Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure comparison

Dell PowerFlex vs. Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure

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Categories and Ranking

StarWind Virtual SAN

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the HCI category, the market share of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.3% and it increased by 63.3% compared to the previous year. The market share of Dell PowerFlex is 15.9% and it increased by 118.9% compared to the previous year. The market share of Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is 0.7% and it increased by 30.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI

Unique Categories:

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

11.2%

No other categories found

Featured Reviews

reviewer1727484

Chief Technology Expert at Rapid Response Networks

Nov 24, 2021

Scalable with excellent support and allowed for the use of existing hardware

The main issue we ran into was the documentation. We attempted to set up the product in our test environment by ourselves and ran into several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us. Starwind provides excellent pre-sale support and scheduled several meetings between our IT staff and their support team to review the configuration and answer questions. This helped immensely in deploying the software in our test environment and helped us to understand the product better. Support was always willing to help with any documentation that we were confused over and continued to follow up with us after the project went live.

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reviewer2125335

Student at a university with 501-1,000 employees

Mar 13, 2023

Good integration, stable, and increased performance

The solution is a private cloud hyper-converged infrastructure that is scalable, with highly available computer workloads The solution has helped reduce our costs and increase our performance. The integration with AWS is a valuable feature. Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not…

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PaulSorelli

IBM Data & IA Technology Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Nov 14, 2020

Consolidated management and good documentation but very complex and difficult to operate

It is not user-friendly, and it is very difficult to operate. You have to have a deep understanding of the technical details of the infrastructure to implement it. When you compare it with VMware, it is totally different because the graphical user interface is not that easy to understand. It is not intuitive. To use it, you have to read a lot of documentation and even understand what is going on behind the solution. It is not for someone who has a little bit of knowledge. Currently, it is too complex. I need something that is easy to implement. It should have a basic configuration as well as a complex configuration.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems."

"The primary purpose of this software is to create a virtual SAN between local storage on Hyper-V hosts. I find this feature most valuable since it accomplishes this quite well."

"The management interface on the software is very simple. It is insanely simple compared to most SANs. The interface is also powerful when used to complete tasks that an IT administrator needs to complete."

"StarWind vSAN was very easy to integrate into our system and ran flawlessly during our entire use time."

"It also provides a high degree of mobility, as the virtual SAN can be moved relatively painlessly between on-site devices and the cloud."

"StarWind allowed us to deploy highly available shared storage within our budget."

"The iSCSI protocol is quite simple to configure."

"The ability to run a two-node cluster without a dedicated witness has made this an excellent product for small deployments, which is right on target for our needs in regional offices."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."

"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."

"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."

"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 setup was very straightforward."

"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."

"The solution is quite stable."

More Dell PowerFlex pros

"The most useful feature is the solution's automation in terms of how we are able to spin up a certain workload in real-time when we are doing R&D."

"The consolidation of the management in one control point is the most valuable. The whole infrastructure management is consolidated in just one console point. The documentation is also pretty good."

"It is stable and scalable."

"I like that you can add other types of services."

"Both the scalability and stability of this solution are excellent."

"The size of the hardware is what we need because it is very good for small configurations."

Cons

"The system performs as expected, but we're always looking for performance improvements regarding the best utilization of NVMe disks."

"I would like to see more monitoring and alert tools."

"I struggled when bit figuring out how to go about doing the evaluation."

"Some configuration options still demand service restarting."

"Management of VSAN itself could be improved. A Web UI for management would be great rather than an application installation. StarWind is testing a command center virtual appliance that I have installed in my environment."

"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."

"It should reclaim white spaces after big files are deleted."

"I would say that the documentation is mostly great, however, some features could be expanded upon a bit."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

"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."

"The initial deployment was complicated and required a lot of data nodes, IPs, internal vLANs, data vLANs, and many other things."

"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."

"They need to work on improving the overhead for protecting the data."

"I think there might be some room for improvement when it comes to pricing, because although I know how to convert customers, at the end of day, it's quite expensive. Sometimes your feature architecture is still coming out much cheaper than hardware costs for your infrastructure."

"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."

"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."

"There should be more functionality available for routing."

More Dell PowerFlex cons

"This product is not so stable. Maybe it is just not mature enough in its development."

"The licensing policy needs to be improved. They have a licensing policy based on the number of CPU sockets. Nowadays what has happened is that the license they are trying to move is based on the number of CPU cores. With the advancement in technology there are now more cores in a single CPU. It's been very challenging in terms of managing the license around everything. Today we have a processor with 24 and 32 cores on the same physical CPU."

"The main issue is the initial investment. It is an expensive product, and it should be cheaper. It should also be easier to use and manage. The professional service for this solution is quite complex and expensive."

"It should be more user-friendly, in my opinion."

"The cloud deployment could be improved."

"It is not user-friendly, and it is very difficult to operate. You have to have a deep understanding of the technical details of the infrastructure to implement it. When you compare it with VMware, it is totally different because the graphical user interface is not that easy to understand. It is not intuitive. To use it, you have to read a lot of documentation and even understand what is going on behind the solution. It is not for someone who has a little bit of knowledge. Currently, it is too complex. I need something that is easy to implement. It should have a basic configuration as well as a complex configuration."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."

"The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."

"I think the bang for the buck is much better with StarWind Virtual SAN."

"The cost, including OPEX, is lower compared to other solutions."

"The license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running."

"When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."

"Once you buy the license, you are free to build your own hardware solution based on your needs."

"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

"The product is expensive."

"The pricing for this solution is good."

"The cost of this solution is fair."

"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."

"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."

"The price could be improved."

"We have a good contact in Dell and he prepared all the information and provided everything to us."

"The solution's price is medium."

"It is quite pricey."

"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is an open-sourced, low-cost solution with full features."

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787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?

It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combin...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

I would highly advise new users to consult the StarWind technical team beforehand. Also, consider the paid version if...

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings t...

What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?

VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not bein...

What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerFlex?

The support is highly responsive.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerFlex?

The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten.

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

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Product Reports

StarWind Virtual SAN

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Download Dell PowerFlex product report

Dell PowerFlex

June 2024

HCI

Download Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure product report

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure report

Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS

VxFlex, VxRack FLEX, PowerFlex

Red Hat HCI, Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Virtualization

Learn More

StarWind

Dell Technologies

Red Hat

Overview

StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

VxRack System consists of hyper-converged rack-scale engineered systems, with integrated networking, to achieve the scalability and management requirements of traditional and cloud native workloads. The VxRack series is purposely designed to enable customers to quickly deploy Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and/or Private Cloud architectures. VxRack Systems tightly integrate hardware with software and management layers.

The result is a fully tested, pre-configured, hyper-converged system with simplified operations at data center and Service Provider scale. VxRack Systems support the deployment of a variety of application workloads, allowing IT to rapidly deliver new services while improving overall agility and efficiency.

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure - based on our leading OpenStack and virtualization platforms - provides co-located, scalable, software-defined compute and storage, driven by Red Hat Ansible Automation on economical, industry-standard hardware.

Sample Customers

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Canopy, 8x8Inc., Atos, Canadian Pacific, City of Denton, CenturyLink, BNP Paribas, Asyaport, EDF, CSC, Fox Sports, Insight, Hunter, KPIT, Paetec, Rosetta Stone, Sonda, Xerox

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Dell PowerFlex vs. Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure