We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The main difference between the two products is speed. Dell EMC Unity XT users say the speed of the solution should be improved, while NetApp AFF users find the solution’s speed to be impressive.
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"The solution is scalable."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"It is lightning fast, low on power and heat, and has a small footprint with great performance."
"The most valuable feature is the fast cache with functionality rewrite."
"It is great because it can work as a SAN and net storage."
"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."
"It is ease to use. It performs. It's easy to provision, and It's stable."
"Stable data storage platform which promotes ease of management through its multi-cloud support. Remote support provided to users to address issues is very good."
"This product is perfect for small, and mid-range customers who need to pay less, but still, get enterprise-level capabilities."
"We put the Unity on one of the file servers and the backup performance improved quite a lot."
"We had some customers who were running virtualization workloads on classical spinning disks. We implemented an AFF system, and they got a huge performance boost out of it because the latency of the SSDs is simply much lower. Actually, most customers benefit from the improved latency and performance from the AFF systems."
"The most valuable feature is speed."
"Switching to AFF has improved the performance of a lot of our virtual machines in a VMware environment. The number of support tickets that we receive has fallen to almost zero because of this, so it's been a real help for our virtual server support team."
"The Active IQ feature is a productive mechanism that automatically collects reports and users' statuses."
"The performance. The flash performance helps move data pretty fast."
"When we move to all-flash, our response times were reduced to microseconds."
"We are spending less time putting out fires, so there's a tangible benefit right there."
"Batch times went from approximately seven hours down to about two and a half. Functionality during the day, such as taking or removing snapshots and cloning instances, is higher than it has ever been."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"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."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"We need better data deduplication."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"Firmware Upgrades in EMC Unity require you to manually download OS and Drive firmware, this should be integrated (Nimble does this). When you order an EMC Unity, you have to specify the block size. This is weird for me and even weirder that you cannot change this afterwards, you should be able to specify per LUN/datastore (Nimble does this as well)."
"My only complaint would be some of the CLI Help files could be a little more detailed, but that's very minor complaint. We were trying to run some commands just to see how the storage snaps were interacting with the storage array, and it was a little difficult to look up exactly what commands should be run. The Help files detailing what exactly the commands did wasn't as detailed as we would have wanted them to be."
"I would like to see more compression and deduplication added to the solution. Today, our compression is about 2:1 and other solutions give us about 4:1 or 5:1."
"Scalability for the 650F is good, but I was expecting a little bit more."
"The interface and configuration could improve."
"It would be nice to have been able to easily move off our old VNX system to this system. The process is very manual."
"It could be improved in the area of management flexibility. For example, I really need to set read-only access for LUNs, and there's no such option with Unity XT."
"I have a problem because between the Unity XT and the PowerMax, sometimes we need another product between these two products. There could be better integrated and the capacity of the size could be larger."
"I would like to see NetApp improve more of its offline tools and utilities."
"The stability is good but there is room for improvement with other options."
"Additional performance, additional data efficiencies, that's what everybody wants right now."
"One of the features that I am looking for, which is already in the works, is to be able to take my code and automatically move it to the cloud."
"A while ago, they performed quite slowly."
"The product has size limitations on fax volume. They have increased from 100 to 300, which is still less than other vendors. Or flex groups are not supported."
"I've had a few cases where support wasn't able to answer the question or they took quite a while."
"I would like for them to develop the ability to detach the fabric pool. Once you've added it to an aggregate it's there for life and it would be nice to disconnect it if we ever had to."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 189 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 281 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell Unity XT writes "Easy to set up with good data compression technology and useful deduplication". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, HPE Nimble Storage, Pure Storage FlashArray, IBM FlashSystem and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Pure Storage FlashArray, VMware vSAN and NetApp FAS Series. See our Dell Unity XT vs. NetApp AFF 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.
I saw that you have doubts about what you chose. I have a lot of experience with the constructor, honestly I can recommend Dell EMC Unity XT All-flash which can guarantee you a ratio of 3:1 signed by Dell and you have to deploy all types of workload from block to file. You can also rely on the native cash and fast cache functionality for increasing application performance
This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended cost is decisively based on the Gartner magic quadrant storage 2020 Net app company and Dell EMC are leaders. But we can say NetApp is First in Queue.
One of the superiority NetApp working on NVMeOF
The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matters more than IOPS for your needs, Netapp AFF is the right choice. You can approach the max. Performance by equipping Unity with SSDs but maybe this costs more. I would recommend Netapp AFF all the time if your budget is ok.
They’re both great solutions and I’ve used both.
EMC is being VERY aggressive on pricing which may be the undoing of NetApp.
Differences are in the user interface mostly, they both do what they are designed to do in different ways.
I say, compare apples to apples on models and get them fighting on price.
You win.
First of all the decision should be taken looking at similar products in terms of capacity and performance.
I will show a few aspects helping the decision, comparing Unity Xt480f and AFF220 (both chosen by distributor to be in the price range for capacity):
1. Comparing 2 systems with the same capacity and performance: pricing is the first to look at:
1a. Cost per GB, war capacity and usable capacity (+Unity)
1b. Cost of adding capacity (+Unity)
1c. Cost of licensing per GB / per added capacity (+Unity all included)
1d. Cost of maintenance after initial contract (+Unity same for all life )
2. Comparison of CPU/MEM, we choose Unity XT because of better CPU cores/frequency and memory per controller
3. Percentage of space lost in various configurations. Our goal was to use Dynamic disk pools, available on Unity. Easier upgrades/downgrades.
4. If virtual volumes are considered, Unity has a VASA provider included in the controller, Netapp is using external VM.
5. Product lifecycle
6. Inline compression / deduplication, performance,
From the above 1=80%, 2=5%, 3=10%, 4+5=5%
We went to Unity XT480 where on the same budget we got 20% more usable flash capacity, while enough slots remain for future upgrades.
My experience was with DELL EMC Unity Hybrid Storage and it was amazing cost-wise. Are you sure you need an All-flash solution?
EMC definitely.