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."Its array houses our entire production environment."
"Lone segmentation is simpler and more agile. It's improved the velocity in overall provisioning from project to operation."
"It comes with a large number of features out-of-the-box, which makes it easy for us to see problems and manage capacity."
"The most valuable feature of the Pure Storage Flash Array is the blazing fast monitoring."
"Access speed and power consumption are most valuable."
"Running SAP on Pure Storage helps a lot without doing any further tuning to improve application performance. Our internal clients are happy."
"The deduplication in the array combined with its snap technologies allows the product to be remotely/manually controlled or scheduled."
"Support has been helpful."
"Replication of the communication object (COB) scenarios"
"The Snapshot feature is key."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with vCenter."
"The replication is big for us. We use file services on Unity and it has a really nice file services interface. It's also easy to manage. It's really easy in terms of provisioning, replication. There are no real tricks to it. It's just easy."
"It is scalable. Customers are going more into distributed architecture, so the Unity definitely has a scalable architecture built into that."
"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."
"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."
"If you buy the solution for its specific purpose it will work well."
"Feature-wise, it is a good solution allowing users to monitor and simplify their networks. The solution also provides its users with flexibility by enabling them to utilize its extensions."
"It's a very compact device. For a medium-sized business, it's very helpful because the device is efficient and very fast."
"The system efficiency is excellent overall."
"It's got full API functionality and the performance is pretty steady."
"We can just buy them, scale them as we need on demand, and we don't have to spend so many front end cycles on designing the architecture."
"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."
"Individual settings you can put on each individual volume, if you want to do that."
"The solution could improve by having a multi-tenant feature."
"The way Pure Storage does the controller storage warranty or replacement has been an issue for some people who just replace the controllers every couple of years, and that's where some of the confusion with pricing and support has come in. They should be clear on the way the controller replacements happen, as it is important to know whether or not you can get a good return on them, because it can be a little confusing."
"Currently, the solution fails to support file screening."
"In the next release I would like to see integration into other third-party player providers like Google."
"The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."
"I would like to have support available in Spanish."
"I think replication is one area that still needs improvement. Earlier, Pure Storage FlashArray only had IP-based replication. There was no API-based replication, but they have enhanced the feature now. However, they need to work on API replication for C-type of arrays."
"In the next release of the solution I would like to see Vormetric native block encryption."
"There is no de-duplication. Unity used to be Bionics, which had de-duplication; however, in Dell Unity XT, the de-duplication was deprecated and is no longer available."
"It is missing some features, like deduplication."
"Software updates have to be downloaded to the root of the device. This pushes the available space to 95% utilization."
"It would be better if there were more integrations."
"I would like them to continue to build on the solution and expand on the functionality, like replication."
"What I'd like to see is a little more detail on the networking side. I can go into where it's showing me the replication, but when I go into the network it just gives me broad-based information. I don't know which replication job is actually feeding it. I have to go in and rely on other apps."
"There is an ESRS problem that we're facing where, for some reason, the other Unity has not been able to register to EMC. The support information is not upgrading and nobody can tell me what is wrong with it. It's a minor issue, the ESRS is still working, but it is something that is very confusing and nobody seems to know what to do about it."
"The biggest one for us, and the reason we don't use it more, is that we can't throttle the replication speed. If it's on, it's on. So we have to be a little more WAN-sensitive, in some applications, which means we can't put it everywhere. That's the biggest issue for us, by far."
"Though it is a stable solution, its users may face some security issues at times...The security provided by the solution is one area that can be improved."
"For example, the ease of use with the reporting. Right now it's not impossible, but you have to know Sequel. It's a little time consuming to get those customized reports in there."
"It's a very good Windows-type solution. But we do a lot of legacy systems and the like. So it's getting that incorporated into it that would help us."
"The upgrade process could be better."
"This solution would be improved if it were made to be more compatible with other products."
"The inclusion of more protocols and interfaces would make it easier to integrate with other products."
"I think there is room for improvement needed with its storage capability. A bigger node is needed."
"We had some false positives, power supplies failing, and that's really been about it. We had a couple of glitches during some upgrade processes but nothing that was really concerning to us."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 186 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, IBM FlashSystem and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas SolidFire is most compared with NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore and VMware vSAN. See our Dell Unity XT vs. SolidFire report.
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