We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure 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."Virtual SAN runs on iSCSI, which is free and easy to configure. It's easy to manage from StarWind's GUI console, and it only required a few extra switch ports."
"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."
"We like their high availability. It reduces the downtime for our entire organization's environment."
"This has helped to improve the reliability of service and operation in all departments, without having to stop in case of emergency situations."
"We have experienced multiple hardware failures at one site and the fault-tolerant volume worked exactly as expected with zero downtime."
"Ten gigabit Ethernet compatibility, support, ease of use, and management are some positive features."
"This solution enables us to make better cost-effective use of our existing hardware and leverage the current infrastructure at a higher level than we could before."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to grow rapidly while still providing flexibility and reliability."
"The setup was very straightforward."
"The support is highly responsive."
"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 program is stable."
"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."
"The solution is scalable."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"Very user-friendly and simple."
"It was not expensive at all."
"The most valuable feature is the three nodes and the free hypervisor."
"The initial setup isn't hard."
"I would rate the user-friendliness an eight out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Sangfor HCI is the built-in recovery functionality. The migration is simple to do from other solutions, such as VMware."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten... Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Sangfor HCI has a really good GUI. It allows us to monitor the temperature of the server and many other things."
"A mobile app to sync up for overview and status would really be helpful."
"The interface of the management console of the StarWind Virtual SAN is complex, and it's difficult for the novice user to interact with the management having less knowledge or training in the product."
"This is a great product."
"The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex."
"The main thing I would like to see improved is the level of documentation."
"The console is something that I believe could be enhanced."
"If there was a way to automatically put disks in maintenance mode when shutting the host down and exit maintenance mode automatically, that would simplify things."
"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."
"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."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"Needs some more monitoring tools."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful 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 storage capability must be improved."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"The documentation and support from the community are not as good or as mature as VMware or Hyper-V."
"We have had issues while integrating VMware with Sangfor HCI. The tool should be also faster in terms of customization."
"The solution could improve by including backup capabilities."
"Lacks network support."
"It should have object storage. It already has network virtualization and micro-segmentation, but it is missing object storage. It does not have object storage. vSAN also does not have object storage, but Nutanix has object storage, and it is natively integrated into its HCI. So, if you pay for the object storage license, you have that module pre-built."
"Its virtual machine tools can be improved. These tools should be enhanced for use in other applications and operating systems, such as Linux."
"The processing speed and cost should be improved."
"Sangfor does not support a SAS configuration, which is something that we would like."
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Dell PowerFlex is ranked 8th in HCI with 19 reviews while Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is ranked 9th in HCI with 28 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is rated 8.0. 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 Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure writes "The solution offers straightforward setup, scalability, and manageability". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and HPE Alletra dHCI, whereas Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is most compared with VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VxRail, HPE SimpliVity and StorMagic SvSAN. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure report.
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