Dell Unity XT vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado comparison

Dell Technologies and Huawei are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3, while Huawei is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.7. Dell Technologies holds a 10.5% mindshare in AFS, compared to Huawei’s 4.9% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Huawei users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Dell Unity XT and Huawei OceanStor Dorado are advanced storage solutions competing in the storage market. Huawei OceanStor Dorado seems to have the upper hand due to its performance and innovative features, against Dell Unity XT's affordability and strong customer support.

Features: Dell Unity XT is noted for scalability, robust data protection, and affordability. Huawei OceanStor Dorado is highlighted for high-speed performance, all-flash architecture, and reliability.

Room for Improvement: Users suggest Dell Unity XT could improve in its software update processes, integration complexities, and reporting tools. For Huawei OceanStor Dorado, feedback points to a need for better reporting tools, enhancements in technical documentation, and simplification in certain features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell Unity XT is generally easier to deploy with strong customer service support. Huawei OceanStor Dorado users report a slightly more complex deployment but better documentation to guide them. Customer service quality is comparable, with Dell having a slight edge due to its hands-on support approach.

Pricing and ROI: Dell Unity XT is viewed as a cost-effective solution with a reasonable ROI, appealing to budget-conscious buyers. Huawei OceanStor Dorado, despite its higher initial setup cost, delivers better ROI through superior performance and reliability, making it a more viable long-term investment for those prioritizing high efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Unity XT vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 10.5%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huawei OceanStor Dorado is 4.9%, up from 3.8% 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

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…

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Srikanth Purushothaman

DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems

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.

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TOLGA ALNIAK

Expert (System Architect) at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

May 29, 2024

Offers ransomware protection for files stored on servers

Data processing is the most important feature. We are using Huawei OceanStor Dorado, which employs SSD storage on the hardware side. No reported performance issues or improvements are required for our systems because all of the systems run on memory on the host side. The Oracle data and Oracle virtual machines also operate from memory. Additionally, we use Oracle for patching systems, with all data residing in memory. There is some latency during backup times, typically at night, but this is acceptable for us. These latencies occur outside of office hours, so they do not impact our operations during normal times when there is no noticeable latency.

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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 system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

"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."

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

"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."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."

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

"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

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

"Unified block and file storage without the need of control stations and data movers. This simplifies administration and deployment and requires less rack space."

"It has compression, which allows you to store more data than you would normally under the arrays."

"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."

"We are happy with the way we have Dell EMC Unity XT configured."

"It is scalable. Customers are going more into distributed architecture, so the Unity definitely has a scalable architecture built into that."

"The inline deduplication and data reduction capabilities have been the most valuable."

"There has been no downtime. It has built-in redundancy upon redundancy."

More Dell Unity XT pros

"The platform’s most valuable features are speed, accuracy, and encryption."

"The solution's pricing is its most valuable feature."

"The integrated Huawei Flash technology within OceanStor Dorado stands out as one of the most valuable features."

"The primary factors that make Huawei OceanStor Dorado Series highly valuable to us are its competitive pricing, exceptional performance, and stability."

"The most valuable aspects encompass a comprehensive set of common features, such as NetFlow technology, hyper-micro, and hyper-application functionalities."

"The majority of our customers find this solution simple to use."

"The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment takes about a day."

"The solution is scalable."

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado pros

Cons

"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

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

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

"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."

"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."

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"It could be improved in the area of management flexibility. For example, I really need to set read-only access for LUNs, and there's no such option with Unity XT."

"There are a lot of things that can be done with it. It's got Cloud IQ, but I think it's not as mature as it could be, they could make it more effective. They could make it more comparable to some of the other products out there that have cloud analytics. The amount of insight that the Unity product is able to give, at this point, is okay, but not class-leading. Some of the other data-reduction technologies, like deduplication, are not to the level of other competitors and what their products provide."

"It would be great if the solution could integrate an NVMe disk."

"We've got an ongoing issue with a Unity where some power supply fans spin up. We've had a whole bunch of hardware changed as a result but I still have an open SR which has been a struggle. It doesn't seem to affect performance, but it's something that we're hoping the engineers can resolve. Also, we had some issues with an upgrade where we can't manage a device, after the upgrade. So we had to have a ticket in for that."

"The upgrade process needs improvement. I should be able to swap it out, with zero downtime, with another array, down the road. I don't think Dell EMC has anything in the roadmap for this product line. I just don't want to have to deal with that anymore and all of our customers are pretty much the same."

"There is no de-duplication. Unity used to be Bionics, which had de-duplication; however, in Dell Unity XT, the de-duplication was deprecated and is no longer available."

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

"We've got massive issues at the moment with IBM AIX. It's not stable. We have a lot of disk errors, production crashes sometimes."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"Huawei OceanStor Dorado's biggest weakness is its lack of cloud integration."

"Some customers have reported not understanding how the immutable part can be unlocked."

"The product's current pricing model involves over 12 different licenses, which can be complex. Simplifying the process would enhance the overall user experience."

"The user interface of Huawei OceanStor Dorado could be more user-friendly. Other solutions, such as EMC, have a better user interface."

"The speeds of the disks themselves need to be faster. The disks are not flash. When we opened our hard drive from the inclusion, I saw a converter, and it's not entirely flash."

"There are some limitations to this product because they do not have unified storage."

"The solution needs to improve its integration."

"One of the key areas that need enhancement pertains to the software procurement process."

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"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."

"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."

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

"The product is expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"While it has a good price to start, they could always make it cheaper."

"The price of Dell EMC Unity XT is higher compared to other solutions. The price should be less expensive."

"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."

"Our CAPEX was close to $42,000 and operating costs are below $1000."

"Here is our major complaint with pricing. Dell EMC comes to us and gives us a price. We are like, "Well, this doesn't even compare to what we got on the last project." We say, "No, you should bring it down to this level." Then, they come back again and we are sort of in the middle again. I am like, You already sold us other stuff at a better price. We are not going to just say, 'Yes,' because we are out of time.""

"While Dell EMC is costly, I don't have any complaints about their licensing model."

"There is no capacity license for XT and no additional costs for expansions. I would rate its pricing as four out of five."

"We have to apply for a license for each system."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

"We usually recommend our customers choose advanced licensing and enterprise companies are more inclined to choose this solution because it is more cost-effective than competitors."

"The price of Huawei OceanStor Dorado is very inexpensive, it cost approximately $5 per gigabyte."

"The pricing is one thing that works for them. I think their pricing is more competitively affordable than these top competitors."

"I rate the pricing a six on a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive, not cost-effective, and ten is cheap."

"There are some costs in addition to the standard licensing fees, depending on the requirements."

"The pricing is very competitive."

"It's not easy to receive an upgrade license of Huawei OceanStor Dorado. It's easy to buy OceanStor with several features, but when you want to add on features later it's not easy. I had some problems."

"In price comparisons with alternative products, it stands out as a more cost-effective option."

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado 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

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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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What do you like most about Huawei OceanStor Dorado?

The product has the best compression and encryption features. The most valuable features I have found in the tool are...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Huawei OceanStor Dorado?

The solution's licensing structure needs improvement.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Huawei OceanStor Dorado?

The product's current pricing model involves over 12 different licenses, which can be complex. Simplifying the proces...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 37% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% 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 7% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell Unity XT Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 20% of the time

Huawei OceanStor vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 12% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 11% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 9% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 2% of the time

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado 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

November 2024

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Buyer's Guide

Huawei OceanStor Dorado

November 2024

Download Huawei OceanStor Dorado product report

Also Known As

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

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

OceanStor Dorado V3 All-Flash Storage System

Learn More

Pure Storage

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Dell Technologies

Huawei

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."

Huawei's OceanStor Dorado V3 all-flash storage is the ideal choice for enterprises' mission-critical business. It is the industry's first commercial use of NVMe all-flash storage, and it delivers high-performing, reliable, and efficient storage services.

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

Telecom Italia, Hi3G Sweden, KPN

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado

October 2024

Free Report: Dell Unity XT vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Huawei OceanStor Dorado and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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