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, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp and others in All-Flash Storage.

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

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All-Flash Storage

April 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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Dhandayudapani C

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.

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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.

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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

"It has improved my organization in the way that now we have lower latency, we get fewer complaints from customers, and we see a constant response time."

"The most valuable feature is test performance. It helps us store large amounts of data along with providing us faster retrieval of data."

"Scalability is one of the best features. You can quickly add more. You can swap out the drives with larger sizes, you can add more shelves. All of that is perfect - the whole concept of keeping it modular..."

"Both the ease of setup and the reliability of the array makes it quite simple to manage for the customer."

"If you factor in the ease in terms of operations, as well as the cost of the array compared to other solid state arrays, it becomes a clear positive for Pure Storage."

"It simplifies building out the storage."

"The performance of the storage is just unbelievable."

"From the performance that I've seen, the simplicity of how to use it, the responsiveness, and customer experience, it is one of the best companies that I have worked with so far."

More Everpure FlashArray pros

"We saved money by moving off old storage and we gained extra capacity and speed."

"For our customers, the benefits are that it's not too expensive and it has almost all of the features from the beginning."

"It is easy to manage overall. It is all web-based. It has a an easy, nice dashboard. I receive emails if there are issues. When there are any updates, I receive emails. I can either do them on my own, but normally I schedule them with Dell EMC and they remote in, then it's done."

"For our customers, it's the simplicity of it. They find it easy to use, along with the added features, the dynamic volumes."

"The performance and the stability of the platform have been stellar, with no issues from customers and simple, very non-disruptive upgrades that have been fantastic for all of our customers."

"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."

"It gives me the flexibility with its ability to replicate to itself and the ability to use the Dell EMC Cloud as an option. That's always sitting there and waiting if we need it."

"We expanded both our EMC Unity disks by 10TB without any disruption or issues."

More Dell Unity XT pros

"EMC storage has the best performance and functions."

"The most valuable feature is the auto-tiering, which helps in the speed of data access."

"I really value deduplication and compression to save space."

"Depending on how simple the customer needs it to be, might sway my recommendation one way or the other, but in terms of functionality, VNX is very very good."

"Tiering, because it allows your data to dynamically move among different disk types based on demand in the last 24 hours."

"Integration with VMware"

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

"If you are looking for a stable, powerful and effective entry level SAN that you can provision on your own for a small environment or a small office/remote office situation - this is definitely the product for you."

More VNX [EOL] pros

Cons

"A noticeable area for improvement is the support for object storage. The FlashArray does not natively support object storage like S3 or Swift, which pushes customers needing these features towards the more expensive FlashBlade."

"The connectivity needs improvement. You do not have the possibility to have a file and block connectivity at the same time on the same machine."

"I would like to have an easy way to determine the cost per VM so that I can present a solution to our customers."

"In Pure Storage FlashArray, the area with room for improvement is local MFA login."

"A three wave application or multi-wave application synchronization would be an improvement."

"They have a product, FlashBlade, which is their object storage integration, and that's something that we haven't integrated with yet."

"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services."

"I had to contact customer support when a drive failed as I was doing a couple of OS upgrades."

More Everpure FlashArray cons

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

"We had one incident with a memory leak that led to controller reboot. Although it had no impact, when such things happens the storage should be more aware of it, send alerts, and propose corrective actions."

"Dell EMC Unity's competitor, NetApp, has a similar product. However, it has a clustering technology where you can group multiple systems together, then you can move data from one system to another seamlessly. I would like the Unity to do that."

"The interface can be a little challenging for someone new."

"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.""

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

"The technical support sometimes takes three to four days to get hardware to facilities. I would rate customer service four out of ten."

"One of the issues we've had is that controllers have crashed several times... We've had a lot of problems with the storage processor, SPBs. We've actually had them crash."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"We actually had data loss from too many simultaneous drive failures on the 7500."

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

"It is not the easiest product to implement and manage, especially on the NAS side, but that is now fixed in its successor product from Dell EMC called Unity."

"The administrative console (Navisphere/Unisphere) needs some improvement, especially on their Java-based GUI. The updated version of Java is not compatible."

"The performance impact snapshotting had on the cluster was enormous. The entire cluster performance took a performance impact of about 30% as soon as we created one snapshot of all the volumes created on the cluster."

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

"We encountered scalability as it is limited by backend slots, and NAS performance is significantly reduced when scaling."

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

More VNX [EOL] cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have 16 or 18 arrays. We like to do the three-year support model so that we get Evergreen and therefore, we get free upgrades. We pay around more than 1.5 million dollars."

"There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."

"Pricing is very competitive, and it's better than other competitors."

"The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."

"We have seen a reduction in the TCO, because Pure Storage is partnering with Belfrics. This partnership reduces our latency and space."

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

"No storage device is cheap, but Pure Storage is fairly priced and offers what you pay for. You get all the licenses in the future when you purchase a license."

"While it comes with a higher price tag, this investment often translates to significant improvements in performance."

More Everpure FlashArray pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"It is priced at around or under $50,000."

"For costing, you have to have a budget in mind because SANs can be fairly expensive and EMC offers a wide range of products."

"Because of the attractive price, we were able to get rid of more expensive arrays, standardize, and get rid of a lot of spinning disks. We also got rid of more expensive flash that we weren't properly utilizing."

"The solution should be cheaper."

"The solution is extremely functional for the price that we pay for it. It is worth the investment."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

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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

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

15%

Marketing Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	64
Midsize Enterprise	36
Large Enterprise	146

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	62
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	94

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 don't really know much about the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray in terms of the absolute cost. Regarding Everg...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?

Despite liking Pure Storage FlashArray, there is room for improvement in automation. Pure Storage FlashArray needs to...

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...

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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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Comparisons

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Compared 12% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 8% of the time

VAST Data vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 7% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 5% of the time

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Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 26% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 13% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 4% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 4% of the time

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HPE MSA vs VNX [EOL]

Compared 41% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs VNX [EOL]

Compared 37% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray

April 2026

Download Everpure FlashArray product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

April 2026

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Buyer's Guide

VNX [EOL]

April 2026

Download VNX [EOL] product report

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray

EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity

VNX

Overview

Everpure Storage FlashArray delivers simplicity, speed, and performance with ease of management and data reduction capabilities. Its resilience and seamless upgrades complement its integration with VMware, while predictive analytics and proactive support enhance reliability.

Everpure Storage FlashArray leverages a flash-based architecture for improved storage efficiency, reduced footprint, and outstanding data management through deduplication and compression. Users appreciate its single pane of glass management and Evergreen model. It supports VMware environments effectively, offering predictive analytics for better operational insights. The system is noted for its user-friendly management and proactive support, ensuring minimal downtime while delivering resilient storage solutions.

What Key Features Does Everpure Storage 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, Everpure Storage 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 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

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, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: April 2026.

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