Dell Unity XT vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform comparison

Dell Technologies and Hitachi Vantara are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3, while Hitachi Vantara is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.2. Dell Technologies holds a 7.3% mindshare in AFS, compared to Hitachi Vantara’s 3.2% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Hitachi Vantara users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and Dell Unity XT compete in the enterprise storage solutions market. Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform seems to have the upper hand in terms of overall performance and support, while Dell Unity XT is favored for its robust features and overall value, despite higher costs.

Features: Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is known for its high performance, reliability, and straightforward deployment. Dell Unity XT stands out for its comprehensive features, flexibility, and smooth deployment process, offering an extensive feature set that justifies its higher price.

Room for Improvement: Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform needs better integration capabilities, improved support response times, and enhancements in management capabilities. Dell Unity XT could improve cost-efficiency, enhance management capabilities, and further refine its integration features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform has a straightforward deployment process with good customer service, but with occasional delays in support responses. Dell Unity XT offers a smooth deployment process and robust customer service, which aids in faster issue resolution. Dell Unity XT is slightly ahead in these aspects.

Pricing and ROI: Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is cost-effective with a favorable ROI. Dell Unity XT, while more expensive, provides substantial long-term value, balancing its higher initial costs with a strong ROI. Users believe the features of Dell Unity XT make it worth the investment despite higher setup costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Unity XT vs. Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

April 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 7.3%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is 3.2%, 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

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

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.

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Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

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.

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Ozair Amin

Sales Manager - Infrastructure at Synergy Computers

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."

"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 initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"You can add volume and it's automatically registered in VMware."

"Storage Snapshots have been really nice. They allow us to do backups without impacting our production workload that much. The scalability, the ability to add disks dynamically and adjust our workload as needed, has also been really helpful. That definitely makes my job easier. And the interface for managing Unity is very easy. The integrations between VMware Hypervisor and Dell EMC are top-notch, so it's been really easy to use and manage."

"We use the solution for site recovery manager, DR, and endpoint penetration."

"There has been no downtime. It has built-in redundancy upon redundancy."

"I like that when you log in it gives you a dashboard of what your storage looks like."

"Key features are ease of use, ease of management, ease of deployment, and the GUI is very user-friendly."

"It has compression, which allows you to store more data than you would normally under the arrays."

"The flash aspects of the Unity make it incredibly fast. The fact that you get that much storage directly on what is basically a 3U box to us, that density has been really useful."

More Dell Unity XT pros

"It is robust. It doesn't need too much troubleshooting. It is a good device."

"What I like best about Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series is that it's a fast storage solution. It also has reliable models. The sales support is also good for this product. Even the pricing for it is good."

"The performance was decent."

"In terms of performance and ability, the product can stand up against its competitors since the solution offers two controller systems to users."

"The feature I like best is the stability of the hardware."

"The most valuable feature is that it has 'eight nines' availability, 99.999999 percent of the time. That is the main selling point."

"One of the features, for us, that is important is the monitoring platform integrated into the solution. It has all the elements that we need to see, at all times, to be sure the platform is working right."

"Overall, the solution is strong, easy and fast."

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform pros

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."

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

"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."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."

"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."

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"This solution would be improved with the addition of flexible raid volumes."

"The VNX reporting is much more granular, versus the Unity reporting."

"The support team is well-versed in the AMG solution, having received comprehensive training. They also boast strong partnerships in both VNAM and Korea. The system's user-friendliness is a primary consideration in their choice of solution, emphasizing the importance of service. They place a strong emphasis on service, occasionally requiring approvals. However, with full installations, they have achieved almost uniformity. Their storage approach differs from a consolidated business-based model; instead, it is application-centric. Their investment in solutions is geared towards specific needs, such as the banking or information system, acquiring smaller storage units individually."

"Scalability is not good. We have a Unity 300, now we have to do a data-in-place conversion for the next upgrade because only 150 slots are supported, not drives, only slots."

"We do a lot of VMware. It only integrates with VMware in one way, which is virtual volumes. I don't really have any visibility on anything else. From VMware, I can't look into Unity. From Unity, I can't look into VMware unless I am using virtual volumes, where they integrate together happily, but we are not using that. I would like better integration for non-virtual volume VMware use."

"Ordering is easy, but the processing site and working with those companies was difficult."

"Dell Unity XT could add a unit-to-unit replication. We haven't seen that because we don't have an additional one to test. However, it is not an improvement, but something that we would like to have visibility on how it's done or how it works."

"It is expensive, and the pricing could be better."

More Dell Unity XT cons

"The complex setup, ease of use, and snapshot operations of this product need to be improved."

"This product should be easier to install and set up."

"We moved away from this product because we were looking for an all-flash solution, and with our G1500 at the time, perhaps two years ago, they were just proposing more of the same technology."

"I would like to see an audit account set up such that the user can log in, see the configuration, and see the logs, but they cannot make any changes."

"Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform needs to improve its scalability options where there are a few shortcomings."

"The complex setup phase is an area where improvements are needed."

"One improvement I am hoping for in the next release is unified storage."

"The interface should be simplified and made easier to use."

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"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."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"The product is expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"While it has a good price to start, they could always make it cheaper."

"The price of Dell Unity XT is reasonable. However, if you are buying a custom solution, it can come at a considerable price."

"The price of Dell Unity XT could improve. However, it is a one-time purchase."

"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."

"The flexibility is important. We still have a lot of customers that have a use case for non-flash, yet you can also build the flash version as well."

"It's the performance combined with the gig-per-dollar value. That combination is superior to other storage options."

"Compression is making a difference towards the amount of hardware that we need to purchase."

"It scales, but then you have to buy additional stuff."

More Dell Unity XT pricing and cost advice

"I would rate the solution's pricing at around eight or nine on a scale of one to ten. While the solution may be priced higher than some competitors, we prioritize the quality and durability of the storage."

"It is expensive. Everything is included in the license. There is no additional cost."

"The price per gigabyte is good and it is low when it comes to terabytes."

"Architecture-wise, it's actually at a competitive price point. It is not cheap."

"Hitachi VSP's pricing is good compared to other brands."

"It is cheap. It is not very expensive. If you decide to expand the system, the cost is pretty low as compared to other vendors, such as Dell."

"The costs were primarily in line with every other vendor at the time."

"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."

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Educational Organization

65%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

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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...

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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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E990?

The product's reliability has been crucial for our company's operations.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 31% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 18% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 38% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 5% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs Dell Unity XT

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell Unity XT Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 14% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 12% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 4% of the time

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

May 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT

May 2025

Download Dell Unity XT product report

Buyer's Guide

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

May 2025

Download Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform product report

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

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

Dell EMC Unity XT is one of the best all-flash storage arrays on the market today. Dell EMC Unity XT arrays are designed for performance, optimized for efficiency, and built for a multi-cloud world. In addition, they support digital transformation, enabling businesses to reach the full potential of their data capital quickly and easily. Dell EMC Unity’s All-Flash and Hybrid Flash storage platforms provide the performance, efficiency, enterprise-class software, and virtualization integrations required for running a wide range of virtualized applications.

Dell EMC Unity XT Features

Dell EMC Unity XT has many valuable key features, including:

Unified storage flexibility: With Dell EMC Unity XT you can consolidate separate storage platforms into a single Unity XT unified storage system via a simple and intuitive (HTML5) management GUI that also connects you to CloudIQ.
All-inclusive data protection: Dell EMC Unity XT offers a reliable way to protect application data with all-inclusive data protection services, including snapshots, data-at-rest drive encryption, replication, thin clones, and dynamic pools.
Software-defined solutions: Dell EMC Unity XT provides software-defined storage and HA for on-prem and in the cloud solutions.
Multi-cloud alignment: With Dell EMC Unity XT you have the ability to build and manage an effective data-first multi-cloud strategy. It allows you to consolidate public and private cloud resources that align with your business goals.
Metro node: This feature enables automated business continuity with zero RPO and RTO. It also provides greater flexibility through multi-platform support and replication to any array and has zero performance impact on the storage array.
Scalable file system: Dell EMC Unity XT is built with a robust 256TBu file system. The UFS64 file system includes up to 256 independent VMDK clones, 16 thin clones, space efficient snapshots with a simple space reclaim and low IO impact, file system shrink that can reclaim free blocks, simplified Quotas for User, and much more.
DevOps integrations: Dell EMC Unity XT supports the Container Storage Interface (CSI) plugin to run Kubernetes workloads.

Dell EMC Unity XT Benefits

Some of the benefits of using Dell EMC Unity XT include:

High-speed data access
Low latency
Dual-active controller architecture
Multi-cloud
Intuitive user interface
Cost efficient
Solid performance

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Dell EMC Unity XT users.

A Systems Engineering Manager at a manufacturing company says, "It is definitely one of the most robust, solid, well-performing products that I have dealt with. It is set it and forget it, which is pretty amazing." He also mentions, “We can do both block and file storage on one unit without purchasing a separate device.”

Peter S., Senior Technical Specialist at a healthcare company, states, “The most valuable feature is reliability. At the end of the day, it just runs. This solution is easy to work with and easy to maintain.”

PeerSpot user Melvin T., Senior Systems Engineer at Prosperity Bank, explains that the solution is “easy to use and we can add LUNs or space without interruption to end-users. We're able to access it from just about anywhere, as long as we have access to a browser. That feature is really neat because sometimes we will go to a different data center or a different site, and if we need to access it to see a LUN or to see any type of storage, we can do that. That's one of the big takeaways with Unity."

Dell Technologies

RETHINK YOUR DEFINITION OF SPEED AND PERFORMANCE

With adaptive, guaranteed data reduction and a 100% data-availability guarantee, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F series helps you tackle complicated business challenges. Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) VSP F series delivers up to 4.8M IOPS with sub-millisecond response times.
Featuring legendary Hitachi reliability, VSP F series arrays are backed by the industries only 100% availability guarantee. For these reasons, 80% of the Fortune 500 choose Hitachi all-flash arrays to accelerate the performance of mission-critical applications like Oracle, SAP, Virtualization, Microsoft apps etc. With over 350 patents in flash technology, Hitachi’s innovative mix of flash hardware and software accelerates ROI with enterprise-class reliability and performance.

Hitachi Vantara

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

Buyer's Guide

Dell Unity XT vs. Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

April 2025

Free Report: Dell Unity XT vs. Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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