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Dell Unity XT vs SolidFire comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
220
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell Unity XT
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolidFire
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
33rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.5%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 6.0%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolidFire is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray7.5%
Dell Unity XT6.0%
SolidFire0.8%
Other85.7%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
NR
TSG Manager at Navigator Systems
Ease of implementation and robust performance enhance multi-OEM support experience
We are limited only to hardware replacement, not administration tasks. We work on AMC products through Annual Maintenance Contracts. We provide support up to the 680 model. The XT680F is a newer model, and we support from 380F to 680F. The FlashSystem 8000 series is all-flash, and there is also a 5000 series flash model. We can compare IBM DS series, including the 8000 series for recommendations. For NetApp, we can recommend the FAS 8000 series.
Ramil Cerrada - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has simplified our storage."
"This solution has improved our organization in the way that in the past we had reports that were taking up to two hours and after switching to SSD storage the overall processing power dropped to half an hour."
"Technical support is excellent. I've had very good responses from technical support. We had a couple of cases where we needed support. Some of the communications were purely over email and some has been an actual call to the service desk."
"As we needed to grow in capacity, we were able to do so without increasing footprint by replacing smaller devices with larger ones."
"When users don't call wanting to kill me, that's ROI."
"The most valuable feature is the speed of it, as it is much faster than anything that we can get from similar competitors, and the solution helps to simplify storage."
"The deduplication in the array combined with its snap technologies allows the product to be remotely/manually controlled or scheduled."
"I am very satisfied with this solution and I would recommend it to others."
"It can improve your TCO; when you buy a Unity box, you can consolidate a lot in a very small frame, save energy, and, if you're arranging a room for your equipment, it can help you reduce costs in tiles and flooring, energy, and so on."
"It is easy to manage. A lot of the system manages itself."
"I cannot stress enough how simple and easy it is to set up and use and manage."
"The Dell EMC unity interface is simple to manage. We manage it by ourselves. We create logs to store data."
"The NAS capability is mainly what we're looking for from this product, and being able to recover fast in DR."
"The solution is extremely functional for the price that we pay for it."
"The way it takes the Snaps, that is one of the best features. Snapshot performance is what is key in the Unity, compared to a traditional VNX."
"It is scalable. Customers are going more into distributed architecture, so the Unity definitely has a scalable architecture built into that."
"The product is stable and performs very well without any bugs."
"If you're looking for an easy-to-implement solution from an all-flash perspective, really take a look at SolidFire."
"The dashboard is such that you don't need to be a storage expert to administer it."
"It's a very compact device. For a medium-sized business, it's very helpful because the device is efficient and very fast."
"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."
"Based on those use cases we get really good efficiencies."
"The simplicity of it."
"One of the most valuable thing aspect of the solution is the fact that it's all in one and all in a very small physical footprint."
 

Cons

"Pure will probably have to move to other layers of the stack, not only storage but, maybe, hyperconverged."
"It goes at about 95 percent, so we have had some performance issues. It is hard to clear them."
"When we were doing some tests, we found that there was an I/O freeze when they were switching the controller."
"I would like to see data tiering to AWS."
"One thing I'd like to see in a future release is integration between their main storage array and what they call their FlashBlade product; to be able to snapshot directly from the primary array into multiple different backup copies on FlashBlade."
"I would like FlashArray to add reports that help us forecast our predicted resource needs based on current usage."
"Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."
"I recognize it's a difficult challenge, but I would like to see them make the pricing more reasonable."
"There are some limitations with the file storage."
"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."
"There are some features in VNX that I wish were in the Unity. Storage Groups for isolating LANs and hosts is a big issue."
"If the product could only send alert notification via SMS, it would be much better."
"Scalability is not good. We have a Unity 300, now we have to do a data-in-place conversion for the next upgrade because only 150 slots are supported, not drives, only slots."
"My only complaint would be some of the CLI Help files could be a little more detailed, but that's very minor complaint. We were trying to run some commands just to see how the storage snaps were interacting with the storage array, and it was a little difficult to look up exactly what commands should be run. The Help files detailing what exactly the commands did wasn't as detailed as we would have wanted them to be."
"The solution should include a free process in the HPE portal that uses serial numbers to verify that hardware is genuine."
"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."
"The technical support is really bad and has to be improved."
"The upgrade process could be better."
"We have a large fiber channel infrastructure, and that's one area that we haven't seen implemented in SolidFire, it's more iSCSI."
"You don't have business continuity with SolidFire. I think it could be a nice feature to have in the future."
"We had some false positives, power supplies failing, and that's really been about it."
"The level of monitoring could be better."
"When you set up the nodes, we have to serial into each one of these nodes to configure the IP ranges. It's still very easy, but it's time consuming."
"SolidFire should start from two nodes instead of the four nodes. That's the only thing. In a lot of solutions, we have to use four nodes, that's the better thing. But as a starting point, two is better. That's why their starting point is expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
"It's a good price point and it's a solid product for the price."
"Our costs are around $100,000."
"The solution is expensive."
"I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing. It could be improved."
"It could always be lower, but it's okay."
"You get what you pay for. It is expensive, but it really works."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership."
"Our big return of investment is the ability to scale and not add FTE counts nor extra administration."
"The price of Dell Unity XT is reasonable. However, if you are buying a custom solution, it can come at a considerable price."
"Our CAPEX was close to $42,000 and operating costs are below $1000."
"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 solution is very expensive."
"We integrated it with VMware vSphere at no additional cost. As we moved into VMware vSphere, this is what we bought to go with it for our storage performance."
"The solution is extremely functional for the price that we pay for it. It is worth the investment."
"Our costs are roughly $200,000 a year."
"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"
"Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."
"The price of this solution is more expensive than others."
"It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for what you get."
"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
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Construction Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise156
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise96
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
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...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. SolidFire and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,830 professionals have used our research since 2012.