Dell Unity XT vs SolidFire comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.6, while NetApp is ranked #33. Dell Technologies holds a 5.9% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

SolidFire and Dell Unity XT are leading storage solutions. Users favor Dell Unity XT for its advanced features, but SolidFire stands out due to competitive pricing and support.

Features:SolidFire is known for efficiency, scalability, and seamless integration. It also offers robust performance. Dell Unity XT highlights include versatility, data compression, and remote replication capabilities. It offers a more comprehensive feature set than SolidFire.

Room for Improvement:SolidFire could improve its data recovery tools and simplify administrative tasks. Dell Unity XT might benefit from UI enhancements and reduced complexity. Both products have specific areas for improvement based on user suggestions.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:SolidFire is favored for quick deployment and strong customer support. Dell Unity XT has a longer deployment process but offers responsive support and extensive documentation. Each offers strong support in their own way.

Pricing and ROI:SolidFire is praised for cost-effectiveness and quick ROI owing to lower setup costs. Dell Unity XT is more expensive but offers extensive features that justify the cost in the long term. SolidFire is seen as budget-friendly, while Dell Unity XT is a worthwhile investment for advanced needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Unity XT vs. SolidFire Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. SolidFire

April 2026

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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

Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray X NVMe is 2.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 5.9%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolidFire is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dell Unity XT	5.9%
Everpure FlashArray X NVMe	2.0%
SolidFire	0.5%
Other	91.6%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

Read full review

Deepak Kannan

Sales Account Manager - BFSI Sector at Frontier Business systems

Customer needs are addressed effectively with collaborative sales and service support

Recently, customers have been asking for a cloud tiering option in storages. Some Dell storages do not have cloud tiering, which is an optional commercial feature. NetApp's FSA model 2750 comes with an inbuilt cloud tiering option. In the future, if Dell storages include this option, especially for Unity, it would help us target SME or medium enterprises for quicker closures and support the sales team.

Read full review

Ramil Cerrada

Solution lead at Globe Mobile

A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance

The most significant benefit lies in its exceptional performance, driven by its Flash-based architecture. This enhances routing speed and, consequently, database performance. The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"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."

"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."

"Using this solution has benefitted us operationally by making us more efficient."

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"If a company is looking for an All-Flash Tier and they need extreme performance for individual workloads, Pure's the way to go, over something like a SolidFire."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

More Everpure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The Dell EMC Unity is a small but powerful storage solution."

"It saves us time, it does not require a lot of admin from us."

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

"The Unity platform is really easy to use; when it comes to provisioning and management, it has reduced complexity and improved productivity."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to provision storage from the CLI, versus having to go in and use the GUI every time. I can just script it out and it will create what I need. That makes it super-easy to manage. Also, for us, it's a set-and-forget. Once we provisioned it out, we haven't had to mess with it."

"This is a great storage solution and a product that I recommend."

"We use the Unity as the SAN for our data center; it's where all of our data lives right now for our main office, and it has exceeded our expectations."

"Unity is equipment that, if you sell it, you don't have any headaches with it."

More Dell Unity XT pros

"SolidFire is one of the products that does have great APIs right out-of-the-box. It works great. The tools and the other stuff seem to work a little better right out-of-the-box than the ONTAP stuff does, C-Mode."

"All those solutions just didn't compare with what we could do with SolidFire in terms of performance, support, product stability."

"If we get complaints about any kind of performance metric issues, whether it's storage related or something on the virtual side, we use it to pinpoint what the actual issue is."

"The initial setup was easy, very simple, and we were up and running in less than an hour after it was racked and stacked."

"What is nice with SolidFire is that the QoS is embedded, and for each volume you create, you put the QoS on it, and you're sure to grantee the service level agreement for the customer, depending on the workloads he needs."

"The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential."

"Being able to provide quality of service as promised."

"The square footage for doing development is at a premium when dealing with government networks. To be able to put a lot of IOPS in a lot of high-speed performing drives in a very small location which requires very little HVAC with very little power, it is very valuable to us."

More SolidFire pros

Cons

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

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

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

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

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

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

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."

More Everpure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"Since Dell took over EMC, the support has been very bad. Before, the support was fine. Now, the support is slow or they don't react."

"The interface and configuration could improve."

"The EMC VNX Virtual Data Mover (VDM) software needs more improvement."

"The only room for improvement I can see would be a faster lead time and lower cost."

"The product’s pricing should be improved."

"Currently, the protocol SNMP is not implemented. That's a problem, as we follow this protocol and I can't check the integrity of this equipment."

"I think Dell EMC should be more careful in appointing partners, and they need to have better control over their partners. And if their partner has some problems with them, we should not suffer."

"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."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"So feature-wise, I would say more reporting tools that could be merged into it."

"It would be good to provide administrative access at the root level to be able to do things with the system, if need be."

"For people using FC SAN, SolidFire is not an option because of the interface."

"There is room for improvement with a focus on creating a centralized storage system, functioning similar to AWS."

"The user interface needs to be improved. Much of the client feedback involves comments such as "Oh, it's hard to navigate through.""

"The user interface needs to be improved."

"They could make the mNode more user-friendly. Now you need to configure and add nodes by CLI and it’s not really easy to manage."

"On the negative side of it, I'm working on support, and I would get not enough detail or the support tech would say, "Check the manual.""

More SolidFire cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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 Everpure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"At the end of the day, the licensing cost is key, because every customer has a pain point, that the cost of each piece is high. So if they would bundle everything in a package, that is how the competitors are selling their footprint."

"Compression is making a difference towards the amount of hardware that we need to purchase."

"It's the performance combined with the gig-per-dollar value. That combination is superior to other storage options."

"The return on the investment was simply speeding up our entire vSphere stack, which allowed our developers and engineers to get their workloads done faster and simpler. We were experiencing VM snapshot times of 45 minutes to two or three hours, and it shrunk it down to under five minutes."

"The price of Dell EMC Unity XT is not reasonable. They should lower it because the trend is to move to the cloud. They have to protect their market by giving commercial or financial incentives."

"The price of the solution should be less expensive. However, at some point, you need to pay for facility and performance."

"It's an expensive solution, particularly for medium companies. One device costs about 30,000 euros. The support contract is quite expensive as well. We are currently looking for other lower-cost solutions."

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

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

"Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."

"It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for what you get."

"The price of this solution is more expensive than others."

"We would probably use SolidFire more, except we're getting more bang for our buck with our purchases of ONTAP right now, and the deal we made with NetApp, so it's more of just a cost decision"

"On a scale where one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the solution between three and four. It is an expensive solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Construction Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

20%

Marketing Services Firm

10%

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	62
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	94

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	17

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.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

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What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

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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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Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 4% of the time

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Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 27% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 14% of the time

Everpure FlashArray vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 10% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 4% of the time

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Everpure FlashArray vs SolidFire

Compared 20% of the time

NetApp AFF vs SolidFire

Compared 20% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs SolidFire

Compared 11% of the time

Dell XtremIO vs SolidFire

Compared 8% of the time

Tintri VMstore T7000 vs SolidFire

Compared 7% of the time

More SolidFire Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray X NVMe

April 2026

Download Everpure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

April 2026

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Buyer's Guide

SolidFire

March 2026

Download SolidFire product report

Also Known As

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

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

No data available

Overview

Everpure FlashArray X NVMe delivers high performance, reliability, and low latency, making it ideal for block storage in private cloud infrastructures and mission-critical applications.

Boasting robust data reduction, high availability, and seamless scalability, Everpure FlashArray X NVMe supports databases, VMware environments, and machine learning analytics. Known for its intuitive interface, superior support, volume snapshots, and AI-powered analytics, it efficiently manages storage needs, often deployed to replace outdated systems. Users highlight its simplistic management and easy configuration, although opportunities exist to enhance pricing, replication features, VNC integration, and storage capabilities.

What are the key features?

Data Reduction: Effective compression and deduplication improve storage efficiency.
Seamless Scalability: Easily scales to meet growing demands without downtime.
Volume Snapshots: Quickly create snapshots for data protection and recovery.
VMware Compatibility: Integrates smoothly with VMware environments for optimal performance.
AI-Powered Analytics: Provides insights for enhanced storage management and efficiency.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Low Latency and High Availability: Ensures rapid data access and uninterrupted service.
Easy Management: Intuitive interface simplifies configuration and monitoring.
Evergreen Model: Continuous upgrades without disruptive migrations.
Enhanced Support: Reliable service and support for critical applications.

Organizations in industries such as finance and healthcare implement Everpure FlashArray X NVMe to bolster data performance and reliability. They leverage its integration capabilities with Oracle databases and SQL workloads, supporting machine learning and virtualization. It's often chosen to upgrade legacy storage systems, ensuring high availability and speed for demanding environments.

Everpure (formerly Pure Storage)

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."

Dell Technologies

SolidFire delivers all five core elements needed to deliver newfound storage agility to your next generation data center and beyond. With SolidFire you can deploy new applications and capabilities faster, provide more agile and scalable infrastructure, increase application performance and predictability, enable automation and end-user self-service and raise operational efficiency and reduce cost.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

California Public Utilities Commission, RFA, 1&1, Ultimate Software , Endicia, ezVerify, MercadoLibre, Sungard Availability Services, ServInt, Elastx, Hosted Network, Colt, Crucial, iWeb, Datapipe, Databarracks

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. SolidFire

April 2026

Free Report: Dell Unity XT vs. SolidFire

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. SolidFire and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.

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