We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance 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.
"This product now allows us to migrate virtual machines between nodes as if we had a dedicated $100,000 SAN in the mix without the additional cost and management of the SAN."
"The support team is available to solve any problem efficiently."
"One of the most valuable features is the way it sets up the virtual SAN, because we don't have to buy a separate appliance for storage. It uses the existing storage on the servers, which is definitely a cost savings for us."
"It also provides a seamless and efficient solution for personal storage requirements, showcasing the versatility and scalability of my Virtual SAN configuration."
"The iSCSI protocol is quite simple to configure."
"The ability to keep data accessible even in the event of hardware failures is highly valued, as it ensures business continuity."
"StarWind SANs come with outstanding support."
"The top-notch support before, during, and after deployments are better than any other vendor I have come across."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"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 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."
"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."
"The program is stable."
"The solution is scalable."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The biggest thing we were looking for was redundancy, with both the compute and the storage, so that way we could lose a full node and still keep everything up and running, and not have to worry about it... StarWind was able to provide a solution for what we wanted, - to provide for redundancy."
"The StarWind array has greatly improved our workflow internally as it is quite easy to use and provides robust features that allow us to provide anything our clients need quickly and efficiently."
"Reliability and overall uptime are key as we're also hosting client environments in addition to our own."
"The sales process is easy."
"We also opted for 24-hour support monitoring for any issues. They are extremely quick to respond on issues we even cause ourselves such as bumping a network cable."
"We opted for 24-hour monitoring and support, which has already paid for itself."
"The initial setup seems to be very straightforward."
"We run probably 16 virtual machines, and all of them are now highly available, and highly redundant."
"An update caused a syncing issue and it took over a month to resolve it"
"I'd love to see more clarification for us folks who are smart enough to do some damage yet not smart enough to use CLI."
"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."
"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."
"It runs until it does not - and disaster recovery documentation is sparse and mostly unclear."
"Having more support plan options would be nice."
"A mobile app to sync up for overview and status would really be helpful."
"The main thing I would like to see improved is the level of documentation."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"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 biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"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."
"Needs some more monitoring tools."
"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."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"We have to pay for support, which is high-end support. That can be expensive, at least for us."
"Shipping options should be explained in detail and offer more white glove delivery options even if it comes at an additional cost for some SMBs without docks."
"We struggle a little with capacity management with the StarWind Hyperconverged appliance."
"I'd like a better UI and some limitations on "breaking it.""
"Product shipments did have a few bumps along the way, but that's to be expected when using any shipping company."
"Possible new features could be CSV-level snapshot capability, Veeam integration, and maybe a more straightforward setup. Granted, you don't have to worry about setups with the HCA, but if you want to implement StarWind vSAN in a lab to test it is a tedious setup process."
"I honestly cannot think of anything else to be improved, as I rarely have to interact with the Starwind product."
"The only real flaw that I have seen so far is this hard drive that was accidentally ejected because when it was received and added back into the RAID. There was an error there. It was not added back into the RAID correctly, so I have an outstanding hard disk. Apparently, a guy just knocked it with his hand as he was in my office, so it was just a small eject. He said that he didn't crash into anything. That is the only thing that has reared its head."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 8th in HCI with 21 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 7th in HCI with 65 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of Dell PowerFlex writes "Is very resilient and protects our data, but the solution is complex". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and Scale Computing HC3, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, StorMagic SvSAN, VxRail and Red Hat Ceph Storage. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
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