We performed a comparison between Azure Stack HCI and VxRail based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI."The StarWind VSAN is always up and allows us to move VMS to other nodes for maintenance, without interruption to service."
"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"
"Speed and high availability have been the most valuable for us."
"It allows me to configure High Availability and failover clustering with some fault tolerance, at a cost point that doesn’t break the bank for a small business budget."
"VSAN works great; it's very easy to install, configure, and manage."
"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."
"The management interface on the software is very simple. It is insanely simple compared to most SANs. The interface is also powerful when used to complete tasks that an IT administrator needs to complete."
"The most valuable features are high availability and real-time replication between two servers."
"The solution has the latest processor."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to manage VMs."
"In my hybrid cloud setup, there are three features I've found very efficient. The first is software-defined networking. Similar to Azure where you create virtual networks and software load balancing, Azure Stack HCI lets you configure them with a drag-and-drop experience on the on-premises cluster. That's one of the good feature."
"For me, VxRail's most valuable feature is its life-cycle management."
"The solution is stable and reliable. This is one of the main reasons why we purchased this solution."
"We are very happy with the purchase, and it works well. It is fast. We went with the full-flash version, meaning that we have SSDs. So, we can build a Windows virtual machine in two minutes. We were surprised when we first tried to do that."
"The most valuable feature is the fact that the storage is integrated with the VxRail so I don't have to go in between systems when I have to monitor my storage."
"The update capability of VxRail is crucial for us."
"VxRail is very cost-effective and affordable in the long term. It is more recommended when it comes to financial life, but it may depend upon the license. VxRail comes with VMware licensing, which may not be that cost-effective as compared to others. With VMware, it's an auto check competition. VMware is an expensive solution, especially for Nutanix. Nutanix have their own hypervisor called Acronis, which is very cost-effective against the VMware. Nutanix is cheaper for the hardware but not for the software. If you ask the Nutanix partners to deploy Nutanix over Cisco servers or Dell EMC servers, the cost will be higher. Nutanix wants to compete financially. Therefore, they propose their software over the Supermicro server, which is a very cheap Chinese server. In fact, I don't like their terms of service. HyperFlex has the highest price, and it is very expensive. I don't know why. It may be because this is a UCS system, which comes from Cisco and is already expensive. When it comes to HyperFlex, they need the labor to deploy Hyper-V, Citrix, or any other hypervisor."
"The updating of the features was one aspect of the solution that made us decide to use it."
"It's a good product based on the features. You can upgrade the solution with only one click."
"The Command Center, a free guest VM for management and monitoring, leaves something to be desired. It could have more accurate real-time information and better reporting visuals, which seem to be an afterthought."
"Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment."
"The interface of the management console of the StarWind Virtual SAN is complex, and it's difficult for the novice user to interact with the management having less knowledge or training in the product."
"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."
"I would like to see some additional, and possibly clearer, implementation videos with some slower and possibly more detailed descriptions of what the various steps of implementation are for someone who is unfamiliar with high availability and failover clustering in Windows."
"The documentation could be better."
"vSAN's free version does not have a graphical user interface."
"StarWind offers the Enterprise-level high availability (HA), deployed and easily configured .maintain and update and with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings a the cost of a Highly Available HCI solution down to a very cost effective point" Having used Starwind Virtual SAN for many years both for clients and for internal systems it has always done exactly what it set out to do, provide a cost effect way to run a HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor, but it is most effective with Hyper-V, simple, easy to use, -.software monitoring should be web based to be reachable from any workstation in VLAN."
"We faced multiple problems with the product’s stability."
"The product's initial setup phase can be a bit complex, making it an area where improvements are required."
"There are a lot of areas for improvement. Since I've been working very closely with this product, there are many areas, especially in software-defined networking. We had to improve multiple areas because we depended on the service fabric cluster to manage the software-defined network. That means we're already running a hypervisor inside a VM, and we're managing the control plane of the software-defined network. That's another cluster. So, multiple layers make the complexity more. So, from an operational perspective, it's very difficult to manage."
"Troubleshooting can be a little more difficult than legacy systems."
"Next release, we would like to see online applications."
"VxRail could improve by having domain protection."
"The agility of the support team to provide you with better solutions should be improved. VxRail also has to be improved in terms of simplicity. Adding a simple node seemed like quite a project."
"You cannot install another operating system such as Microsoft or Hyperflex or Nutanix. We have also had a hardware problem."
"I would like to have a unified platform where I, for example, can manage my 50 stores from a single portal in VxRail and be able to apply all the updates at once. I want to unify them into a centralized console."
"In the next release, I would like to see our graphical user interface allow us to manage VxRail clusters and everything on a single pane of glass where I can monitor and shut down the server, similar to a VxRail manager."
"The solution is okay to scale vertically but a bit difficult to expend horizontally. For example, increasing RAM."
Azure Stack HCI is ranked 20th in HCI with 3 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 115 reviews. Azure Stack HCI is rated 8.4, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Azure Stack HCI writes "Performs well, provides good features, and has the latest processor". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". Azure Stack HCI is most compared with VMware vSAN, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series.
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