We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI."I like the asynchronous replication and failover features. They are what I'm primarily using it for. The asynchronous replication is helpful because our servers are backed up continuously throughout the day. If anything goes wrong we just fail over immediately. That is a very nice feature to have."
"In addition to the main functions of the software, I want to note the excellent work of technical support."
"It has reduced the amount of switching, network connections, etc., because the converged StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to connect high-speed network interfaces between different boxes instead of having to connect SANs via the network, then connect those two clusters together."
"It integrates (fully) with VMware and Veeam, my hypervisor, and backup vendors, so for me, all the puzzle pieces simply fit and work smoothly."
"Support keeps track of alerts of the system and verifies with us if we need help to fix any issues. They have great and quick technical support."
"It provides shared storage to multiple hypervisor hosts. Times had changed, however. StarWind Virtual SAN is the “software replaces hardware” for SAN. We have access control and CCTV systems up and running using Microsoft clustering and shared storage"
"The failover protection and the ability to expand storage and nodes with no downtime are by far the best physical features we have benefited from."
"The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"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 program is stable."
"The support is highly responsive."
"The support team responds quickly."
"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."
"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 size of the hardware is what we need because it is very good for small configurations."
"I like that you can add other types of services."
"Both the scalability and stability of this solution are excellent."
"It is stable and scalable."
"The most useful feature is the solution's automation in terms of how we are able to spin up a certain workload in real-time when we are doing R&D."
"The consolidation of the management in one control point is the most valuable. The whole infrastructure management is consolidated in just one console point. The documentation is also pretty good."
"The software could benefit from more tooling to help with initial deployment."
"If it's possible to make a driver/solution that does not make use of the iSCSI targets of Windows, that would be great. I don't know if that's possible, however, it could make the configuration a little easier."
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"We ran into an issue with alerts."
"You have to do a "full" sync on write-back cache disks instead of a quick sync if there is an issue."
"It would be great to have more automated tooling around managing the iSCSI connections in Windows"
"The GUI deserves a little love."
"Updating the software can be a bit tricky."
"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."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"The installation is complex."
"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."
"The storage capability must be improved."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"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."
"This product is not so stable. Maybe it is just not mature enough in its development."
"It is not user-friendly, and it is very difficult to operate. You have to have a deep understanding of the technical details of the infrastructure to implement it. When you compare it with VMware, it is totally different because the graphical user interface is not that easy to understand. It is not intuitive. To use it, you have to read a lot of documentation and even understand what is going on behind the solution. It is not for someone who has a little bit of knowledge. Currently, it is too complex. I need something that is easy to implement. It should have a basic configuration as well as a complex configuration."
"The cloud deployment could be improved."
"It should be more user-friendly, in my opinion."
"The main issue is the initial investment. It is an expensive product, and it should be cheaper. It should also be easier to use and manage. The professional service for this solution is quite complex and expensive."
"The licensing policy needs to be improved. They have a licensing policy based on the number of CPU sockets. Nowadays what has happened is that the license they are trying to move is based on the number of CPU cores. With the advancement in technology there are now more cores in a single CPU. It's been very challenging in terms of managing the license around everything. Today we have a processor with 24 and 32 cores on the same physical CPU."
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Dell PowerFlex is ranked 10th in HCI with 19 reviews while Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is ranked 23rd in HCI. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is rated 8.0. 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 Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure writes "Comes in a small, compact model that does not have any separate management but it is not so stable". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, whereas Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI).
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