We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and FlexPod XCS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI."It includes every feature that a traditional SAN offers and so much more."
"StarWind vSAN is a great solution to create a redundant two-node-only Hyper-V cluster, both for domain or workgroup scenarios."
"We have experienced multiple hardware failures at one site and the fault-tolerant volume worked exactly as expected with zero downtime."
"The ease of reaching the support team and their promptness for support is great."
"The StarWind VSAN is always up and allows us to move VMS to other nodes for maintenance, without interruption to service."
"We have been able to use more on-prem hardware to reduce cost and also use old disks that we do not trust enough for ordinary RAID or usage."
"Updates to server hardware are now painless and done during working hours with zero stress. We had a RAID failure a few months back, and nobody in the building even noticed and there was no after hours time used for repair."
"The ability to run the software virtually on every virtualization platform and the ability to eliminate all storage vendor locking are the most valuable features."
"We're doing a lot of VMware for IT so this solution is really valuable from a VMH point of view. We're trying to assist our customers mainly with management, because that's what they want. The most important aspects are ease of management, as well as ease of configuration, allowing them to attach additional nodes and resources for the applications."
"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 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 integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"It's less resource-intensive, given that it comes in a package."
"Simplicity and integration with NetApp are its most valuable features."
"The documentation alone that NetApp provides can guide anybody through the setup process."
"All-flash storage and low latency I/O enhance performance."
"The agility is probably the most valuable feature for us. It's very easy to send out resources."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the stability."
"The assurance and the peace of mind that we get from knowing if we had an issue with either the NetApp equipment, Cisco equipment, or our VMware enviroment, we can call one number for support, then everyone works together and nobody is pointing fingers all over the place."
"The main advantage is consolidating everything into a single rack, which helps optimize power consumption, especially in CRM."
"With data verification, I would like to know how does the solution perform validation of data being synced between two VSANs."
"The configuration can a bit cumbersome."
"Perhaps the developer should refine the product management through PowerShell."
"They need to improve the speed of the interfaces, thus allowing for better traffic on the network."
"The console is something that I feel could be improved. There is nothing technically wrong with it, but it can be jazzed up and/or made to be a little more intuitive."
"It is difficult to control all of the hardware components."
"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."
"The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"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."
"The support of containers needs to be improved. At present, it is limited to VMware. There needs to be direct communication with the hardware rather than through a hypervisor."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"There are apparently some new products coming around the whole FlexPod side of things with regards to auditing, to ensure everything is configured correctly. It's basically a "delta" if there have been any changes. It's important to us, from a support perspective, to know if there have been changes and what impact they have actually had."
"If they could reduce some of the complexity at the system manager level for ONTAP. I find it gives a lot of flexibility. You can do as much or as little as you want. But to be able to do as little as you want, you do have to do a lot. So, if they could bring that down to a more manageable effort level, that would be nice and simplify it a bit."
"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"I would be interested to see more integration with other applications."
"FlexPod XCS needs to improve its pricing."
"It would be great to see some form of interoperability between the FAS units and the E-Series, specifically for replication, even if it is just one more replication from a FAS to an E-Series. That would be amazing."
"The last two calls that I have made to NetApp support have been handled too casually. People are too lax, not quite as professional as I would have liked."
"The biggest thing that I would like to see is more cost-effective FlexPod solutions."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 8th in HCI with 20 reviews while FlexPod XCS is ranked 2nd in Converged Infrastructure with 295 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.0, while FlexPod XCS 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 FlexPod XCS writes "Integrates everything so you are using fewer tools". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Scale Computing HC3, whereas FlexPod XCS is most compared with VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Oracle Exadata, Dell VxBlock System and HPE Hyper Converged.
We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
