We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure 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."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."
"The management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly."
"StarWind vSAN has a lot of great features and is a perfect solution for mirroring internal disks and flash between servers."
"PowerShell library is pretty good feature as I created with APC PowerChute a script to put volumes on maintenance mode then turning off the StarWind nodes together with the VM and Hosts when UPS reaches 15 percent, this way after a blackout or electrical problems when turning servers on again, there is no issues for syncing or data loss due to energy interrupts."
"We test live failovers every week, and so far, everything has been running smoothly without anything unexpected."
"Ten gigabit Ethernet compatibility, support, ease of use, and management are some positive features."
"The customer support provided by StarWind is excellent."
"We are running Hyper-V on twin servers in failover, and being able to manage servers from anywhere I need to, virtually, has been a game changer."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"The setup was very straightforward."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"The support is highly responsive."
"The solution is scalable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."
"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."
"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."
"It was not expensive at all."
"Sangfor HCI's best features are the ability to scale to a bigger size and the roadmap, whereby if they need to replicate their production to disaster recovery, they can do so on the same platform."
"The initial setup isn't hard."
"You can get almost all the features of the tool at a low cost. The tool also has built-in backup mechanisms. It also has a physical firewall for internet management which other competitors lack."
"Sangfor HCI is a one-stop solution that enables you to store and centrally manage your VMs."
"Very user-friendly and simple."
"The most valuable feature is the three nodes and the free hypervisor."
"We find the topology feature of Sangfor HCI particularly valuable."
"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."
"I had to buy upgraded support, which was not a problem, but it wasn't a prorated amount, so I paid for the support, the full upgrade, but I only got a couple of months out of it because it was only good until renewal time."
"Ongoing improvements in read and write performance would help meet increasingly demanding workloads."
"The logs can also become very noisy when there is an issue, which is very infrequent."
"It would be great if it provided thin provisioned virtual disks."
"Feature-wise we are only waiting for the release of a "planned disaster" feature that would allow us to patch a hypervisor node without having to take the full storage offline."
"It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI."
"If there was a way to automatically put disks in maintenance mode when shutting the host down and exit maintenance mode automatically, that would simplify things."
"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."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."
"Needs some more monitoring tools."
"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."
"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."
"Its virtual machine tools can be improved. These tools should be enhanced for use in other applications and operating systems, such as Linux."
"Sangfor does not support a SAS configuration, which is something that we would like."
"My company faced some issues with the product, as our virtual machines crashed, and we had to face some security issues."
"It should have object storage. It already has network virtualization and micro-segmentation, but it is missing object storage. It does not have object storage. vSAN also does not have object storage, but Nutanix has object storage, and it is natively integrated into its HCI. So, if you pay for the object storage license, you have that module pre-built."
"The error reporting needs to be improved."
"One question that has come up frequently in the last week is whether or not the renewal cost for Sangfor's HCI solution is too high."
"The initialization is not fully automated and has room for improvement."
"The interface could be a little bit better."
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Dell PowerFlex is ranked 10th in HCI with 19 reviews while Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is ranked 9th in HCI with 28 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged 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 Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure writes "The solution offers straightforward setup, scalability, and manageability". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, whereas Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and StorMagic SvSAN. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure report.
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