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Dell Unity XT vs Dell VMAX All Flash comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell Unity XT
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
191
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell VMAX All Flash
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
28th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Paul Pearson - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 25, 2022
Works well, is easy to implement, and has upgrade analysis capabilities
Currently, it's our tier-one storage. We use it mostly for our Oracle databases It has drastically improved the performance of our high-end Oracle databases and allows us the ability to replication to a DR location with ease. We love the product. Pure Storage works really well.  The CAT tool and…
Srikanth Purushothaman - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 23, 2022
Easy to set up with good data compression technology and useful deduplication
The initial setup is very straightforward. Even upgrading the firmware is very nice. You don't need to shut down. Previously, we used to have a shutdown, and now we hand over to one more processor, upgrade the one processor, and then switch back to this process, and then we'll do the upgrade for the process so there is no downtime. I'd rate the ease of implementation nine out of ten. Since we are holding almost all the data, which are all critical and confidential, the deployment is always on-prem only. It takes a maximum of two to three hours. The solution is almost finalized before ordering. We plan what has to be done, and how many services have to be connected through the HBA. Based on that, the number of fiber ports should have been ordered along with the system. Normally, it comes with two fiber-channel HBA adapters. We used to order with four channels instead of going for a sand switch. We connect three servers directly into process A and process B. Before getting into the server, all the servers should be up and running with the HBA connector with the fiber cable ready. Once we install the server, we will see if the firmware is up-to-date or if it is one month old since the shipment takes at least one or two months before it reaches our hands. If there is any new update, we will check with them to see whether the new firmware is good or if there are any bugs in it. If the support team says there is no bug, it means we will update the firmware and create a pool. If it is a hybrid pool, we'll do a mix and combinations of flash as well as the NSS for the images. For the data, we have only the flash itself, and we use a rate six for the data. Previously, with the regular SaaS drives, we used to have a rate ten; however, with the flash drives, we used to have rate five or rate six only. Normally, in-house inside the rack, we need two people. Otherwise, one engineer itself will do. If it is a flash drive, only one person itself will be enough. If it is three bay drives with 144 TB or 288 TB, then we'll go for one more person to fix inside the rack. Once it is fixed, the installation will be done only by one person. For maintenance, normally, we check the firmware updates within a month, or we check every 30 to 45 days to seek out firmware updates. We provide maintenance to our customers. For other issues, we might call technical support. Most things we can manage.
BrijeshKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 16, 2024
With an easy initial setup phase, the tool is useful for multi-site replication and DR
I use the solution in my company for multi-site replication and DR The most valuable features of the solution are multi-site replication and availability. The data gets saved in each and every case, including when the power supply is off, meaning our company doesn't lose any data. If there are…

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."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"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."
"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."
"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."
"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."
"It has saved us time when provisioning new storage, so we're trying to automate that process."
"This solution makes it easy to manage storage, provision new workloads, and scale-up."
"Using this solution has meant that I do not need to look for different partners to provide me with solutions like a backup service. Dell provides end to end solutions."
"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 Snapshot feature is key."
"I like its performance and support."
"Storage Snapshots have been really nice. They allow us to do backups without impacting our production workload that much. The scalability, the ability to add disks dynamically and adjust our workload as needed, has also been really helpful. That definitely makes my job easier. And the interface for managing Unity is very easy. The integrations between VMware Hypervisor and Dell EMC are top-notch, so it's been really easy to use and manage."
"The performance is great. We have four or five different Unity arrays, and they have all run flawlessly."
"The ransomware protection feature is housed in a separate unit, specifically addressing the top twenty most critical threats."
"It works very well."
"The snapshot feature has been precious for our testing processes, application development, and managing testing environments due to its efficiency and ease of use."
"The product's initial setup phase was good."
 

Cons

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"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."
"We need better data deduplication."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"I think there are a couple of things on the file side that we're lacking from the VNX world. It would be nice if we got some of those back. I think there are limitations on how many file systems you can back up at a time. Whereas you can do, I believe, eight continuous per data mover on the file side on the VNX, you can only do something like two or four on Unity. If they could step up to that, that would be good."
"We noticed in the last release of code that there were some inefficiencies around getting our data efficiency up in terms of dedupe and compression."
"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.""
"The initial installation is straightforward and took approximately one hour. However, the full process was not as simple as IBM."
"The iSCSI and the VMware integation using vSphere could be less confusing."
"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)."
"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 could always use native replication. Then I could get rid of RecoverPoint."
"Improvements are needed in both partition recovery and scalability."
"There is room for improvement in the centralized administration."
"The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"We encountered some challenges during large data migrations that could be addressed for smoother transitions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"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."
"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."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"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."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"The price of Dell Unity XT is reasonable. However, if you are buying a custom solution, it can come at a considerable price."
"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 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 solution is very expensive."
"The solution’s pricing is competitive."
"I liked the price point when we purchased it."
"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 falls within the mid-range, neither inexpensive nor high-priced."
"It is not a cheap product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
69%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Government
2%
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
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 se...
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems.
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...
What do you like most about Dell EMC VMax?
The product's initial setup phase was good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC VMax?
It is not a cheap product. As the tool is expensive, I am looking at the market for some products with better prices ...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC VMax?
There is room for improvement in the centralized administration. There could be better centralizing the administratio...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Dell VMAX All Flash and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
813,418 professionals have used our research since 2012.