We performed a comparison between Azure Stack HCI and VxRail based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI."A great feature is that I basically set it and forget it, as everything is automatic."
"I save both physical and virtual space."
"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."
"The Windows-based StarWind GUI is easy to use and understand and integrates seamlessly with VMware's vSphere portal as well."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to grow rapidly while still providing flexibility and reliability."
"One of the most valuable features is the way it sets up the virtual SAN, because we don't have to buy a separate appliance for storage. It uses the existing storage on the servers, which is definitely a cost savings for us."
"I like the asynchronous replication and failover features. They are what I'm primarily using it for. The asynchronous replication is helpful because our servers are backed up continuously throughout the day. If anything goes wrong we just fail over immediately. That is a very nice feature to have."
"Active-active work mode leads to true redundancy of storage and allows us to distribute the load between multiple nodes."
"The solution has the latest processor."
"In my hybrid cloud setup, there are three features I've found very efficient. The first is software-defined networking. Similar to Azure where you create virtual networks and software load balancing, Azure Stack HCI lets you configure them with a drag-and-drop experience on the on-premises cluster. That's one of the good feature."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to manage VMs."
"We enjoy the ease of management since all of the resources are located on one box — one single point of support."
"The initial setup was not complex."
"The stability is very nice. We haven't had any issues with the cluster. The cluster is very stable. No problems with slowness. Everything has been stable. It was well-architectured."
"It's a turnkey solution, which is good for customers, because they are buying into stability."
"This is a good solution if you want to deploy an ACI Environment but don't have all the necessary resources."
"When we have a resource contention, we can easily increase the capacity."
"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."
"You don't need to think about compatibility of components."
"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."
"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."
"I wish they would improve the documentation for the beginner level as it's not very clear on the web page."
"I would like to see more advanced free versions."
"Perhaps the developer should refine the product management through PowerShell."
"The system performs as expected, but we're always looking for performance improvements regarding the best utilization of NVMe disks."
"The interface of the management console of the StarWind Virtual SAN is complex, and it's difficult for the novice user to interact with the management having less knowledge or training in the product."
"They need to improve the speed of the interfaces, thus allowing for better traffic on the network."
"We faced multiple problems with the product’s stability."
"The product's initial setup phase can be a bit complex, making it an area where improvements are required."
"There are a lot of areas for improvement. Since I've been working very closely with this product, there are many areas, especially in software-defined networking. We had to improve multiple areas because we depended on the service fabric cluster to manage the software-defined network. That means we're already running a hypervisor inside a VM, and we're managing the control plane of the software-defined network. That's another cluster. So, multiple layers make the complexity more. So, from an operational perspective, it's very difficult to manage."
"It still has some maturity to grow. It needs to be more tightly integrated with its own family of products. It has shown that it is open with the other products within the market, through its stack, but it needs to have the proof in the market (with use-cases), and it has to have the scalability with the integration."
"The product could support and have more compliance with other vendors."
"I wish for the performance environment to be improved."
"It would be an improvement if VxRail could be integrated with some other hypervisors and not just with VMware."
"A more containerized approach in regards to the interface would be better."
"The version upgrade process should be simplified."
"The licensing needs to be improved upon."
"I would like to see Dell take a crack at simplifying the process of moving from a node to a cluster and assembling everything into the appliance. It would be great if Dell could provide a pathway where a customer could actually install it without the certifications. Of course, I can't say how you would dumb down something so complex."
Azure Stack HCI is ranked 17th in HCI with 3 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 120 reviews. Azure Stack HCI is rated 8.4, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Azure Stack HCI writes "Performs well, provides good features, and has the latest processor". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". Azure Stack HCI is most compared with VMware vSAN and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and HPE Hyper Converged.
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