Dell Unity XT Unified Storage vs. NetApp AFF A-Series

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Score 9.4 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 AFF A-Series
Score 9.6 out of 10
N/A
NetApp AFF A-Series All Flash Arrays are the company's flagship flash storage solutions.N/A
Pricing
Dell Unity XT Unified StorageNetApp AFF A-Series
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Dell Unity XT Unified StorageNetApp AFF A-Series
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 AFF A-Series
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 AFF A-Series

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Dell Unity XT Unified StorageNetApp AFF A-Series
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 AFF A-Series
9.4
6 Ratings
3% above category average
Flash Array Performance9.413 Ratings9.76 Ratings
Flash Array Integration9.413 Ratings9.75 Ratings
Data Compression9.712 Ratings9.65 Ratings
Non-Intrusive Upgrades8.715 Ratings9.65 Ratings
Simplicity9.015 Ratings9.16 Ratings
Power Savings9.514 Ratings9.15 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Dell Unity XT Unified StorageNetApp AFF A-Series
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 9.2 out of 10
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Dell VMAX
Dell VMAX
Score 9.7 out of 10
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Dell Unity XT Unified StorageNetApp AFF A-Series
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(20 ratings)
9.7
(7 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Dell Unity XT Unified StorageNetApp AFF A-Series
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
Easy interface and the accessibility of the features are effective and this solution functionalities on data migration and processing of different from other packages is amazing. NetApp AFF A-Series All Flash Arrays is the most secure platform for easy management of all the business and project data and the capacity planning tools and even the configuration options are the best and easy to use.
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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
  • Protective multiple project and business data is excellent.
  • Solutions for data storage and data migration.
  • Providing useful and quality data reports is effective.
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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
  • Cost is still prohibitive for performance.
  • Performance tuning at the Fabric Interconnect level.
  • Automation and scripting improvements in the PowerShell module.
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Usability
Dell Technologies
Very cumbersome compared to other vendors in the same marketplace.
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NetApp
No answers on this topic
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 been an IBM and EMC storage customer. I used EMC CX and VMX series SANs. I have used IBM Shark SANs before that. Much has changed over the years. It is my experience that Netapp has shown a great deal more innovation with large leaps in technology, ease of use and an aggressive progress while the two other vendors that I have experience with are more tied to their legacy technologies.
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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
  • ROI has been tremendous as it has come in handy in all the scenarios we were looking at
  • Users and admins both happy with the overall performance and management is happy that they got a good deal from reseller.
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ScreenShots