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Dell Unity XT vs HPE Alletra Storage comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 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 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
HPE Alletra Storage
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
5th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
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.
Lisa Whalen - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides a cloud-like operation model on-prem for managing data infrastructure
I've always said I love that it's easy to use. At one point in time, we had a 3PAR. And with 3PAR, I always thought it was a little more difficult. There was so much more to maintaining it, setting it up, and everything. With the [HPE] Alletra [Storage], it's just easy. It's easy to provision space to use and to set up. InfoSight is invaluable to me. With it, I can just quickly go out there and see what is going on. Alletra provides a cloud-like operation model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. [HPE] Alletra [Storage] is very good for predicting problems and preventing them before they occur. InfoSight has really helped with that. I honestly don't have to look at it much. However, there's the alerting and everything that will tell us what's going on. That said, I check InfoSight every once in a while. [HPE Alletra Storage] reduced the time spent on storage provision. It's so much easier than the 3PAR. It's just so much easier. I don't spend time in there at all. The product improved our storage performance experience in terms of IOPS. Our end users that use the SAP environment were a little concerned at first. We said we were going to switch over from the 3PAR to the Alletra since they've always been more familiar with the 3PAR. However, when we moved them over, they noticed a performance increase.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."
"The latency is good."
"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."
"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."
"In the hybrid version, I would say they are fast. They have fully automated storage tiering. In the all-flash version, higher performance, compression, data replication."
"It is scalable, and we usually recommend Dell Unity XT to small and medium companies."
"Compared to our old platform, everything is more tightly integrated. I don't have to go to different sections to do something. A lot of it is wizard-driven, so it's an easy to use system."
"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."
"All-flash array eliminates all the overhead of tiering and a lot of the data structuring overhead involved."
"We have integrated it with vSphere and SQL. There were no costs involved outside of our normal workload licensing, no costs that were specific to the Unity platform."
"I like the easy management with the new Unisphere management and the HTML5 interface."
"User friendly interface"
"The overall redundancy and performance of the system is valuable."
"It's good for preventing problems before they occur."
"More deduplication and compression are valuable because capacity matters."
"The GUI for onboarding is straightforward."
"It's been providing us with insanely fast storage."
"Right now, it's offered both cost reduction and space reduction."
"The ease of setup was huge for me, as I'm the only storage admin for our company."
"The simplicity of use is great."
 

Cons

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"It is on the expensive side."
"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."
"We need better data deduplication."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"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."
"This product lacks deduplication and compression at the current version 4.1.0. LACP is not available for iSCSI either."
"Scalability for the 650F is good, but I was expecting a little bit more."
"Issues with slow responses from the support team."
"I would like them to continue to build on the solution and expand on the functionality, like replication."
"Dell EMC's competitor has a clustering technology. In the next release, it would be nice if they could build that into the product."
"The support portal needs fixing. Accessing a service request on the support portal seems to be a bit difficult, as opposed to just calling the 800 number."
"It could go faster. Make it bigger, better, and faster at a lower price, and I am there."
"Due to their acquisition of Nimble, there are multiple portals. I'm hoping that that gets cleaned up."
"I do not have any requirements. They can maybe have more flexibility for configurations or things like that."
"When you configure it, the system has to be connected to the Internet. Otherwise, you cannot configure it. That is the most difficult part. They need to have something that does not require a connection to the Internet."
"Moving from Nimble to Alletra was a little difficult."
"They can continue developing their V vaults and peer persistence. They can implement active-active peer persistence so that our organization can use it."
"In the perfect world, it would be cheaper."
"They have a new update coming out that I'm going to be using as far as lack of snapshots. I'm going to put that into place as soon as I upgrade to the new version."
"I'd like the solution to offer more free training."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"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 support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"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."
"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."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"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."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"The pricing is competitive. We miss some of the feature functionality that we had with the XtremeIOs but it's certainly suitable for the purpose."
"Looking at it based on cost per gigabyte, it's certainly very effective."
"It is an average priced solution."
"When you look at what Dell EMC is compared to, like NetApp, they're all priced pretty similarly. I think the pricing of the hybrid model is good."
"The Dell EMC Data Protection license covers everything, like a one stop shop. All our options are covered."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The solution’s pricing is competitive."
"What they really like is the easy licensing now - Dell EMC has caught up to a lot of their competitors - based on not having to charge for everything, and they can get everything in one bundle."
"There is a license. HPE Alletra uses a cloud-based model."
"HPE was a clear winner on price per terabyte. It was very smooth."
"Its licensing is good. Pricing-wise, there can be a little bit more flexibility. It would help to have different sizes. However, it fits into the budget that we have, so we are happy."
"So far, so good."
"It is fairly priced. It is in line with industry standard pricing and cost models."
"It is reasonably priced."
"Overall, it was good. It had a good price per gigabyte."
"Its pricing is very competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
72%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
3%
Financial Services Firm
2%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

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 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 HPE Alletra?
It offers rich features and high speed for transferring data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Alletra?
We work with a vendor partner, and he offers us good service and pricing. Some vendor partners are not so effective.
What needs improvement with HPE Alletra?
More training videos would help. We could learn some best practices. Sometimes, people may not follow the best practi...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Accenture, Aetna, AIG, Airbus, Allianz, American Express, ATT, Bank of America, Barclays, BASF, Bayer, Berkshire Hathaway, Boeing, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Comcast, Credit Suisse, Dell, Deutsche Bank, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Google, HSBC, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Kroger, L'Oreal, Merck
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Alletra Storage and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.