We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes 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 solution is also quite flexible. As an example, other vSAN solutions that we looked at had more stringent requirements regarding mixed HDD/SSD storage which wouldn't have worked in our environment."
"It's quite easy to manage."
"It's very easy to resize disks and they show up in VMware almost instantly."
"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 management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard."
"It has allowed us to save a lot of time and money by letting us create a vSAN within a Windows VM on the environment it controls."
"The access to our data is quicker and cheaper than it used to be in a traditional storage system."
"The product has improved the ability to mimic physical SAN environments to demo scenarios and troubleshoot problems."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"The solution is quite stable."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."
"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."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is scalable"
"If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability."
"It is easy to install."
"You don't have to spend much time evaluating the hardware. It can be deployed in a short time. The tool is also easy to upgrade."
"No concerns regarding the footprint in the data center."
"The most valuable feature of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is the flexibility of the nodes. Additionally, if there are any critical issues they update us through emails. The issues are taken care of remotely on the system."
"The product is useful for DR and other things."
"The solution immediately expands storage area when you add nodes."
"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."
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"I would say that the documentation is mostly great, however, some features could be expanded upon a bit."
"Perhaps the developer should refine the product management through PowerShell."
"In the next release, they could make some graphs of the real-time loading, speed of storage, and interfaces. Of course, these can be viewed in other places. But, in the event of a malfunction or troubleshooting, this would be convenient."
"An extended trial period would serve as a way to get clean insights into the technology's adaptability and alignment with their specific needs before committing to long-term integration."
"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."
"Proper training sessions should be included with the licensing."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"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."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"Exporting data from the dashboard is not very user-friendly. It's just designed in a way that it's going to cover let's say 90%, 80%, of the end-users needs. If you need more sophisticated reporting it's not easy to have."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is a great hyper-converged system that is a perfect platform for supporting any kind of workload. The only workload that it's not designed to support is big data."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required. The price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes could be lowered."
"This product is not sufficiently scalable."
"Scalability is an area that could be improved. We are looking at a maximum of 32 nodes now in a cluster, but going to 64 or 128 would be a major advantage."
"The solution doesn't scale."
"The power switch on the hardware is located in a poor location where it can accidentally be pushed. In an update, they should solve this issue so people do not push it accidentally to have their service go down. A possible solution is the switch should be inside."
"Dell vSAN Ready Nodes must be flexible since it is complex in designing concepts. It needs to improve stability. The product should integrate with the public cloud."
"Compatibility with other hardware nodes needs to be improved."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 10th in HCI with 19 reviews while Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is ranked 12th in HCI with 14 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while Dell vSAN Ready Nodes 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 Dell vSAN Ready Nodes writes "Offers good performance and is easy to use". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and FlexPod XCS, whereas Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. Dell vSAN Ready Nodes report.
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