We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The main difference between the two products is speed. Dell EMC Unity XT users say the speed of the solution should be improved, while NetApp AFF users find the solution’s speed to be impressive.
"Data reduction and compression. Sub millisecond latency."
"The predictive performance analytics are good."
"This is the best all-flash storage array on the market."
"The compression and deduplication features help to make the best use of the capacity."
"It simplifies storage."
"The solution is easy to scale. I'm running two environments right now, so I need to scale. I'm running a part technology. I've got an A-side and a B-side."
"Data deduplication is one feature I found to be the most valuable in the tool...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It upgrades in place which means we'll be using it well into the future."
"It has made deployment, configuration, and maintenance a lot simpler."
"It does great deduplication. From a storage perspective, we save money being able to dedupe right on the disk"
"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."
"We use it to implement all our VDI solutions."
"It is scalable. We can add additional tools if we need to expand it."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with vCenter."
"It has helped us be able to use less administrators per device or system. Therefore,we are more streamlined."
"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."
"Efficient and easily scalable all-flash storage solution, significantly reducing latency, optimizing data management, and providing cost savings for businesses"
"We have SQL clusters across the United States. It has sped up our IOPS and made it a lot easier for users."
"It is stable. In my three years working with the storage, I haven't seen any issues with our NetApp product."
"The most valuable feature, primarily, would be speed. That's why we got it. Storage is costly but it's very, very fast. Very efficient, very fast."
"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression, so we get more out of our storage. The replication is also important."
"The newest version of ONTAP has a bit of a learning curve because you need to learn where things are to find them. It is not impossible, but when you are accustomed to the older version of ONTAP, it just takes a bit getting used to it, but it is about the same as before."
"One of the main features that differentiate AFF from the FAS products, or some other technologies used, is the footprint of these arrays are significantly smaller than the traditional ones. Also, the performance that you get to these new arrays is really significant. You can see a huge difference there. By switching to it, we can achieve more storage performance and efficiency as well as in the long run lower down some of the TCOs due to reducing the footprint."
"With the new version, they have the FabricPool which works for me. I can extend the hyperscaler storage."
"Going forward, don't complicate things for the customers."
"I would like to get a weekly report of how our storage has been used, and if there is any storage sitting there not being used."
"I would like the ability to swap out the network adapters into it. So, without taking out the whole controller, I would like to be able to swap adapters. This would make things easier."
"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."
"Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases."
"I would like to see some improvements on the FlashBlade side around the CIFS space support. I am not super familiar with all the different NAS protocols that they run on their box, but there could be some improvements made on SMB CIFS side."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve in the area of cryptographic information in the consoles. The user-friendliness could improve. The Pure Storage FlashArray team should come and log into the system with their maintenance credentials and then pull out the information as evidence of cryptography."
"It took us a year to get it to stabilize and to get the best out of Pure."
"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."
"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."
"They should update to the cloud."
"Because we can do synchronous replication between the two sites, this made the setup challenging for this piece. They did not know how to set this up initially. We ended up having to do bidirectional synchronous replication."
"It could go faster. Make it bigger, better, and faster at a lower price, and I am there."
"VNX used to have some features that Unity still doesn't have. From that perspective, the progress is not that advanced."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the deduplication part, because for large deduplications, you need an extra appliance to do it in order to avoid having problems in performance. I think that could be improved, because everything should be included in the product, not with an appliance from the outside."
"Having more artificial intelligence tools built into the solution would be a great benefit. This would allow us to see more about the workloads and higher visibility, such as performance degradation."
"They should provide easier integration with multiple systems."
"For ONTAP, in general, the deduplication ratio and Snapshot limitation are areas that need improvement. There is a global limitation on the number of Snapshots or clones that can be spun off of a particular Snapshot. If those limitations are increased, it might be helpful."
"To enhance the already excellent administration, one area for potential improvement could be in terms of integration."
"Higher communication: I love the professional services and I love everything that everyone's able to offer us, but I find sometimes we're not aware of all the things that NetApp can do."
"The scaling needs improvement. NetApp is limited for scaling options."
"It would be helpful if the compatibility matrix was a bit better."
"I don't work on the technical side of things, so it's hard for me to highlight areas of improvement, but maybe the price could be a little better."
"The upgrade process could be a lot quicker, but it's still good as it is. The failovers and things like that are harder than expected."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 186 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while NetApp AFF 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 NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem, HPE 3PAR StoreServ and Dell PowerMax NVMe, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN, NetApp FAS Series and VAST Data. See our Dell Unity XT vs. NetApp AFF report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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I saw that you have doubts about what you chose. I have a lot of experience with the constructor, honestly I can recommend Dell EMC Unity XT All-flash which can guarantee you a ratio of 3:1 signed by Dell and you have to deploy all types of workload from block to file. You can also rely on the native cash and fast cache functionality for increasing application performance
This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended cost is decisively based on the Gartner magic quadrant storage 2020 Net app company and Dell EMC are leaders. But we can say NetApp is First in Queue.
One of the superiority NetApp working on NVMeOF
The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matters more than IOPS for your needs, Netapp AFF is the right choice. You can approach the max. Performance by equipping Unity with SSDs but maybe this costs more. I would recommend Netapp AFF all the time if your budget is ok.
They’re both great solutions and I’ve used both.
EMC is being VERY aggressive on pricing which may be the undoing of NetApp.
Differences are in the user interface mostly, they both do what they are designed to do in different ways.
I say, compare apples to apples on models and get them fighting on price.
You win.
First of all the decision should be taken looking at similar products in terms of capacity and performance.
I will show a few aspects helping the decision, comparing Unity Xt480f and AFF220 (both chosen by distributor to be in the price range for capacity):
1. Comparing 2 systems with the same capacity and performance: pricing is the first to look at:
1a. Cost per GB, war capacity and usable capacity (+Unity)
1b. Cost of adding capacity (+Unity)
1c. Cost of licensing per GB / per added capacity (+Unity all included)
1d. Cost of maintenance after initial contract (+Unity same for all life )
2. Comparison of CPU/MEM, we choose Unity XT because of better CPU cores/frequency and memory per controller
3. Percentage of space lost in various configurations. Our goal was to use Dynamic disk pools, available on Unity. Easier upgrades/downgrades.
4. If virtual volumes are considered, Unity has a VASA provider included in the controller, Netapp is using external VM.
5. Product lifecycle
6. Inline compression / deduplication, performance,
From the above 1=80%, 2=5%, 3=10%, 4+5=5%
We went to Unity XT480 where on the same budget we got 20% more usable flash capacity, while enough slots remain for future upgrades.
My experience was with DELL EMC Unity Hybrid Storage and it was amazing cost-wise. Are you sure you need an All-flash solution?
EMC definitely.