpful."

"The cost of the solution could be better."

"In some customer cases, customers experienced more performance or latency."

"An issue we had was that the controller went down during an upgrade because of their upgrading the code. One side of the switch was down."

"The lower model, the 3000, should have duplication. It doesn't right now. It's only from 5000 that this is offered, but it depends on the performance. It could be they don't offer it on lower models because the duplication is too much of a burden to the performance."

"The lack of reporting would be the main issue."

More Dell SC Series cons

"My only complaint would be some of the CLI Help files could be a little more detailed, but that's very minor complaint. We were trying to run some commands just to see how the storage snaps were interacting with the storage array, and it was a little difficult to look up exactly what commands should be run. The Help files detailing what exactly the commands did wasn't as detailed as we would have wanted them to be."

"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."

"It would be great if the solution could integrate an NVMe disk."

"Recently, they released products, sometimes without proper testing, it seems."

"We do a lot of VMware. It only integrates with VMware in one way, which is virtual volumes. I don't really have any visibility on anything else. From VMware, I can't look into Unity. From Unity, I can't look into VMware unless I am using virtual volumes, where they integrate together happily, but we are not using that. I would like better integration for non-virtual volume VMware use."

"The reporting should be better. In other systems, you can create many different kinds of reports but this is not the case with Dell."

"There's always room for improvement with the UI. That can be a little cumbersome at times."

"The EMC VNX Virtual Data Mover (VDM) software needs more improvement."

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."

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

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"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."

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

"The product is expensive."

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

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is reasonable, but it is expensive."

"We have found the solution to be affordable."

"Compared to other solutions out there, it's affordable."

"This solution could be better priced in comparison with other vendors."

"The pricing of Dell EMC Compellent is competitive."

"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."

"Pricing depends on varying life cycles."

"There are costs involving the solution, vendor fees and product safety which are additional."

More Dell SC Series pricing and cost advice

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

"Most licenses for the solution are free but upgrades are available when adding additional software or storage."

"All the licenses are included from day one of your purchase of the product, so you don't have to buy licenses separately. There are no additional costs to be paid for the maintenance of the solution."

"The price is very reasonable."

"It was easy to order. We are a big Dell shop, so it was easy to purchase and get it in place, then up and running."

"Obtaining a warranty is easy."

"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."

"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."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

23%

University

Financial Services Firm

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.

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What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

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

See all answers

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 ...

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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...

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What needs improvement with Dell SC Series?

If Dell SC Series could have supported the protocol NVMe over TCP, that would have been great. It does not. Additiona...

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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 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

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% 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 SC Series

Compared 68% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell SC Series

Compared 12% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell SC Series

Compared 9% of the time

More Dell SC Series 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

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 4% 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 SC Series

January 2025

Download Dell SC Series 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

SC Series Storage, Compellent

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

Learn More

Pure Storage

Dell Technologies

Video not available

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 EMC SC Series arrays provide a unified platform for the ultimate in performance, adaptability and machine-driven efficiency. SC Series software delivers modern features that help you meet aggressive workload demands using the fewest drives necessary. With an open, future-ready design, SC Series storage integrates seamlessly with applications and infrastructure, enabling you to scale on a single platform and add capabilities without forklift upgrades.

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

TGen, Frost Science, Gerrie Electric

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

Buyer's Guide

Dell SC Series vs. Dell Unity XT

January 2025

Free Report: Dell SC Series vs. Dell Unity XT

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell SC Series vs. Dell Unity XT and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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