We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and HPE Hyper Converged 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."In addition to the main functions of the software, I want to note the excellent work of technical support."
"Before VSAN, hypervisor configuration changes and updates resulted in VM outages. Now, downtime is dramatically reduced."
"The most valuable feature is the fact that the nodes are Active/Active, and allow us to do upgrades on any node without any downtime."
"VSAN works great; it's very easy to install, configure, and manage."
"It has a nice, simple control panel. You can clearly see the state and health of storage along with the synchronization."
"The fact that we can expand our storage and add on to our compute nodes easily and how amazing the StarWind technical support team is really adding value to our purchase."
"User friendly interface and straight forward implementation."
"The instant failover, with vSAN copying data to the second node, allowed for the continuous availability of our applications."
"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 setup was very straightforward."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"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 solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"The support is highly responsive."
"The support team responds quickly."
"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."
"The most valuable features are resiliency and data protection."
"Hyper-convergence is the most valuable aspect of the solution. We can avoid downtime when there's maintenance or updates needed. Also, we have homogenous hardware, so we have a lot of trust in the solution's reliability."
"It is easy to manage; the administration is simpler. It saves a lot of rack space in the data center because you can consolidate 20 servers into three to five nodes. The client will be able to benefit from power savings and cost savings as well."
"The most valuable feature is the in-built backup system. The backup speed is also excellent."
"It is a stable solution...Those who want flexibility, ease of use, and a simple support system can opt for HPE."
"It is a scalable solution."
"It is a scalable solution."
"What I really like about this program, is that it needs little space and it works really fast, so it saves us time."
"The Command Center, a free guest VM for management and monitoring, leaves something to be desired. It could have more accurate real-time information and better reporting visuals, which seem to be an afterthought."
"I wish they would improve the documentation for the beginner level as it's not very clear on the web page."
"StarWind offers the Enterprise-level high availability (HA), deployed and easily configured .maintain and update and with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings a the cost of a Highly Available HCI solution down to a very cost effective point" Having used Starwind Virtual SAN for many years both for clients and for internal systems it has always done exactly what it set out to do, provide a cost effect way to run a HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor, but it is most effective with Hyper-V, simple, easy to use, -.software monitoring should be web based to be reachable from any workstation in VLAN."
"It would be nice if we could designate pools, or tiers, for storage of different speeds, and then assign rules to new VMs that would automatically place them into the proper pool."
"The most disappointing side of the application is the free edition. There used to be GUI attached. That has recently changed to only CLI management of the application."
"It should be improved in the way it detects the right filesystem image after a complete shutdown of the system or in the case of disaster recovery."
"Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful."
"Pricing is a bit high."
"The installation is complex."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."
"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."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"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."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"I think that OneView should be replaced by something else for the management."
"The product must provide more storage capability."
"The solution's pricing for the hardware and support could be reduced."
"The solution can be improved on the management side. More management features should be added to future releases."
"A software-only version of the solution, without the hardware, would be nice."
"If the solution could further compress the data, it would use less storage."
"The solution needs to add a module or plugin of vCenter for clear monitoring and insights."
"I would like to see improvement in the hardware underneath it. Currently, it's a Gen9 DL380. One day, there will be a Gen10 DL380 and maybe they will have bigger or smaller sizes."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 8th in HCI with 19 reviews while HPE Hyper Converged is ranked 10th in HCI with 34 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while HPE Hyper Converged is rated 8.2. 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 HPE Hyper Converged writes " Ensures end-to-end data security with redundancy measures and provides visibility into the system but node expansion challenges". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Red Hat Ceph Storage, whereas HPE Hyper Converged is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, HPE Alletra dHCI and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. HPE Hyper Converged report.
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