We performed a comparison between Dell Unity XT and IBM FlashSystem 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 system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"It's unified, it does block and file, so that is pretty important to my customers who might have file servers around their environment. I can roll them all up into a single array, as well as provide block storage for them on one array."
"We have simplified it down to where we're using one storage pool inside the Unity, whereas on the VNX, we had multiple storage pools. This has simplified that aspect for us. It would depend on each organization. We're heavy into VMware and this ties into it so simply. It's made it a lot easier for us. I create a datastore inside Unity, it just shows up in VMware. I love that tie-in."
"It is completely reliable. The plugins for it are quite mature. I don't really have any issues with the interactions with vSphere, they all work as intended."
"For our customers, it's the simplicity of it. They find it easy to use, along with the added features, the dynamic volumes."
"Real Unified Storage (Block, File, VVols) in a unique 2U hardware."
"It's very reliable. I have not had an issue with Dell EMC Unity."
"The most valuable feature is the fast cache with functionality rewrite."
"In the hybrid version, I would say they are fast. They have fully automated storage tiering. In the all-flash version, higher performance, compression, data replication."
"The most valuable features in IBM FlashSystem are IOPS, performance, duplication, and compression."
"The Flash core models offer amazing performance."
"The storage system is one of the best in the world."
"This solution is very stable."
"When it comes to the interface of the solution we did not encounter any challenges. Additionally, the solution has good documentation."
"The initial setup is straightforward and can be done in an hour and a half by one person."
"The ability to create LUNs and modify them are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The most valuable features were the performance of the array, i.e., very low latency and high IOPS. Plus, the management interface is very easy to use."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"We need better data deduplication."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"The software layer has to improve."
"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"It is on the expensive side."
"It's very frustrating that it's not backward-compatible with the previous platforms, so it's a struggle for a lot of our customers."
"It could always use native replication. Then I could get rid of RecoverPoint."
"We've also encountered an issue when it comes to migrating to compressed LANs on the Unity, and during the Storage vMotion. It appears that the compression algorithm is overwhelmed, and when it becomes overwhelmed it just stops compressing and writes the raw data to the destination. We later copied internally another Storage vMotion to another compressed LAN and achieved much higher compressions on that internal copy. It would be really nice if there was a way to automatically throttle, as a part of a Storage vMotion, to say, "I want to gain the maximum benefits from the compression algorithm, so throttle back the Storage vMotion to implement 100 percent compression.""
"We would like to see more advanced integration capability added to this solution."
"I would like to see them add Storage Groups, like we have had in Clariions and VNXs."
"It would be nice to have been able to easily move off our old VNX system to this system. The process is very manual."
"It should be lighter. It takes up a ton of rack space. It would be nice to have a smaller footprint."
"Software updates have to be downloaded to the root of the device. This pushes the available space to 95% utilization."
"I would like to have a larger disk. Right now, you can get 57 terabytes in a shelf. Once they get the larger disk and you get larger capacities, it'll be even better."
"In IBM FlashSystem, data reduction is an area with shortcomings where improvements can be made in the future."
"Our customers have raised concerns about the limitations of the FlashSystem 5200 and 7300, which only offer a 32-gigabyte connection."
"There could be some extra features added."
"It is slightly more expensive, however, it all depends on your supplier."
"The solution is not easy to use and could improve."
"The support could improve by allowing you to speak to someone when you call rather than them calling you back. However, once we do have contact with one of their technicians they are excellent."
"The solution is not easy to implement. It takes a lot of time to study the product and it's a little complicated in general."
Dell Unity XT is ranked 4th in All-Flash Storage with 190 reviews while IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 106 reviews. Dell Unity XT is rated 8.4, while IBM FlashSystem 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 IBM FlashSystem writes "An easy GUI and simple provisioning but our model does not support compression". Dell Unity XT is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, Pure Storage FlashArray and HPE 3PAR StoreServ, whereas IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, NetApp AFF, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and Huawei OceanStor Dorado. See our Dell Unity XT vs. IBM FlashSystem report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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As with any engineered solution, it depends on your needs.
However, the bottom line is that for their target markets Dell EMC Unity will generally have a better price at parity performance over IBM's FlashSystem.
Both are focused on All-Flash arrays and Dell EMC Unity is where I start with VMWare. If I have a dedicated IBM DB2 application, I would lean toward the IBM FlashSystem.
The problem in the VMWare environment is that IBM has done a poor job prioritizing this area and has several I/O bottlenecks and interface driver issues. I expect future resolution, but does that happen before current platforms evolve?
Depends what you're expecting. Full compatibility with VMware environment - DellEMC only, IBM FS has problems with iSCSI connections to vsphere 7.02 - it's not supported (FS5200 and vsphere 7.02 server with Intel cards - doesn't work fast (10Gbe - 300MB/s instead of 1,1-1,2 GB/s), no solution for now from IBM and VMware (08/2021). Integration - DellEMC and VMware are one company - everything goes smoothly. Space reclamation didn't work well on IBM systems when connected to vsphere (vsphere 6.5 and V7000 models). When using Microsoft virtualization - no difference - it's more complex to start system but when properly configured - it runs well (fast). But of both of them I would choose HPE systems,:-) (Nimble or Primera):-)