We performed a comparison between Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and Dell PowerFlex 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."It also provides a high degree of mobility, as the virtual SAN can be moved relatively painlessly between on-site devices and the cloud."
"I've had to open a few support cases over the years due to administrator errors, and the support received was top-notch."
"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."
"The best feature is its ease of installation and integration within a current infrastructure."
"Quick setup, great support, stability is great"
"For those basic uses, it's simple to set up and manage, and it seems to do a fine job."
"One of the standout features of StarWind.com is its remarkable ability to seamlessly integrate with Dell systems. This integration provides users with an unmatched level of convenience and compatibility, allowing for streamlined operations within a Dell environment. This compatibility factor alone can save significant time and effort for IT professionals, ensuring a smooth integration process and optimized performance."
"Updates to server hardware are now painless and done during working hours with zero stress. We had a RAID failure a few months back, and nobody in the building even noticed and there was no after hours time used for repair."
"On the VDI side, because the storage is local to the HyperFlex, it was very easy and convenient. The performance is exceptional."
"The most valuable feature for our company is that it works internally. We have a lot of internal projects for optimization."
"The feature that we are most interested in is the scalability. When needed, we are able to add more nodes and scale it up further."
"The implementation process is okay."
"Cisco HyperFlex is helping us to put everything in centrally so that we can manage in one place."
"The software defines networking, storage, and processing."
"It is very scalable. It is also easy to scan."
"Its most valuable feature is its flexibility."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"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."
"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 solution is scalable."
"The solution is quite stable."
"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 solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"The support is highly responsive."
"It is hard to find adequate technical documentation on their support website."
"I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves."
"The cluster configuration is time-consuming and tedious."
"In all areas the product could be made faster."
"I would say that the documentation is mostly great, however, some features could be expanded upon a bit."
"The documentation could be better."
"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."
"We would like to see the documentation more fully developed."
"There should be the opportunity to create more than one div group"
"In the next release, I would like to see them able to connect to the public cloud."
"We had a bit of complexity to think about how to migrate our legacy infrastructure into Cisco HyperFlex."
"If we compare it with VMware, the VMware product is basically very open, and it can be easily integrated with any platform. VMware product is also available on the cloud and is not an appliance-based product, whereas Cisco HyperFlex is an appliance-based product. Companies that want to use HCI as a platform or as a service would prefer something without an appliance. A SaaS-based product is better for a customer who is using the cloud and has multiple resources, workflows, and devices on the cloud and wants to go for a hyper-converged solution. This is where improvement is needed. In addition to an appliance-based product, Cisco should provide a SaaS-based product. Its price should be lower. Cisco needs to work on the pricing model for this product. Its price is a big road blocker when competing against Nutanix and VMware, which are its main competitors."
"They can't get a POC to work because there are big latencies between the two sites we have. Even though we have a private fiber connection and everything else works well, they can't get the two products to talk to each other. They are not able to build it up. It looks like it's a firmware issue. They said it isn't but now it's looking like it is. I hope we can sort it out."
"Sometimes when there are multiple technologies involved in a support case, this is when there is a bit of a lag."
"I would rate the installation of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series an eight out of ten. It can be complex."
"The product does not have a cloud version...The product should be made more flexible in terms of integration capabilities."
"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 storage capability must be improved."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"Needs some more monitoring tools."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."
"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."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is ranked 8th in HCI with 90 reviews while Dell PowerFlex is ranked 10th in HCI with 19 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is rated 8.0, while Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series writes "A fast and easy deployment that allows secure access to our medical applications ". On the other hand, 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". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and HPE Alletra dHCI. See our Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series vs. Dell PowerFlex report.
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