Dell EMC Unity vs NetApp All Flash FAS, which do you recommend?

Companies looking for a an all flash system will be swayed by 3 main factors: What storage vendor they already have, price and how well the proposed solution is marketed/sold. Feature comparison normally comes about 5th on a list of the most heavily weighted factors. In my many years of advising clients it has been my experience that if the IT manager knows and likes a particular brand, that is the one they will purchase. So, a client with Netapp will buy Netapp. From a features viewpoint: Both have a lot of very useful features and both have horrible "gotchas" that can trip up unwary administrators. If you buy a new brand, spend money on training !!

Full disclosure I represent both manufacturers.

In my opinion, it comes down to use case. Certainly, all flash is the way to go from a starting point.

If you are operating in a block storage environment I would suggest the Unity has some advantages.

If you are looking at more of a file world then I think NETAPP has the edge.

Both are well built and both will be aggressive price wise.

Both are well integrated to VMware if you are virtual in nature although I would probably give the edge to Unity on that front given VMware is part of Dell Technologies.

If you have more specifics about the use case ( data access type, capacity, performance, relocation and or DR etc ) I could probably narrow it down a little more for you.

In general, I lean to EMC Unity due to its flexibility, modularity and low cost. I would use NetApp if I already had this in my portfolio and you heavily used key features like file support.

Unity is still not that reliable .. as it has so many bugs in the software...plus UEMcli is not that user-friendly.
Hybrid models are good on load bearing capacity but overall has still a long way to go.

Have known Netapp Solidfire since the days it was only Solidfire... and the IOPS guarantee marketing regime is something next gen.

I would rate Solidfire above Unity and NETAPP FAS arrays also above Unity models.

Flash is more reliable with high performance but expensive. Users need to check out their requirements of storage.

Dell EMC Unity can have tiered storage based on user requirements whereas NetApp All-Flash FAS is built with all flash capability.

We can choose either all flash or other HDD types or both based on our budget requirement and application needs. If the storage is required for archival with minimum write then All Flash is not the solution.

In my opinion technically & feature wise both are equally qualifying.

Both the Unity and NetApp all-flash arrays are very good all flash solutions and work well. I would not be able to recommend one over the other but would suggest the customer look a little deeper into what requirements they have for the storage such as cloud tiering, setup, integration with other products, management and make the determination based needs.

Unfortunately, I can’t as I didn’t try both of them. However, I might buy the Dell EMC Unity soon.

As Direct Purchase Partner I always recommend DellEMC ;)))
But NetApp AFM is really good stuff.
Depends on the business task.

E8 Storage….

I can only speak about Netapp's SolidFire SSA as we used this product. It's fast, reliable and has the dynamic ability to increase IOPS for applications without downtime which I is a distinctive feature of this SSA compared to the rest of the SSA product.

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