Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Dell Unity XT vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform comparison

Sponsored
 

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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Dell Unity XT
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
196
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Hitachi Virtual Storage Pla...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
NAS (4th), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (4th), Frame-Based Disk Arrays (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 6.7%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is 3.3%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
Syed Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient data replication and fast IOPS have improved operational performance
Dell and a partner jointly implemented this solution in Auvink. We installed the Flash, which makes our IO operations fast and efficient. Replication is available, allowing us to replicate data simultaneously from one site to another. All-flash technology and vTXT enhance speed, and the IOPS are faster. The cache's IOPS are much better. Snapshots provide a unique feature for testing and make management more comfortable and easy. The platform is multi-supported and certification is more convenient and easy to manage.
Ozair Amin - PeerSpot reviewer
A robust and dependable product that ensures a 100 percent data availability guarantee
We don't encounter any challenges in selling these Hitachi VSPs to our customers. These products boast an exceptionally robust architecture, making them highly reliable. This reliability is the key reason behind our lack of challenges. However, when we delve into the realm of competition, particularly in the unified storage sector, we do face certain challenges. This is primarily due to the usage of gateways in their storage solutions by some competitors. Unlike other competitors such as NetApp and Huawei, who do not employ gateways, we contend with challenges related to these gateways within the context of unified products. Many customers have been utilizing Hitachi Vantara for several years, relying on its storage capabilities. They appreciate its reliable roadmaps, which facilitate long-term planning. This makes it an effortless choice for customers to opt for Hitachi Vantara, as the product seamlessly accommodates updates and future changes. The key focal point of the Hitachi Vantara roadmap for our clients is centered around future upgrades. Typically, customers undergo tech refresh cycles approximately every five years. Consequently, when they embark on a tech refresh initiative, they tend to prioritize options that facilitate a smooth transition of data to alternative storage solutions. In this context, Hitachi Vantara leverages its external storage virtualization platform to ensure a seamless data migration process. This approach proves to be highly advantageous for our customers, and it stands as a primary reason for their choice to engage with Hitachi Vantara's offerings. Our customers are highly satisfied with their choice to acquire Hitachi products and services. I have not observed any of our customers shifting away from the Hitachi brand. I would recommend Hitachi Vantara 100 percent of the time to others. There are tools that assist us in accessing the IOPS per second and latencies of Hitachi Vantara systems. One such tool is the CPK tool, accessible through the Hitachi Vantara portal. Whenever we configure a product and a customer requests information about the IOPS and latencies, we can provide them with a report from the portal. This report includes details about reads, writes, IOPS, and sequential operations, offering a comprehensive overview of the IOPS performance that Hitachi Vantara offers. The combination of low latency and high performance has consistently assisted customers in improving their production and enhancing their working experience. It also aids them in easily managing the product, giving them time to expand their knowledge and plan for the future, rather than dealing with storage-related issues. The cost comparison of IOPS between our solutions and those of competitors is favorable at present, but this wasn't always the case. In the Pakistani market, Huawei used to be highly competitive. However, our current partnership with Hitachi has allowed us to pose a strong challenge to Huawei. Additionally, when considering products from NetApp, EMC, and even IBM, Hitachi remains highly competitive. Hitachi offers flexible media options to support the consolidation of multiple uses within the same platform which is important to our customers. Most of our customers utilize Unified Storage, employing a two-tier storage approach that includes both NVMe and SSDs. However, current trends indicate a shift in customer preferences towards NVMe over SAAS or SSDs due to the heightened reliability and increased cost-effectiveness of NVMe technology. This transition is driving many customers to adopt a comprehensive NVMe solution. Nonetheless, a substantial number of large customers still adhere to the two-tier storage model. For their primary tier, they employ NVMe drives, while for the secondary tier, they opt for NFS drives or a SAAS-based large-scale service. The integration of various use cases into a unified platform to facilitate the transformation of data into business insights is highly valuable. We receive input from our customers regarding their workloads. Based on the nature of these workloads and their intended use for storage – whether for ERP solutions, archives, or backup purposes – we recommend the appropriate storage type. These steps outline our process for evaluating the intended storage workload. Following this workload assessment, we suggest either NAS Unified Storage or Document Storage solutions. In the portal, there is a tool that enables us to calculate Hitachi's guaranteed effective capacity. It is quite straightforward for customers to comprehend and identify the effective capacity ratio. This is because many customers in Pakistan are already familiar with and using effective capacity ratios. Explaining the concept of effective capacity to customers is not a challenging task. Customers typically appreciate the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform due to its efficiency, easy product manageability, and product reliability, all of which offer significant benefits to the customers. This is crucial, especially in sectors like banking, where any breach or downtime could lead to substantial losses for customers. The uninterrupted operation of storage is paramount. This substantial benefit not only ensures customer satisfaction but also underscores the value derived from data utilization. Hitachi's adaptive data reduction technology assists in decreasing our client's storage footprint by around 50 percent. The majority of our customers were using storage from various vendors. We consolidated this storage into a single system using Hitachi Vantara.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"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."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."
"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."
"The Unity XT box is very strong. It doesn't break. The MTBF time is very large so you don't have to worry about faults or outages in your operations."
"The most valuable feature of Dell Unity XT is the GUI, it is very good. End users can manage using it. Additionally, the documentation is of high quality and it integrates well."
"Unified block and file storage without the need of control stations and data movers. This simplifies administration and deployment and requires less rack space."
"Scheduled components are sourced from Korea based on their quality selection, with the actual purchase taking place in Vietnam. The notable features include cache memories and MOS feeder in Dell Unity. Additionally, the storage dynamics are managed uniformly on a global scale, whether it is a simple or wide-ranging configuration."
"Integration; We use the product with VMware, and also use it with Syft for home directory and departmental shares."
"Because I always need to trouble shooting for IOPS & database (DB) performance issues. I can quickly focus on what is part of the issue. I can decrease downtime and can plan next year's extended capacity budget."
"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."
"This solution is easy to work with and easy to maintain."
"The active data management of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, especially with the HOPS Center, makes it easier to work with the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform infrastructure."
"It is very flexible, and it is very useful when you want to virtualize different storage from different vendors."
"The product has great data storage performance with a 100% data security and availability guarantee."
"The solution is very user-friendly in terms of maintenance and configuration. It's also possible to connect the solution to other storage management solutions."
"The product's reliability has been crucial for our company's operations."
"The first thing that attracted this model to us was the non-disruptive migration. We had a very large database application that was on older gear and needed to be migrated to these arrays. We had experience with virtualizing behind an array and moving applications and data but this made it even better."
"The biggest benefit of the Hitachi platform is 100 percent storage uptime. It's also highly cost-effective."
"This is one of the most reliable and dependable products on the market."
 

Cons

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"Currently, the protocol SNMP is not implemented. That's a problem, as we follow this protocol and I can't check the integrity of this equipment."
"Replication with VMware - it's called the vSphere Metro Storage Cluster - is lacking in the Unity and is present in Compellent."
"We have only used this solution for less than one year so I don't have any improvements suggestions yet."
"It isn't easy to find trusted partners for the product. The solution has issues with mid-level storage and does not come with enterprise storage."
"The user interface could use improvement."
"We are running VMware, and with the VNXe it was possible to restore. We're using Veeam for VMware backups and with the predecessor, it was possible to mount a backup or restore a backup from a storage snapshot. With the Unity 300, this is not possible."
"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."
"The upgrade process needs improvement. I should be able to swap it out, with zero downtime, with another array, down the road. I don't think Dell EMC has anything in the roadmap for this product line. I just don't want to have to deal with that anymore and all of our customers are pretty much the same."
"Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform needs to improve its scalability options where there are a few shortcomings."
"Hitachi should offer a distinct overview of the various storage choices."
"Hitachi should work on unified storage for the SMB market and entry-level NAS storage, similar to what HP or Dell offers."
"The admin tools in the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform definitely have certain shortcomings that require improvement."
"Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's GUI or interface for storage and management is a little bit difficult compared to Primera and HPE storage products."
"The solution is stable. However, there have been some software crashes where we had to restart the system. They could improve the hardware to prevent this type of issue."
"The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform faces challenges when it comes to features like deduplication and compression. Enabling these features can lead to processor overload, resulting in performance degradation, especially under high loads."
"I would like to see Hitachi improve their management software. It's been three years since they introduced Ops Center, their management product, and it still hasn't reached at least 50 percent of the capability we require. We are using legacy software because the product Hitachi offers does not stack up in functionality."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."
"This unit is one of the cheapest storage all-flash arrays in the market and it does well for what it is intended. It can be combined for both file and block storage."
"I liked the price point when we purchased it."
"We checked both HP and Dell and we determined that Dell EMC was a better option."
"One of the most valuable features is its cost. It was inexpensive compared to other arrays that we were looking at."
"I rate Dell Unity XT’s pricing a nine out of ten."
"We bought extended warranties out of the box because our customer has a bad habit of managing warranties."
"While Dell EMC is costly, I don't have any complaints about their licensing model."
"The return on the investment was simply speeding up our entire vSphere stack, which allowed our developers and engineers to get their workloads done faster and simpler. We were experiencing VM snapshot times of 45 minutes to two or three hours, and it shrunk it down to under five minutes."
"Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series tools are highly specialized, such as management and performance tools and the overall solution is expensive. If customers want to have a lot of data in their hands, they need to purchase several solutions."
"Considering the solution's price, it is very competitive compared to the other competitors in the market. I rate the product price a nine out of ten."
"It is expensive. Everything is included in the license. There is no additional cost."
"The pricing we get is very competitive when compared to other vendors. Hitachi is working on their licensing model and it is improving but can be irksome when many different items are not bundled or enterprise size."
"This solution is cheaper than Dell EMC VMAX. When you are looking for a high-end solution, price matters, but availability and stability are more important than the price."
"In our company, we only pay towards the licensing charges associated with Forcepoint, as Hitachi is considered to be a third-party product for us."
"Architecture-wise, it's actually at a competitive price point. It is not cheap."
"I give the price of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform a nine out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
41%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
4%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

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?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform?
For NVMe storage, the pricing is reasonable compared to competitors in India. However, for entry-level SAN storage or...
What do you like most about Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E990?
The product's reliability has been crucial for our company's operations.
What needs improvement with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E990?
The interface management and monitoring need improvement. Although I receive emails from Hitachi Virtual Storage Plat...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series, 5000 Series, E Series, N Series, G Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Turkcell, Owens Corning, Region Nord, Net Credit Financial Group (NFC Group), Russian Railways
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.