Dell Unity XT vs HPE Primera comparison

Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.1. Dell Technologies holds a 10.4% mindshare in AFS, compared to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 3.9% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Dell Unity XT and HPE Primera compete in the enterprise storage solutions category. HPE Primera appears superior due to its advanced features and higher operational efficiency despite higher pricing.

Features: Dell Unity XT is known for efficient data reduction, user-friendly management capabilities, and seamless integration with virtualized environments. HPE Primera stands out with intelligent predictive analytics, advanced reliability features, and enhanced operational efficiency.

Room for Improvement: Dell Unity XT could improve scalability, upgrade processes, and support response times. HPE Primera needs cost reduction, better integration with third-party tools, and users emphasize its cost aspect.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell Unity XT offers straightforward deployment but initial setup challenges. Customer service has mixed reviews. HPE Primera provides quicker setups, intuitive deployment, and highly rated proactive support.

Pricing and ROI: Dell Unity XT is cost-effective with a competitive initial setup cost, preferred by budget-conscious buyers. HPE Primera, though higher-priced, offers better ROI through fewer downtimes and superior long-term efficiency gains.

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

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Primera

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 HPE Primera is 3.9%, down from 5.7% 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.

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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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Taufeeq Rauf

Head of IT at NATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL FACILITATION TECHNOLOGIES (PVT.) LTD.

Offers a simple user interface and is useful for data replication

I use HPE Primera for mission-critical applications. My company uses the product as a storage solution for our machines. The availability of HPE Primera in our company is critical for us, considering that we operate in an HA environment where we can't have downtime since we need to deal with cheque clearance for banks. The product's interface is simple to use. I am satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The ease of use of the product's interface has directly had an impact on our company's operations, along with the improvement in the availability and performance of machines. Compared to HPE Primera, I work with a much more reliable storage solution like Dell PowerStore. Compared to HPE Primera, Dell PowerStore's features related to deduplication are very good, and it also offers a physical storage capacity of eight TB, which can be expanded up to forty TB. I would recommend the product to others who plan to use it only after taking into consideration their usage and requirements. From the price and performance point of view, Dell PowerStore is a better choice. I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

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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 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."

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"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."

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

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"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."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"It can be simple to deploy, the standup time is quite quick. The interface is quite quick. The terms are simple, intuitive, it's similar what was there in the VNXE before it. It's very simple to navigate and administer from the console."

"It's the simplicity part of it. It's the ease of management, it's the call home, the CloudIQ functionality. It's all built in. I think Dell EMC has put a lot of thought into it."

"The most valuable feature is the performance. It's still an all-flash array at a good price point."

"It has saved us time when provisioning new storage, so we're trying to automate that process."

"VMware integration makes the life of our engineers easier, as we are almost 100% virtualized and this feature is used on a daily basis."

"It is a workhorse and will run even demanding workloads."

"User friendly interface"

"The fact that it's hybrid is the most valuable feature. We have the SSD so we put our SharePoint on there and some of the stuff that requires a little more speed. For SharePoint, we want the pages to respond a little more quickly. And it's nice to be able to use the slower storage for stuff that we don't need as quickly, like file servers."

More Dell Unity XT pros

"The most valuable feature of HP Primera is that you don't have to buy an additional product for application replication. It's a stable product. The tool is scalable. I recommend HPE Primera because it's one of HP's most stable product."

"The features that I have found most valuable are the artificial intelligence for the storage inside of the software and firmware because customers do not like functionalities which require manual interruption."

"When taking into account the price, maintenance required, and performance of HPE Primera, it is an effective solution."

"HPE Primera is quite a stable storage system that provides good provisioning and allows for the changing of partition sizes."

"The most important thing that we had found when we purchased this product around six months back was its 100% availability and uptime."

"HPE Primera is an all-flash storage product that's very stable and has a higher storage capacity. It can also give better ROI compared to NetApp."

"All of the capabilities of the hardware such as replication, snapshot, and the specific features are all included from the start as opposed to being on another license."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

More HPE Primera pros

Cons

"It is on the expensive side."

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

"The software layer has to improve."

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

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"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."

"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."

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"We would like to see the concept of Storage Groups brought back to this product line."

"The solution can use improvement with the patch cluster like the Synchron and Active replication."

"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 pricing is a bit high. We'd like it to come down."

"The only challenge I've ever had was with a Drive firmware upgrade."

"Issues with slow responses from the support team."

"We are running VMware, and with the VNXe it was possible to restore. We're using Veeam for VMware backups and with the predecessor, it was possible to mount a backup or restore a backup from a storage snapshot. With the Unity 300, this is not possible."

"I miss storage groups. Now, if I have to add a LUN to a cluster, multiple host, I have to know which host is in that cluster. I have to write it down and that makes it hard. In VNX and earlier, I could simply put a LUN on a storage group and every host in the group had the LUN. This lack bothers me a lot because it takes a lot of time and mistakes are made. Sometimes, a Hyper-V host gets a VMware LUN and vice-versa. Not good."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"Recently, we had many issues with HPE Primera storage, mainly in the leveling process, which caused many problems for the customers."

"The product's stale snapshots feature needs improvement."

"HPE Primera's pricing model is an area of concern and can be considered for improvement."

"I would like to see improved training offered with HPE Primera."

"We have not had a good experience with support from HPE Primera. They can improve."

"The cost of HPE Primera could be lower."

"We would like to have more flash storage and its stability. This is an area of challenge for us."

"The solution could prove the reporting."

More HPE Primera cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"It scales, but then you have to buy additional stuff."

"Its biggest valuable feature is its price point for the amount of storage and performance you get. It's a sweet spot. It's cheaper than the other SANs out there, but performs well enough. It fits that nice, middle-ground portfolio."

"This unit is one of the cheapest storage all-flash arrays in the market and it does well for what it is intended. It can be combined for both file and block storage."

"It is priced at around or under $50,000."

"The pricing of Dell Unity XT is good."

"The price is good for commercial grade storage arrays."

"Licensing is fine. We worked with a sales rep to purchase our Unity."

"Pricing for this product is manageable, though slightly higher than comparable products."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

"The cost is $75,000 for a three-year contract."

"The solution is cost-effective. I rate it an eight out of ten, with ten being excellent."

"Because it has high availability, the cost is above average. The cost depends upon the sizing, and every customer has a different size. It is slightly above average in terms of cost compared to its competitors, but the value add was that they could know what their maintenance cost was going to be going forward. They knew what their renewal or expansion costs would be."

"HPE Primera is a little bit higher than Dell PowerStore...HPE Primera costs around 80,000 USD."

"HPE Primera is an expensive product but has competitive pricing."

"The pricing for HDD was good."

"The solution’s pricing is affordable and worth the money."

"The price of HPE Primera could improve, it is expensive."

More HPE Primera 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

Educational Organization

70%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

45%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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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Which would you choose - HPE Nimble Storage or HPE Primera?

HPE Nimble is a versatile synced WAN San solution. It is easy to use and doesn’t require much training for admins. Th...

See all answers

What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?

HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspectiv...

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What do you like most about HPE Primera?

For over a year, I have not seen any downtime in the product.

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 15% 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

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 3% of the time

More Dell Unity XT Competitors

HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 26% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs HPE Primera

Compared 18% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE Primera

Compared 10% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs HPE Primera

Compared 5% of the time

More HPE Primera Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

November 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

HPE Primera

December 2024

Download HPE Primera product report

Also Known As

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

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

Primera

Learn More

Pure Storage

Video not available

Dell Technologies

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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."

HPE introduces HPE Primera, a new storage platform designed to deliver superior simplicity, availability, and performance for mission-critical applications
HPE Primera advances the HPE Intelligent Data Platform, a portfolio of products and solutions designed to help customers transition from delivering storage to unlocking business value with intelligent data

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Primera

December 2024

Free Report: Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Primera

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

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