We performed a comparison between Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series and VxRail based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The main benefit is that StarWind is almost maintenance-free."
"Having the ability to scale horizontally if needed is a huge plus for future growth."
"It's quite easy to manage."
"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."
"StarWind Virtual SAN offers high availability and data resilience features to prevent data loss if hardware fails."
"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."
"It has great free trials that allow end users to test a large variety of their products before deciding to buy the full product."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very easy-to-use solution that can be quickly and easily deployed and configured without intimate and specific knowledge in the virtualization sphere."
"We find the setup quite straightforward and very easy."
"Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series' deployment is easy. We are a tier-one platinum partner who is into multiple implementations."
"Installation is straightforward because it's a vSAN. It only took one or two days."
"The VX machines are scalable."
"It is very powerful. We find that to be the most valuable aspect. The movement of devices between nodes is very easy."
"VxRail is very cost-effective and affordable in the long term. It is more recommended when it comes to financial life, but it may depend upon the license. VxRail comes with VMware licensing, which may not be that cost-effective as compared to others. With VMware, it's an auto check competition. VMware is an expensive solution, especially for Nutanix. Nutanix have their own hypervisor called Acronis, which is very cost-effective against the VMware. Nutanix is cheaper for the hardware but not for the software. If you ask the Nutanix partners to deploy Nutanix over Cisco servers or Dell EMC servers, the cost will be higher. Nutanix wants to compete financially. Therefore, they propose their software over the Supermicro server, which is a very cheap Chinese server. In fact, I don't like their terms of service. HyperFlex has the highest price, and it is very expensive. I don't know why. It may be because this is a UCS system, which comes from Cisco and is already expensive. When it comes to HyperFlex, they need the labor to deploy Hyper-V, Citrix, or any other hypervisor."
"We are very happy with the purchase, and it works well. It is fast. We went with the full-flash version, meaning that we have SSDs. So, we can build a Windows virtual machine in two minutes. We were surprised when we first tried to do that."
"One-click upgrade is valuable because upgrading an environment that is considered a traditional one is something that we never do or are never going to complete. It is very time-consuming for my team. With the one-click upgrade, it is much quicker. There are preparation stages, but it takes less time, so we are also saving time in the daily administration."
"Initial setup is straightforward, as everything is pre-installed."
"I like that there is a dependency on the storage controller."
"I can roll out the system in thirty minutes and the customer can work with it."
"When we have a resource contention, we can easily increase the capacity."
"For improvement, I would like to see how the software determines which networks to use for which purpose. It seems like the naming terminology changes a bit from here to there."
"If it's possible to make a driver/solution that does not make use of the iSCSI targets of Windows, that would be great. I don't know if that's possible, however, it could make the configuration a little easier."
"The cluster configuration is time-consuming and tedious."
"With data verification, I would like to know how does the solution perform validation of data being synced between two VSANs."
"We would like the documentation to be more complete. Most items are covered, but if you don't know something, you may need to contact their support."
"To enable the proactive support capability that is part of our support agreement, I would ask that the terms and conditions be revised and made acceptable to corporate security."
"I would like to see more monitoring and alert tools."
"It could have a dashboard so that you can check all servers' SAN health and performance."
"The user management could be a bit better. It's something they could improve upon in future releases."
"With the VX machines, the clients often confuse the hardware itself with the services and resources. VMs are configured according to resources - memory, hard disk capacity, and network. These resources, including memory and processor, are actually shared on the VX Series. So, if the server's processor is underpowered or unreliable for the VMs, many of the VMs will encounter issues. Ideally, the physical server configuration should align more closely with the needs of the virtual servers."
"Support could be better."
"Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series needs to improve its stability. Its resolution should be faster."
"The configurations of VxRail can be difficult. However, it has improved in the newer version. From version 6 to 7, there has been a lot of changes."
"They need to keep upgrading the environment and improving automation so that the solution keeps getting better and better."
"We spend around six months waiting for a confirmation and firmware upgrade to confirm this step."
"I can't speak to any missing features or weak aspects of the system just yet. We haven't had a chance to really dig in."
"The solution could improve by having more storage performance because in some other solutions you can have a file system that can be mounted at several places at one time."
"The solution is vendor-locked and Dell is the only supplier of VxRail."
"I would like them to include an easier solution to host its own DNS. When they changed to version 6.5, they took out the easy features of letting the rail be its own DNS. You can still trick the system and make the VxRail Manager another one of the rail-required VMs become the DNS, but it's a lot of extra work. I'd like to see it put back into the UI."
"The licensing is a bit too costly."
Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series is ranked 15th in HCI with 4 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 120 reviews. Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series is rated 8.6, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series writes "simplifies management for clients familiar with VMware, and offers a user-friendly management and configuration experience". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series is most compared with Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series, HPE Alletra dHCI, HPE Hyper Converged and HPE SimpliVity, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure. See our Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series vs. VxRail report.
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