We compared VMware vSAN and Dell PowerFlex based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Overall, VMware vSAN is praised for its simplicity, integration, and scalability, with positive feedback on customer service and ROI. On the other hand, Dell PowerFlex is highly regarded for its flexibility, performance, and reliability, with positive feedback on pricing and customer service. Users note varying deployment times for both products.
Features: VMware vSAN is valued for its simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and seamless integration. On the other hand, Dell PowerFlex is highly regarded for its flexibility, scalability, and reliability. Both offer high performance and user-friendly interfaces.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for VMware vSAN was initially deemed expensive by users, but it provided good long-term value. On the other hand, Dell PowerFlex had a reasonable and competitive pricing. Users found its setup cost to be straightforward and hassle-free, resulting in a smooth implementation process., Users report positive ROI for both VMware vSAN and Dell PowerFlex. vSAN offers improved virtualization performance and data protection, while PowerFlex enhances productivity and cost savings.
Room for Improvement: VMware vSAN has room for improvement in performance optimization, scalability for larger environments, configuration ease, and integration with third-party solutions. Dell PowerFlex needs enhancements in specific areas.
Deployment and customer support: The user reviews for VMware vSAN and Dell PowerFlex indicate that the duration required to establish a new tech solution can vary. Some users of VMware vSAN reported spending one week for both deployment and setup, while for Dell PowerFlex, some users mentioned needing a week for deployment and another week for setup. This suggests that the two products may have different timelines for deployment and setup., The customer service provided by VMware vSAN is described as top-notch, with users praising the support team's helpfulness, knowledge, and responsiveness in troubleshooting and providing timely solutions. Dell PowerFlex also offers efficient and helpful assistance, promptly addressing users' questions and concerns with knowledgeable and friendly representatives. Both products prioritize customer satisfaction and provide reliable support.
The summary above is based on 29 interviews we conducted recently with VMware vSAN and Dell PowerFlex users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"We test live failovers every week, and so far, everything has been running smoothly without anything unexpected."
"We like their high availability. It reduces the downtime for our entire organization's environment."
"Having the ability to scale horizontally if needed is a huge plus for future growth."
"The solution offers easy one-click PowerShell scripts that are ready to run."
"The product has improved the ability to mimic physical SAN environments to demo scenarios and troubleshoot problems."
"I've been really impressed with it so far. I think it's pretty great, actually. It does exactly what we need it to do, and it does it well, so I would recommend it. Plus, the support has been very good."
"Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."
"We can lose a site or even two of our three, and we would lose no data and have no outage."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"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 most valuable feature of this solution is integration."
"It has reduced downtime. Before, on our previous solution, we used to have downtime on some of the servers because of the sort of convention. But currently I've not experienced any downtime on any of the servers, and there is no more resource congestion."
"The setup was very straightforward."
"The program is stable."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"Stretched Cluster is one of the big features that we use across multiple data centers."
"It has a single pane of glass for management and operational control, which is the most valuable feature. The integrated storage is also valuable."
"I have found the solution to be scalable."
"Scalability in vSAN has been really good. It's very easy to add nodes in, to automatically generate the drives and the disk groups. It has been a piece of cake, surprisingly so."
"We had very good access to technical support."
"Overall the solution is very good."
"The performance has exceeded our expectations and exceeded our traditional converged infrastructure."
"Storage policies are used to perform operations in the VMs. This feature allows you to create storage policies for VMs to get performance, high availability, I/O policies, etc."
"Ongoing improvements in read and write performance would help meet increasingly demanding workloads."
"It would be great if the Linux version of the management console offered the same features as Windows."
"I think the setup could be streamlined a bit."
"I'd prefer it if a remote console was provided."
"There is one issue as far as licensing goes and that is a lack of documentation online for users when transitioning from the free version to the paid version, or vice versa."
"I would like to see more advanced free versions."
"We just need more integration with Veeam."
"Ability to to test the virtual storage are network area and storage speed from StarWind Management Console."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."
"There is a room for improvement on the latest version of compatibility with the VMware product, especially for vSAN and with other vendors on their motherboards and driver configurations."
"The UI could certainly be better. The inside into what's actually going on with vSAN would be nice to know."
"On the DevOps side, if there could be more automation it would be more helpful."
"VMware vSAN needs to improve its features because other solutions have more advanced features."
"I would like compression and deduplication to be offered for offloading hardware, instead of doing it with software. That would be nice."
"The UI falls short compared to other solutions. It needs some development to make it more user-friendly."
"What I would like to see, for the really small customers, is the ability to have two nodes."
"The server files are larger than before."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 8th in HCI with 19 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. 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 VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity, HPE Alletra dHCI and HPE Hyper Converged, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. VMware vSAN report.
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