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Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.8
Users praise Pure FlashArray X NVMe's responsive customer support despite occasional delays in engineer access and spare parts.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dell's support is responsive and knowledgeable, but some users face delays and suggest improvements, especially for new systems.
Sentiment score
6.4
Dell Unity XT customer service experiences vary, showing strengths in support but inconsistencies in response time and expertise access.
Rather than Pure just saying it's Cisco's problem, call Cisco, they actually got on with a TAC engineer and talked us through it.
The guys in South Africa, and they're very, very good.
What I like about Pure Storage technical support is that when you enter a request, you immediately get a response.
If it's a serious issue, they respond in four hours.
With regard to post-deployment support, if we have any needs and call them, they respond within minutes.
I got an email within 15 minutes saying 'you had an unexpected node failure, and do you need help?'
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
5.2
FlashArray X NVMe needs pricing, deduplication, UI, replication, and security improvements, plus SMB options and enhanced cloud offerings.
Sentiment score
4.5
Dell PowerStore needs improved features, stability, and integration, with enhanced analytics, user-friendliness, security, and cost-efficiency.
Sentiment score
3.9
Dell Unity XT needs improved deduplication, management flexibility, integration, pricing, scalability, user interface, and data replication capabilities.
I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center.
We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency.
We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC.
Overall, they need to make the system stable.
If a customer finds out SSD is not supported, they will look for another option.
If you want to delve into where your I/Os are going, the reporting might need more in-depth information to make informed decisions.
The pricing is a bit higher than expected.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Pure FlashArray X NVMe excels in scalable workload handling, praised for simplicity and adaptability despite customization and cost limits.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dell PowerStore provides scalable, flexible storage options, allowing efficient growth despite NVMe costs, with generally satisfied users.
Sentiment score
7.3
Dell Unity XT is scalable and modular, easily accommodating hardware upgrades and diverse workloads with minimal concerns.
We also have an X90R2 with two petabytes of NVMe in it which fits in about six rack units of space.
We are able to push the X70 way past our current needs from a throughput and IOPS perspective – without any degradation on latency.
We have also performed storage and controller upgrades live with zero downtime.
The magic is that we could do that with the data in place, inside the frame, keeping the drive.
The design for scalability of the solution is perfect.
The most valuable features of PowerStore are its scale up and scale out.
 

Setup Cost

Sentiment score
7.8
Pure FlashArray X NVMe's pricing, though high, is seen as a cost-effective investment with competitive and reasonable annual support fees.
Sentiment score
6.1
Dell PowerStore's pricing is high but competitive, justified by features and performance, though flexibility could improve for larger setups.
Sentiment score
5.9
Dell Unity XT offers competitive pricing, essential features, and cost-effectiveness with additional warranty and maintenance expenses to consider.
While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.
The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.
We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees.
Dell is right there in the mix as far as providing the best price point, as well as meeting the performance requirements that we have.
There are a lot of solutions similar to PowerStore in regards to networking capacity and their prices are very cheap compared to PowerStore.
Likely the cost is $400,000 whereas IBM may be $250,000.
It is priced at around or under $50,000.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Pure FlashArray X NVMe is highly reliable, offering excellent performance and support, with most users rating stability 9-10.
Sentiment score
8.0
Dell PowerStore is praised for its stability, reliable performance, effective failover management, and quick resolution of occasional software issues.
Sentiment score
9.3
Dell Unity XT boasts high stability with reliable performance, easy upgrades, effective support, and minimal issues, earning high user satisfaction.
We have gone through multiple software upgrades, as well as completely non-disruptive hardware upgrades.
During the eight years, there have been no problems such as hardware failure or stopping.
There was one minor issue when the M70s were first released – but they have been 100% stable since.
We have not even had to call support since putting it into production.
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
I would rate the stability of Dell PowerStore a ten out of ten.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
8.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers high performance, ease of use, and efficiency, with robust support and VMware integration.
Sentiment score
8.3
Dell PowerStore delivers high performance, flexibility, and efficiency with seamless VMware integration and intelligent management for enterprise needs.
Sentiment score
8.2
Dell Unity XT excels in stability, speed, simplicity, scalability, and offers user-friendly management with great performance and storage features.
Going from a legacy vendor to Pure Storage, we saw reductions in MRP reports previously running at six hours going to 30 minutes.
The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance.
The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use.
One of the main characteristics of PowerStore is that it is like another piece of VMware, so you can run applications on top, applications that have direct access to the storage.
Dell's built-in intelligence is the best because it can also calculate how much data is needed for storage beforehand and if you need to add more drives or anything.
Another important feature is the power of this frame. It's very powerful. We have almost less than a millisecond of response time, all the time, even during backup windows.
It helps with data cost management and is seen as a mid-range product with good performance.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (7th)
Dell PowerStore
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (4th), NAS (2nd), Enterprise SAN (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
Dell Unity XT
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
193
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerStore is 18.3%, up from 15.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 10.4%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Paul Pearson - PeerSpot reviewer
Works well, is easy to implement, and has upgrade analysis capabilities
We love the product. Pure Storage works really well. The CAT tool and also the ability to upgrade the unit's place grades are great. It allows for in-place control or upgrades. It's a very simple implementation. They have a good tool to analyze upgrades. The stability is good. Technical support has been excellent.
Ken Boyer - PeerSpot reviewer
Reduces the footprint, is easy to use, and can handle heavy workloads
The systems I currently have in place are old, and their support is running out. They're at the end of their life cycle. One of the key improvements that PowerStore is going to bring is that it will enable me to shrink the physical footprint. I'll be going from 5 physical HP arrays, which are about 12 racks in size, down to 4 PowerStores, which can fit on one rack. As a result, I'll be able to shrink the footprint, save power, cooling, etc. I will also be able to improve the existing performance and longevity of the platform. When we put the PowerStore in for the Oracle database, it was previously on NetApp. The staff wanted to do snapshots but also clone, and then be able to clone from a clone to add it to another system. PowerStore enabled them to do just that. They not only got their performance back to where it needed to be from previously being on the NetApp array but also got some of the feature functions that they require for the application.
Srikanth Purushothaman - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to set up with good data compression technology and useful deduplication
The initial setup is very straightforward. Even upgrading the firmware is very nice. You don't need to shut down. Previously, we used to have a shutdown, and now we hand over to one more processor, upgrade the one processor, and then switch back to this process, and then we'll do the upgrade for the process so there is no downtime. I'd rate the ease of implementation nine out of ten. Since we are holding almost all the data, which are all critical and confidential, the deployment is always on-prem only. It takes a maximum of two to three hours. The solution is almost finalized before ordering. We plan what has to be done, and how many services have to be connected through the HBA. Based on that, the number of fiber ports should have been ordered along with the system. Normally, it comes with two fiber-channel HBA adapters. We used to order with four channels instead of going for a sand switch. We connect three servers directly into process A and process B. Before getting into the server, all the servers should be up and running with the HBA connector with the fiber cable ready. Once we install the server, we will see if the firmware is up-to-date or if it is one month old since the shipment takes at least one or two months before it reaches our hands. If there is any new update, we will check with them to see whether the new firmware is good or if there are any bugs in it. If the support team says there is no bug, it means we will update the firmware and create a pool. If it is a hybrid pool, we'll do a mix and combinations of flash as well as the NSS for the images. For the data, we have only the flash itself, and we use a rate six for the data. Previously, with the regular SaaS drives, we used to have a rate ten; however, with the flash drives, we used to have rate five or rate six only. Normally, in-house inside the rack, we need two people. Otherwise, one engineer itself will do. If it is a flash drive, only one person itself will be enough. If it is three bay drives with 144 TB or 288 TB, then we'll go for one more person to fix inside the rack. Once it is fixed, the installation will be done only by one person. For maintenance, normally, we check the firmware updates within a month, or we check every 30 to 45 days to seek out firmware updates. We provide maintenance to our customers. For other issues, we might call technical support. Most things we can manage.
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Answers from the Community

YC
Sep 20, 2023
Sep 20, 2023
Hello Yasin, The best solution depends upon your host environment. In general, PowerStore is more powerful than Unity but Unity is also a very good Storage solution.
See 2 answers
ST
Sep 19, 2023
The Unity 400 is a rather old, a much less powerfull solution and at its best holds ssd flashdrives if at all. Currently you have the Unity 8xx model, which has more CPU punch and therefore maxes out less fast on CPU utilisation. What this means is that you can add more shelves and disks and workloads to it before you hit the roof.   The powerstore 1200 is an nvme storage, is 60% more powerfull (compared to FC/SCSI-SSD on Unity) in our case, and has higher datareduction rates. If the unity reaches out to a datareduction rate of 1.5 or 2, the Powerstore T1200 is capable of 3 to 3.5 datareduction, probably due to half its blocksize. The price of the device is pretty much dependant on the price of its media, and therefore the Powerstore T1200 is the absolute winner. . Another aspect is that the Powerstore can be used to build a cluster of arrays compared to the sync/asynch replication only feature of the Unity series, rendering the mirrored volumes unuseable unless one fails over to it, like in a disaster recovery scenario. . The Powerstore also allows true A/A volumes on both sides . What this means is that one can build stretched vSphere clusters and the loss of your array in one site will still allow writing to the alternate protected disk, transparently ! You can have site local writes to your volumes and remain in sync without a need to cross site write. . There is not much of a reason to settle for the Unity anymore, though some still prefer the Unity for NAS compared to Powerstore, but honestly speaking I won't recommend to use any of both for that purpose unless for limitted useage. Unity allocates RAM ressources dynamically when used for FC/SCSI AND NAS , whereas the Powerstore is initialized in a kind of split off of RAM ressources between NAS/FC SCSI at installation time. The ressource allocation is fixed and can't be altered lateron.  Thats a hard call. So I'd favour the Unity only if you use it for low/moderate NAS needs in combination with FC/SCSI or block data and you don't have the budget nor the size to use a NAS optimised array on top.
Md. ImranulHoque - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 20, 2023
Hello Yasin,  The best solution depends upon your host environment. In general, PowerStore is more powerful than Unity but Unity is also a very good Storage solution.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
70%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Government
2%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
After implementation, there are limitations, such as the number of paths, file systems, and replication options. It f...
What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated managem...
What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell of...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
I saw that you have doubts about what you chose. I have a lot of experience with the constructor, honestly I can reco...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
They’re both great solutions and I’ve used both. EMC is being VERY aggressive on pricing which may be the undoing of...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
First of all the decision should be taken looking at similar products in terms of capacity and performance. I will sh...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
PowerStore
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Information Not Available
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. Dell Unity XT and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
823,875 professionals have used our research since 2012.