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."It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"Compared to older generations of arrays there is quite an improvement, compared to the older VNXs, for example. It depends on you use it, but for our purposes, we find Unity simple to use."
"We were able to integrate it very quickly with other solutions."
"We use it to implement all our VDI solutions."
"The storage management is superb, with a user-friendly graphical interface and dashboards. The performance is good. The integration, dashboards, and analytics are excellent. It gives me immediate output and quick access to the reports I need promptly. It's an excellent product with high stability. The solution is scalable. The support team is highly supportive, responsive, and efficient in providing solutions. This product is highly useful and well-suited for all types of automation."
"The UI itself is fantastic, and the ease of administration is far better than Unisphere or Navisphere ever were. It's very easy to manage. The fact that it has built-in APIs means our automation people can help us automate a lot of tasks, and that has been helpful. And, of course, it's really fast. Obviously, that doesn't hurt anything at all."
"Dell Unity XT is user-friendly and easy to use."
"The ease of management and “user-friendly” management environment (GUI)."
"The NAS is also extremely easy to set up."
"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem are performance and security."
"The speed and the ease of installation are the most valuable features."
"IBM's technical support do excellent work."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is replication...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The maintenance service and support from IBM is very good."
"The most crucial feature of IBM FlashSystem is compression."
"The installation is nice and easy."
"It's a mature product. It's like a BMW that evolves consistently."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"The software layer has to improve."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"It is on the expensive side."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"We need better data deduplication."
"We have had some downtime. Nothing is perfect. Unity’s have had some code-release problems, versions that, from a compatibility perspective, had some glitches which caused an outage. But, given the amount of Unity’s we run, that has been fairly minor and it hasn't happened at scale or across all of our Unity’s."
"They should have more wizards for customers so they can do more of the self-service types of functions, in terms of upgrades and patching, although it's pretty easy right now."
"The solution can use improvement with the patch cluster like the Synchron and Active replication."
"The iSCSI and the VMware integation using vSphere could be less confusing."
"This solution could be improved by offering containerization. This is something many of my customers are looking for."
"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."
"Improve the interface and provide more management capability."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say its capacity and its connection."
"There could be some extra features added."
"The solution is not easy to use and could improve."
"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."
"Events/log analysis tools."
"The data reduction pool feature sucks and is not recommended for use with heavy workloads."
"Their technical support needs improvement in terms of reachability for the clients and response times. They should be more responsive and have more online platforms for support. They should make more technical information available online. There could be some kind of documentation community."
"The basic setup can be challenging when it comes to certain IP addresses and the configuration of the IP. You have to go in to different menus to makes changes and ensure it is stable."
"The installation is not easy. You need to have extensive knowledge to handle it."
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, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, NetApp AFF 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):-)