Dell Unity XT vs Tintri VMstore T7000 comparison

Dell Technologies and Tintri are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.2, while Tintri is ranked #26 with an average rating of 9.3. Dell Technologies holds a 7.8% mindshare in AFS, compared to Tintri’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Tintri users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Tintri VMstore T7000 and Dell Unity XT are evaluated for tech buyers based on user reviews. Dell Unity XT appears to have the upper hand in terms of features and deployment, but Tintri VMstore T7000 scores higher for pricing and customer support.

Features: Users of Tintri VMstore T7000 find its automation and real-time analytics valuable and appreciate its simplified management. Dell Unity XT users highlight its robust scalability and multi-cloud integration, with advanced features giving it a slight edge in this category.

Room for Improvement: Tintri VMstore T7000 users mention the need for enhanced scalability, better integration with certain applications, and overall performance upgrades. Dell Unity XT users focus on improving performance under heavy workloads and enhancing the UI experience while addressing software bugs. Scalability is a critical concern for Tintri VMstore T7000.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tintri VMstore T7000 users praise its straightforward setup process and exceptional customer service. Dell Unity XT users appreciate its deployment flexibility but note mixed experiences with customer support. While Dell Unity XT offers more deployment options, Tintri VMstore T7000's better customer service is an advantage.

Pricing and ROI: Tintri VMstore T7000 is considered cost-effective with a favorable ROI. Dell Unity XT offers premium pricing with a justified ROI due to its advanced features. The critical difference is the higher initial cost associated with Dell Unity XT, balanced by the long-term value perceived by its users.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Unity XT vs. Tintri VMstore T7000 Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. Tintri VMstore T7000

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 848,253 peers since 2012

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 April 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 7.8%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tintri VMstore T7000 is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

Read full review

Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

Efficient data replication and fast IOPS have improved operational performance

Dell and a partner jointly implemented this solution in Auvink. We installed the Flash, which makes our IO operations fast and efficient. Replication is available, allowing us to replicate data simultaneously from one site to another. All-flash technology and vTXT enhance speed, and the IOPS are faster. The cache's IOPS are much better. Snapshots provide a unique feature for testing and make management more comfortable and easy. The platform is multi-supported and certification is more convenient and easy to manage.

Read full review

Magnus Österlund

VMWare & Tintri Storage Solutions Evangelist at Proton Technologies

Runs seamlessly, gives excellent visibility, and is like having an extra employee

Tintri VMstore gives excellent visibility at the virtual machine level. By using the performance statistics for a particular virtual machine, we can see straight away how a VM performed at a specific time. We can see whether there is any issue with low latency or high CPU usage. With the Tintri platform, it is very easy to pinpoint any underlying problems and issues. Tintri VMstore enables replication, snapshots, and setting QoS at the virtual machine level. This is very important these days. I have been in this business for a long time. I have been working with VMware for over 25 years in data operations. Over the last six to seven years, there has been a serious threat of ransomware attacks. Back in the day, you would have a backup and the ability to do a restore because someone deleted a file. Nowadays, you also need to have proper protection when the next ransomware attack comes. The ability to have immutable snapshots is very important so that you can be back on track instantly when the next attack occurs. In my case, it has been a very good tool to avoid an attack and mitigate when an attack has already occurred. There is the simplicity of instant rollback. It does not matter how big the machines are. It is very easy to roll back the machine and get it up and running again. It enables us to do recovery at the virtual machine level. With Tintri SyncVM, I can do a per-file VM restore. It does not matter if it is a database, file server, or Exchange server. I have a complete copy of the machine from the snapshots where I can do full recovery or recover individual files if needed. The GUI is excellent when it comes to monitoring performance and capacity on a per-VM basis. I can directly go to the virtual machine, and via the widget in the vCenter GUI, I can see the performance statistics and historical and current performance for the virtual machine. I love the fact that it is so easy to get those numbers. I can also log in to the Tintri Global Center and get the performance data for the last five minutes and up to 30 days for a specific VM. You can use the one you want as a system admin. You can use the vCenter GUI for instant information and recent activities, or you can go into Tintri Global Center for deeper information and historical details. I worked with the older series of VMstore for many years, which unfortunately are coming to the end of life in February or March. I have been helping a customer in Sweden to migrate to the new T7000 platform. I have one customer who has been using their system for nine years, which is a very long time in these circumstances. Normally, you change storage every three to five years, but this customer has been so happy with their 800 series. The performance of these old series that are coming to their end of lifespan in February or March has been top-notch. The customer has been happy with the performance and total cost of ownership. Having a storage platform for nine years is impressive, not many can do it. This customer had a highly used and very big SQL Server running for many years. It had several jobs running for days. It was a hybrid VMStore at the time, so it had its limits. I pointed out to the customer to look at this virtual machine or this SQL Server. After we migrated it to the 7000 series, within a couple of weeks, we could see that the performance had significantly increased. Their long-running jobs got completed much faster because the 7000 series is 100% NVMe drives, so it is much faster than the hybrid. We could see a significant increase in performance. Tintri VMstore could be considered as an extra employee. It takes the load off your employees so that they can focus on other things on a daily basis. The total cost of ownership over time is beneficial when you are using a Tintri solution. Not many understand this. It is very important to point that out to a new user or a new customer. They have to take into consideration all the factors of daily operations. Having Tintri VMstore is like having an extra employee without having to pay them a salary.

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

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"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."

"I appreciate the performance."

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

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

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"Snapshots provide a unique feature for testing and make management more comfortable and easy."

"The scalability is really good now that they have the Dynamic Pools. We don't always have the money to buy complete write sets when we have to expand the storage, so now with the Dynamic Pools we can add disks on the go."

"The Dell EMC unity interface is simple to manage. We manage it by ourselves. We create logs to store data."

"It has compression, which allows you to store more data than you would normally under the arrays."

"It is very stable."

"The most valuable feature of Dell Unity XT is its support of protocols for both block, and file levels. It has the features a store solution should have."

"It's the simplicity part of it. It's the ease of management, it's the call home, the CloudIQ functionality. It's all built in. I think Dell EMC has put a lot of thought into it."

"Using this solution has meant that I do not need to look for different partners to provide me with solutions like a backup service. Dell provides end to end solutions."

More Dell Unity XT pros

"It is great for finding problems where VMs are hogging all the performance."

"The ability to snap machines into VMware quickly is valuable."

"Fast deployment for virtual machines"

"We love the real-time replication, ease of use when connecting our servers to the storage, and the level of redundancy inside the box... It's also simple software and integrates well with VMware so we get a lot of information about all of the VMs, how they're performing individually, and about network latency. That's very helpful when you're troubleshooting a slowdown."

"The data encryption feature adds a valuable security enhancement with no impact on performance."

"The cloning is very fast... Another aspect I like is that it's very simple. It's an easy GUI to use."

"You can control resources on a per VM basis to ensure that contention in resources does not hamper performance."

"Its performance is amazing. Since I have put Tintri in, I haven't had a complaint from anybody about slowness. On top of that, there is block-level cloning and the ability to spin up VMs."

More Tintri VMstore T7000 pros

Cons

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

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

"It is on the expensive side."

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

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

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

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"I think there are a couple of things on the file side that we're lacking from the VNX world. It would be nice if we got some of those back. I think there are limitations on how many file systems you can back up at a time. Whereas you can do, I believe, eight continuous per data mover on the file side on the VNX, you can only do something like two or four on Unity. If they could step up to that, that would be good."

"We've got an ongoing issue with a Unity where some power supply fans spin up. We've had a whole bunch of hardware changed as a result but I still have an open SR which has been a struggle. It doesn't seem to affect performance, but it's something that we're hoping the engineers can resolve. Also, we had some issues with an upgrade where we can't manage a device, after the upgrade. So we had to have a ticket in for that."

"The pre-sales technical support and technical engagement could be made better for this product."

"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."

"I would like to have secure mobile connectivity going forward. This would help me be more proactive."

"Improve the administrative user interface so it is easier to work with. Currently, a simple task, such as removing a host from 100 LUNS, takes a lot of time. If they could improve LUN to host model to be more like the EMC VPLEX, for example, it would be great."

"The NAS capabilities of Unity - I have to say there are a lot of things I miss. For example, deduplication for hybrid. I have tons of customers with VNX and dedupe. These customers achieve around 50% dedupe efficiency and they mostly use them for archive. If you're talking about 50TB of NAS, which is stored in a 25TB repository, which is very economical, and you can not provide that in a Unity hybrid box, you have problems."

"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."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"I think with the world soon becoming only SSD, possibly NVMe, and 3D Xpoint. It would make sense for Tintri to drop the hybrid array down the line."

"Detailed reporting is missing in the current version. We would like to see this feature added in a new release."

"Tintri's Cloud Connector currently only goes to AWS and IBM Cloud, and we don't use either because we're Microsoft Silver Partners. It would be great to get the Cloud Connector feature with Azure. If it's not already on Tintri's roadmap, that's something I'd like to see."

"We need more options to integrate with cloud storage options other than the current AWS and IBM that it currently supports."

"I would like it to have the ability to store data other than virtual machines. At the moment, you can only connect VMs to it, and that’s a bit disappointing."

"I would like to be able to add more storage capacity to our 2 units down the road with out buying an additional seprate array."

"The solution is already good but the brand name is not so popular here."

"VMstore as a product is an appliance. It is normal hardware. When there are new releases of, for instance, VMware vSphere, it can sometimes take time on the Tintri side to support that. It can take longer than expected. Tintri could improve by ensuring shorter times for support and compatibility when there are new releases from partners like VMware or Microsoft."

More Tintri VMstore T7000 cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

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

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"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."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Currently, we buy directly from Dell EMC. We've tried going through resellers before, but we've found that if we go directly through Dell EMC, we get a good a price from being with the government."

"We have to apply for a license for each system."

"We purchased a five-year warranty."

"The flexibility is important. We still have a lot of customers that have a use case for non-flash, yet you can also build the flash version as well."

"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."

"From a pricing perspective, this solution is comparable to others on the market."

"From an ROI perspective, I'll put it this way: When we've tried to buy other SANs, the Unity ROI makes it impossible to buy them. So usually, the only time we buy another SAN is when the ROI isn't a factor, because Unity can't do the job. From an ROI perspective, it's great because it beats everything else out. We've tried to look at other options but, at the end of the day, when you price it out, the Unity wins."

"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."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

"Performance for the price is amazing."

"The licensing model is relatively simple. For things like replication, however, the licensing needs to be looked at."

"The price of Tintri VMstore is not overly high compared to similar solutions."

"The area it needs to improve is the pricing. It could be better."

"With any SAN purchase, the sizing procedure is the most important step."

"We haven't found Tintri's pricing to be a barrier to entry for any of our customers. Tintri works through a number of distributors and when we've had to purchase it for our customers we have found the pricing to be competitive."

"Always could be cheaper."

"Prices are not cheap, but it runs."

More Tintri VMstore T7000 pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

848,253 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Educational Organization

69%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

28%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Retailer

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?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

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...

See all answers

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 Tintri VMstore?

The ability to snap machines into VMware quickly is valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tintri VMstore?

It's not cheaper or more expensive than other vendors. It performs better.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Tintri VMstore?

The solution was challenging. I had to use a consultant to determine my level and decide what machine to use. Maybe s...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 32% 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 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 39% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell Unity XT Competitors

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Tintri VMstore T7000

Compared 40% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs Tintri VMstore T7000

Compared 19% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Tintri VMstore T7000

Compared 15% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Tintri VMstore T7000

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Tintri VMstore T7000

Compared 8% of the time

More Tintri VMstore T7000 Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

March 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

April 2025

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Buyer's Guide

Tintri VMstore T7000

March 2025

Download Tintri VMstore T7000 product report

Also Known As

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

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

No data available

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.

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

For over 10 years, Tintri has been unburdening IT teams of tedious, manual data management with the most advanced, AI-enabled solution on the market. With a commitment to ongoing R&D, Tintri delivers an infrastructure solution built for today’s future-ready, integrated operations from the ground up. We are redefining what data management and analytics look like for today’s dynamic workloads.

Tintri VMstore Adds Feature That No Other Platform Offers

Workload Intelligence Drives Tintri’s Most Powerful and Flexible Auto Adaptive Platform

The Tintri VMstore T7000 Series is the latest addition to the storage industry’s only true Intelligent Infrastructure portfolio. The T7000 delivers NVMe driven performance and efficiencies, supporting up to 7,500 virtualized applications in just two rack units. It offers the kind of scalability, availability and security that you’d expect from an enterprise-grade system that powers numerous Fortune 100 firms. Our customers love the outstanding AI-driven efficiency and optimizations that set VMstore apart from traditional approaches. VMstore systems deploy in minutes, self-optimize and dynamically adapt to accommodate the most demanding workloads in the data center maintaining quality of service (Auto-QoS) for each Virtual Machine (VM). Autonomous operations and advanced real-time and predictive analytics consistently drive down storage management activities and costs – by as much as 95%.

Tintri VMstore T7000 – NVMe Platform Datasheet

Tintri “Geek Out” Demo Series

Tintri VMstore simplifies and automates storage management, delivering real-time analytics, and maximizing performance so you can refocus your efforts on high-impact projects and business innovation.

Tintri

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

That’s why leading enterprises including Comcast, Chevron, NASA, Toyota, United Healthcare and 20% of the Fortune 100, trust Tintri with storage needs.

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. Tintri VMstore T7000

April 2025

Free Report: Dell Unity XT vs. Tintri VMstore T7000

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Tintri VMstore T7000 and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

848,253 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Dell Unity XT vs. Tintri VMstore T7000 report.

See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.

We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.