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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
222
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

"Everpure FlashArray is very good with AI development and is very suitable for low downtime and critical mission storage, so customers who need critical mission storage and those chasing performance should consider this solution."
"VMware has benefited our IT organization because we're 100% VMware, everything is running on it."
"The deduplication in the array combined with its snap technologies allows the product to be remotely/manually controlled or scheduled."
"Technical support is very good."
"In Pure Storage FlashArray, the dedupe and compression are excellent, and performance is good too."
"Performance, deduplication, compression, and fast response time for requests from servers and applications."
"Performance is the most valuable feature."
"The availability and ease of use are the big features."
"We can get to our applications faster."
"We saved millions of dollars by not going back with Oracle."
"The product has met all our expectations."
"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."
"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."
"The UI itself is fantastic, and the ease of administration is far better than Unisphere or Navisphere ever were. It's very easy to manage. The fact that it has built-in APIs means our automation people can help us automate a lot of tasks, and that has been helpful. And, of course, it's really fast. Obviously, that doesn't hurt anything at all."
"The All-Flash models are intuitive and easy to work with, in addition to providing high IOPS with low latency to support Business Critical applications."
"We have adopted the all-flash array; it eliminates all the overhead of tiering and a lot of the data structuring overhead involved, and it gives us a lot of operational efficiencies."
"I would say in terms of architecture and in terms of functionality, the product is quite good."
"The dashboard is such that you don't need to be a storage expert to administer it."
"If you're looking for an easy-to-implement solution from an all-flash perspective, really take a look at SolidFire."
"Greater IOPS, speed, it's all-flash. So seeing that everything is going to all-flash, all SSDs, SolidFire fits right in there with the emerging trend in IT."
"If you buy the solution for its specific purpose it will work well."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability."
"It really helped us not only in delivering the service levels to our users, but also automating 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."
 

Cons

"The file functionality could be better."
"The time-to-market could be better at times, but I think that's true for all vendors of hardware."
"The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality."
"Areas for improvement would be the financial operations. In the next release, I would like to see a NAS protocol included."
"The support for NFS protocols right out-of-the-box need improvement. I'm used to other storage vendors who have NFS support right out-of-the-box, and Pure Storage doesn't seem to have anything."
"We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform. The idea is that they would run a basic NFS or CIF share from the controllers. FlashBlade is the powerhouse for File and Object storage, but if you don't need all that power, a lightweight file function would make FlashArrays more versatile."
"The only thing is that we've had to upgrade controllers a few times because we ended up wanting to use more stuff on here."
"Its price needs improvement. Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"This product lacks deduplication and compression at the current version 4.1.0. LACP is not available for iSCSI either."
"I would like to see more compression and deduplication added to the solution. Today, our compression is about 2:1 and other solutions give us about 4:1 or 5:1."
"The reports could possibly export all the data at once."
"I'm not sure if it has a single pane of glass management console. That would be something we would like to see."
"Dell could improve Unity XT by adding support for NVMe."
"The pricing is a bit higher than expected, and this is an area where I see room for improvement."
"Dell operates at the commodity end of the market, so if they really want to get into storage in a big way, they need to have better pre-sales technical support and engagement."
"The technical support sometimes takes three to four days to get hardware to facilities. I would rate customer service four out of ten."
"A little better segregation of the multi-tenancy. Right now, it's just VLAN-specific, that's all you can do."
"There is room for improvement with a focus on creating a centralized storage system, functioning similar to AWS."
"The level of monitoring could be better."
"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."
"We have a large fiber channel infrastructure, and that's one area that we haven't seen implemented in SolidFire, its more iSCSI."
"The inclusion of more protocols and interfaces would make it easier to integrate with other products."
"The starting point of SolidFire is really a little bit on the expensive side, but from a scalability perspective, as a total cost of ownership, if you go for it then it's not so expensive."
"They could do a file-based NAS: SolidFire NAS-based. It's probably not its niche, but that is our direction, not to use block, and it's block. Solid state block is what it is."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our costs are around $100,000."
"The solution is expensive."
"Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
"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."
"I'm good with the licensing. Of course, pricing can always be less... It's actually not a bad pricing model, considering I don't have to rip-and-replace."
"The price of the solution can be a bit expensive. There is an additional fee for support."
"It was less expensive than some of the alternatives. It's not as though it was a premium price to get that kind of quality. It's a very competitive product from a price perspective..."
"The cost of Pure Storage is subjective and determined by your environment. Pure Storage tends to be more expensive than NetApp, but it is cheaper than EMC. Performance varies with data workload, making cost considerations complex."
"The price is good for commercial grade storage arrays."
"All the licenses are included from day one of your purchase of the product, so you don't have to buy licenses separately. There are no additional costs to be paid for the maintenance of the solution."
"The price is up a little bit from what we used to pay so I'm hoping that it's a little bit of a better system than the VNXe was. But I still think it's a good value. It's new, so I'm sure there's room for the pricing to drop."
"Looking at it based on cost per gigabyte, it's certainly very effective."
"This solution is a good price for what you get."
"While Dell EMC is costly, I don't have any complaints about their licensing model."
"As far as licensing goes, I love how VMware works with Dell EMC Unity. It's great. They work hand in hand. They have made it so simple."
"While it has a good price to start, they could always make it cheaper."
"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."
"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"
"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%
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 Business67
Midsize Enterprise37
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.
895,151 professionals have used our research since 2012.