Dell Unity XT Unified Storage vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Dell Unity XT hybrid flash arrays are storage systems for running general purpose workloads that do not require the low latencies and speed of all flash/NVMe architectures. Unity XT hybrid flash arrays balance performance, efficiency, features or outcomes.N/A
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
The NetApp® EF-Series is a family of entry-level and midrange all-flash storage arrays that accelerate organizations' access to data and help derive value from it. These systems offer NVMe flash storage and provide more affordable to extreme IOPS, boasting response times under 100 microseconds and bandwidth up to 44GBps.N/A
Pricing
Dell Unity XT Unified StorageNetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Dell Unity XT Unified StorageNetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Dell Unity XT Unified StorageNetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays
Considered Both Products
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Chose Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
From my experience, Dell EMC belongs to the second class of storage arrays due to less popularity and performance compared to "the big heads".
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Dell Unity XT Unified StorageNetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays
Enterprise Flash Array Storage
Comparison of Enterprise Flash Array Storage features of Product A and Product B
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
9.3
15 Ratings
2% above category average
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays
8.9
5 Ratings
2% below category average
Flash Array Performance9.413 Ratings9.35 Ratings
Flash Array Integration9.413 Ratings9.65 Ratings
Data Compression9.712 Ratings9.34 Ratings
Non-Intrusive Upgrades8.815 Ratings8.15 Ratings
Simplicity9.015 Ratings9.45 Ratings
Power Savings9.614 Ratings7.95 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Dell Unity XT Unified StorageNetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 9.3 out of 10
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Dell VMAX
Dell VMAX
Score 9.7 out of 10
Dell VMAX
Dell VMAX
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Dell Unity XT Unified StorageNetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays
Likelihood to Recommend
9.6
(20 ratings)
9.2
(5 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(3 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(6 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Dell Unity XT Unified StorageNetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays
Likelihood to Recommend
Dell Technologies
Dell EMC Unity is an easy system and very flexible component and very easy to navigate while providing effective services and management of multiple project information management and the data pulling from the supported third-party platform is easy and quick. Excellent reporting features and easy to use and the analytics tools are amazing.
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NetApp
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is useful for the application that required high badwidth , IOP's like Video surveillance, analytics (hadoop), online transaction processing applications, fast data backup and restore. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is less appropriate for the application that required low/medium IOP's . i.e log collection application server, snapshot collection ... etc.
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Pros
Dell Technologies
  • Enables you to create multiple copies of any database.
  • Data savings feature with compression.
  • Integrity with VMWare, RHEL, Oracle.
  • The best option is a midrange unified storage array in a customer environment.
  • Some models support NMMe.
  • Copy Data Management (iCDM), Data-At-Rest-Encryption (D@RE).
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NetApp
  • Storage pooling with thin provisioning
  • Solution of MetroCluster in Cluster-Mode known as MCC
  • very good solution for more than 500 users per cluster
  • impressive IOPS, microsecond response times
  • Faster database application
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Cons
Dell Technologies
  • Alerting: receiving an alert when an issue occurs. That is good to know. However, if the alert is cleared, or somehow no longer in alarm, no email is received. At times I will receive the email alert on weekends, not knowing if the issue is resolved or not until Monday when I can access the unit. I have learned in most instances, the alert is a false alarm, which could be a problem.
  • The alerting itself is sometimes not clear. For example, it tells me the link is down, we reset the connection, the link is still down, a tech was dispatched, he troubleshot, and finally the alarm cleared. This incident took almost a week. It went back into alarm after he left, then suddenly it cleared on its own.
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NetApp
  • NetApp EF-Series All Flash Array need to perform the additional configuration for multipathing
  • Experienced are required to manage this storage
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Usability
Dell Technologies
Very cumbersome compared to other vendors in the same marketplace.
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NetApp
HW and SW of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are easy to use, with very good support.
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Support Rating
Dell Technologies
Not only support for Unity, but for any Dell product, whether for companies or for the end consumer. Support is agile, helpful, and always focused on solving the problem. To date, there has been no problem that Dell's support has failed to resolve and help us with.
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NetApp
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Dell Technologies
I was instructed to buy these arrays, but I was not given the opportunity to evaluate other arrays. We evaluated other products in the market that competed with Unity and found that the younger array built from scratch had far better features, software, and ease of use. The Unity system has a unique way of storing the data when compared with other systems.
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NetApp
I have not been able to work with such a great platform in my career experience. Data storage and networking of all databases have been a great achievement of this platform. The user interface is simple and the dashboard shows clear trends in data infrastructure. There are backup storage systems on our cloud servers in case we lose any data. It has an automated update system that keeps our applications up to date.
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Return on Investment
Dell Technologies
  • Less business downtime and reliability is a major business concern. DELL EMC UNITY addresses this concern well and provides robust storage.
  • Investing in UNITY system is less expensive than all-flash storage systems.
  • Managing and provisioning VMware disks became simpler from a single interface in the Vcenter
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NetApp
  • High dedupe ratio
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ScreenShots