We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays 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 Storage FlashArray has significantly improved our data center performance. It handles high workloads efficiently, providing better performance in the environment. With increased storage capacity, it has led to improved overall system performance. The tool's technology is a standout feature. It has helped me reduce storage costs by 15 percent."
"It upgrades in place which means we'll be using it well into the future."
"The job of support for the storage engineers dramatically changed. We know more quickly the automation of the provisioning. We can now focus on things that bring more value to the company than just managing storage."
"The most valuable feature is test performance. It helps us store large amounts of data along with providing us faster retrieval of data."
"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both."
"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."
"Most of the problems that we had in the past with the performance in IOPS have disappeared. It has been a great improvement for our customers' services."
"It has made working with storage as easy and simple as it should be."
"The hardware itself, it differs from Compellent and differs from the VNX before it. It doesn't have a separate file harbor that goes with it, there are no separate NAS heads. It's 2U, you have file and block storage, so you get a quite a lot of services for a small footprint."
"It can be simple to deploy, the standup time is quite quick. The interface is quite quick. The terms are simple, intuitive, it's similar what was there in the VNXE before it. It's very simple to navigate and administer from the console."
"It's easy for us to use because we use other solutions which are built for Unity, like VMware, which are recovery points. They work with the Dell EMC Unity system, as these products integrate well in our environment."
"It’s helped with the overall stability of our VMware environment."
"It has saved us time when provisioning new storage, so we're trying to automate that process."
"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."
"We have integrated it with vSphere and SQL. There were no costs involved outside of our normal workload licensing, no costs that were specific to the Unity platform."
"It is nice the way ESRS works with remote support, being able to remote in and take a look at problems proactively."
"It provides multi-protocol, which is what gives the edge when it comes to big lineage PC workloads."
"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our data bases."
"This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs."
"Its performance is most valuable. This solution is much faster than other as well as older storage solutions. The performance of the system is very good. We are getting 50 times better experience than the older storages. We are using AFF 300. It also has native cloud integration and most of the features."
"Some of the valuable features include MetroCluster switchover, in terms of disaster recovery, it is easy to use, and flexible."
"The stability, speed, and reliability are the solution's best features. The information is also very secure."
"The solution allows us to segregate one storage unit from another."
"I would rate this solution an eight. There's always room for improvement, nobody is perfect to get a ten out of ten. They do what they do well. It's not cheap but we it's for uses that we needed."
"It needs to improve its price."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see automated copy data management for SQL Server."
"The support for NFS protocols right out-of-the-box need improvement. I'm used to other storage vendors who have NFS support right out-of-the-box, and Pure Storage doesn't seem to have anything."
"Having something native in the Pure Storage ecosystem would make it integrated and in one single company, and we wouldn't have to work with multiple organizations."
"I would like to see support for NVMe, end-to-end."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"I would like to migrate to the cloud in the future and know how that would actually work with this product."
"I would like to see more compression and deduplication added to the solution. Today, our compression is about 2:1 and other solutions give us about 4:1 or 5:1."
"I rate the scalability of Dell Unity XT a nine out of ten."
"Thick provisioning of LUNs."
"Software updates have to be downloaded to the root of the device. This pushes the available space to 95% utilization."
"This product has some scalability issues. Before you can get support, you have to look for the service tag number on your product which could make it difficult to access support."
"Replication with VMware - it's called the vSphere Metro Storage Cluster - is lacking in the Unity and is present in Compellent."
"Dell Unity XT could add a unit-to-unit replication. We haven't seen that because we don't have an additional one to test. However, it is not an improvement, but something that we would like to have visibility on how it's done or how it works."
"We would like to see more advanced integration capability added to this solution."
"The only major drawback is the replication between EF-Series units."
"There could be an improvement when it comes to SLA support, it could be faster."
"We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily."
"The solution's technical support is not as good as it is supposed to be since you have to push them to get support."
"There could be better integration with some of our Cisco products."
"The dashboard could be simplified."
"We need a center related to NetApp in Egypt so that we can deal with them directly."
"I would like to have the ability to replicate data between All Flash and other NetApp storage systems."
More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Pricing and Cost Advice →
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 186 reviews while NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is ranked 23rd in All-Flash Storage with 38 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays 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 NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays writes "A storage solution that offers great stability, resilience, and support". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is most compared with NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Huawei OceanStor Dorado and HPE Primera. See our Dell Unity XT vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report.
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