We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and HPE Hyper Converged 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."StarWind Virtual SAN is a highly flexible solution, as it can be deployed on physical servers or on top of virtual machines running on hypervisors such as VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V."
"StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere is a software-defined storage solution that has reduced administration time for storage. It's pretty straightforward to install and setup it and so far it has been robust and worked as advertised from StarWind."
"The management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly."
"For those basic uses, it's simple to set up and manage, and it seems to do a fine job."
"Integration with virtualization platforms helped us to resolve many issues we were facing while using the physical storage."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is essentially hardware agnostic, allowing us to build out a specific hardware layer based upon the customer's unique requirements."
"The virtual tapes can be uploaded to the object storage of your choice with object locking/governance which gives you an extra layer of protection."
"Immediately we noticed huge performance gains, even on older hardware and once we implemented a 10GB link between both servers, the sync was near-instant after the initial sync was complete."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"The solution is scalable."
"No concerns or issues with stability."
"Ease of management, as I come from a software background, and I'm responsible for IT overall. I can get in there and turn some nuts and bolts and make things happen without any trouble."
"One of the solution's strong points is the deduplication capabilities of SimpliVity."
"The HA, which means I have a copy of the VMs always available, and the moment a VM is down, the system tries to power it on again."
"It is a stable solution...Those who want flexibility, ease of use, and a simple support system can opt for HPE."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The product enables me to use any software or database."
"It is a scalable solution."
"We just need more integration with Veeam."
"I would like to see an extensive set of cmdlets that could allow for easier automation as well as status management."
"Feature-wise we are only waiting for the release of a "planned disaster" feature that would allow us to patch a hypervisor node without having to take the full storage offline."
"While we had no problems setting the system up, and service technicians from StarWind could assist us very well, they could provide some form of in-depth documentation."
"An update caused a syncing issue and it took over a month to resolve it"
"Besides not being able to use any filesystem, I do not have any additional cons."
"We ran into an issue with alerts."
"We don't really have any issues with this product."
"The installation is complex."
"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."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"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."
"The storage capability must be improved."
"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."
"Needs some more monitoring tools."
"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."
"Could be more secure and more economical."
"In the Hyper Converged environment, some of the brands only support the OS VMware and not Hyper-V from Microsoft or even Red Hat or KVM."
"Some improvement is required in the availability of the data and performance. The solution is too expensive for our customers. The pricing should be lower."
"I would like to see improvement in the hardware underneath it. Currently, it's a Gen9 DL380. One day, there will be a Gen10 DL380 and maybe they will have bigger or smaller sizes."
"The solution is not very stable."
"One problem I've had is that I was trying to do a move and it was not working. I was given an error and a message asking me to shut down the machine first and then move it to another host."
"I would like to see a more intuitive, user-friendly UI."
"The product must provide more storage capability."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 10th in HCI with 19 reviews while HPE Hyper Converged is ranked 11th in HCI with 34 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while HPE Hyper Converged is rated 8.2. 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 HPE Hyper Converged writes " Ensures end-to-end data security with redundancy measures and provides visibility into the system but node expansion challenges". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas HPE Hyper Converged is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, HPE Alletra dHCI and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. HPE Hyper Converged report.
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