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Dell Unity XT vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays comparison

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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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell Unity XT
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
24th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.4%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Unity XT is 6.2%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 1.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray7.4%
Dell Unity XT6.2%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays1.3%
Other85.1%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
NR
TSG Manager at Navigator Systems
Ease of implementation and robust performance enhance multi-OEM support experience
We are limited only to hardware replacement, not administration tasks. We work on AMC products through Annual Maintenance Contracts. We provide support up to the 680 model. The XT680F is a newer model, and we support from 380F to 680F. The FlashSystem 8000 series is all-flash, and there is also a 5000 series flash model. We can compare IBM DS series, including the 8000 series for recommendations. For NetApp, we can recommend the FAS 8000 series.
Tayo Olubanke - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at GCET
Offers flexibility and top-notch technology
You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We tested our VDI environment on this array and it performed flawlessly and boosted the user experience."
"The best features of Pure Storage FlashArray are its ease of use and user-friendly interface, and the performance allows all types of services to be visualized from a single point of interface, making it more robust and user-friendly."
"I appreciate the ease of provisioning storage on Pure Storage FlashArray."
"The speed of the Pure FlashArray is very, very fast and nothing in the market can compare to it."
"Very efficient storage"
"The Pure Storage customer service is by far the best part of the product and organization."
"When users don't call wanting to kill me, that's ROI."
"The most valuable feature is it never goes down. We can expand and create volumes."
"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."
"It is a good value given the benefits it provides."
"We put the Unity on one of the file servers and the backup performance improved quite a lot."
"The Unity 400 is one of the easiest to manage and the most reliable storage systems that I have managed in my 22 years in IT."
"The setup and installation procedures are easy."
"All-flash is a game changer. If you need performance, simple operations, and you plan to use it with VMware, it is a good choice."
"I like its performance and support."
"It is easy to manage; a lot of the system manages itself, and it is nice the way ESRS works with remote support, being able to remote in and take a look at problems proactively."
"The replication and mirroring features are very good."
"One of the most valuable features is the overall performance it provides. You're able to throw a pile of IOPS at it and it will handle that without much issue."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its speed."
"Our batch processing time went down from 14 hours to seven hours with this solution."
"You can't beat it for the price."
"This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs."
"At the end of the day, low latency was what geared us towards the EF."
"When we compared it to other all-flash arrays, it was the most cost-effective solution and really the most performant that we looked at."
 

Cons

"The GUI is simplistic and basic. I feel like it's explanatory, but not enough, it needs a little more to it."
"I can't see where they can make anything better, unless, of course, they lower their prices even more."
"If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it."
"Once, before Pure went public, we were a member of their customer advisory board and beta tested replication. One requested enhancement yet to manifest is the scheduling of snapshot replications."
"The solution is not cheap. It's much more expensive than DataCore."
"The latest release contains bugs that shouldn't be in a production environment. Two incidents impacted our client, including hardware-related bugs. They need to be more cautious in testing before they release."
"The only thing is that we've had to upgrade controllers a few times because we ended up wanting to use more stuff on here."
"It would be beneficial to have a separate pricing point for environments with lower performance requirements or less workload."
"Thick provisioning of LUNs."
"More integration with VMware would always be helpful, plugins that go directly into the vSphere management. A single pane of glass is always beneficial."
"There is an issue with data duplication occurring on the flash memory. It should be improved. Timely updates and upgrades to the latest versions would be great."
"We have had a lot of issues. We've got massive issues at the moment with IBM AIX, it's not stable, we have a lot of disk errors, production crashes sometimes, and that's not good for a retailer."
"I rate the scalability of Dell Unity XT a nine out of ten."
"The NAS capabilities of Unity - I have to say there are a lot of things I miss. For example, deduplication for hybrid. I have tons of customers with VNX and dedupe. These customers achieve around 50% dedupe efficiency and they mostly use them for archive. If you're talking about 50TB of NAS, which is stored in a 25TB repository, which is very economical, and you can not provide that in a Unity hybrid box, you have problems."
"It could go faster. Make it bigger, better, and faster at a lower price, and I am there."
"There are some limitations with the file storage."
"I would like to see higher-capacity drives, as they come out; I have heard that 15 TB are out on a different NetApp series. Getting those on the EFs would be nice."
"Better support technicians for CAPP."
"They could improve overall scalability through performance. Denser capacity, which is doable, it is what the competition is doing."
"When it's a software-related issue, it is difficult to find an engineer that can help you."
"This solution does not have any compression or deduplication."
"Nonetheless, there are a couple of other things that NetApp hasn't done right."
"The solution should really build out a more hyper-converged product."
"Things like the FlexClones, SnapVault, SnapMirror, all of that. Some of it's available on the EF series, but we like what we have in the FAS system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."
"I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing. It could be improved."
"The price is reasonable."
"The solution is expensive."
"We evaluated Oracle and Hitachi, but Pure Storage had the better pricing."
"Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"Dell and Pure Storage offer competitive pricing, but Pure Storage might have a slight advantage."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is great, because then I get new controllers every three years."
"While Dell EMC is costly, I don't have any complaints about their licensing model."
"The ROI is right where we need it to be. It's a reasonably priced array."
"The solution is extremely functional for the price that we pay for it. It is worth the investment."
"The price of the solution should be less expensive. However, at some point, you need to pay for facility and performance."
"I rate Dell Unity XT’s pricing a nine out of ten."
"Most licenses for the solution are free but upgrades are available when adding additional software or storage."
"The solution’s pricing is competitive."
"Our big return of investment is the ability to scale and not add FTE counts nor extra administration."
"Its cost-effectiveness is a major selling point. Compared to other storage vendors, the EF-Series offers excellent value for its price. It's truly a leading product in the industry."
"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."
"The pricing of the solution is expensive, considering the initial investment required...At the end of the product's life cycle, it could get cheaper, but the initial investment in NetApp makes it one of the most expensive solutions."
"Cheaper pricing is always good. NetApp has been doing everything the right way. They've been figuring out things really well, going in the right direction."
"he price point that we're getting is very competitive in the market. Since we are buying in such a large quantity, they gave us a huge discount."
"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."
"It's a lot cheaper than what the other vendors have for the same type of environment. It saves us money."
"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
7%
Construction Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Performing Arts
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise96
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
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 NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to rene...
What needs improvement with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's supp...
What is your primary use case for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
There are so many things to talk about around the use cases associated with the tool. There are so many reasons why I...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
EMC Unity, Dell EMC Unity
NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Draper, Rio Grande Pacific, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Unity XT vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.