We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and HPE Nimble Storage based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Dell EMC Unity XT has a slight edge in this comparison due to the higher marks it received for its scaling abilities.
"It has good stability for our company."
"The solution is very reliable."
"This is the best all-flash storage array on the market."
"It allows engineers to focus on other things rather than doing the more manual tasks. It automates tasks, so the ease of use is extreme. It simplifies the storage."
"The most valuable feature is how it simplifies the management of the SAN."
"The ease of use. That's what our customers love. They say it's very easy, they don't need special training, they don't need to call us or any other company or integrator to help them do their job. That's the main reason they purchase Pure."
"It simplifies storage."
"We put a fair amount of stress on it because we run sequel workloads and we run web applications where the same web files are hit over and over. We have had almost zero stability issues with that SAN, that has been really great for us."
"The solution is so easy to manage that I forget it is there."
"The most valuable features are its performance and simplicity."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Dell Unity XT is the GUI, it is very good. End users can manage using it. Additionally, the documentation is of high quality and it integrates well."
"We've never had an issue with storage."
"We have resolved IT challenges with this solution. It sped up our environment. We went from spinning disk to all-flash, which reduced our footprint."
"Compared to older generations of arrays there is quite an improvement, compared to the older VNXs, for example. It depends on you use it, but for our purposes, we find Unity simple to use."
"The product has helpful local technical support."
"This solution has given us reliability that is evident by the fact that it has been running for five years with virtually no hiccups."
"Some of the beneficial features I have found are the Block-level backups, the interface is easy to use, backups work well and the portal is functional."
"The solution is quite scalable."
"The interaction with VMware is most valuable."
"HPE Nimble Storage is quick to release updates that fix bugs or problems and the failover has been good."
"InfoSight provides real-time reporting, it gives you information about your different volumes, how the arrays are being used, I/O, performance in general."
"Deduplication and compression."
"The setup was very, very simple. When we got our AF5000, no kidding, we had it up in production within two hours"
"This product has only two active controllers, whereas other solutions can have more. This is something that needs to improve."
"It was not proactive communication."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution. Right now, you have to click and schedule an appointment with Pure Storage to be able to upgrade. I would love for it to automatically download, install, and fall-over every controller as it updates."
"Beyond a certain amount of petabytes, you have to have a separate system. Basically, it's not infinitely scalable."
"I would like to see the NAS add-on component become more fault-tolerant than just a single virtual machine running inside the array. I'm unwilling to use it for that reason."
"They have a product, FlashBlade, which is their object storage integration, and that's something that we haven't integrated with yet. This might be an area for additional focus as it would play into scalability, because the very nature of object storage is that it's infinitely scalable."
"Self-backup is the only feature lacking in this solution."
"They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth."
"It should be lighter. It takes up a ton of rack space. It would be nice to have a smaller footprint."
"We've got an ongoing issue with a Unity where some power supply fans spin up. We've had a whole bunch of hardware changed as a result but I still have an open SR which has been a struggle. It doesn't seem to affect performance, but it's something that we're hoping the engineers can resolve. Also, we had some issues with an upgrade where we can't manage a device, after the upgrade. So we had to have a ticket in for that."
"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."
"We had some issues recently because of a bug in the system. We were presenting LANs to the Unity array but I think it caused a disruption to the host. EMC did acknowledge it and provided an alternative way to do it."
"We would like to see more advanced integration capability added to this solution."
"The initial setup is not so straightforward if you don't have experience with storage arrays."
"I would like to see them add Storage Groups, like we have had in Clariions and VNXs."
"Scalability for the 650F is good, but I was expecting a little bit more."
"Its pricing could be better. It's expensive."
"The scalability could be better."
"The solution should allow for easier configurations."
"The solution could reduce its price."
"There is a new version of the Nimble and 3PAR systems called Alletra and they have a lot of new features."
"We are doing a hybrid and are moving some machines to Microsoft Azure to run in hybrid mode. We are checking the availability of extra software-defined storage so that we can configure it."
"Scalability, in terms of being able to scale out, is not easy and should be improved."
"An area that needs improvement is extending the life of the device after five years."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 186 reviews while HPE Nimble Storage is ranked 5th in All-Flash Storage with 119 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while HPE Nimble Storage is rated 9.0. 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 HPE Nimble Storage writes "Beneficial management software, straightforward installation, and good support". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, IBM FlashSystem, HPE 3PAR StoreServ and Dell PowerMax NVMe, whereas HPE Nimble Storage is most compared with Dell PowerStore, HPE Primera, VMware vSAN, IBM FlashSystem and NetApp AFF. See our Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Nimble Storage report.
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