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Dell Unity XT vs VNX [EOL] comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (17th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell Unity XT
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (5th)
VNX [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user752949 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Architect with 1-10 employees
Dec 03, 2017
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256
Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades
I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.
DK
Sales Account Manager - BFSI Sector at Frontier Business systems
Customer needs are addressed effectively with collaborative sales and service support
Recently, customers have been asking for a cloud tiering option in storages. Some Dell storages do not have cloud tiering, which is an optional commercial feature. NetApp's FSA model 2750 comes with an inbuilt cloud tiering option. In the future, if Dell storages include this option, especially for Unity, it would help us target SME or medium enterprises for quicker closures and support the sales team.
AZ
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The solution is scalable."
"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."
"Initial setup is a simple process."
"It has a very intuitive web console that runs in HTML5 and makes navigation and administration fairly easy."
"Their support cases are all handed through the portal. The support contacts me when they need to do upgrades. It has been great. It's all very well-handled, scheduled, and performed."
"They've integrated NAS and SAN pretty well. It made replication very simple. Because one of our systems has a lot of LANs, for it to replicate we have Consistency Groups in there. That's something that is really helpful, making sure that everything is working not just for replication but for backups as well."
"It is easy to manage. A lot of the system manages itself."
"It can be simple to deploy, the standup time is quite quick. The interface is quite quick. The terms are simple, intuitive, it's similar what was there in the VNXE before it. It's very simple to navigate and administer from the console."
"Dell excels in service and support."
"Unity's are more easily administrated, so we need fewer people to do the administration. We have less overhead because of that."
"One of the best features of the VNX is the ability to combine drives of different types into a virtual Storage Pool. By combining small but fast flash drives, SAS drives, and high-capacity but slower NL-SAS drives, the VNX can intelligently move data to the different tiers of storage based on usage."
"From my point of view, the configuration that I can sell is restricted to the EMC best practices. It is hard to make a mistake in a solution. It means the configuration has good performance and scalability options."
"It is very stable, even during multiple power failures."
"The most valuable feature is the tight VMware integration, due to the migration from bare metal to virtualized environments and then on to the cloud."
"The implementation of both block and file system storage in a single GUI provides is better situated than most other storages."
"Multi-tiering, positively affects the efficiency of the storage space."
"Integration with VMware"
"It is very stable even during multiple power failures."
 

Cons

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"We need better data deduplication."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."
"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"The interface can be a little challenging for someone new."
"We did encounter a firmware bug which actually caused loss of data. There was some heartburn around that. But in general, it has operated as expected, except for that bug."
"The pricing is a bit higher than expected."
"There is no de-duplication. Unity used to be Bionics, which had de-duplication; however, in Dell Unity XT, the de-duplication was deprecated and is no longer available."
"It's very frustrating that it's not backward-compatible with the previous platforms, so it's a struggle for a lot of our customers."
"We had some issues recently because of a bug in the system. We were presenting LANs to the Unity array but I think it caused a disruption to the host. EMC did acknowledge it and provided an alternative way to do it."
"This product has some scalability issues. Before you can get support, you have to look for the service tag number on your product which could make it difficult to access support."
"Data replication needs improvement as the future roadmap for RecoverPoint appliance is not there."
"If the VNX had embedded encryption, that would be great."
"Based on our workloads, we see repeatedly in performance reports that the built-in controller (SP) cache of our VNX model is not sufficiently large, resulting in forced cache flushing."
"Poor connection to FC."
"Intel Xeon processors with under 2 GHz processing speeds could be replaced with more recent ones."
"It would be very helpful to get an automated report that shows you the size of the checkpoints and get warnings when a checkpoint is reaching either maximum capacity per a file system or hitting the ceiling on the SavVol pool consumption."
"There is an easy replication process between distinct data centers via VPLEX and/or RPA. But I hope in the future that EMC/Dell could replicate this with other types of storage."
"The management software used for the VNX is Unicenter. While it is an improvement over Navicenter, used in older EMC SANs, it still feels outdated in comparison to other SAN management software."
"EMC VNX needs to support bigger SSDs. Next generation EMC Unity will do this."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"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 price in our country is very expensive and some of our customers opt for lower-cost alternatives."
"It was easy to order. We are a big Dell shop, so it was easy to purchase and get it in place, then up and running."
"From a pricing perspective, this solution is comparable to others on the market."
"The pricing was quite okay compared to others. We probably got it cheaper because we were the first ones out of the gate, but I would say that it's good value for the money."
"There is not a license required for the use of the solution. We purchased a maintenance contract."
"This solution offers great pricing."
"When you look at what Dell EMC is compared to, like NetApp, they're all priced pretty similarly. I think the pricing of the hybrid model is good."
"It is an average priced solution."
"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."
"The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable, the 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."
"The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable. Yearly EMC is more expensive."
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Answers from the Community

it_user752949 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Architect with 1-10 employees
Dec 3, 2017
Dec 3, 2017
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
CT
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.
it_user281856 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise94
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise23
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...
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 FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
VNX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Samsonite, Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Kindred Healthcare
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