We compared VxRail and HPE Hyper Converged based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Overall, VxRail is praised for its excellent performance and highly scalable infrastructure, with positive feedback on customer service and support. On the other hand, HPE Hyper Converged stands out for its seamless integration and ease of management, along with efficient customer service and support. Both products offer favorable pricing, but VxRail users emphasize flexibility and customization options, while HPE Hyper Converged users highlight scalability and efficiency. Areas for improvement include system scalability, performance enhancements, and user interface design for HPE Hyper Converged, while VxRail users call for better scalability, easier deployment, and improved customer support and documentation.
Features: VxRail is praised for its excellent performance, seamless integration, and scalability. In contrast, users appreciate HPE Hyper Converged for its simplified management, reliability, and user-friendly interface, among other features.
Pricing and ROI: The setup costs for VxRail and HPE Hyper Converged products have been regarded favorably by users. However, VxRail is noted for its flexible licensing options, while HPE Hyper Converged is praised for its ease of setup and straightforward licensing process., VxRail has shown positive ROI with increased efficiency, improved performance, lower TCO, scalability, ease of use, and reliability. Users praise its value in accelerating processes and meeting goals. On the other hand, users of HPE Hyper Converged have also reported positive ROI.
Room for Improvement: User feedback suggests that VxRail could improve scalability, compatibility, setup process, monitoring capabilities, customer support, and troubleshooting documentation. In contrast, users of HPE Hyper Converged desire enhanced scalability, performance, user interface, technical support, and documentation.
Deployment and customer support: Based on user reviews, the duration required to establish a new tech solution varies for VxRail and HPE Hyper Converged. Some users of VxRail spent three months on deployment and one week on setup, while others completed both in just a week. For HPE Hyper Converged, one user took three months for deployment and another one week for setup, while another user completed both in just one week. These differences in timeframes suggest that the two products have different implementation processes., Customers have expressed satisfaction with the customer service of both VxRail and HPE Hyper Converged products. They appreciate the helpfulness, responsiveness, and professionalism of the support teams, as well as their knowledge and willingness to address concerns.
The summary above is based on 35 interviews we conducted recently with VxRail and HPE Hyper Converged users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The customer support provided by StarWind is excellent."
"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"
"It integrates (fully) with VMware and Veeam, my hypervisor, and backup vendors, so for me, all the puzzle pieces simply fit and work smoothly."
"The price was right."
"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."
"The configuration is so much simpler than that of a traditional SAN with fewer points of failure to worry about."
"Starwind support is excellent. They are very fast and have very good knowledge of Starwind and Hyper-V Cluster software."
"Our storage and IT are now at an enterprise level with all the necessary controls and restrictions being enacted."
"The solution has good backup resolution updates."
"There are multiple advantages. Typically, being an all-flash storage, which is available through either SimpliVity or dHCI, the performance is much better because the IOPS goes high, so it's more powerful in terms of performance. Secondly, if I'm talking of SimpliVity Hyper Convergence solution from HPE, unlike the competition, even if three hard drives fail, you are still running the solution."
"HPE Hyper Converged is stable."
"The product enables me to use any software or database."
"The most valuable features of this solution are fast deployment, security, and it is easy to upgrade."
"It is a stable solution...Those who want flexibility, ease of use, and a simple support system can opt for HPE."
"The most valuable feature is the in-built backup system. The backup speed is also excellent."
"We were able to speed up our gaming software, which was a big plus."
"The most compelling aspect of VxRail lies in its unwavering guarantee of sustained performance for my systems, regardless of their geographical distribution."
"VxRail performs well in the VDI environment."
"Homogeneity is most valuable. The truth is that having everything in a single cluster helps a lot."
"VxRail can be used for application modernization."
"I have found the vSAN is highly flexible. The documentation is good and the interface of the solution is responsive and fast. The interface has everything you need to manage the solution, such as the VxRail and VMware integration. You can manage the hardware from within the VMware plasma pan."
"The update capability of VxRail is crucial for us."
"The feature that I have found most valuable with VxRail is its upgrade. Because if you talk about the normal ESX process you have to upgrade the firmware, the bios, and you have to manage the compatibility. You have to do a lot of things. But in the case of VxRail, it's a single upgrade, end to end. You simply upload the bundle, click next, it will do some pre-checks, if those pre-checks pass, it will update everything one by one. It will put one ESX in the maintenance and move other VM's to another mode. There is no downtime to the VM's."
"I'd prefer it if a remote console was provided."
"StarWind currently has a Windows native application that it uses for management. There is not a web-based GUI at this time."
"While we had little to no issues in setting up StarWind and received excellent support from the StarWind technicians, we would have appreciated a clearer guideline for a setup with the free version of StarWind Management Console or, in other words - for the setup with the PowerShell."
"Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so."
"StarWind Virtual SAN architecture is slightly complex and requires the team to carefully identify and study how the solution integrates with VMware vSphere."
"Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment."
"They recommend RAID10 for HDD, which reduces the usable storage capacity."
"StarWind really needs to market its product more."
"Its technical support services could be faster."
"We've had to do a power cycle to bring it all the way down, bring it back up for power outages, A/C shut-downs of our DC office, but it hasn't presented a problem."
"This solution is very costly."
"I would like to see a more intuitive, user-friendly UI."
"If the solution could further compress the data, it would use less storage."
"The software version on the HC380s we are using is version 1. It does not support spanned vCenter which we use since we have multiple sites."
"In my country, the biggest issue is probably pricing."
"The price can be improved. We would like to see support for some open source virtualization technology like for example KVM."
"The version upgrade process should be simplified."
"The most important thing that I want to be included in this solution is the VMware license. Its deployment time can be quicker so that instead of 40 minutes, it takes 10 minutes."
"The update for the graphics integration and the media drivers isn't included in the VxRail update."
"Supply chain capabilities are certainly hurting us. We're in the process of placing a large order for more VxRail nodes right now."
"The price should come down a little bit. It has become better than it was at the beginning. There was a really big price difference between a hyper-converged infrastructure and the classic servers and storage. The gap is lessening, however, it's still there."
"The solution could improve by having more storage performance because in some other solutions you can have a file system that can be mounted at several places at one time."
"If they continue developing their product regarding VMware, it will be one of the best products in the HCI space. In terms of additional features, there is nothing missing because, for data protection, they also have the CDP option for VM. They can protect the VM at any point in time."
"The solution is vendor-locked and Dell is the only supplier of VxRail."
HPE Hyper Converged is ranked 10th in HCI with 34 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 117 reviews. HPE Hyper Converged is rated 8.2, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of HPE Hyper Converged writes " Ensures end-to-end data security with redundancy measures and provides visibility into the system but node expansion challenges". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". HPE Hyper Converged is most compared with VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, Dell PowerFlex, HPE Alletra dHCI and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. See our HPE Hyper Converged vs. VxRail report.
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