We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes 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."It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."
"StarWind vSAN is easy to deploy and administer."
"StarWind SANs come with outstanding support."
"It's quite easy to install."
"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."
"It eliminates the use of expensive physical shared storage."
"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 setup was very straightforward."
"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."
"The most valuable feature is the overall integration and just seeing the three different layers which make up the machine software. Altogether, it's something that I would say is much better than any other solution that I have experienced before."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"The tool's most valuable feature is high availability."
"If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability."
"I have found the most important features of Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes are the capacity to manage the storage because the storage is built in the servers. The type of profiles you can attribute to the storage is a benefit. You can manage the storage by profiles. Overall the solution is a good speed and performance."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is scalable"
"You don't have to spend much time evaluating the hardware. It can be deployed in a short time. The tool is also easy to upgrade."
"The most valuable feature of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is the flexibility of the nodes. Additionally, if there are any critical issues they update us through emails. The issues are taken care of remotely on the system."
"They are heading in the right direction and moving to integrate everything with a hybrid cloud, and moving workloads back and forth."
"It is easy to install."
"I wish they would improve the documentation for the beginner level as it's not very clear on the web page."
"I would like them to invest time in reducing the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure."
"High availability for direct attached hardware drives could be useful for increasing the performance of a storage appliance."
"It is not very clear within the StarWind Management Console or the StarWind support documentation how to perform maintenance on a single node in a two-node HA cluster."
"I would love to see more vendor selection to be available for the HCA/vSAN appliances."
"I would like to see different levels of support offered."
"Management of VSAN itself could be improved. A Web UI for management would be great rather than an application installation. StarWind is testing a command center virtual appliance that I have installed in my environment."
"It would be helpful if StarWind provided more precise and detailed documentation explaining how to configure the solution in various scenarios, including the advantages and disadvantages of each."
"We're also running Hyper-V virtual machines. But we recently discovered that migration of the Hyper-V virtual machines is a bit challenging. Maybe if Dell EMC can come out with a tool that will make it very easy for us to migrate the Microsoft Hyper-V machine, that may be an improvement."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"The installation is complex."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"It would be great to get earlier access to beta builds because we have to develop providers on our own. The APIs and enablers for custom automation could also be improved."
"Exporting data from the dashboard is not very user-friendly. It's just designed in a way that it's going to cover let's say 90%, 80%, of the end-users needs. If you need more sophisticated reporting it's not easy to have."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"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."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is a great hyper-converged system that is a perfect platform for supporting any kind of workload. The only workload that it's not designed to support is big data."
"The solution should provide daily task alerts for data recovery maintenance, usage, and other instructions to ensure the systems are in a good status."
"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 deployment is done by doing it one by one and could be simplified."
"The solution doesn't scale."
"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."
"Upgrades are carried out manually."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 9th in HCI with 19 reviews while Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is ranked 12th in HCI with 14 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Dell PowerFlex writes "Infrastructure management solution that offers rapid provisioning of computer storage but the APIs and enablers for custom automation could be improved". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes writes "Offers good performance and is easy to use". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and FlexPod XCS, whereas Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. Dell vSAN Ready Nodes report.
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