We compared VxRail and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
VxRail is praised for its excellent performance, support, pricing structure, and positive ROI, while Dell vSAN Ready Nodes are valued for their high performance, scalability, and efficient storage management. Users highlight VxRail's flexibility and customer service, while Dell vSAN Ready Nodes receive praise for their ease of use and data protection. Suggestions for improvement include enhancing scalability and compatibility for VxRail and improving performance optimization and installation process for Dell vSAN Ready Nodes.
Features: The valuable features of VxRail include excellent performance, seamless integration with existing systems, and highly scalable and flexible infrastructure solution. On the other hand, Dell vSAN Ready Nodes offer high performance, scalability, ease of use, efficient storage management, reliable data protection, and seamless integration with existing infrastructure. Users also appreciate the nodes' ability to handle demanding workloads, expand storage capacity as needed, and effortlessly fit into their existing IT environment.
Pricing and ROI: According to user experiences, VxRail offers reasonable setup costs and flexible licensing options. Users have reported that Dell vSAN Ready Nodes also have reasonable setup costs and a straightforward setup process. Both products are praised for their easily obtained and managed licensing., The VxRail product offers increased efficiency, improved performance, lower total cost of ownership, scalability, ease of use, and reliability. On the other hand, Dell vSAN Ready Nodes provide improved data storage and management capabilities, seamless integration, cost-effectiveness, and user-friendly features.
Room for Improvement: Some areas for improvement in VxRail include scalability, flexibility, compatibility, setup process, monitoring/reporting capabilities, customer support, and troubleshooting documentation. Dell vSAN Ready Nodes could benefit from enhancements in performance optimization, compatibility, storage options, installation/configuration process, reliability, and efficiency.
Deployment and customer support: The user reviews suggest that there are varying timeframes for deployment, setup, and implementation phases for both VxRail and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. Some users spent three months on deployment and an additional week on setup for both, while others required only a week for both., Customers have expressed satisfaction with the customer service for both VxRail and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. However, VxRail is praised for its helpfulness and responsiveness, while Dell is commended for its prompt and efficient assistance.
The summary above is based on 34 interviews we conducted recently with VxRail and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."
"As the client had acquired another company some distance away, they were concerned about having a single SAN in one location or the other. StarWind vSAN allowed us to keep a copy of the data local to each site without asking the client to pay for two SANs in addition to the two new servers they needed."
"You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage."
"The product creates opportunities with hybrid on-premise solutions."
"I like StarWind's high availability. The failover is almost immediate, so the end users have no idea the guest VM moved at all. We can failover all guest VMs onto a single hypervisor, place it into maintenance mode, install updates, and reboot a hypervisor all during the daytime and remotely, with confidence the process will be successful."
"I've been really impressed with it so far. I think it's pretty great, actually. It does exactly what we need it to do, and it does it well, so I would recommend it. Plus, the support has been very good."
"The best part is the easy way it operates with a very clear GUI without any unnecessary items."
"The configuration is so much simpler than that of a traditional SAN with fewer points of failure to worry about."
"We find the initial implementation process simple and straightforward."
"No concerns regarding the footprint in the data center."
"The most valuable feature is the set of user tools that are available."
"It is easy to install."
"If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability."
"They are heading in the right direction and moving to integrate everything with a hybrid cloud, and moving workloads back and forth."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is scalable"
"The product is useful for DR and other things."
"It is very powerful. We find that to be the most valuable aspect. The movement of devices between nodes is very easy."
"VxRail has improved our organization by providing our admin team with an easy-to-use interface."
"Cost-effective and easy to install."
"VxRail simplifies IT infrastructure management by providing a single management console for compute, storage, and network. The second advantage is that VxRail offers a continuously validated architecture from the OEM. This means that Dell thoroughly tests all firmware updates before being released or installed on the product, helping to prevent compatibility issues. The third benefit is its ten-year roadmap. Dell consistently announces a roadmap for the product spanning the next decade."
"The tool's price is competitive and it is easy to use."
"I like the new releases that Dell EMC is doing with VMware. They are allowing for flexibility across the hybrid cloud. This allows organizations to use containers and to be able to move into the public cloud, but also not have lock-in. They can come back to the private cloud when they want to, so it's creating a lot of flexibility across the stack."
"Initial setup is straightforward, as everything is pre-installed."
"Low-maintenance solution with hyperscale feature so it has the ability to utilize the resources for the VMware cluster setup on which Citrix VDA runs."
"A better overall view of the different deployments could be beneficial, although this is difficult due to how flexible the solution is."
"Pricing is a bit high."
"There should be some kind of active monitoring connected to StarWind vSAN, so you will be able to act when needed."
"It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI."
"Being able to run StarWind vSAN on top of any free UNIX operating system to build a resilient iSCSI/FTP/SMB storage system would be useful."
"An update caused a syncing issue and it took over a month to resolve it"
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"This solution should be more self-sufficient, running without creating domains or failover clusters."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required. The price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes could be lowered."
"Upgrades are carried out manually."
"Compatibility with other hardware nodes needs to be improved."
"The power switch on the hardware is located in a poor location where it can accidentally be pushed. In an update, they should solve this issue so people do not push it accidentally to have their service go down. A possible solution is the switch should be inside."
"Scalability is an area that could be improved. We are looking at a maximum of 32 nodes now in a cluster, but going to 64 or 128 would be a major advantage."
"This product is not sufficiently scalable."
"The solution doesn't scale."
"Dell vSAN Ready Nodes must be flexible since it is complex in designing concepts. It needs to improve stability. The product should integrate with the public cloud."
"The support protocols have changed after Broadcom acquired VMware."
"The upgrade packages require a lot of bandwidth. This could be reduced for an improved experience."
"Lacks integration of licenses so that it's an expensive solution."
"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 search feature isn't good."
"If they can provide deduplication compression through the traditional hard drives, as Cisco does in the HyperFlex system, it will be very cost-effective, especially when it comes to archiving workload. VxRail doesn't allow the mixing of old flash clusters and hyper clusters. When I'm starting with an old flash cluster and it comes to archiving workload, I will also need to attend the new cluster. So, I either manage two different clusters, or I pay and upload my work with the archiving mobile hard drive, which is not cost-effective at all. The main key is to allow mixing between two types of clustering, like Nutanix, or allow deduplication of completion over the period of shared hard drive on SAV. It will be much better."
"The most important thing that I want to be included in this solution is the VMware license. Its deployment time can be quicker so that instead of 40 minutes, it takes 10 minutes."
"If they continue developing their product regarding VMware, it will be one of the best products in the HCI space. In terms of additional features, there is nothing missing because, for data protection, they also have the CDP option for VM. They can protect the VM at any point in time."
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is ranked 11th in HCI with 14 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 120 reviews. Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is rated 8.6, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes writes "Offers good performance and is easy to use". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is most compared with VMware vSAN, Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, Dell PowerFlex, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series. See our Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs. VxRail report.
See our list of best HCI vendors.
We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
