We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and NetApp FAS Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"It is scalable, and we usually recommend Dell Unity XT to small and medium companies."
"Ease of use is probably number one, compared to the previous storage that we've had. Easy scalability, easy set up. Compared to everything else, the Unity is, well, you could call it child's play. As long as you know what you're doing storage-wise, Unity is really easy to use."
"The scalability is really good now that they have the Dynamic Pools. We don't always have the money to buy complete write sets when we have to expand the storage, so now with the Dynamic Pools we can add disks on the go."
"This solution is easy to work with and easy to maintain."
"The Unity XT box is very strong. It doesn't break. The MTBF time is very large so you don't have to worry about faults or outages in your operations."
"We have integrated it with vSphere and SQL. There were no costs involved outside of our normal workload licensing, no costs that were specific to the Unity platform."
"We were able to integrate it very quickly with other solutions."
"It is simple to use and easy to manage. We don't touch it after we set it up."
"It offers data compression and people management."
"The best feature is its ONTAP product line for Ransomware protection. It also has features for file storage and block storage. The solution is stable. We've had no issues with it. The tool is scalable and meets our requirements. The technical support and the supporting partner are great. The initial setup is straightforward. It is very easy to maintain the product. The feature set is excellent. I recommend the solution."
"One of the most valuable features offered is double-parity RAID, which guarantees that your data will stay intact. We're also able to provision storage and monitor which ones are really consuming storage."
"Other products lose performance over time, but NetApp OS is speed-optimized."
"The most valuable feature of the NetApp FAS Series is its stability."
"The new FAS series is a good fit for some customers. We have good performance and capacity, even though it is full flash."
"It's a stable product. No issues there."
"The solution is stable."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"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've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"The software layer has to improve."
"I think Dell EMC should be more careful in appointing partners, and they need to have better control over their partners. And if their partner has some problems with them, we should not suffer."
"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."
"Our request to Dell EMC for improvement was in the reporting and monitoring areas. Dell EMC built up a cloud ID so that we could see the overall storage numbers. We needed to have the proper KPIs to be able to see and manage things."
"We noticed in the last release of code that there were some inefficiencies around getting our data efficiency up in terms of dedupe and compression."
"It's not as reliable as it should be, I think it was probably released a little early. We've had production problems with customers, and there are still some challenges at scale as well. Compression is a problem for the system. Once you enable dedupe and compression, the performance of the system, the capability, halves... It has to be right-sized and sized for compression, but even with that, because there are only two storage processors, you're ending up at almost 40 percent usage."
"You can't use every feature, because it costs in performance. Therefore, you have to choose which features to use to achieve a better environment. That is why customers do not use every feature in Unity."
"The iSCSI and the VMware integation using vSphere could be less confusing."
"One area of improvement is replication. We are also using Oracle virtual machines, and when you are using systems from other vendors, the process of replicating from Unity through OLVM is more laborious than when we were using VPLEX."
"Its licensing cost can be improved."
"There is no NetApp infrastructure set up here in Greece."
"It may need more flexibility to fight with other competing arrays."
"There is room for improvement in deployment and configuration processes."
"The high cost of the product is an area of concern, so from an improvement perspective, the tool needs to be made cheaper."
"It could be more flexible in terms of configuration."
"Dedicated storage efficiency accelerators could improve the overall performance of the system."
"For long term partnership in Myanmar, the local warehouse should be built in Myanmar that's something I'd like to see. We have some issues with supply so there is sometimes a delay in getting the hardware."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 190 reviews while NetApp FAS Series is ranked 5th in Deduplication Software with 98 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while NetApp FAS Series is rated 8.8. 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 FAS Series writes "Offers good performance and ". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, Pure Storage FlashArray and IBM FlashSystem, whereas NetApp FAS Series is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), NetApp AFF, HPE StorageWorks MSA, Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) and VAST Data. See our Dell Unity XT vs. NetApp FAS Series report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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