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Dell Unity XT vs HPE Alletra Storage comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 22, 2025

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
HPE Alletra Storage
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 HPE Alletra Storage is 9.8%, up from 1.6% 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.
Anand Algesan - PeerSpot reviewer
Provisioning and encryption ease improve data storage efficiency
To improve HPE Alletra Storage, it needs to have a true active-active controller; it claims to have an active-active controller from the back end, however, the second node is pretty much sitting there doing nothing. The MV 10000 series, which is the next series, is an improvement to HPE Alletra, and HPE is already doing that. In the next release, I would prefer to see better dedupe features; I know other companies do excellent dedupe, and they have protection group policies, meaning you have immutable data in case of a ransomware attack. If you're on the SAN, it should give you a way to protect that data without being erased. Other vendors have that capability built-in, ensuring that you can't erase the data, so features similar to that would be great.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."
"The latency is good."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"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 reliability."
"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"The most valuable feature is that the solution is a hybrid system, so you can do both block and file storage."
"I like the integration into VirtualCenter. I used to have to add LUNs manually, then scan them in and format them. It does that all for you, all in one, immediate deployment of LUNs."
"I like how it separates the iSCSI drives from the standard shares. It has two different routes to it. I know most of the other solutions do this, but I just like the way that Dell EMC does it."
"The most valuable features include snapshots, Thin Clones, and deduplication and compression."
"It is great because it can work as a SAN and net storage."
"The most valuable features are its performance and simplicity."
"Key features are ease of use, ease of management, ease of deployment, and the GUI is very user-friendly."
"I like the idea that it can compress and dedupe inline. That is quite a stunning feature for mid-range customers."
"HPE Alletra Storage helps simplify storage operations, integrating with vCenter."
"The features I appreciate most about the HPE Alletra Storage are its ease of provisioning storage and management."
"The simplicity of use is great."
"The features of HPE Alletra Storage that I prefer most are that it's fast and reliable."
"The cloud-like operational model has affected my operations such as deployment, provisioning, and day-to-day management by making it very easy to navigate and easy to get to everything I need."
"HPE Alletra Storage provides a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing our data infrastructures, although I still interact with the SAN in the traditional on-prem way."
"Feature-wise, it's pretty simple; just a one-click button to enable it, so implementing it was pretty easy too."
"Right now, it's offered both cost reduction and space reduction."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"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."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say its capacity and its connection."
"This product lacks deduplication and compression at the current version 4.1.0. LACP is not available for iSCSI either."
"Stability is the problem. We've had stability issues with it. We've had problems with the iSCSI interface. We've had it for two years now and for two years we've had problems where a service processor will drop, we'll lose connectivity to LUNs, we'll lose connectivity to the storage, issues like that. No matter how we've tried to chase it down, everybody just points fingers at each other. The only thing that changed in our environment was that the Unity solution was installed."
"It is missing some features, like deduplication."
"Since Dell took over EMC, the support has been very bad. Before, the support was fine. Now, the support is slow or they don't react."
"There's always room for improvement with the UI. That can be a little cumbersome at times."
"It's not as reliable as it should be, I think it was probably released a little early. We've had production problems with customers, and there are still some challenges at scale as well. Compression is a problem for the system. Once you enable dedupe and compression, the performance of the system, the capability, halves... It has to be right-sized and sized for compression, but even with that, because there are only two storage processors, you're ending up at almost 40 percent usage."
"The technical support sometimes takes three to four days to get hardware to facilities. I would rate customer service four out of ten."
"I have experienced some issues, not necessarily downtime. That said, we had some controller issues at one point; however, since I have redundancy, we really didn't experience any downtime."
"To improve HPE Alletra Storage, I suggest adding more expansion capabilities."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would give HPE Alletra Storage around a seven."
"They have a new update coming out that I'm going to be using as far as lack of snapshots. I'm going to put that into place as soon as I upgrade to the new version."
"The plug-in for vCenter and integration into vCenter is spotty at best."
"It would be great if we had a direct integration with Veeam repositories so we wouldn't have to go through Linux or Windows."
"Previously, the [HPE] 3PAR [storage array] gave us the ability to build on SSC or spindles. The Alletra doesn't allow for this."
"One problem we had during the installation of HPE Alletra Storage was the connection to the cloud. Our company does not like cloud connections for storage, but it was necessary. It would be a good thing to start without the GreenLake cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"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."
"At the end of the day, the licensing cost is key, because every customer has a pain point, that the cost of each piece is high. So if they would bundle everything in a package, that is how the competitors are selling their footprint."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The price of Dell Unity XT is reasonable. However, if you are buying a custom solution, it can come at a considerable price."
"We purchased a five-year warranty."
"This solution offers great pricing."
"We looked at HPE Nimble but the price of the Unity XT was very good compared to the competition."
"It is shipped with all licensed, included for this product range, no need to buy additional licenses"
"Licensing is a little bit confusing. Going through everything with them, there are a lot of line items to go over. Every single thing is broken down into a line item, and it starts to get really confusing in terms of what we're actually purchasing when it comes to the product."
"Its price can be optimized."
"Its pricing is very competitive."
"The solution is expensive and can cost around five lakhs."
"The pricing is somewhat high, but when customers choose HPE, they often prioritize the brand value over pricing. The pricing is higher compared to other vendors."
"There is a license. HPE Alletra uses a cloud-based model."
"It is reasonably priced."
"Its licensing is good. Pricing-wise, there can be a little bit more flexibility. It would help to have different sizes. However, it fits into the budget that we have, so we are happy."
"So far, so good."
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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
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
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 do you like most about HPE Alletra?
It offers rich features and high speed for transferring data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Alletra?
Its price can be optimized. The cost before deployment is significant to customers, but post-deployment cost analysis...
What needs improvement with HPE Alletra?
The user interface, configuration, and customization could be improved, though the configuration is currently very ea...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Accenture, Aetna, AIG, Airbus, Allianz, American Express, ATT, Bank of America, Barclays, BASF, Bayer, Berkshire Hathaway, Boeing, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Comcast, Credit Suisse, Dell, Deutsche Bank, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Google, HSBC, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Kroger, L'Oreal, Merck
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. HPE Alletra Storage and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.