We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays 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."We have tons of capacity on it."
"I like its speed. It has all the features that I need."
"We're getting good performance, and the compression ratio is also very good in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"This solution is very scalable."
"The deduplication and compression meet all of our system requirements."
"This is the best all-flash storage array on the market."
"The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"The compression and deduplication features help to make the best use of the capacity."
"We are happy with the way we have Dell EMC Unity XT configured."
"It has the same operating system for both file and block, and it actually simplifies everything. And it's much smaller compared to VNX."
"Setup is simple."
"It has reduced complexity."
"The ease of management and “user-friendly” management environment (GUI)."
"It is easy to manage. A lot of the system manages itself."
"It is scalable. Customers are going more into distributed architecture, so the Unity definitely has a scalable architecture built into that."
"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."
"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Some of the valuable features include MetroCluster switchover, in terms of disaster recovery, it is easy to use, and flexible."
"The hardware and software of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are easy for us to use."
"Rapid deployment, easy integration management and cloning of areas."
"The speed is the most valuable feature."
"I like the performance aspect of EF Series. It basically provides everything that we are looking for as a solution, very low latency and very high performance."
"We do a lot of in-house, application-dependent type things, where we find the different niches to the different things. Certain things they do better. We've found that it actually does very well on some of our higher-end applications."
"The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our data bases."
"Most of our upgrades have not been as smooth as they should have been."
"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 some cases, we get into very in-depth conversations around movement of specific data and, what's more, chunk sizes. The documentation lacked any description or information on that."
"The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features."
"I would like to see them lower the costs."
"There's always an opportunity for new feature functionality."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better."
"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."
"I don't know where the hybrid cloud might be going or what connectivity there is between what was recently released as far as AWS and being able to manage both of them. Maybe there is an on-prem and an AWS instance in the same window, like a single pane, but I would like to see something along those lines, where there wouldn't be two locations to manage storage."
"It needs more functionality and the ability to move across more landscapes."
"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."
"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."
"Issues with slow responses from the support team."
"One area of improvement is replication. We are also using Oracle virtual machines, and when you are using systems from other vendors, the process of replicating from Unity through OLVM is more laborious than when we were using VPLEX."
"Support Responsiveness & time to fix bugs should be improved."
"I have a problem because between the Unity XT and the PowerMax, sometimes we need another product between these two products. There could be better integrated and the capacity of the size could be larger."
"Better integration with other brands is important so we would like to see it easier to integrate."
"A little more manageability, a simpler management interface. It's not necessarily that it's way overly complex. It's just that it's not as easy as the FAS series."
"This solution does not have any compression or deduplication."
"They could improve overall scalability through performance. Denser capacity, which is doable, it is what the competition is doing."
"The only major drawback is the replication between EF-Series units."
"Things like the FlexClones, SnapVault, SnapMirror, all of that. Some of it's available on the EF series, but we like what we have in the FAS system."
"The pricing could be cheaper and it should have documentation in more languages, specifically, Russian."
"I would like to see higher-capacity drives, as they come out; I have heard that 15 TB are out on a different NetApp series. Getting those on the EFs would be nice."
More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Pricing and Cost Advice →
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 186 reviews while NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is ranked 23rd in All-Flash Storage with 38 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays 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 NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays writes "A storage solution that offers great stability, resilience, and support". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is most compared with NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Huawei OceanStor Dorado and HPE Primera. See our Dell Unity XT vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report.
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