We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and HPE SimpliVity 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 product only requires two VMWare ESXi host servers versus three host servers for VMware's comparable solution."
"I like the asynchronous replication and failover features. They are what I'm primarily using it for. The asynchronous replication is helpful because our servers are backed up continuously throughout the day. If anything goes wrong we just fail over immediately. That is a very nice feature to have."
"The user interface for this application is amazing."
"Quick setup, great support, stability is great"
"It enables us to provide more solution options for our clients, with the reassurance that, when implemented, they will be efficient and stable."
"StarWind vSAN is easy to deploy and administer."
"The iSCSI protocol is quite simple to configure."
"The ability to choose our own hardware and our own vendors for this was hugely beneficial, as we had pre-existing relationships with vendors we wanted to maintain."
"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."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"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 most valuable feature is high availability."
"The support team responds quickly."
"The solution is quite stable."
"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."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"The HCI concept by itself is the most valuable feature of the solution. It is a full-fledged HCI. It is the main component. I think this is what makes the project valuable."
"I like the expandability of the solution. We can effortlessly grow the storage and resources without downtime."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"The initial setup was very easy as I had the SimpliVity engineers work with our managed services."
"SimpliVity works well in a UAT environment.."
"The backup feature is valuable, and replication is also valuable. It is very quick and easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the quick restore."
"Among the valuable features are that it's a complete solution, it's easy to use, and there is not a lot of management time involved in operating the solution."
"The StarWind Management Console is available only for Microsoft Windows/Windows Server, and should also be available for Linux and macOS, as it would reduce implementation costs."
"This product could be improved with the inclusion of new health check procedures."
"Regular updates to the software are required, and subtle design changes would be welcome."
"An update caused a syncing issue and it took over a month to resolve it"
"It could have a dashboard so that you can check all servers' SAN health and performance."
"Server-side snapshots are one thing the Linux appliance can't do yet."
"When StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere nodes go offline unexpectedly, the nodes have to re-sync disks fully which takes a long time. We had a power failure and when both nodes came online, VMware vSphere didn't see StarWind disks before I manually re-scanned them form ESXi administration console even though it should happen automatically"
"In all areas the product could be made faster."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"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 centric management could be simplified or more user-friendly."
"There may be issues around scaling."
"When we make some upgrades to the platform, it does take time to stabilize the structure again."
"There is room for improvement in the operations area because the support for that server space is minimal."
"I would like some reporting about backup and replication."
"Not a lean architecture in terms of anything."
"The backup and recovery process needs to be faster. Right now, it's a bit slow."
"Needs decoupling of distributed data fabric to run in a hyperscale deployment outside the hypervisor on dedicated nodes."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 8th in HCI with 19 reviews while HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 151 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while HPE SimpliVity 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 HPE SimpliVity writes "Provides a unified management interface that allows administrators to manage all aspects of the infrastructure". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and HPE Hyper Converged, whereas HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. HPE SimpliVity report.
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