Dell Unity XT vs Dell XtremIO comparison

Dell Unity XT and Dell XtremIO are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Unity XT is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3, while Dell XtremIO is ranked #21 with an average rating of 8.3. Dell Unity XT holds a 10.4% mindshare in AFS, compared to Dell XtremIO’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Unity XT users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 82% of Dell XtremIO users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Dell XtremIO and Dell Unity XT are two competitive storage solutions. User reviews indicate Dell Unity XT has the upper hand due to its feature-rich experience and comprehensive support.

Features: Dell XtremIO is noted for consistent high performance, inline data reduction, and scalability. Dell Unity XT stands out with multi-cloud capabilities, data protection features, and a unified storage approach.

Room for Improvement: Dell XtremIO could improve in customer support, ease of use, and data protection features. Dell Unity XT benefits from enhanced data migration tools, improved third-party integration, and better management interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell XtremIO is notable for straightforward deployment but mixed customer service reviews. Dell Unity XT is known for an easier deployment process and more reliable customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Dell XtremIO has higher setup costs but provides strong ROI due to performance. Dell Unity XT, with lower setup costs and extensive features, shows robust ROI as a cost-effective investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Unity XT vs. Dell XtremIO Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. Dell XtremIO

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, 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 Unity XT is 10.4%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell XtremIO is 1.1%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Paul Pearson

Storage and Backup Architect at Concentrix

Works well, is easy to implement, and has upgrade analysis capabilities

We love the product. Pure Storage works really well. The CAT tool and also the ability to upgrade the unit's place grades are great. It allows for in-place control or upgrades. It's a very simple implementation. They have a good tool to analyze upgrades. The stability is good. Technical support has been excellent.

Read full review

Srikanth Purushothaman

DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems

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.

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Gouranga Maiti

Sr. Project Manager -IT at ITC Ltd

Suitable for high IOPS and helps get backup in ten minutes

We use Dell XtremIO for high IOPS. We get backup within 10 minutes. Initially, we faced numerous issues with our analytical systems. However, we saw performance improvement after the implementation of the solution. I like the tool's snapshot backup and flash storage features. Sometimes we…

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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

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

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

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

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

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

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

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"It has a very intuitive web console that runs in HTML5 and makes navigation and administration fairly easy."

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

"The most valuable feature is that the solution is a hybrid system, so you can do both block and file storage."

"The initial setup is very easy. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, with one being difficult and ten being easy."

"It is completely reliable. The plugins for it are quite mature. I don't really have any issues with the interactions with vSphere, they all work as intended."

"The compression and deduplication that will be coming in version 4.3. With just those features, you're reducing the amount of data and the footprint on the hardware."

"It is lightning fast, low on power and heat, and has a small footprint with great performance."

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

More Dell Unity XT pros

"Snapshots are valuable because of their seamless nature, as well as the minimal space each snapshot takes."

"It has very good performance for an application which needs lower latency and a better response, for example, in microseconds."

"Deduplication and cloning capability"

"The solution's most valuable features are the inline data reduction and deduplication."

"I like the deduplication and auto-tiering features."

"Performance and deduplication. This is a very robust block storage option that offers both performance and data optimization."

"The most valuable feature of Dell EMC XtremIO is the data protection (DP) group, it is one of the most advanced features in these types of arrays. The dedupe and compression that this array provides both do a superb job."

"XtremIO is very stable."

More Dell XtremIO pros

Cons

"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."

"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

"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."

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

"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."

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

"The software layer has to improve."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"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."

"It should be lighter. It takes up a ton of rack space. It would be nice to have a smaller footprint."

"The solution should include a free process in the HPE portal that uses serial numbers to verify that hardware is genuine."

"The NAS capabilities of Unity - I have to say there are a lot of things I miss. For example, deduplication for hybrid. I have tons of customers with VNX and dedupe. These customers achieve around 50% dedupe efficiency and they mostly use them for archive. If you're talking about 50TB of NAS, which is stored in a 25TB repository, which is very economical, and you can not provide that in a Unity hybrid box, you have problems."

"Licensing costs could be reduced."

"It could always use native replication. Then I could get rid of RecoverPoint."

"It could go faster. Make it bigger, better, and faster at a lower price, and I am there."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"The GUI could be modified more in terms of how the different components are linked to each other."

"The management should be improved and the GUI interface could be better and easier."

"Management: At the time, there was no snapshot scheduler, so I had to write XSnapCourier to address it. The sad thing is that even after the newest release, which includes a native scheduler, most customers using XSnapCourier chose to stick with it due to a more feature-rich experience."

"They can improve the product by providing an HTML5-based interface instead of the Java GUI based application."

"I am not too impressed with XtremeIO because we had a major failure."

"Ease of use is key in the converged and hyper-converged world that requires administrators to have both hypervisor and storage skills."

"In the next release, the solution could have better integration and if we can host assets on the cloud, such as NetApp has the NetApp volumes, which we can host on the cloud directly called NetApp CVO (cloud volume ONTAP). Dell EMC should come up with something purely on the cloud rather than manage services."

"It can be more cost-efficient."

More Dell XtremIO cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 product is expensive."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"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."

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

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The pricing is reasonable. We're using the Flex on Demand pricing. It's really good for us when we pay for what we use. It made it easy to get it inside since it's an OpEx and instead of CapEx expense."

"Go with the virtual appliance versus the hardware."

"There is not a license required for the use of the solution. We purchased a maintenance contract."

"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 pricing of Dell Unity XT is good."

"It is shipped with all licensed, included for this product range, no need to buy additional licenses"

"The price in our country is very expensive and some of our customers opt for lower-cost alternatives."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

"Dell XtremIO's price is affordable and I would rate it a five out of ten."

"Too high priced for the Brazil market."

"Licensing is approximately $200,000 per year."

"With some workloads that benefit from compression and deduplication, costs are actually better than some tier 2 subsystems (while latency remains <1ms)."

"Don’t buy this array. You’re paying for loads of magic beans, since it’s mediocre at best for a platform in a rapidly growing field. Look instead at Pure Storage or something with variable block deduplication. You’ll end up spending less and getting a better product with actual support."

"This is the best flash array on the market for high-end workloads, so expect to pay for that. But the support subscription cost is fixed for seven years, which made it easier for us to plan on the maintenance costs."

"XtremIO is pretty straightforward about pricing. However, you need to look at your data so you can estimate, with the advice of DEL EMC, what data reduction ratio you will reach. In our case, a 3:1 reduction ration gave us a positive case compared to other storage arrays."

"The price of the solution should be reduced. The price matches the price of a VMAX service but it does not have the capability of a VMAX service. However, the prices of Dell EMC XtremIO can be reduceable."

More Dell XtremIO pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user182013

Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at Rubrik

May 1, 2015

Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR

Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Educational Organization

71%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

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.

See all answers

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?

After implementation, there are limitations, such as the number of paths, file systems, and replication options. It f...

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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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What do you like most about Dell EMC XtremIO?

The feature I like most about Dell Xtremio is its hardware quality compared to other vendors. It's clear they're cont...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell XtremIO?

When purchased eight years ago, it was offered at a special price that was good and competitive. However, upgrading w...

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What needs improvement with Dell XtremIO?

When we upgraded the capacity from five to ten TB, the price of the disks was high. Dell explained that they are sell...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 36% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 42% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 11% 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

Dell PowerStore vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 33% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 14% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 14% of the time

VAST Data vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 7% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell XtremIO

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell XtremIO Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

December 2024

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

December 2024

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell XtremIO

December 2024

Download Dell XtremIO product report

Also Known As

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

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

Dell EMC XtremIO Flash, Dell EMC XtremIO X2, XtremIO, XtremIO X2

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Pure Storage

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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 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."

Bring all-flash, scale-out storage to your enterprise applications with EMC XtremIO. Purpose-built for flash, XtremIO storage arrays are amazingly fast. Delivering high IOPS at less than 1 millisecond latency is just the start. EMC XtremIO helps you harness the power of flash storage by building in innovations like content-based data placement and dual-stage metadata.

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

Raiffeisen Bank Bulgaria, Wentworth-Douglas Hospital

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. Dell XtremIO

December 2024

Free Report: Dell Unity XT vs. Dell XtremIO

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Dell XtremIO and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.

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