We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and HPE Nimble Storage based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Dell EMC Unity XT has a slight edge in this comparison due to the higher marks it received for its scaling abilities.
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"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."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"We like the way it integrates with our environment. These features help us use multiple soft applications. The new features of going off the grid and replicating really help us. They give us an advantage versus traditional storage resources."
"On a scale from one to 10, I'd probably give EMC customer support an 11. It's been really good. We do have premium support, which means if we have a problem, it gets solved really quickly."
"All-flash is a game changer. If you need performance, simple operations, and you plan to use it with VMware, it is a good choice."
"This solution is easy to work with and easy to maintain."
"We can get almost real-time response times."
"The flash aspects of the Unity make it incredibly fast. The fact that you get that much storage directly on what is basically a 3U box to us, that density has been really useful."
"I like its performance and support."
"We have Dell EMC engineers helping us out and doing some over the shoulder training. They are working with our customer right now doing data migration over to Unities from the legacy Oracle stuff. While they're doing this, they're showing people how the Unities work and the ins and outs of the software interface."
"The tool’s support is feasible."
"I have found the convergence rate and deduplication the most valuable features."
"The valuable features include encryption of data, hybrid performance, firmware updates, and overall simplicity."
"If a ransomware or enterprise-level attack happens, my infrastructure remains totally secure. If any virtual machine gets damaged or collapses, we have built a backup solution, which will take a minute to restore the same version of HPE Nimble Storage in our company."
"InfoSight. It's AI for the data center. It's very easy, it does a lot of the work for the customer... InfoSight and the whole system, help them to deal with troubleshooting."
"Their remote management and understanding when things are starting to go wrong and their ability to fix them before the customer even knows, this has been a big positive when a customer makes the decision to go with Nimble"
"Nimble's phone-home capability is decent. The compression, dedupe, and caching are also solid. Generally, I like the simplicity. It's almost a set-and-forget solution."
"Any updates are just part of your subscription, so you don't have to buy add-ons for new features. You're continually adding value to it."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"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."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"It might be nice to have more integrated features instead of having everything as a separate module, like the networking. The networking is attached separately in the back. It would be nice if that was more integrated with less ports."
"The only challenge I've ever had was with a Drive firmware upgrade."
"The upgrade process needs improvement. I should be able to swap it out, with zero downtime, with another array, down the road. I don't think Dell EMC has anything in the roadmap for this product line. I just don't want to have to deal with that anymore and all of our customers are pretty much the same."
"The VNX reporting is much more granular, versus the Unity reporting."
"What I'd like to see is a little more detail on the networking side. I can go into where it's showing me the replication, but when I go into the network it just gives me broad-based information. I don't know which replication job is actually feeding it. I have to go in and rely on other apps."
"More integration with VMware would always be helpful, plugins that go directly into the vSphere management. A single pane of glass is always beneficial."
"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."
"They should update to the cloud."
"Pure Storages have some option, which allows us the ability to directly download that host inventory and volume report. We can receive everything directly generated from the storage itself. We do not need to use some other web browser or something. If HPE Nimble Storage could do the same it would be a benefit."
"We have had some stability issues with one array which has happened twice during subsequent software updates but is due to a bad Postgres database."
"When we’re setting up the solution, making options available regarding the replication tool mechanism would be ideal."
"I'd also like to see them incorporate tools that let me get granular with the VMs. I want to see an individual VM, I want to Snapshot and recover an individual VM."
"The solution’s stability could be better. The tool’s pricing is high and depends on the partner."
"The large hardware components may be difficult to fit into some standard racks."
"I would like deduplication by default on all the volumes. I still don't understand (or know why) dedupe isn't enabled for the templates out-of-the-box. We have to go in and manually enable it each and every time."
"We are doing a hybrid and are moving some machines to Microsoft Azure to run in hybrid mode. We are checking the availability of extra software-defined storage so that we can configure it."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 189 reviews while HPE Nimble Storage is ranked 5th in All-Flash Storage with 119 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while HPE Nimble Storage 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 HPE Nimble Storage writes "Beneficial management software, straightforward installation, and good support". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, Pure Storage FlashArray, IBM FlashSystem and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas HPE Nimble Storage is most compared with Pure Storage FlashArray, Dell PowerStore, HPE Primera, VMware vSAN and IBM FlashSystem. See our Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Nimble Storage report.
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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.
