We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and IBM FlashSystem 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."Performance, dedupe, and that it works well with database workloads are its most valuable features."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has significantly improved our data center performance. It handles high workloads efficiently, providing better performance in the environment. With increased storage capacity, it has led to improved overall system performance. The tool's technology is a standout feature. It has helped me reduce storage costs by 15 percent."
"The best feature is consistently lower latency, even when IOPS crank up to over 75K. The product maintains submillisecond response time, which is incredible."
"The simplicity of it. The performance is good, but the simplicity is the best thing. Storage management is quite complex, but Pure Storage is easy to manage."
"This solution is very scalable."
"The performance of the storage is just unbelievable."
"Pure Storage is extremely reliable — it's never failed."
"The deduplication in the array combined with its snap technologies allows the product to be remotely/manually controlled or scheduled."
"It is great because it can work as a SAN and net storage."
"It has reduced the latency in application and database reads and writes... All-flash, it's fast. We have the 650 model which is all-flash, upgraded from VNX. It just flies."
"We were able to integrate it very quickly with other solutions."
"We particularly like the user interface on cloud IQ with this product."
"I like the idea that it can compress and dedupe inline. That is quite a stunning feature for mid-range customers."
"We can put all the virtualized servers in one place, so our customers can share and manage the devices very easily."
"I like that when you log in it gives you a dashboard of what your storage looks like."
"It’s helped with the overall stability of our VMware environment."
"Over the years, it has become increasingly user-friendly."
"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression."
"One of the valuable features is the performance, it is one of the best in the market."
"FlashSystem offers proven technology in a compact package."
"The feature I find most valuable, is the deduplication, because the nature of the data that we are using in our current environment, has a lot of replicated data."
"The power systems are very reliable if you are running 24/7 operations. For ongoing mission-critical applications, it's the best solution."
"User friendly management interface."
"Flash disk with Easy Tier option"
"We would like to see better troubleshooting aspects. It helps us if we can find out where the problem is. Right now, it's difficult. Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint the issue. If they had more visibility and more troubleshooting feature built into the tool that would really help."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve in the area of cryptographic information in the consoles. The user-friendliness could improve. The Pure Storage FlashArray team should come and log into the system with their maintenance credentials and then pull out the information as evidence of cryptography."
"One thing I'd like to see in a future release is integration between their main storage array and what they call their FlashBlade product; to be able to snapshot directly from the primary array into multiple different backup copies on FlashBlade."
"It is way in excess of what we need. If anything, we could see a bit more speed. I'm just comparing it with what some of my colleagues who are implementing their own systems do."
"CIFS and SMB Shares cannot be mounted directly."
"I would like to see active replication. I know that it's available now but I haven't tried it yet. I hope that it works."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve by being more secure."
"Pure Storage support could be a little better."
"Licensing costs could be reduced."
"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."
"Dell EMC Unity is not sexy. It doesn't have all the flash and pizzazz of some of the other storage vendors."
"For the integration of the VPLEX function for Cross IDC structure, they should integrate the function into the SP controller."
"Since Dell took over EMC, the support has been very bad. Before, the support was fine. Now, the support is slow or they don't react."
"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."
"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."
"There's always room for improvement with the UI. That can be a little cumbersome at times."
"I would like to see an improvement in the handling of large amounts of rights."
"Product support is restricted to IBM only. It must be decentralized to IBM partners as well."
"Cloud file sharing is an area that needs improvement."
"The solution should improve its pricing and the mechanism in the reduction pool."
"This product lacks some of the options we wanted. For example, expansion was difficult and it required a lot of patching to be done."
"One area for improvement is in the GUI, where host clusters are not properly dealt with. With Hypervisor host clusters, all hosts must see the same volumes in the same order. Using the concept of a “host-group” has been around (even with IBM) for many years, so why not with the V7000?"
"It has room for improvement in the area of stability."
"Our customers have raised concerns about the limitations of the FlashSystem 5200 and 7300, which only offer a 32-gigabyte connection."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 186 reviews while IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 106 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2. 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 IBM FlashSystem writes "An easy GUI and simple provisioning but our model does not support compression". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, HPE 3PAR StoreServ and Dell PowerMax NVMe, whereas IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, HPE Nimble Storage and Dell PowerMax NVMe. See our Dell Unity XT vs. IBM FlashSystem report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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As with any engineered solution, it depends on your needs.
However, the bottom line is that for their target markets Dell EMC Unity will generally have a better price at parity performance over IBM's FlashSystem.
Both are focused on All-Flash arrays and Dell EMC Unity is where I start with VMWare. If I have a dedicated IBM DB2 application, I would lean toward the IBM FlashSystem.
The problem in the VMWare environment is that IBM has done a poor job prioritizing this area and has several I/O bottlenecks and interface driver issues. I expect future resolution, but does that happen before current platforms evolve?
Depends what you're expecting. Full compatibility with VMware environment - DellEMC only, IBM FS has problems with iSCSI connections to vsphere 7.02 - it's not supported (FS5200 and vsphere 7.02 server with Intel cards - doesn't work fast (10Gbe - 300MB/s instead of 1,1-1,2 GB/s), no solution for now from IBM and VMware (08/2021). Integration - DellEMC and VMware are one company - everything goes smoothly. Space reclamation didn't work well on IBM systems when connected to vsphere (vsphere 6.5 and V7000 models). When using Microsoft virtualization - no difference - it's more complex to start system but when properly configured - it runs well (fast). But of both of them I would choose HPE systems,:-) (Nimble or Primera):-)