We compared VxRail and HPE Hyper Converged based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Overall, VxRail is praised for its excellent performance and highly scalable infrastructure, with positive feedback on customer service and support. On the other hand, HPE Hyper Converged stands out for its seamless integration and ease of management, along with efficient customer service and support. Both products offer favorable pricing, but VxRail users emphasize flexibility and customization options, while HPE Hyper Converged users highlight scalability and efficiency. Areas for improvement include system scalability, performance enhancements, and user interface design for HPE Hyper Converged, while VxRail users call for better scalability, easier deployment, and improved customer support and documentation.
Features: VxRail is praised for its excellent performance, seamless integration, and scalability. In contrast, users appreciate HPE Hyper Converged for its simplified management, reliability, and user-friendly interface, among other features.
Pricing and ROI: The setup costs for VxRail and HPE Hyper Converged products have been regarded favorably by users. However, VxRail is noted for its flexible licensing options, while HPE Hyper Converged is praised for its ease of setup and straightforward licensing process., VxRail has shown positive ROI with increased efficiency, improved performance, lower TCO, scalability, ease of use, and reliability. Users praise its value in accelerating processes and meeting goals. On the other hand, users of HPE Hyper Converged have also reported positive ROI.
Room for Improvement: User feedback suggests that VxRail could improve scalability, compatibility, setup process, monitoring capabilities, customer support, and troubleshooting documentation. In contrast, users of HPE Hyper Converged desire enhanced scalability, performance, user interface, technical support, and documentation.
Deployment and customer support: Based on user reviews, the duration required to establish a new tech solution varies for VxRail and HPE Hyper Converged. Some users of VxRail spent three months on deployment and one week on setup, while others completed both in just a week. For HPE Hyper Converged, one user took three months for deployment and another one week for setup, while another user completed both in just one week. These differences in timeframes suggest that the two products have different implementation processes., Customers have expressed satisfaction with the customer service of both VxRail and HPE Hyper Converged products. They appreciate the helpfulness, responsiveness, and professionalism of the support teams, as well as their knowledge and willingness to address concerns.
The summary above is based on 35 interviews we conducted recently with VxRail and HPE Hyper Converged users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a highly flexible solution, as it can be deployed on physical servers or on top of virtual machines running on hypervisors such as VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V."
"This software lets us maintain storage redundancy across both of our Hyper-V hosts, so if one goes down the environment fails over to the other and we have minimal to no downtime."
"The product only requires two VMWare ESXi host servers versus three host servers for VMware's comparable solution."
"A typical system administrator with minimal experience in Hyper-V, VMware, or Windows can do VSAN configuration and maintain VSAN operations."
"It has given the company an almost zero possibility of downtime."
"Integration with virtualization platforms helped us to resolve many issues we were facing while using the physical storage."
"The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget."
"This solution has a very good user interface, with simple administration/management."
"The solution has good backup resolution updates."
"The most valuable feature is the in-built backup system. The backup speed is also excellent."
"I've found the data protection features the most valuable."
"It is a stable solution...Those who want flexibility, ease of use, and a simple support system can opt for HPE."
"The most valuable feature was its time to delivery."
"If you were comparing this solution to VMware, it has more features, and it's very fast on the recovery."
"Hyper Converge is easier to manage and performs better than traditional infrastructure."
"The HPE Hyper Converged solution is used in a hybrid cloud configuration. We assess the disk space and partition additional capacity."
"VxRail is an agile solution with easily scalable, simplify operations with software driven automation and lower operational cost."
"VxRail simplifies IT infrastructure management by providing a single management console for compute, storage, and network. The second advantage is that VxRail offers a continuously validated architecture from the OEM. This means that Dell thoroughly tests all firmware updates before being released or installed on the product, helping to prevent compatibility issues. The third benefit is its ten-year roadmap. Dell consistently announces a roadmap for the product spanning the next decade."
"VxRail can manage the whole cluster at the same time, so it's easy to expand. VxRail has more features vSAN ReadyNodes that make it easier to implement from scratch."
"The VxRail is built on two specific platforms that have been in the industry for the last 15 to 20 years: the 1-U socket and the 2-U socket platforms from Dell. They're in their sixteenth generation of those platforms, I believe, so they're very stable."
"The most valuable features are ease of management and ease of applying updates."
"The compute is good and we have not had any issues with the vSAN."
"Initial setup is straightforward, as everything is pre-installed."
"The simplicity and manageability of VxRail are most valuable. We have a very good experience with this product. Its stability and scalability are also very good."
"It would help us if the vendor continues to release software updates for earlier versions of the Windows operating systems."
"Updating the software can be a bit tricky."
"I would like them to invest time in reducing the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure."
"The documentation is good yet is still lacking in a few areas."
"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."
"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."
"I would like additional documentation regarding possible networking configurations with 10GbE switching."
"Ongoing improvements in read and write performance would help meet increasingly demanding workloads."
"One problem I've had is that I was trying to do a move and it was not working. I was given an error and a message asking me to shut down the machine first and then move it to another host."
"In my country, the biggest issue is probably pricing."
"Scalability is an issue because it becomes very expensive. When you need to upgrade memory, you have to upgrade memory across the nodes. Suppose a customer has gone with a three-node HCI solution, then to increase the memory, you have to do it across the three nodes."
"A software-only version of the solution, without the hardware, would be nice."
"The improvements could be customization and backup efficiency."
"I think that OneView should be replaced by something else for the management."
"Some improvement is required in the availability of the data and performance. The solution is too expensive for our customers. The pricing should be lower."
"We have faced some challenges when upgrading. With Hyper Converged, you have to fully upgrade because there are no incremental upgrades available in this solution. For example, let's say we have two nodes. If we want to upgrade storage, we also need to upgrade computing. That means a full upgrade EME."
"VxRail could improve by having domain protection."
"If we could have some out of the box ideas in integration, I think that would be a great feature."
"You cannot install another operating system such as Microsoft or Hyperflex or Nutanix. We have also had a hardware problem."
"VxRail could be easier to set up. It's tricky to configure the network properly and match the requirements."
"What I did not like so much was the amount of VMware that you have to put in your system related to the VxRail."
"Lacks integration of licenses so that it's an expensive solution."
"My main issue so far is that the installation created a default datacenter name of "Marvin" and it cannot be changed."
"I would like them to include an easier solution to host its own DNS. When they changed to version 6.5, they took out the easy features of letting the rail be its own DNS. You can still trick the system and make the VxRail Manager another one of the rail-required VMs become the DNS, but it's a lot of extra work. I'd like to see it put back into the UI."
HPE Hyper Converged is ranked 10th in HCI with 34 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 119 reviews. HPE Hyper Converged is rated 8.2, while VxRail is rated 8.6. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". HPE Hyper Converged is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, HPE Alletra dHCI and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. See our HPE Hyper Converged vs. VxRail report.
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