We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and HPE Nimble Storage based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Dell EMC Unity XT has a slight edge in this comparison due to the higher marks it received for its scaling abilities.
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"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 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."
"Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"It has made deployment, configuration, and maintenance a lot simpler."
"It is ease to use. It performs. It's easy to provision, and It's stable."
"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."
"We currently have two Dell EMC Unities going. One of them at our primary on-premise DR site. They communicate with each other. If we ever have to failover, it is right there and ready."
"We can get almost real-time response times."
"The most valuable aspects of this solution are its stability, performance, and ease of updating."
"It is great because it can work as a SAN and net storage."
"It has a very intuitive web console that runs in HTML5 and makes navigation and administration fairly easy."
"It's given us more time to do the important things, less time worrying about SANs and failures and picking up the pieces. It just works."
"It has allowed us to upgrade our DMS to the latest version and reuse the older array as the DR storage for VMware SRM."
"Their tech support is very professional, know their products, know what they do, and they are very informative in terms of keeping the customer updated."
"Performance Integration with Commvault"
"Even if one control fails, it automatically turns on the other controller and everything moves from one to the second instantaneously without any issues."
"VMware integration, why is pretty self-explanatory."
"Nimble's support is awesome and one of the best. You sort of get a Tier 3 plus guy every time that you call, no matter if it is a Tier 0 issue. This is super helpful in case we ever have problems."
"Not only is it high performing, but it is also more compact and fits better in our storage arrays than equipment from other storage providers."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"It is on the expensive side."
"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."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"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."
"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."
"Because we can do synchronous replication between the two sites, this made the setup challenging for this piece. They did not know how to set this up initially. We ended up having to do bidirectional synchronous replication."
"The initial installation is straightforward and took approximately one hour. However, the full process was not as simple as IBM."
"They should have more wizards for customers so they can do more of the self-service types of functions, in terms of upgrades and patching, although it's pretty easy right now."
"It would be great if the solution could integrate an NVMe disk."
"Problems with I/O modules, with bugs that came out that really should have been caught before the product was released."
"It isn't easy to find trusted partners for the product. The solution has issues with mid-level storage and does not come with enterprise storage."
"Scalability of this solution could be improved."
"The scalability could be better."
"I’d like to see in-line deduplication extended to Nimble non-flash (called “Hybrid”) arrays, even if it’s only the C500 and higher controllers that support it."
"I would like to have integration into cloud providers, apart from HPE."
"A feature that would be a nice addition to the next release would be a filer option. A filer option so that you could connect the sim or NFS or chips like NetApp does for NAS functionality."
"You could argue that it would be preferable if everything were cheaper in order to save taxpayer money."
"The dashboard can be improved."
"I would like to see native network attached storage (NAS) functionality. Our customers are looking for NAS, and Nimble can't give it to them."
"When we’re setting up the solution, making options available regarding the replication tool mechanism would be ideal."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 189 reviews while HPE Nimble Storage is ranked 5th in All-Flash Storage with 119 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while HPE Nimble Storage is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell Unity XT writes "Easy to set up with good data compression technology and useful deduplication". On the other hand, the top reviewer of HPE Nimble Storage writes "Beneficial management software, straightforward installation, and good support". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, Pure Storage FlashArray, IBM FlashSystem and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas HPE Nimble Storage is most compared with Pure Storage FlashArray, Dell PowerStore, HPE Primera, VMware vSAN and IBM FlashSystem. See our Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Nimble Storage report.
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