We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and HPE 3PAR StoreServ 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.
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"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."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"I like the easy management with the new Unisphere management and the HTML5 interface."
"Setup is simple."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with vCenter."
"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."
"It's a much smaller footprint than our older storage arrays, which take up some six tiles, a lot of space in the data center. The Unity's are a lot smaller, and they're a lot faster."
"Being all-flash makes everything super-fast. It's also great to manage. That's the easiest part. We also have another SAN, from Pure, and the Unity is easier to manage than the Pure."
"I like how it separates the iSCSI drives from the standard shares. It has two different routes to it. I know most of the other solutions do this, but I just like the way that Dell EMC does it."
"Key features are ease of use, ease of management, ease of deployment, and the GUI is very user-friendly."
"The solution fetches quick responses in milliseconds which can be within 40-50 milliseconds."
"Thanks to HPE remote IT assistance, they can do the updates with the configuration in best-case scenario."
"This is a very robust product and it offers everything that we are looking for."
"So far, we have yet to have a disk fail on either system, other than one I forced to fail when we first got the system in. So the reliability of the 3PAR system has been outstanding."
"The features which are most valuable are the availability of the system and the management."
"We have been able to back up our data more frequently now that we have everything on flash. It responds a lot faster, so the IOPs are a lot faster."
"It works well and we don't have any issues with this solution."
"It has been very stable. We've had very minor issues, but I've loved how HPE is proactive on letting us know. Usually, they let us know before we notice it ourselves and they already have a solution for us. It has been great that way."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"The software layer has to improve."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"It is on the expensive side."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"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."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"Dell EMC's competitor has a clustering technology. In the next release, it would be nice if they could build that into the product."
"Licensing has been quite difficult. It doesn't always auto-license. About half the time, when I provision one, I have to contact Service to get a license, or even go to our account manager to help get it straightened out."
"Scalability for the 650F is good, but I was expecting a little bit more."
"I'd like to see more of the NVMe back-end for the flash. And the big deal with the PowerMax is that they've used all U2 drives so that they can avoid having to take it down. I see using M.2 and modular sections as being a real nice alternative that could be implemented in Unity at a fairly low cost."
"I think that they could do a better job of testing on the back-end, for the code revisions. I've heard of some issues down the line where people have upgraded to the latest code and there were bugs in it, and they had to release a subsequent code fix."
"This product needs to have better integration with enterprise backup solutions and archiving devices."
"Thick provisioning of LUNs."
"There are features still to come, like compression and deduplication on hybrid platforms, VDM improvements to be developed for NAS environments, and also improvements in the “self-migration” tools to push or pool information (to assist the migrations to and mostly from third-party arrays)."
"We are using a built-in solution in 3PAR. We are using All-Flash Storage, and there are some difficulties with it. HPE has now developed a new tool system to support All-Flash, and that's why we are changing our investment. They must increase its performance. I want unlimited support, which is very important for performance. I am not interested in spinning disks. HPE is developing new storage systems called Primera, but they must be developed more."
"I'd really it to be able to interact with older 3PAR storage, and possibly even non-HPE. I would like to be able to pull stuff off of old things and bring it up to the standard that has been set, simply, quickly, and efficiently. That would be a really nice feature. Right now it is a big pain. It seems to work but we tend to get some latency behind."
"Upgrades could be improved. We would like to see more upgrades."
"We had a minor error when we were configuring this system, which initially detracted from its overall stability."
"There are issues formulating the upgraded disk."
"The initial setup was pretty complex. There were a lot of different things that had to happen which was the reason why they had to send out the HPE engineers to help us."
"As a management tool, it would help us to have more customer reports."
"if it were easier for us to manage the product ourselves without having to get HPE to connect, because it sometimes it does take a bit to get the scheduling worked out with the HPE support. If it were simpler, then it might be easier for us to handle it ourselves."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 189 reviews while HPE 3PAR StoreServ is ranked 9th in All-Flash Storage with 299 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while HPE 3PAR StoreServ is rated 8.6. 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 3PAR StoreServ writes "The product's technical support is outstanding as I can reach someone right away". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, Pure Storage FlashArray and Dell PowerMax NVMe, whereas HPE 3PAR StoreServ is most compared with HPE Primera, HPE Nimble Storage, NetApp AFF, HPE StorageWorks MSA and Dell PowerStore. See our Dell Unity XT vs. HPE 3PAR StoreServ report.
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I have used all, EMC, and HPE 3Par, VNX, Unity, etc. All are OK. But for long term Flash Storage, I would take a look at Hitachi F Series. Best reliability hands down and they provide non-disruptive migrations, no server downtime, no scheduling with users, etc. NDM makes Hitachi a no brainer.
Many insightful answers already provided.
I would just add the following based on my experience. With so many employees an located in different places, its important for you to list the issues being encountered with the present setup, in addition of the need to upgrade, of course :
- Latency -if being experienced generally or specifically to a location as this may indicate a network issue and this is better solved before the upgrade to new storage in order not to disappoint users
-Type of need : analytics/ Big data, classical operational transactions, archiving - in this case you may go for Tiering ( that is have NVMe as the top Tier and SSD as Tier 2). Users are normally demanding but given the costs in a time of budgetary cuts, better offer them different Tiers with front end ones data residing on the better Tier
- Finally, also make sure you have some well structured storage network as you don't want some big fat slow Database VMs located in one of your data centers impacting on the performance of your leaner VMs provisioned on NVMe.
Hello Robert,
What you need to know is in the world of storage infrastructure all the constructor offers a portfolio group by categories like Entry Level Storage, Midrange Storage, Enterprise storage
PowerMax is an enterprise storage on the DELL EMC portfolio
Enterprise storage is usually used for Mission critical Application where the availability required is 99,9999%. With enterprise storage you can manage approximatively 15Millions of IOPS which are very important when you want to take decision to consolidation storage.
Personally, if you cannot expect to reach Millions of IOPS I recommend to go to DELL EMC Unity XT, otherwise move forward to Power Max
PowerMax offer many features like SLO for categories of Application (Diamond, Gold, Silver)
Diamond latency < 1ms
Gold Latency >1ms
Silver Latency >10ms, <20ms
You have also FastVP to move Hot Data to the fastest TIER storage
Physically PowerMax use a Virtual matrix to interconnect all the Engine which can reach 8 depending of the model
Midrange storage use only two controller and provide you and availability of 99,999%
Unity XT is better than HPE MSA or 3PAR
If you want other informations you can contact me
Does PowerMax have storage virtualization for external storage as part of the package?