We performed a comparison between Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and Dell PowerFlex 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."The customer support provided by StarWind is excellent."
"StarWind support has been great in helping resolve other issues not caused by their software."
"StarWind saved us about 80% of our storage costs over our old solution."
"This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business."
"It also provides a seamless and efficient solution for personal storage requirements, showcasing the versatility and scalability of my Virtual SAN configuration."
"The configuration is so much simpler than that of a traditional SAN with fewer points of failure to worry about."
"When using new (warranty) servers, you can forget about the storage service for several years. The users will not even notice the failure of two servers out of three."
"One of the most valuable features is the way it sets up the virtual SAN, because we don't have to buy a separate appliance for storage. It uses the existing storage on the servers, which is definitely a cost savings for us."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco HyperFlex HX is that it is self-contained."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the connectivity, consistency, and that we now have fewer vulnerabilities on the network."
"The ROI we have seen from the high performance that has saved us time and money."
"It increases efficiency, decreases the cost, and manages the network in one single way. That's the most important thing."
"The integration between the storage and the server applications is the most valuable feature of this solution. It cuts down on the necessity to buy a secondary storage system.. It saves money in the long-run."
"You can administer things easily. E.g., if you need more power, you can add a system."
"Our customers have seen ROI in terms of the time they save troubleshooting."
"The most valuable feature for our company is that it works internally. We have a lot of internal projects for optimization."
"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 most valuable feature of this solution is integration."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"The setup was very straightforward."
"When you will cease your contract with StarWind (for support) your product won't be updated and that is a big selling point, especially for us, as we have loads of products from StarWind."
"Management tools could be improved, sometimes the usage seems to be slowed down and confusing. A native web interface could also be an option. I love to see in the future port of the software on a general Linux distribution like RedHat or Ubuntu in order to avoid windows license costs. I would also like to see features like erasure coding implemented. On the VSAN software, I would like to see some improvements in the storage pools (eliminate the usage of the file as a data container and use the raw partition)."
"The initial setup got a little confusing at a few points with differences between the VMware version in documentation vs the latest, etc."
"I'd love to see more clarification for us folks who are smart enough to do some damage yet not smart enough to use CLI."
"They need to improve the speed of the interfaces, thus allowing for better traffic on the network."
"Geolocation could be better, for example, for site mirroring for DR purposes."
"This product would benefit from having automated alerting functionality."
"It would be helpful if StarWind provided more precise and detailed documentation explaining how to configure the solution in various scenarios, including the advantages and disadvantages of each."
"Deployment on-prem was quite difficult."
"Lacks some integration and documentation could be improved."
"I would rate the installation of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series an eight out of ten. It can be complex."
"We need to be able to scale out and not just up. When you want to scale up or scale out, you are quite limited."
"We would like to have the ability to not have to reboot while doing updates. Being able to work through updates with as minimal amount of impact to users."
"We would like HyperFlex to connect the storage directly into Fabric Interconnect along with the features of the solution. We have enough ports in HyperFlex. We don't want to buy another set of switches to connect to Fabric Interconnect, complicating the solution."
"We would like to see better integration in the next release of this solution."
"I would like a lighter product; something which can be carried by a mere human. The typical size still looks like a stack of data center-sized servers, which is typically fine, but not so good if you want to carry it around."
"I think there might be some room for improvement when it comes to pricing, because although I know how to convert customers, at the end of day, it's quite expensive. Sometimes your feature architecture is still coming out much cheaper than hardware costs for your infrastructure."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."
"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 solution must be more flexible."
"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."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is ranked 8th in HCI with 90 reviews while Dell PowerFlex is ranked 10th in HCI with 19 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is rated 8.0, while Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series writes "A fast and easy deployment that allows secure access to our medical applications ". On the other hand, 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". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and HPE Alletra dHCI. See our Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series vs. Dell PowerFlex 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.
