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."The most important feature is the ability to experience the loss of one node or one storage device, and not lose the entire cluster."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to leverage our server infrastructure more completely without the need to add more hardware."
"A typical system administrator with minimal experience in Hyper-V, VMware, or Windows can do VSAN configuration and maintain VSAN operations."
"In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems."
"I've had to open a few support cases over the years due to administrator errors, and the support received was top-notch."
"The management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard."
"It enables us to provide more solution options for our clients, with the reassurance that, when implemented, they will be efficient and stable."
"In addition to the main functions of the software, I want to note the excellent work of technical support."
"The support is highly responsive."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"The setup was very straightforward."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"The solution is scalable."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"The support team responds quickly."
"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."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is scalable"
"If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability."
"We find the initial implementation process simple and straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is the set of user tools that are available."
"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."
"It is easy to install."
"No concerns regarding the footprint in the data center."
"The solution immediately expands storage area when you add nodes."
"I'm sure it needs bug fixes..."
"It runs until it does not - and disaster recovery documentation is sparse and mostly unclear."
"StarWind doesn't really have any performance reporting, especially compared with other vSAN products we've used."
"Feature-wise we are only waiting for the release of a "planned disaster" feature that would allow us to patch a hypervisor node without having to take the full storage offline."
"It took a bit of knowledge and support to put in place but once installed it works fine. Migration (HyperV) from one server to another sometimes takes longer than expected but there is no data loss even if the host crashes."
"It would be great to have more automated tooling around managing the iSCSI connections in Windows"
"The cluster configuration is time-consuming and tedious."
"Our company was hoping for deduplication and encryption across HCI. That is currently not supported."
"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."
"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."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"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."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"The storage capability must be improved."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in the maintenance pricing. Maintenance isn't difficult, but the prices are high and ridiculous. Some customers feel it is better to go with a new solution rather than renew this one."
"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."
"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 Dell VxRail solution is based on vSAN Ready Nodes, but the Dell VxRail is fully automated. It would be helpful if this automation feature could be added to the Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. For example, we need to install VMware ESXi, and manually expand the cluster."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 8th in HCI with 20 reviews while Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is ranked 11th in HCI with 14 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.0, 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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