DDN IntelliFlash vs Dell Unity XT comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between DDN IntelliFlash and Dell Unity XT based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Pure Storage and others in All-Flash Storage.
To learn more, read our detailed All-Flash Storage Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights.""Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution.""Technical support has been helpful and responsive.""The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use.""The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance.""FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle.""The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature.""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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Pros →

"High performance and ease-of-management are the most valuable features.""Data Compression: Up to 80% space reduction in the database""It's very fast. We were seeing read latencies of less than one millisecond. It is robust.""It performed great originally, and when it performed great, it was awesome.""The initial setup is straightforward.""It provides a combination of all the protocols that you need, without losing deduplication and compression.""EasyTier/hotcaching: Valuable because it allows greater performance than standard SAS disks""It has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the amount of disks needed for the virtual environment."

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"The most valuable features are its performance and simplicity.""We just recently started using the Dynamic Pools, so while it's scalable, we actually find it valuable that we can just pop in one or two drives when we need to, instead of having to add a whole RAID set. That has actually been very handy for us.""The ease of management and “user-friendly” management environment (GUI).""Unified block and file storage without the need of control stations and data movers. This simplifies administration and deployment and requires less rack space.""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.""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.""It is lightning fast, low on power and heat, and has a small footprint with great performance.""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."

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Cons
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors.""I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware.""There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features.""You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me.""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.""It is on the expensive side.""The software layer has to improve.""There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

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"It's somewhat scalable, but maybe not so much as some of the competition.""It only keeps one hour of real-time data without the ability to do deep analysis of each element.""In the proxy section you can’t choose a user account and password, so it is not allowed at the moment to go out, if customer has such constellation.""We had just one small stability problem with power flapping and it did not start up again automatically. We had to access service ports and manually restart the storage processors.""Snapshots are not as easy to access as on a NetApp device.""Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible.""They need to offer better integration for a virtual platform to enable you to create hyper-converged solution.""Performance is horrible now. Our original intent was to buy new storage in about two years. But since it became a critical urgency for us, we decided to purchase a new one in two or three months."

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"Scalability for the 650F is good, but I was expecting a little bit more.""Dell EMC's competitor has a clustering technology. In the next release, it would be nice if they could build that into the product.""The iSCSI and the VMware integation using vSphere could be less confusing.""I would like to have secure mobile connectivity going forward. This would help me be more proactive.""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.""We integrated it with vSphere but that integration was "iffy". It was okay but we had a few challenges with it.""It could always use native replication. Then I could get rid of RecoverPoint.""We would like to see more advanced integration capability added to this solution."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
  • "We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
  • "With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
  • "Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
  • "As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
  • "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."
  • "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 licensing is on a yearly basis."
  • More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I recommend the full bundle software in order to have all the functionality. It is more expensive to purchase it one by one."
  • "I think we pay around 100 grand per year for three arrays or four arrays."
  • More DDN IntelliFlash Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The price is good for commercial grade storage arrays."
  • "This unit is one of the cheapest storage all-flash arrays in the market and it does well for what it is intended. It can be combined for both file and block storage."
  • "Licensing is easy since all the software is included."
  • "This product is cheaper than the EMC VNX solution. It is good for small businesses."
  • "It is shipped with all licensed, included for this product range, no need to buy additional licenses"
  • "The only improvement would be a lower cost per unit/disks, however on the whole we are very pleased with this product."
  • "For costing, you have to have a budget in mind because SANs can be fairly expensive and EMC offers a wide range of products."
  • "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."
  • More Dell Unity XT Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.
    Top Answer:The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it… more »
    Top Answer:The tool's pricing is higher than competitors.
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    Top Answer:I saw that you have doubts about what you chose. I have a lot of experience with the constructor, honestly I can… more »
    Top Answer:They’re both great solutions and I’ve used both EMC is being VERY aggressive on pricing which may be the undoing of… more »
    Top Answer:First of all the decision should be taken looking at similar products in terms of capacity and performance I will show… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
    Tegile, IntelliFlash N-Series, IntelliFlash T-Series, IntelliFlash HD-Series
    EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

    Western Digital through its IntelliFlash arrays delivers high-performance storage with a complete range of features and connectivity options, including inline compression and deduplication, application and VM consistent snapshots, replication, RAID, data encryption, VMware vCenter integration, and multi-protocol support for SAN (FC, iSCSI) and NAS (NFS, SMBv3). IntelliFlash arrays deliver high availability through dualredundant and hot-swappable components, active/active or active/passive controllers, non-disruptive software upgrades, eMLC flash, and proactive cloud-based monitoring, analytics, and intelligence. A RESTful API provides scripted or programmatic control.

    Dell EMC Unity XT is one of the best all-flash storage arrays on the market today. Dell EMC Unity XT arrays are designed for performance, optimized for efficiency, and built for a multi-cloud world. In addition, they support digital transformation, enabling businesses to reach the full potential of their data capital quickly and easily. Dell EMC Unity’s All-Flash and Hybrid Flash storage platforms provide the performance, efficiency, enterprise-class software, and virtualization integrations required for running a wide range of virtualized applications.

    Dell EMC Unity XT Features

    Dell EMC Unity XT has many valuable key features, including:

    • Unified storage flexibility: With Dell EMC Unity XT you can consolidate separate storage platforms into a single Unity XT unified storage system via a simple and intuitive (HTML5) management GUI that also connects you to CloudIQ.

    • All-inclusive data protection: Dell EMC Unity XT offers a reliable way to protect application data with all-inclusive data protection services, including snapshots, data-at-rest drive encryption, replication, thin clones, and dynamic pools.

    • Software-defined solutions: Dell EMC Unity XT provides software-defined storage and HA for on-prem and in the cloud solutions.

    • Multi-cloud alignment: With Dell EMC Unity XT you have the ability to build and manage an effective data-first multi-cloud strategy. It allows you to consolidate public and private cloud resources that align with your business goals.

    • Metro node: This feature enables automated business continuity with zero RPO and RTO. It also provides greater flexibility through multi-platform support and replication to any array and has zero performance impact on the storage array.

    • Scalable file system: Dell EMC Unity XT is built with a robust 256TBu file system. The UFS64 file system includes up to 256 independent VMDK clones, 16 thin clones, space efficient snapshots with a simple space reclaim and low IO impact, file system shrink that can reclaim free blocks, simplified Quotas for User, and much more.

    • DevOps integrations: Dell EMC Unity XT supports the Container Storage Interface (CSI) plugin to run Kubernetes workloads.

    Dell EMC Unity XT Benefits

    Some of the benefits of using Dell EMC Unity XT include:

    • High-speed data access
    • Low latency
    • Dual-active controller architecture
    • Multi-cloud
    • Intuitive user interface
    • Cost efficient
    • Solid performance

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Dell EMC Unity XT users.

    A Systems Engineering Manager at a manufacturing company says, "It is definitely one of the most robust, solid, well-performing products that I have dealt with. It is set it and forget it, which is pretty amazing." He also mentions, “We can do both block and file storage on one unit without purchasing a separate device.”

    Peter S., Senior Technical Specialist at a healthcare company, states, “The most valuable feature is reliability. At the end of the day, it just runs. This solution is easy to work with and easy to maintain.”

    PeerSpot user Melvin T., Senior Systems Engineer at Prosperity Bank, explains that the solution is “easy to use and we can add LUNs or space without interruption to end-users. We're able to access it from just about anywhere, as long as we have access to a browser. That feature is really neat because sometimes we will go to a different data center or a different site, and if we need to access it to see a LUN or to see any type of storage, we can do that. That's one of the big takeaways with Unity."

    Sample Customers
    Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
    Bank of Stockton, Barnsley College, Boyes Turner, Brigham Young University
    Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Manufacturing Company18%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Government7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Real Estate/Law Firm8%
    University7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Healthcare Company13%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Energy/Utilities Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization66%
    Computer Software Company6%
    Manufacturing Company4%
    Government3%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business35%
    Midsize Enterprise29%
    Large Enterprise35%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise60%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business67%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise17%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise7%
    Large Enterprise71%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise46%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise70%
    Large Enterprise20%
    Buyer's Guide
    All-Flash Storage
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Pure Storage and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: May 2024.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    DDN IntelliFlash is ranked 29th in All-Flash Storage with 11 reviews while Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 190 reviews. DDN IntelliFlash is rated 7.4, while Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of DDN IntelliFlash writes "Good features with an easy initial setup but technical support is slow ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Dell Unity XT writes "Easy to set up with good data compression technology and useful deduplication". DDN IntelliFlash is most compared with Pure Storage FlashArray, VAST Data, Tintri VMstore T7000, NetApp AFF and Pure Storage FlashBlade, whereas Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, Pure Storage FlashArray and IBM FlashSystem.

    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.