Dell Unity XT vs SolidFire comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3, while NetApp is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.2. Dell Technologies holds a 10.3% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

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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: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. SolidFire

November 2024

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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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 10.3%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolidFire is 0.2%, down from 0.4% 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.

Read full review

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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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.

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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

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

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

"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."

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"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."

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"It's easy to handle for administrators and it's a unified system. It's not as complex as Celerra systems or CX4 Clariions to administrate. You can do everything with one GUI."

"It is ease to use. It performs. It's easy to provision, and It's stable."

"We currently have two Dell EMC Unities going. One of them at our primary on-premise DR site. They communicate with each other. If we ever have to failover, it is right there and ready."

"A lot of the Unisphere interfaces are greatly improved in terms of monitoring capabilities, alerting, and ease of use. Setting up the storage and the file system are all just a few clicks away."

"We have integrated it with vSphere and SQL. There were no costs involved outside of our normal workload licensing, no costs that were specific to the Unity platform."

"It is nice the way ESRS works with remote support, being able to remote in and take a look at problems proactively."

"Stable data storage platform which promotes ease of management through its multi-cloud support. Remote support provided to users to address issues is very good."

"The Snapshot feature is key."

More Dell Unity XT pros

"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 system efficiency is excellent overall."

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

"SolidFire provides seamless performance across your storage system when you need to scale up. Other storage systems do not do that."

"It is very easy to scale up SolidFire."

"It's a very compact device. For a medium-sized business, it's very helpful because the device is efficient and very fast."

"I would say in terms of architecture and in terms of functionality, the product is quite good."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability."

More SolidFire pros

Cons

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

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

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

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

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

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

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"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."

"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.""

"Licensing has been quite difficult. It doesn't always auto-license. About half the time, when I provision one, I have to contact Service to get a license, or even go to our account manager to help get it straightened out."

"The VNX reporting is much more granular, versus the Unity reporting."

"It could always use native replication. Then I could get rid of RecoverPoint."

"It isn't easy to find trusted partners for the product. The solution has issues with mid-level storage and does not come with enterprise storage."

"I would like the device to have the ability to pull down its own firmware. That would be a great thing."

"Problems with I/O modules, with bugs that came out that really should have been caught before the product was released."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"The technical support is really bad and has to be improved."

"This solution would be improved if it were made to be more compatible with other products."

"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."

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

"We are looking for, potentially, on the Active IQ reporting side, to do reporting based on the datastore. Right now, I can report on the whole SolidFire, or I can report on just a certain datastore or a volume. I'd like to take all of my VDI infrastructure, which as an example would be multiple datastores."

"I think there is room for improvement needed with its storage capability. A bigger node is needed."

"The upgrade process could be better."

"The inclusion of more protocols and interfaces would make it easier to integrate with other products."

More SolidFire cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"The product is expensive."

"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."

"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."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

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

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Our big return of investment is the ability to scale and not add FTE counts nor extra administration."

"This solution offers great pricing."

"I rate Dell Unity XT’s pricing a nine out of ten."

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

"We purchased a five-year warranty."

"The price in our country is very expensive and some of our customers opt for lower-cost alternatives."

"Licensing is easy since all the software is included."

"This product is cheaper than the EMC VNX solution. It is good for small businesses."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"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."

"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"

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Educational Organization

71%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

35%

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Healthcare Company

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?

Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive.

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...

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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...

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about SolidFire?

The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance w...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolidFire?

It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay fo...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolidFire?

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

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 38% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% 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

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 4% of the time

More Dell Unity XT Competitors

NetApp AFF vs SolidFire

Compared 50% of the time

VMware vSAN vs SolidFire

Compared 25% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs SolidFire

Compared 25% of the time

More SolidFire Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

December 2024

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

January 2025

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Buyer's Guide

SolidFire

December 2024

Download SolidFire product report

Also Known As

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

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

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Learn More

Pure Storage

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Dell Technologies

NetApp

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."

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.

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

November 2024

Free Report: Dell Unity XT vs. SolidFire

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. SolidFire and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.

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