We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and NetApp HCI [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI."The ability to run a two-node cluster without a dedicated witness has made this an excellent product for small deployments, which is right on target for our needs in regional offices."
"Having the ability to migrate machines live in our environment was made possible by this software."
"The features that I found most valuable are ease of use of the software that StarWind offers - with the first setup being a bit painful."
"StarWind has provided us with a top-notch, well-supported, robust vSAN offering when other vendors have moved to hyper-converged solutions that are outside of our average clients' reach from a financial and resource perspective."
"The best feature is its ease of installation and integration within a current infrastructure."
"High Availability is the best feature of product."
"The instant failover, with vSAN copying data to the second node, allowed for the continuous availability of our applications."
"It also provides a high degree of mobility, as the virtual SAN can be moved relatively painlessly between on-site devices and the cloud."
"The support team responds quickly."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"The program is stable."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"The support is highly responsive."
"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."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"The NetApp Deployment Engine that comes with it makes the actual deployment and usage very easy. That's our primary focus and it's hyper-converged. That's something that we want to use as well."
"We like SnapMirror and we've been using it for many years. We also like the object storage tools, as well as cloud sync for customers wanting to integrate between the cloud and local."
"HCI has helped with storage persistence across private and hybrid clouds for the last year. It's faster and more reliable with minimal downtime, as it doesn't require any maintenance."
"The most valuable feature is the software design storage that really provided a faster, agile, easier to scale up and out storage path."
"Our goal with NetApp HCI is to have no single point of failure."
"It is a unique product with simplified setup and independent control over storage and compute."
"Scalability was another thing I was looking at. The solution, by its very nature, is designed to be expandable and flexible, so you don't have to buy performance you don't need today, but you're also not stuck with something you can't expand."
"It is scalable, and NetApp Deployment Engine (NDE) makes its deployment easier."
"It would be great if it provided thin provisioned virtual disks."
"An extended trial period would serve as a way to get clean insights into the technology's adaptability and alignment with their specific needs before committing to long-term integration."
"To enable the proactive support capability that is part of our support agreement, I would ask that the terms and conditions be revised and made acceptable to corporate security."
"With data verification, I would like to know how does the solution perform validation of data being synced between two VSANs."
"This product could be improved with the inclusion of new health check procedures."
"Scaling the product is fairly easy except for the computing aspect. It would entail another appliance. While not a show stopper, it isn't as easy as dropping in a few extra SSDs."
"It would be great if the Linux version of the management console offered the same features as Windows."
"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."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"Needs some more monitoring tools."
"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"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."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"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."
"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 is difficult to get acclimated to all the new features quickly. The onboard process could be improved to bring clients up to speed faster."
"I would like for them to fall a little closer to like the VMware release model. The new features and new solutions tend to come from the VMware side. I would like for NetApp to follow along closely with VMware's release schedule."
"I would like to see higher level graphics support because we are going to be doing some virtual desktop for our CAD software, and I want to be able to support AutoCAD and Cantillo on remote desktop machines."
"If you want to have a really dense data center then it's hard to have a big chunk of cabling going through everything."
"Because I like block mode, I'd like to see SAN connectivity. I would like to be able to easily put it into my current environment."
"I would like to have the ability to replicate to multiple sites."
"It is easy to install now, but could potentially be even simpler."
"The deployment process has room for improvement. I would like for it to be a cookie-cutter deployment."
Earn 20 points
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 10th in HCI with 19 reviews while NetApp HCI [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in HCI with 32 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while NetApp HCI [EOL] 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 NetApp HCI [EOL] writes "Ease of provisioning has allowed us to implement large installations in a very short time frame". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, whereas NetApp HCI [EOL] is most compared with .
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