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."NVMe data storage platform that's easy to set up and easy to use. It's stable, with a lower response time, and quick technical support."
"The most valuable feature is its speed."
"It's just very easy for general block storage."
"We've had to use tech support on a number of occasions. They did everything remotely and talked us all the way through. They fixed the issue within 30 minutes. Every single time we contact them, they're perfect. I would give their technical support a ten out of ten."
"The stability is very good. I've done destructive testing on it and never had any type of storage outages from it."
"It is easy to manage. You don't have to have the same people who used to manage the Dell EMC arrays because the solution is more intuitive."
"Very efficient storage"
"It has improved my organization because now have lower latency, we get fewer complaints from customers, and we see a constant response time."
"The most valuable feature of Dell Unity XT is data duplication. Additionally, the management interface is simple, and is not a hassle using it. You don't need too much to learn or to be familiarized with it."
"Provides good provisioning, allowing us to save space."
"The benefits are the simplicity, flexibility and the ease of integration between the Unity platform and VMware, for example, and Microsoft platforms; the integration tools and the simplicity of management."
"I like the ease of configuration, the quick setup and the fact that it seems to be hardened. We haven't had any issues with them. In terms of simplicity of ownership, once they're running you don't have to touch them. They're also simple to manage. We came from the VNXe 3200s so it's very similar."
"We currently have two Dell EMC Unities going. One of them at our primary on-premise DR site. They communicate with each other. If we ever have to failover, it is right there and ready."
"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."
"We have Dell EMC engineers helping us out and doing some over the shoulder training. They are working with our customer right now doing data migration over to Unities from the legacy Oracle stuff. While they're doing this, they're showing people how the Unities work and the ins and outs of the software interface."
"We just started doing a bunch of automation where, if an end-user's home directory or departmental share gets filled, I can set certain things through a Unity API so that if it reaches 95 or 98 percent full, it will automatically expand. Now, instead of our getting a ticket and having to go in and do it manually, it does that for us."
"I would say in terms of architecture and in terms of functionality, the product is quite good."
"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."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"If you buy the solution for its specific purpose it will work well."
"Overall performance of the solution."
"The scalability and being able to implement it quickly."
"It is very easy to scale up SolidFire."
"Individual settings you can put on each individual volume, if you want to do that."
"Pure Storage will have issues with positioning in the near future since its a relatively new company. For now, customers need a PoC to trust using the solution, as it can't stand on its brand name alone. They need to improve Pure Storage's marketing."
"There was some complexity in the initial setup."
"Just some nit picky stuff, like allowing servers and volumes to be grouped. Therefore, it would easier to work with them in the GUI."
"I would rate this solution an eight. To make it a ten it would have to be a little cheaper."
"The 3PAR SSD arrays that we have are still failing a lot so even though we're under warranty, we still have to get someone out and usually have someone troubleshoot so that usually adds onto the cost. With Pure, we've had a disc fail and we pop it out and you pop it in and it's good to go."
"I would like to see support for NVMe, end-to-end."
"Beyond a certain amount of petabytes, you have to have a separate system. Basically, it's not infinitely scalable."
"The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."
"They can certainly improve in terms of monitoring."
"Recently, they released products, sometimes without proper testing, it seems."
"Improve the administrative user interface so it is easier to work with. Currently, a simple task, such as removing a host from 100 LUNS, takes a lot of time. If they could improve LUN to host model to be more like the EMC VPLEX, for example, it would be great."
"They should update to the cloud."
"Include cloud-based replication for blocks"
"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."
"Perhaps if they added more 10GB ports to the back of the system, so you have more IOPS out of the box itself to the network, that would help."
"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."
"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."
"The tool should improve its initial cost which is expensive compared to other products."
"The inclusion of more protocols and interfaces would make it easier to integrate with other products."
"SolidFire could improve in terms of hardware robustness."
"The upgrade process could be better."
"So feature-wise, I would say more reporting tools that could be merged into it."
"They could make the mNode more user-friendly. Now you need to configure and add nodes by CLI and it’s not really easy to manage. If they created a web interface to do the management of the mNode, that would be great!."
"You don't have business continuity with SolidFire. I think it could be a nice feature to have in the future."
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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