We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) 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."This software lets us maintain storage redundancy across both of our Hyper-V hosts, so if one goes down the environment fails over to the other and we have minimal to no downtime."
"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 iSCSI protocol is quite simple to configure."
"The license price is one of the cheapest in the market."
"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."
"They offer top-tier support."
"Given the high availability of the server cluster, we were able to reduce separate physical servers onto one hyper-converged cluster - this saved in OPEX and CAPEX costs immediately, along with licensing costs of the Windows Server licenses."
"StarWind saved us about 80% of our storage costs over our old solution."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"The solution is quite stable."
"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."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"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 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 program is stable."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"Its low maintenance is a key feature. It is easy to install, upgrade, and scale by adding more blocks."
"The most valuable feature I have found to be the Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)."
"The most valuable feature would be the ease of deployment. That is the most significant feature for me because I've worked with multiple vendors and it's always been very complicated to install the software and get everything running."
"It's easy to use and has a very smooth onboarding process."
"It is easy to use. One of the things they have as a design goal is to reduce complexity and simplify things."
"It has been stable so far."
"I have found the solution to be stable."
"The solution is well integrated with other vendors."
"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."
"It would help us if the vendor continues to release software updates for earlier versions of the Windows operating systems."
"One main thing this product needs to work on is reporting."
"This solution should be more self-sufficient, running without creating domains or failover clusters."
"I would love to see more vendor selection to be available for the HCA/vSAN appliances."
"There should be publicly available tutorials on YouTube or other platforms that help the users to integrate this solution with other platforms, for example."
"There should be some kind of active monitoring connected to StarWind vSAN, so you will be able to act when needed."
"For me, the product could be improved by it being made cheaper."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"Needs some more monitoring tools."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"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."
"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"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."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"We would like to see a cloud version of Acropolis AOS. Currently, we're trying to implement an AWS environment for some solutions, but we would like to use another technology also to enhance our organization, so we are looking for another technology for this, especially a cloud solution."
"As of now, Acropolis and VMware cannot talk to each other. Until we have some kind of interface, it would be much better for Nutanix if they built an interface that can talk. Otherwise, if I have a VMware stack and I already have a Nutanix stack, I can create containers, I create clusters on VMware, I create clusters on Nutanix."
"One of the improvements I would like to have is related to naming. It is getting confusing because they are using three-letter acronyms, which are more or less misleading. What I do not like is that they changed names and reused names. They had a meaning in the past and they are still using the names for something similar."
"With some projects that we are deploying, there are errors that arise when adding nodes."
"I would like to see them utilize the spare storage that they use as a redundant space. I feel that now a lot of resources are wasted just for standby purposes because we are using data protection. Instead of utilizing those resources only when something happens, they can have an alternative so that we can utilize these resources all the time."
"The technology has a lot of room for improvement. For example, when they want to segment applications in conjunction with NSX, which VMware uses, Acropolis is not compatible with the competitors. The integration in the security layer is not compatible with NSX for the application segmentation that uses VMware."
"I would like to see more Kubernetes and container-related workflows and multiple cloud-partner management. I would also like to see how they will synergize all these AI/ML functionalities that are available on other platforms."
"The latency needs improvement"
More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 10th in HCI with 19 reviews while Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 2nd in HCI with 194 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) 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 Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "A powerful solution with easy deployment, upgrades, and management". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and HPE Alletra dHCI, whereas Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, HPE SimpliVity, VMware vSphere and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) report.
See our list of best HCI vendors.
We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.