Dell Unity XT vs VNX [EOL] comparison

Dell Unity XT and VNX [EOL] are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Additionally, 96% of Dell Unity XT users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of VNX [EOL] users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and VNX [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) and others in All-Flash Storage.

To learn more, read our detailed All-Flash Storage Report (Updated: August 2026).

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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

Everpure FlashArray

Q&A Highlights

it_user752949

Principal Architect with 1-10 employees

Dec 03, 2017

EMC VNX 2500 or EMC Unity 400. Which one is the newer and better Storage and why?

Unity is the new generation of VNX boxes, some refer it to as VNX3. The old VNX 2500 is already EOL since Dec 2014. So in this case Unity 400 is newer and better.

See all answers

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV

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.

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Taj Hussain

Assistant Manager, Technology Support & Services at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

Managing data protection has become consistent and analytics now drive reliable performance

The most valuable features I find in Dell Unity XT include its robust performance and reliability. My thoughts about its in-line deduplication feature are positive. I would assess the value of Dell Unity XT multi-cloud support for my IT environment as highly beneficial. I do utilize Dell Unity XT data protection features. These features have assisted in ensuring data integrity by providing reliable backup and recovery options. Dell Unity XT integration with VMware helps scalability and availability through seamless operations and enhanced performance. My opinion on its Cloud IQ analytics is that it delivers insightful data that aids in operational efficiency.

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Alireza Zabihi

Works at AIT

The Nimble CS-Series has proven to be reliable with 100% uptime

When we started the process of looking for a SAN vendor I had four primary criteria: reliability, performance, cost, and simplicity. We were really looking for a unicorn and were fully expected to have to make compromises in one of those areas. The Nimble CS-Series was recommended by our solutions provider, and we were blown away. Not only was it the most affordable option, but it was the easiest to deploy, had the best performance, and has proven to be reliable with 100% uptime.

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

"The technical support from Pure Storage FlashArray is perfect; if we have some trouble or we need to change something, we ask for support and they are helpful and answer immediately."

"You get what you pay for; it is expensive, but it really works, so I would really recommend using Pure Storage."

"The zero latency and high IOPS utilization we observe with it are significantly better than other storage solutions."

"After the implementation, the time to run the process was reduced to minutes and it did not require any manual intervention from our DBAs."

"The compression and deduplication features help to make the best use of the capacity."

"It has improved my organization in the way that we have high reliability and faster access to our data."

"It has made working with storage as easy and simple as it should be."

"Pricing is very competitive, and it's better than other competitors, as we've looked at some of the other competitors on the market."

More Everpure FlashArray pros

"Unity's are more easily administrated, so we need fewer people to do the administration. We have less overhead because of that."

"The difference was astronomical."

"It is very user-friendly to read and determine the exact problem, unlike HP where different tools and L3 team support are needed."

"The architecture is robust; it was the good, old-fashioned storage array, block array for customers, and it's reliable."

"We saved millions of dollars by not going back with Oracle."

"The most valuable feature of Dell Unity XT is data duplication. Additionally, the management interface is simple, and is not a hassle using it. You don't need too much to learn or to be familiarized with it."

"It is easy to manage; a lot of the system manages itself, and it is nice the way ESRS works with remote support, being able to remote in and take a look at problems proactively."

"It is stable, I have not personally seen any issues when deploying in a customer environment."

More Dell Unity XT pros

"In one cabinet, we have many environments: VMware, Oracle, Adabas, NAS (CIFS and NFS resources), and mix disks on tier configurations Tier configuration with different disks (SAS, SATA, Flash) The software for management is very user-friendly Snapshots for backup and refresh development on test environments"

"The replicating of the entire storage unit to a different location was a very useful function."

"Since implementing VNX, we achieved a 10 times increase in the performance for its end users."

"It has a good, high-level of storage."

"It is very stable even during multiple power failures."

"EMC storage has the best performance and functions."

"VNX 5200 works well with a medium VMware cluster, has good performance, and enables hardware disk replication."

"It’s amazing, you can add and stack, and add more elements."

More VNX [EOL] pros

Cons

"The initial setup was a little complex. We had some initial issues with the design and had to help correct some of the white papers for it, but it wasn't your standard use case."

"The overall scalability for this product could be improved as well as having a single console to management multiple arrays."

"They have a product, FlashBlade, which is their object storage integration, and that's something that we haven't integrated with yet. This might be an area for additional focus as it would play into scalability, because the very nature of object storage is that it's infinitely scalable."

"It would be beneficial to have a health check command that can be run from the CLI to ensure that all hardware components are functioning properly rather than having to enable remote access and connect to support for a health check."

"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."

"The difference in pricing could become a problem for Pure because the commoditization of the solutions could lead to a different price being a problem."

"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."

"What I dislike about Everpure FlashArray is that in the replication, if it is in the pod, we cannot directly add devices to the pod without breaking the relationship."

More Everpure FlashArray cons

"We have had a lot of issues. 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, and that's not good for a retailer."

"The user interface could be improved. The Dell Compellent user interface is fantastic, but the Unity user interface is, in comparison, pretty lousy. It's functional, and I can do what I need, but the Dell Compellent user interface is so much more intuitive and user-friendly."

"The only issue is with the product's scalability because it's not as scalable as the other polished tools in the market."

"The pricing is a bit high. We'd like it to come down."

"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."

"Perhaps if they added more 10GB ports to the back of the system, so you have more IOPS out of the box itself to the network, that would help."

"We cannot connect directly with Dell due to sanctions."

"Inline dedup compression security is coming up as an issue, encryption, etc. is key for our customers. If we could have more ways to do software-based encryption, those are the features customers are asking us for, as well as replication."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"Make major changes to the file services, Celera, do something like a lite version."

"They may change the disks from NL-SAS to Flash, but it would be costlier for customers."

"EMC VNX needs to support bigger SSD and the Next Generation EMC Unity does this."

"VNX can improve by offering flexible upgrade options. It's not possible to add a single HDD to a current array and there are fixed rules to make upgrades."

"The scalability is average because the storage has some hardware limitations and, obviously, operating system limitations."

"Yes, we have had issues. The system is limited by the number of enclosures."

"EMC products are costly when compared to other vendors such HP, Hitachi, Dell, and NetApp."

"VNX can improve by offering flexible upgrade options."

More VNX [EOL] cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You can pay extra for Evergreen support, which gives you free upgrades when new features are introduced."

"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."

"I would rate the pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of ten. It is expensive but not too much."

"Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive."

"The guaranty that Pure Storage provides when you purchase it doesn't meet the overall capacity needs to provide extra storage, if needed. Thus, it is not meeting our expectations."

"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it. A little bit better pricing would be great."

"Our costs are around $100,000."

"The licensing is $100,000."

More Everpure FlashArray pricing and cost advice

"We checked both HP and Dell and we determined that Dell EMC was a better option."

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

"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."

"Looking at it based on cost per gigabyte, it's certainly very effective."

"This solution is a good price for what you get."

"With the large Unity that we bought, it has saved us about one and a half rack space. That's our return on investment on our flash array. We also need less Fibre Channel connectivity."

"Obtaining a warranty is easy."

"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

"The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable, the yearly EMC is more expensive"

"The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable. Yearly EMC is more expensive."

"Reducing dependency on JavaServer Pages (JSP) could improve the administrative overhead."

"Over time, VNX has become pricier than its competitors, and we have turned enthusiastically to Unity."

"Make sure you understand how the licensing works and that you are getting the right set of licenses if you need array-to-array replication."

"While EMC tends to be on the expensive side, the stability and support of their products are top-notch and I feel are worth the cost."

"Pricing is somewhat higher, especially in Zambia, perhaps due to the low sales volume."

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Answers from the Community

it_user752949

Principal Architect with 1-10 employees

Dec 3, 2017

EMC VNX 2500 or EMC Unity 400. Which one is the newer and better Storage and why?

Unity series is re-engineered VNX, so the Unity is newer … it makes better use of flash, active – active , dual controller mode; better price point , configurations solid upgrade from the VNX

2 out of 21 answers

Chris Tunnah

Business Development Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Oct 31, 2017

The VNX range is older and is being phased out. I think you mean VNX 5200? That said the Unity 400 is the better investment as it is newer, cheaper to support, faster, and with higher capacity and bigger supported file system size.

Read full answer

it_user281856

Advisory Systems Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 31, 2017

Hope this helps: http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2016/05/emc-world-2016-unity-the-story-behind-the-story.html

Read full answer

See all 21 answers

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Construction Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Outsourcing Company

12%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	71
Midsize Enterprise	38
Large Enterprise	159

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	62
Midsize Enterprise	48
Large Enterprise	96

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	23

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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?

I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?

I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...

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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...

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Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray

August 2026

Download Everpure FlashArray product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

August 2026

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Buyer's Guide

VNX [EOL]

August 2026

Download VNX [EOL] product report

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

VNX

Overview

The FlashArray family delivers consistent, high-performance data services across block, file, and object workloads. As part of the Everpure Platform, it provides the foundation for a unified data plane, enabling applications to reliably access, protect, and manage data across environments with simplicity and predictability. With built-in capabilities such as inline data reduction, snapshots, replication, and ransomware resilience, FlashArray ensures efficient operations, protected data, and consistent application uptime.

As the foundation of the (unified) data plane, FlashArray enables policy-driven automation, monitoring, and centralized management while integrating across cloud and on-premises environments. Built on an Evergreen architecture, it supports non-disruptive upgrades and continuous performance improvements over time while simplifying operations at scale.

What Key Features Does FlashArray Offer?

Simplicity and Speed: Easy management and rapid performance enhancements.
Data Reduction: Effective deduplication and compression.
Flash Architecture: Seamless upgrades and outstanding resilience.
VMware Integration: Excellent compatibility with virtualization platforms.
Predictive Analytics: Strong insights for proactive management.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Reliability: Proactive support with minimal downtime.
Efficiency: Reduced storage footprint and enhanced data management.
Performance: Faster processing speeds and low latency.
User Experience: Simplified management with Evergreen model.

In industries like finance, banking, and healthcare, FlashArray supports high-performance storage needs focusing on virtualization and database environments. Employed for VMware workloads, disaster recovery, and storage provisioning, it ensures application performance in private or hybrid cloud setups while enhancing management of virtualized environments.

Everpure (formerly Pure Storage)

Dell Unity XT is renowned for its ease of use and management, high performance with all-flash arrays, and seamless integration with VMware. It's appreciated for robust data replication, multi-protocol support, inline compression, and deduplication capabilities, ideal for mid-range storage needs.

Known for its advanced HTML5 interface, Dell Unity XT offers unified block and file storage with rapid deployment and efficient storage utilization. Its scalability and cost-effectiveness make it appealing to users transitioning from older systems. The system supports databases like Oracle and SQL, alongside serving as network-attached storage (NAS). While recognized for performance, integration, and reliability in virtual environments, its deduplication, compression, and support quality are areas flagged for enhancement. There's a desire for improved synchronized replication and monitoring capabilities, enhanced VMware compatibility, and active-active controller functionality. Native cloud integration and better pre-sales support are also anticipated by users.

What are the main features of Dell Unity XT?

VMware Integration: Seamless operation within VMware environments.
Data Replication: Reliable and robust data replication features.
All-Flash Arrays: High-performance storage solution with all-flash capabilities.
Multi-Protocol Support: Flexible support for various storage protocols.
HTML5 Interface: Advanced and efficient management interface.

Where can users find ROI when evaluating Dell Unity XT?

Performance Optimization: Enhanced storage performance for demanding applications.
Scalability: Easily scales to meet growing business requirements.
Cost-Effectiveness: Competitive pricing for mid-range storage solutions.
Seamless Integration: Works smoothly with existing IT infrastructure.
Reliable Data Management: Secure and efficient handling of critical data.

In sectors relying heavily on virtualization and data-intensive applications, Dell Unity XT serves as a vital component in data centers. It plays crucial roles in hosting virtual machines, supporting extensive databases, and providing robust network-attached storage. This adaptability makes it a favored choice for organizations transitioning from traditional storage systems.

Dell Technologies

With EMC VNX you'll have the right blend of flash, capacity, and application-aware software. Scale up storage for midrange workloads, optimized for virtual applications and cloud environments.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas

Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre

Samsonite, Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Kindred Healthcare

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: August 2026.

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