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Azure Local vs Dell vSAN Ready Nodes comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 21, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
3.8
Azure Local boosts ROI by reducing costs and support reliance, integrating well with Microsoft, enhancing business efficiency and engagement.
Sentiment score
3.7
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes offer 30-40% savings despite integration issues, leveraging existing staff to reduce operating expenses.
There has been some return on investment in terms of just time usability and reduction of footprint.
Solution Architect DC at Natilik
The OPEX benefits are around 30 to 40% because the same engineer who manages vSphere can handle Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, eliminating the need for additional support engineers.
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
4.8
Azure Local's customer service is praised for effectiveness, but delays occur with resellers; Premier Support recommended for best outcomes.
Sentiment score
4.0
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes support is rated positively, though response times can be slow, with varying service quality.
They have more advantages than VMware, especially for containerization, and they provide good support as well.
Iinfrastructure Architect at Ministry Of Justice
Not every support team member is very knowledgeable about Azure Stack HCI, creating delays in resolution.
IT Solution Architect at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
Whether we have pro support plus or just the basic level, they are helpful and reliable as long as we provide the necessary details.
Technical Support at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
There is always room for improvement in terms of response time and reaching knowledgeable staff quickly.
Senior Engineering Manager at a media company with 10,001+ employees
If we require a replacement part, the engagement is usually within four hours
Systems Engineer at First Rand Bank Ltd.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.3
Azure Local provides scalable, reliable performance with effective cloud integration and seamless transitions, supporting numerous VMs and user demands effortlessly.
Sentiment score
6.2
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes offer scalability and flexibility, though costs and resource needs pose challenges for larger deployments.
With VCF we have significant automation built-in within the VCF console within SDDC manager as the primary management console.
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I would rate scalability around seven because when customers want to expand capacity but all the drive slots are full, they are forced to buy new servers or nodes which adds more costs with licenses and hardware.
Technical Support at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
5.9
Azure Local, stable and scalable with Hyper-V, has improved installation speed and matches VMware's performance despite minor issues.
Sentiment score
5.1
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes are stable and reliable, with high stability ratings, though performance and disk issues require management.
It does not feel like a well-oiled machine yet, with too many idiosyncrasies and insufficient documentation and integration, feeling more like software that is still in beta.
IT Solution Architect at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
After achieving good maturity, it became easier.
Iinfrastructure Architect at Ministry Of Justice
A disk group for five disks can be problematic, and customers need to tolerate downtime if the disk is not available.
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Local needs improvements in setup, management, integration, architecture, performance, disaster recovery, and competitive pricing.
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes need better scalability, automation, cost-efficiency, integration, support, and updates to address current customer challenges.
Microsoft has decided to discontinue stretched cluster technology completely, which is disappointing.
IT Solution Architect at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
Hyper V seems to lag behind compared to VMware.
Solution Architect DC at Natilik
There could be improvements with Azure Stack HCI regarding the license and price, as they have significantly higher prices compared to other competitors.
Iinfrastructure Architect at Ministry Of Justice
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes are useful as a product, but the lack of expansion with VMware has led customers to refrain from further upgrades.
Technical Support at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
I would want VMware to ensure that when there's a hardware failure on a host, it should gracefully migrate the VMs to another host available in the cluster without restarting, which would be a great improvement.
Systems Engineer at First Rand Bank Ltd.
A faster firmware lifecycle with the release of validated firmware catalogs more quickly would be a desired improvement.
Senior Engineering Manager at a media company with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Azure Local users find costs high but competitive, with potential savings on total stack via Windows Server Datacenter rental.
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes are initially costly but cost-effective long-term, with competitive pricing and annual licensing considerations.
The licensing is quite expensive because it's per call.
Solution Architect DC at Natilik
As a group under Comcast, we receive very good pricing from Dell due to our considerable business dealings.
Senior Engineering Manager at a media company with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Azure Local offers robust features for efficient networking, container management, cost-effectiveness, and seamless integration with Azure services.
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes offer compact design, scalability, and robust security, enhancing performance and user experience with single-vendor support.
Azure Stack HCI has been very beneficial for disaster recovery operations.
Iinfrastructure Architect at Ministry Of Justice
The integration with Azure using Azure Arc is excellent.
Solution Architect DC at Natilik
The benefit of using vSAN is that it's easy to manage on vCenter. You can see if there are issues, get recommendations, and overall, it's highly fault-free which is beneficial because we want to minimize downtime.
Systems Engineer at First Rand Bank Ltd.
The ability for single-team management without requiring a separate storage team for managing arrays and fiber channel switches is also a valuable feature.
Senior Engineering Manager at a media company with 10,001+ employees
I would say in-house management, administration, and storage policies are the three key differentiators compared to normal non-Dell vSAN Ready Nodes where we are leveraging external storage.
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Local
Ranking in HCI
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes
Ranking in HCI
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Azure Local is 3.2%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is 3.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes3.0%
Azure Stack HCI3.2%
Other93.8%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

MC
IT Solution Architect at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
Experience with seamless cost-saving capacity, though integration and support need refinement
An area that could be possibly improved with Azure Stack HCI is the stretched cluster functionality, which was included in version 23H2 for disaster recovery purposes. However, this functionality has been put on hold for the next release, and Microsoft has decided to discontinue stretched cluster technology completely, which is disappointing. They promise to bring back a significant or similar solution in a future release, but currently, there is no such functionality for stretched clusters between two sites in the latest versions of Azure Stack HCI, which poses a problem as we were looking forward to utilizing it. The integration with Azure Arc provides a unified management experience, but I find it to be fairly clunky. The integration exists, but it is not smooth or very easy to use. While they've started to integrate the two, the integration lacks maturity and makes it difficult to manage effectively. There are discrepancies between managing VMs through Azure Arc versus managing them directly, as changes made not using the Azure Arc integration are not easily reflected in Azure Arc. For instance, if I have an Arc-enabled VM and make changes to it outside the Arc interface, those changes may not be registered directly in Azure Arc, leading to issues in fully viewing the status and configuration of VMs depending on the management tool used. You either manage VMs fully through Arc or not at all because mixing the two methods results in incomplete visibility and inconsistencies.
KuldeepSingh4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Experience improved efficiency and customer satisfaction with enhanced integration and management capabilities
Scalability involves two types of environments: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and non-VCF environment where we use VMware Validated Foundation. With VCF we have significant automation built-in within the VCF console within SDDC manager as the primary management console. For non-VCF environments, it depends on customer choice. For small environments, we do manual scalability and sometimes use Terraform scripts to keep the host ready and add in the cluster automatically. For large environments with frequent scalability actions, we propose the Terraform solution that builds ESXi, does necessary configuration, and automatically starts up for associating with the existing environment. If scaling is infrequent, with one or two hosts per month, it is a manual job. From a challenge perspective, it seems easier, with just a few pre-checks regarding make and model compatibility, disks, and server health on the hardware level.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Stack HCI?
This solution costs €10 per core per month. The whole stack is free if you are renting Windows Server Datacenter.
What needs improvement with Azure Stack HCI?
There could be improvements with Azure Stack HCI regarding the license and price, as they have significantly higher prices compared to other competitors. The end-to-end encryption provided by Azure...
What do you like most about Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
There is no specific licensing model for vSAN ReadyNodes as it is linked with Broadcom VMware's solutions rather than Dell's. As a group under Comcast, we receive very good pricing from Dell due to...
What needs improvement with Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
I would want VMware to ensure that when there's a hardware failure on a host, it should gracefully migrate the VMs to another host available in the cluster without restarting, which would be a grea...
 

Also Known As

No data available
vSAN Ready Nodes
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Rackspace
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Local vs. Dell vSAN Ready Nodes and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.