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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
7.2
Number of Reviews
226
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

"The stability and performance are the best things about the solution."
"I never have to worry about its performance or if it is the root cause of an issue."
"It helps us maintain uptime much better than other solutions we've used in the past, and the support is extremely quick and responsive."
"Our clients see a reduction in total cost of ownership by around 40%."
"It is the SAN backbone for our company."
"Performance is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are the management view of the solutions, ease of provision, and deprovision, it is fantastic."
"It is easy to manage. You don't have to have the same people who used to manage the Dell EMC arrays because the solution is more intuitive."
"I like that the solution is scalable. The initial setup is not complex. The basic licenses and software are included in the package. he primary advantage is that this product has been thoroughly tested and proven over time. I recommend this product."
"The initial setup was very straightforward. Migration was smooth and configuration of the storage was quick and simple. The time needed to put it into production was less than expected, and data migration itself went without a glitch."
"It is stable, I have not personally seen any issues when deploying in a customer environment."
"The return on investment is in the fact that it meets all of our storage needs and in the ease of expanding it."
"The most valuable aspects of this solution are its stability, performance, and ease of updating."
"I've had so many nightmares with so many other arrays, but I have no complaints with Dell EMC Unity at this time."
"It is a platform that we have standardized on for remote sites which enables us to have engineers and admins who are trained on and knowledgeable about the platform across the board, enabling them to support those sites and allowing us to do more with less."
"One of the things that I like the most about it is how they have changed the Unisphere GUI, and how it is now HTML5. It is so easy to use. Also, the array itself is so simple, easy to set up and easy to use, but it still has that great Dell EMC technology behind it."
"All those solutions just didn't compare with what we could do with SolidFire in terms of performance, support, product stability."
"SolidFire has seamless performance for the nodes and extensions. I also like the tool’s scalability. The product’s performance does not get affected when we scale either up or down. This is not the case with other products."
"SolidFire provides seamless performance across your storage system when you need to scale up. Other storage systems do not do that."
"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 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."
"The most valuable feature is the performance, as well as how you manage performance on the system."
"The initial setup was easy, very simple, and we were up and running in less than an hour after it was racked and stacked."
"The product is easy to manage and deploy, it's got full API functionality and the performance is pretty steady."
 

Cons

"The setup needs to be improved the most. They can do a little more with the user interface, but the setup is what I would like to see made a bit easier."
"The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can save their investment."
"The scalability of the solution is not as good as it probably could be."
"The integration capabilities could be improved."
"I would love for them to have a hyper-converged solution."
"I have been primarily working with storage and have not fully explored other areas, but there is some room for improvement when it comes to performance reporting."
"I would like to have an easy way to determine the cost per VM so that I can present a solution to our customers."
"Organizations with security concerns that prevent cloud utilization would benefit from a wider range of instruments available for offline operation."
"The uses of tools to communicate with EMC directly. With EMC, I am not able to connect and resolve issues without assistance, so they can't do unattended maintenance on devices, which would be a massive benefit if they could."
"The monitoring part could be better. With EMC storage systems - or Unity and VPLEX, because I'm using them, for the moment - the monitoring part is very difficult. They should improve this to have a better reporting system."
"I would like to see a more seamless virtual box integration with the physical box which can replicate, because the setup of the replication is very difficult right now."
"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."
"We would like an AI feature that would protect the backup and minimize the consumed space so we can maintain the quality of the backup."
"We have had customers reporting issues with slow responses from the support team."
"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."
"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."
"It's a very good Windows-type solution. But we do a lot of legacy systems and the like. So it's getting that incorporated into it that would help us."
"I think there is room for improvement needed with its storage capability. A bigger node is needed."
"The technical support is really bad and has to be improved."
"So feature-wise, I would say more reporting tools that could be merged into it."
"The technical support is really bad and has to be improved."
"Technical Support: That is a problem we have. When we call tech support, we have to open a tunnel to the SolidFire device, then tech support can get in and look at it."
"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. If they created a web interface to do the management of the mNode, that would be great!."
"We have had to stop using this solution because the price was too high for global implementation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure Storage has not helped to reduce our HANA licensing costs."
"Cost-wise, it's been very effective."
"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."
"It is light years beyond anything else with the same price point."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is a really cool concept. As long as we maintain our subscription, we will get new controllers every three years and really never have a forklift upgrade like we currently are doing. Just that future-proofing is an ease off of my mind to know that I won't have to do what I'm dong right now again."
"The pricing is an issue. However, being all-flash, it will always be sort of expensive."
"Cost-wise, I imagine that the product's price would probably give you a nosebleed if you were a younger company."
"Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive."
"Licensing is a little bit confusing. Going through everything with them, there are a lot of line items to go over. Every single thing is broken down into a line item, and it starts to get really confusing in terms of what we're actually purchasing when it comes to the product."
"Most licenses for the solution are free but upgrades are available when adding additional software or storage."
"While Dell EMC is costly, I don't have any complaints about their licensing model."
"The Dell EMC Data Protection license covers everything, like a one stop shop. All our options are covered."
"In the SQL Server instances in our data warehouse, we immediately saw a great return on investment."
"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 product’s pricing should be improved."
"Obtaining a warranty is easy."
"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."
"The price of this solution is more expensive than others."
"Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."
"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"
"It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for what you get."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Construction Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business69
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise157
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 needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I do not have any improvements at the moment; I like how it is. I have nothing to add about needed improvements.
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.
896,467 professionals have used our research since 2012.