We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and HPE SimpliVity 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 iSCSI protocol is quite simple to configure."
"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."
"In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems."
"It has reduced our overall maintenance and overhead by having to only maintain physical boxes for one cluster instead of having to manage physical boxes for two clusters."
"It also provides a high degree of mobility, as the virtual SAN can be moved relatively painlessly between on-site devices and the cloud."
"Highly available storage is the most valuable feature. The entire rollout is hyper-converged and requires no extra storage further than the hosts in which Hyper-V is running. Another feature that has been great is the support from StarWind in general. We have their proactive support package on the main cluster that employs Starwind Virtual SAN."
"Starwind made it easy to deploy fully redundant, highly available storage at a low cost."
"The product only requires two VMWare ESXi host servers versus three host servers for VMware's comparable solution."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The resiliency and data protection are the most valuable features."
"Dell PowerFlex is a one-stop-shop solution. Storage, compute, network, application monitoring, and support cases are all combined into one solution. It's very easy to administer compared to when you have a reference architecture where you need to design and build everything yourself. You would also then have to work with multiple vendors."
"The setup was very straightforward."
"The solution is scalable."
"It has reduced downtime. Before, on our previous solution, we used to have downtime on some of the servers because of the sort of convention. But currently I've not experienced any downtime on any of the servers, and there is no more resource congestion."
"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."
"The solution has integrated backup features that are useful."
"Its performance is quite good, and it is also easy to use. One of the biggest benefits is the included backup solution."
"We like the backup feature, which is inbuilt."
"The rate of compression for the data in SimpliVity is the most valuable feature."
"Having one management console to do everything from was a great improvement over dealing with separate hardware for servers, SANs, backups etc."
"It's much more simple than Nutanix and other hyper-converged solutions, at least from our point of view."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the backup rate and the backup transfer."
"Our clients are very comfortable with the single management of the complete stack. The creation of VM systems is also very fast."
"There should be some kind of active monitoring connected to StarWind vSAN, so you will be able to act when needed."
"Updating the software can be a bit tricky."
"I would love to see more vendor selection to be available for the HCA/vSAN appliances."
"The only thing that I have any difficulty with is that in order to perform upgrades, it is required that the SANs be detached from the Hosts before that can happen."
"A better overall view of the different deployments could be beneficial, although this is difficult due to how flexible the solution is."
"Having more support plan options would be nice."
"It would help if the manufacturer provided clearer and more detailed documentation, with explanations of how the application can be installed in various HA configurations."
"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."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"The storage capability must be improved."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"I would love to see a more proactive approach to implementing patches and reaching out to customers with new initiatives."
"The local support in Argentina is not good. This is a new technology and HP doesn't have a lot of technology specialists here in Argentina. It's very hard to find the specialist here."
"I'm not a technical guy, and I am pretty much okay with the way it is, but it would help if it was closest to Nutanix in Gartner's Magic Quadrants. Nutanix very often beats us. Nutanix provides Acropolis for free. It probably would be great if we have a virtualization layer. It is something that might be lacking in our solution. We depend on VMware, and it is very expensive. It is lacking the software that allows us to install it with HPE and not depend on a third party."
"The solution could have an optimization site."
"File level restores work well, but indexing will help make the process faster."
"I have some worries about the support after the acquisition. The support was better before HPE acquired SimpliVity."
"The installation is quite easy but it could still be improved."
"There are a lot of different components to choose from in the chassis. This could be easier by providing a standard or a base model to create and configure from."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 8th in HCI with 20 reviews while HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 151 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.0, while HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Dell PowerFlex writes "Is very resilient and protects our data, but the solution is complex". On the other hand, the top reviewer of HPE SimpliVity writes "Provides a unified management interface that allows administrators to manage all aspects of the infrastructure". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and HPE Hyper Converged, whereas HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and Scale Computing HC3. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. HPE SimpliVity report.
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