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."Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"It is scalable, and we usually recommend Dell Unity XT to small and medium companies."
"Scalability is good."
"It is easy to set up the solution."
"It is lightning fast, low on power and heat, and has a small footprint with great performance."
"Storage Snapshots have been really nice. They allow us to do backups without impacting our production workload that much. The scalability, the ability to add disks dynamically and adjust our workload as needed, has also been really helpful. That definitely makes my job easier. And the interface for managing Unity is very easy. The integrations between VMware Hypervisor and Dell EMC are top-notch, so it's been really easy to use and manage."
"Because I always need to trouble shooting for IOPS & database (DB) performance issues. I can quickly focus on what is part of the issue. I can decrease downtime and can plan next year's extended capacity budget."
"The multiprotocol support. It's supporting NFS, fiber channel, CIFS, and these kinds of things. The multiprotocol is very attractive."
"I like the idea that it can compress and dedupe inline. That is quite a stunning feature for mid-range customers."
"The speed of the unit is its best feature. It performs very well."
"Over the years, it has become increasingly user-friendly."
"Virtualization of external storage, while adding cache and speed to the external storage."
"One of the valuable features is the performance, it is one of the best in the market."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"It's a mature product. It's like a BMW that evolves consistently."
"The solution is very easy to configure and use."
"Installing FlashSystem is very easy. It takes less than half an hour, and I can handle it all myself."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"The software layer has to improve."
"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."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"Support Responsiveness & time to fix bugs should be improved."
"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 would be better if there were more integrations."
"Improve the administrative user interface so it is easier to work with. Currently, a simple task, such as removing a host from 100 LUNS, takes a lot of time. If they could improve LUN to host model to be more like the EMC VPLEX, for example, it would be great."
"They can certainly improve in terms of monitoring."
"This product lacks deduplication and compression at the current version 4.1.0. LACP is not available for iSCSI either."
"Currently, the protocol SNMP is not implemented. That's a problem, as we follow this protocol and I can't check the integrity of this equipment."
"A customer had to buy VMX because Unity didn't have WORM."
"A big area for improvement is that the data reduction pool feature is not recommended for use in a production environment because it has stability and performance issues."
"I would like to see an improvement in the handling of large amounts of rights."
"The solution should improve its pricing and the mechanism in the reduction pool."
"The customer's expectations are what they get on the cloud, they're expecting even in the on-premises deployments, going forward."
"It could be easier to implement."
"Product support is restricted to IBM only. It must be decentralized to IBM partners as well."
"They don't offer subscription-based payments."
"It is slightly more expensive, however, it all depends on your supplier."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 189 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, Pure Storage FlashArray and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, NetApp AFF, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and Huawei OceanStor Dorado. 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):-)