We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and Dell XtremIO 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."It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"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 latency is good."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"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 solution is very straightforward to set up."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"Unified block and file storage without the need of control stations and data movers. This simplifies administration and deployment and requires less rack space."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is the unified storage. Also, its capabilities for block-access, file access, and the center box."
"It has the same operating system for both file and block, and it actually simplifies everything. And it's much smaller compared to VNX."
"It has helped us be able to use less administrators per device or system. Therefore,we are more streamlined."
"It has reduced complexity."
"The most valuable features are its performance and simplicity."
"The storage management is superb, with a user-friendly graphical interface and dashboards. The performance is good. The integration, dashboards, and analytics are excellent. It gives me immediate output and quick access to the reports I need promptly. It's an excellent product with high stability. The solution is scalable. The support team is highly supportive, responsive, and efficient in providing solutions. This product is highly useful and well-suited for all types of automation."
"We just started doing a bunch of automation where, if an end-user's home directory or departmental share gets filled, I can set certain things through a Unity API so that if it reaches 95 or 98 percent full, it will automatically expand. Now, instead of our getting a ticket and having to go in and do it manually, it does that for us."
"Speed and reliability:"
"XtremIO is very stable."
"Snapshots are valuable because of their seamless nature, as well as the minimal space each snapshot takes."
"Performance and deduplication. This is a very robust block storage option that offers both performance and data optimization."
"It is great for applications like Microsoft Exchange, ERP, SQL and VDI; basically saved the VDI buy-in from users, as now performance was seamless in comparison to a physical PC."
"It was very easy and straightforward to setup."
"The most valuable features are that it is fast and reliable."
"The speed is extremely valuable."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"We've also encountered an issue when it comes to migrating to compressed LANs on the Unity, and during the Storage vMotion. It appears that the compression algorithm is overwhelmed, and when it becomes overwhelmed it just stops compressing and writes the raw data to the destination. We later copied internally another Storage vMotion to another compressed LAN and achieved much higher compressions on that internal copy. It would be really nice if there was a way to automatically throttle, as a part of a Storage vMotion, to say, "I want to gain the maximum benefits from the compression algorithm, so throttle back the Storage vMotion to implement 100 percent compression.""
"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)."
"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."
"It needs more functionality and the ability to move across more landscapes."
"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."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the deduplication part, because for large deduplications, you need an extra appliance to do it in order to avoid having problems in performance. I think that could be improved, because everything should be included in the product, not with an appliance from the outside."
"We went to the PowerMax because of the needs that we have for the business. We're doing true enterprise-level storage. So we went from Unity to PowerMax to give us that tier that we were looking for."
"The price of this product can be more cost-effective."
"Native data replication: To replicate data between XtremIO devices, you need to use EMC’s RecoverPoint appliances to move the data."
"It is very expensive to scale. You have to buy an additional system to extend from one disc, for instance. It is scalable, but extremely expensive to do so."
"Sometimes we don't get an immediate response from the support team. The initial POC also took a lot of resources."
"Right now, external appliances are needed to replicate XtremIO to XtremIO, or to another EMC system."
"The management should be improved and the GUI interface could be better and easier."
"In the next release, the solution could have better integration and if we can host assets on the cloud, such as NetApp has the NetApp volumes, which we can host on the cloud directly called NetApp CVO (cloud volume ONTAP). Dell EMC should come up with something purely on the cloud rather than manage services."
"Ease of use is key in the converged and hyper-converged world that requires administrators to have both hypervisor and storage skills."
"If you are looking at flash storage solutions, XtremIO doesn't offer any unique features. Most of my customers are migrating their workload from XtremIO to other formats because of this."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 189 reviews while Dell XtremIO is ranked 26th in All-Flash Storage with 48 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while Dell XtremIO is rated 7.6. 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 Dell XtremIO writes "Suitable for high IOPS and helps get backup in ten minutes ". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, Pure Storage FlashArray and IBM FlashSystem, whereas Dell XtremIO is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell PowerMax NVMe, Pure Storage FlashArray, NetApp AFF and INFINIDAT InfiniBox. See our Dell Unity XT vs. Dell XtremIO report.
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