We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and SolidFire 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."Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"The latency is 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 most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"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 most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"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."
"With all-flash it should be able to scale. You probably just need one 4U device and you have terabytes of space."
"We were able to integrate it very quickly with other solutions."
"It is scalable. Customers are going more into distributed architecture, so the Unity definitely has a scalable architecture built into that."
"It will certainly help us scale bigger. If I look at the footprint, the VNX's was multi-rack. Now, all of a sudden, we're only at a portion of a rack. And, obviously, if we can scale within the same rack - we can certainly see that by the number of hard drives we've had to put in - we can scale a lot more easily."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is the unified storage. Also, its capabilities for block-access, file access, and the center box."
"Its most valuable feature is the storage alarm."
"In the hybrid version, I would say they are fast. They have fully automated storage tiering. In the all-flash version, higher performance, compression, data replication."
"Being able to provide quality of service as promised."
"The square footage for doing development is at a premium when dealing with government networks. To be able to put a lot of IOPS in a lot of high-speed performing drives in a very small location which requires very little HVAC with very little power, it is very valuable to us."
"Greater IOPS, speed, it's all-flash. So seeing that everything is going to all-flash, all SSDs, SolidFire fits right in there with the emerging trend in IT."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Individual settings you can put on each individual volume, if you want to do that."
"We can add a node, we add compute, we add storage, and we've had really good luck with that."
"SolidFire has seamless performance for the nodes and extensions. I also like the tool’s scalability. The product’s performance does not get affected when we scale either up or down. This is not the case with other products."
"The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"The software layer has to improve."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"Dell EMC Unity is not sexy. It doesn't have all the flash and pizzazz of some of the other storage vendors."
"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."
"The initial setup is not so straightforward if you don't have experience with storage arrays."
"If you compare it with VMAX, where we communicate with the box through Solutions Enabler and there are a lot of commands and a lot of flexibility, the command line for Unity needs to enhanced."
"I have a problem because between the Unity XT and the PowerMax, sometimes we need another product between these two products. There could be better integrated and the capacity of the size could be larger."
"I would like the UI to look better."
"The product’s pricing should be improved."
"It is expensive, and the pricing could be better."
"SolidFire should start from two nodes instead of the four nodes. That's the only thing. In a lot of solutions, we have to use four nodes, that's the better thing. But as a starting point, two is better. That's why their starting point is expensive."
"The inclusion of more protocols and interfaces would make it easier to integrate with other products."
"SolidFire could improve in terms of hardware robustness."
"One of the challenges we faced while using SolidFire was that the product line that we were using in our company was discontinued."
"You don't have business continuity with SolidFire. I think it could be a nice feature to have in the future."
"The user interface needs to be improved. Much of the client feedback involves comments such as "Oh, it's hard to navigate through.""
"This solution would be improved if it were made to be more compatible with other products."
"There is room for improvement with a focus on creating a centralized storage system, functioning similar to AWS."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 190 reviews while SolidFire is ranked 19th in All-Flash Storage with 33 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while SolidFire 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 SolidFire writes "A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, Pure Storage FlashArray and IBM FlashSystem, whereas SolidFire is most compared with NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore, VMware vSAN and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Dell Unity XT vs. SolidFire report.
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