We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and FlexPod XCS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI."The main benefit is that StarWind is almost maintenance-free."
"The fact that I can now count on a true failover solution is what is most appealing."
"StarWind Virtual SAN can improve an organization's storage infrastructure by providing high availability, scalability, cost-effectiveness, performance, and ease of use."
"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."
"Quick setup, great support, stability is great"
"StarWind vSAN has a lot of great features and is a perfect solution for mirroring internal disks and flash between servers."
"The ROI is great on this product."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to leverage our server infrastructure more completely without the need to add more hardware."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"The support team responds quickly."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"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 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."
"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 high availability."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"Integration is most valuable. This is a reference architecture. So, we don't have to design something from scratch and figure out how it is going to work."
"Our downtime has significantly been reduced."
"For anyone who needs the flexibility of moving around profiles from physical device to physical device, it really adds an additional layer of virtualization."
"DR has been tremendously easier."
"With FlexPod, it is about the synergy of the server, the storage, and the whole management layer. Together, it is really about minimizing staff. You don't have to hire more people. You can work with the minimum level of resources and the availability is really good. We have had very little downtime."
"The product is robust, stable, and has flexibility."
"The product is easy to deploy and use."
"All-flash storage and low latency I/O enhance performance."
"Improvements in documentation and support resources could enhance the user experience."
"The product can include a more simple way of synchronization after a forced shutdown as the current process has a few more steps to check that hosts have synchronized and this can be automated."
"I wish the sync after a failure, such as hardware failure or power-related issues, for example, was faster."
"I see no need for major improvements but there could be some improvements in the form of notifications and the simplifying of maintenance mode."
"The GUI deserves a little love."
"Initially, when we first started, the sync was horrible."
"It would help if the manufacturer provided clearer and more detailed documentation, with explanations of how the application can be installed in various HA configurations."
"I had issues locating the documentation that applied to my version of StarWind vSAN."
"The storage capability must be improved."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"It would be great to get earlier access to beta builds because we have to develop providers on our own. The APIs and enablers for custom automation could also be improved."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."
"The installation is complex."
"Updates are not frequent enough."
"There could be room for improvement in terms of offering more flexibility in CBD options."
"I'd like to see some more Ansible integration for automation purposes. We automate everything else with Ansible, so it would be great if we could automate our FlexPod with Ansible as well."
"The majority of the time, if we need more storage, then we need to work with customizing the NetApp deployment. Right now, we just do a generic deployment, then wherever we have a need for storage, we have to move some application out of the next FlexPod deployment. One thing is to customize based on the requirements, but the requirements change so frequently, they are absolutely obsolete in six months."
"Cisco support is much slower. Opening cases with Cisco tech is sometimes a bit tedious. The return time for less important calls can be slower. Even Priority 1 calls can sometimes be a bit long and they will have to call me back."
"I'd like them to bring back the GUI for NetApp ONTAP. They changed the interface in version 9.8, and it's not great. In 9.9 they've tried to bring it back a little bit, but it's still not great."
"The integration between both companies, Cisco and NetApp, is very good but it still needs to be enhanced in terms of visibility and observability."
"It would be very helpful if the upgrades for Cisco, VMware, and NetApp could be bundled together and performed at the same time."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 10th in HCI with 19 reviews while FlexPod XCS is ranked 2nd in Converged Infrastructure with 295 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while FlexPod XCS is rated 8.6. 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 FlexPod XCS writes "Integrates everything so you are using fewer tools". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and Scale Computing HC3, whereas FlexPod XCS is most compared with Oracle Exadata, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VxRail, Dell VxBlock System and Dell PowerEdge VRTX.
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