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."PowerShell library is pretty good feature as I created with APC PowerChute a script to put volumes on maintenance mode then turning off the StarWind nodes together with the VM and Hosts when UPS reaches 15 percent, this way after a blackout or electrical problems when turning servers on again, there is no issues for syncing or data loss due to energy interrupts."
"We are able to execute maintenance on one server while the other is still running."
"You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage."
"The features that I found most valuable are ease of use of the software that StarWind offers - with the first setup being a bit painful."
"It has a nice, simple control panel. You can clearly see the state and health of storage along with the synchronization."
"The most important feature is the ability to experience the loss of one node or one storage device, and not lose the entire cluster."
"It's quite easy to install."
"The StarWind products have enabled our organization to modernize stations where larger and more expensive equipment was not an option."
"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."
"I like that there is a dependency on the storage controller."
"The cover points feature in VxRail is remarkable. It's unique. It has an intervention failover system as well as an automatic failover system, reaching clusters existing in VxRail. This makes all files act as a single file with a large and huge resource, and, of course, with customized administration, configuration, and resources. It provides automatic failover for redundancy and data recovery."
"When we have a resource contention, we can easily increase the capacity."
"The solution is easy to use. When turning on a server or a machine that is required for, deployment or quality assurance, the dynamic deployment of resources is good."
"The simplicity and manageability of VxRail are most valuable. We have a very good experience with this product. Its stability and scalability are also very good."
"It's a turnkey solution, which is good for customers, because they are buying into stability."
"The stability continues to get better and better. It's pretty reliable."
"With VxRail, we can manage the life cycle of a virtual machine."
"I would say that the documentation is mostly great, however, some features could be expanded upon a bit."
"New versions of this solution should be tested more thoroughly before the release as we had a few problems with one version due to a bug."
"I had issues locating the documentation that applied to my version of StarWind vSAN."
"It would be nice to see a new UI for the windows client, as it is not the easiest to find settings."
"Our company was hoping for deduplication and encryption across HCI. That is currently not supported."
"The main thing I would like to see improved is the level of documentation."
"The configuration can a bit cumbersome."
"We ran into an issue with alerts."
"The product's initial setup phase can be a bit complex, making it an area where improvements are required."
"We faced multiple problems with the product’s stability."
"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."
"The solution is vendor-locked and Dell is the only supplier of VxRail."
"The update for the graphics integration and the media drivers isn't included in the VxRail update."
"When we have a vulnerability or we need to upgrade VxRail, it takes a long time. It takes eight hours each time we upgrade."
"We do not use the storage part of VxRail, we use Pure Storage to map out the VxRail because the disk performance from Pure Storage was far better than the performance of the disk on the inside of VxRail."
"The licensing is a bit too costly."
"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."
"The scalability is limited to a single cluster with 64 nodes."
"The support protocols have changed after Broadcom acquired VMware."
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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