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."StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN) offers a significant breadth of features."
"Virtualizing data infrastructure with StarWind Virtual SAN improves efficiency and reduces operational costs."
"The configuration is so much simpler than that of a traditional SAN with fewer points of failure to worry about."
"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."
"The top-notch support before, during, and after deployments are better than any other vendor I have come across."
"The fact that the solution is vendor-agnostic allows it to be used with any virtualization vendor while remaining a powerful abstraction over storage."
"The user interface for this application is amazing."
"It is extremely stable."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"It has reduced downtime. Before, on our previous solution, we used to have downtime on some of the servers because of the sort of convention. But currently I've not experienced any downtime on any of the servers, and there is no more resource congestion."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability."
"The most valuable feature is the set of user tools that are available."
"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."
"No concerns regarding the footprint in the data center."
"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."
"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 file sharing."
"A better overall view of the different deployments could be beneficial, although this is difficult due to how flexible the solution is."
"While we had no problems setting the system up, and service technicians from StarWind could assist us very well, they could provide some form of in-depth documentation."
"For improvement, I would like to see how the software determines which networks to use for which purpose. It seems like the naming terminology changes a bit from here to there."
"Ability to to test the virtual storage are network area and storage speed from StarWind Management Console."
"It would help if the manufacturer provided clearer and more detailed documentation, with explanations of how the application can be installed in various HA configurations."
"You have to do a "full" sync on write-back cache disks instead of a quick sync if there is an issue."
"Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."
"Sometimes documentation on their site can be out of date."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"The installation is complex."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"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 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."
"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."
"Compatibility with other hardware nodes needs to be improved."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required. The price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes could be lowered."
"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."
"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."
"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 19 reviews while Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is ranked 11th 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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