We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) 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."The back-end data reporting for Pure Storage is phenomenal. The data that you can see on the performance of your customers' array, so you can be proactive about upgrades or enhancements, and is a phenomenal tool to have access to as a partner. I haven't seen this type of stuff out of anything of the other storage systems."
"The stability of Pure Storage is very very good."
"It simplifies storage."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the replication of data and the continuous snapshot that we can take from the disc."
"One of the lesser sung advantages was when we started running our interface engine on Pure Storage. The ability to process messages and pass them through in our organization skyrocketed purely because of a disk that I owned which we were getting out of Pure Storage."
"The tool is simple and easy to use. It has neat features like protection from device removal. Moreover, you can undo the deletes. The solution is easy to work with and not as complicated as CAC"
"Their REST API is wonderful, well-documented, and easy to use."
"The valuable features of Unity include that it's flexible, has a friendly user-interface, and provides good performance."
"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."
"We just recently started using the Dynamic Pools, so while it's scalable, we actually find it valuable that we can just pop in one or two drives when we need to, instead of having to add a whole RAID set. That has actually been very handy for us."
"The high availability of Dell EMC Unity XT has been the most important feature."
"We run about 100 virtual servers on it. We have about 100 users accessing the file shares from there, and I've seen no problem with that. We have about a 10GB backbone. Whatever we throw at it, it hasn't shown any sign of weakness or anything. It's been really good."
"It has good performance."
"Compared to our old platform, everything is more tightly integrated. I don't have to go to different sections to do something. A lot of it is wizard-driven, so it's an easy to use system."
"With all-flash it should be able to scale. You probably just need one 4U device and you have terabytes of space."
"The technology of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is the most valuable feature. You don't need multiple screens to manage."
"A lot of features are there, but for us, on the server administration side, creating a clone of the VM is valuable because many times, we have to deploy security patches. For deploying these patches, it helps to have a clone so that if something goes wrong, we can discard that VM and put back the clone VM. That is a very cool feature."
"The cloud features in-site offering, which I found to be very interesting."
"Ability to create multiple VMs."
"The administration console, automation, and the first cluster are all valuable features."
"The interface is very good. Before we used this solution, we had separate storage and switches, but with the hyper convert, it's all in one."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS has very good stability."
"The solution is easy to use and the pricing is affordable."
"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."
"We would like to see better troubleshooting aspects. It helps us if we can find out where the problem is. Right now, it's difficult. Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint the issue. If they had more visibility and more troubleshooting feature built into the tool that would really help."
"It was a little costly. The price was ultimately higher than both of the other solutions that we evaluated. I'd say that's the only downside."
"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."
"Beyond a certain amount of petabytes, you have to have a separate system. Basically, it's not infinitely scalable."
"I can't see where they can make anything better, unless, of course, they lower their prices even more."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve some aspects. There are certain features that are good and there are some features that I see some issues with at the technical level. Those issues are related to replication. They need to resolve those issues, which I have already highlighted to the Pure team. Additionally, there are some issues in the active cluster that could improve."
"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."
"A customer had to buy VMX because Unity didn't have WORM."
"The support team is well-versed in the AMG solution, having received comprehensive training. They also boast strong partnerships in both VNAM and Korea. The system's user-friendliness is a primary consideration in their choice of solution, emphasizing the importance of service. They place a strong emphasis on service, occasionally requiring approvals. However, with full installations, they have achieved almost uniformity. Their storage approach differs from a consolidated business-based model; instead, it is application-centric. Their investment in solutions is geared towards specific needs, such as the banking or information system, acquiring smaller storage units individually."
"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)."
"In the dashboard there could be notification of duplicate files and the like, so we don't have to rely on Windows to do that."
"This product needs to have better integration with enterprise backup solutions and archiving devices."
"More integration with VMware would always be helpful, plugins that go directly into the vSphere management. A single pane of glass is always beneficial."
"It could be a little easier to attach it to a network file system."
"Firmware Upgrades in EMC Unity require you to manually download OS and Drive firmware, this should be integrated (Nimble does this). When you order an EMC Unity, you have to specify the block size. This is weird for me and even weirder that you cannot change this afterwards, you should be able to specify per LUN/datastore (Nimble does this as well)."
"USB dongle-based licenses do not allow us to directly locate the USB ports on Nutanix."
"Our client had some old Citrix Xen servers for which there is no direct migration. Nutanix has a move utility for Microsoft Hyper-V clusters or VMware clusters. You can easily migrate them using the move utility, but the Xen clusters cannot be migrated in a simple way. That is the only thing that is lacking, but nowadays, no one uses the Citrix Xen server for their clusters. Everything else is already there. Nutanix keeps on upgrading its hardware's or hypervisor's capability to be able to support new technologies."
"The licensing cost could be lower."
"I would like to see official compatibility with Red Hat in the future."
"Nutanix can be a bit complex to understand."
"I feel like the flow chart and the automated processes have some room for improvement. They're nearly there, and the rest is fine. They've improved a lot over the past few years."
"I would enjoy an advanced mode where experienced users can leverage their knowledge to do advanced things currently only allowed using the command line tools on the CVM."
"It is a CentOS-based operating system, but CentOS releases security patches almost every week or every other week. However, Nutanix releases their upgrade at three or four month intervals. According to my organization's SLA, if a critical patch is released during that time, then I need to implement the patches within 30 days. If it is a standard patch, then I need to patch it within 60 days. Since that is my SLA, I cannot meet my SLA for security because Nutanix will not release the upgrade within these 30 days. Between the critical patch release and the Nutanix release, my customers say they are vulnerable and I am accepting the risk while the SLA is breached."
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Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 186 reviews while Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 2nd in HCI with 194 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) 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 Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "A powerful solution with easy deployment, upgrades, and management". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, HPE SimpliVity, VMware vSphere and Hyper-V. See our Dell Unity XT vs. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) report.
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