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."The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the all-flash storage performance, low latency, and efficiency of their de-duplication technology. Additionally, the ease of use is good compared to other storage systems. The features in data protection, snapshotting, and replication between data centers and sites are superior to other solutions."
"It helps to simplify storage. For most of our customers, when they move to Pure Storage, storage becomes an afterthought."
"Because we were able to afford to go all flash, we don't manage the tiers, we're not moving data up, and we're not waiting for overnight cycles."
"The top-tier support and reliable storage are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is its high stability level."
"FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."
"Data deduplication is one feature I found to be the most valuable in the tool...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It upgrades in place which means we'll be using it well into the future."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"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 provides a combination of all the protocols that you need, without losing deduplication and compression."
"High performance and ease-of-management are the most valuable features."
"EasyTier/hotcaching: Valuable because it allows greater performance than standard SAS disks"
"It performed great originally, and when it performed great, it was awesome."
"It has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the amount of disks needed for the virtual environment."
"Their support cases are all handed through the portal. The support contacts me when they need to do upgrades. It has been great. It's all very well-handled, scheduled, and performed."
"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."
"Using this solution has meant that I do not need to look for different partners to provide me with solutions like a backup service. Dell provides end to end solutions."
"Veeam Backup integration: Veeam is the defacto standard for backing up of virtual environments."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is the unified storage. Also, its capabilities for block-access, file access, and the center box."
"The technical support is very professional and provides quick responses."
"A lot of the Unisphere interfaces are greatly improved in terms of monitoring capabilities, alerting, and ease of use. Setting up the storage and the file system are all just a few clicks away."
"I like that when you log in it gives you a dashboard of what your storage looks like."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"It goes at about 95 percent, so we have had some performance issues. It is hard to clear them."
"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."
"The one major gripe I have is that there is no snapshotting enabled by default on the SAN."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve in the area of cryptographic information in the consoles. The user-friendliness could improve. The Pure Storage FlashArray team should come and log into the system with their maintenance credentials and then pull out the information as evidence of cryptography."
"I would like to see them lower the costs."
"We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform. The idea is that they would run a basic NFS or CIF share from the controllers. FlashBlade is the powerhouse for File and Object storage, but if you don't need all that power, a lightweight file function would make FlashArrays more versatile."
"A year ago they promised that they would be able to read through the database encryption with more metric and they have not delivered on that patch, which is significant because it gives us back so much more storage room. We want to be able to read through the encryption."
"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."
"It only keeps one hour of real-time data without the ability to do deep analysis of each element."
"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."
"Snapshots are not as easy to access as on a NetApp device."
"It's somewhat scalable, but maybe not so much as some of the competition."
"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."
"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."
"Scalability for the 650F is good, but I was expecting a little bit more."
"We have had some downtime. Nothing is perfect. Unity’s have had some code-release problems, versions that, from a compatibility perspective, had some glitches which caused an outage. But, given the amount of Unity’s we run, that has been fairly minor and it hasn't happened at scale or across all of our Unity’s."
"They should have more wizards for customers so they can do more of the self-service types of functions, in terms of upgrades and patching, although it's pretty easy right now."
"The support portal needs fixing. Accessing a service request on the support portal seems to be a bit difficult, as opposed to just calling the 800 number."
"The NAS capabilities of Unity - I have to say there are a lot of things I miss. For example, deduplication for hybrid. I have tons of customers with VNX and dedupe. These customers achieve around 50% dedupe efficiency and they mostly use them for archive. If you're talking about 50TB of NAS, which is stored in a 25TB repository, which is very economical, and you can not provide that in a Unity hybrid box, you have problems."
"The interface can be a little challenging for someone new."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say its capacity and its connection."
"Having more artificial intelligence tools built into the solution would be a great benefit. This would allow us to see more about the workloads and higher visibility, such as performance degradation."
Earn 20 points
DDN IntelliFlash is ranked 29th in All-Flash Storage with 11 reviews while Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 186 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 VAST Data, NetApp AFF and Tintri VMstore, whereas Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and HPE 3PAR StoreServ.
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