We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance 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."Besides being 80% cheaper than the other alternatives, the simplicity makes reconfiguration and support much easier."
"Using our own choice of HW allowed us to price our service to answer our customers' needs."
"StarWind Virtual SAN offers high availability and data resilience features to prevent data loss if hardware fails."
"It eliminates the use of expensive physical shared storage."
"The ROI is great on this product."
"Quick setup, great support, stability is great"
"The StarWind products have enabled our organization to modernize stations where larger and more expensive equipment was not an option."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to leverage our server infrastructure more completely without the need to add more hardware."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"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 support is highly responsive."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."
"The most valuable feature is the overall integration and just seeing the three different layers which make up the machine software. Altogether, it's something that I would say is much better than any other solution that I have experienced before."
"Having this all backed up by pro-active support gives us good peace of mind."
"The initial setup is straightforward once you know what you're doing."
"Live migration between nodes was quick and simple."
"The setup was easy to deploy, and management is simplified compared with traditional SAN solutions."
"It improved all services running on the new cluster and took up less space and less energy."
"The initial setup seems to be very straightforward."
"The support is the most valuable feature. The support has been amazing. It's around the clock. One of our hard disks accidentally ejected without me knowing or being onsite. They called and told me about it before I had a chance to see it myself."
"The high-quality hardware options, directly affecting performance, have significantly improved the user experience and are well worth the cost."
"They recommend RAID10 for HDD, which reduces the usable storage capacity."
"The documentation is good yet is still lacking in a few areas."
"The software monitoring should be web-based to be reachable from any VLAN workstation."
"It would be nice if we could designate pools, or tiers, for storage of different speeds, and then assign rules to new VMs that would automatically place them into the proper pool."
"It is not very clear within the StarWind Management Console or the StarWind support documentation how to perform maintenance on a single node in a two-node HA cluster."
"I would like to see options for automated notifications of any changes, including, for example, synchronization issues."
"With data verification, I would like to know how does the solution perform validation of data being synced between two VSANs."
"The reconnection of the attached drives upon a reboot could 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."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"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."
"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."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"Shipping options should be explained in detail and offer more white glove delivery options even if it comes at an additional cost for some SMBs without docks."
"I wish I understood what goes into the StarWind software a little bit better. To me, it's kind of magic the way some of it works. As an IT professional, you don't really want things to be magic. I do wish there was a little more "Here's how it works." There could be more documentation given to administrators..."
"It would be nice if it were possible to do the ISCSI setup that you do on Windows directly in the management GUI of StarWind."
"The only thing my team has recommended improving on is possibly a StarWind-customized GUI to monitor the overall system health, similar to 5nine Manager."
"We struggle a little with capacity management with the StarWind Hyperconverged appliance."
"The only thing that can use improvement is the StarWind Management Console and Command Center."
"Over the past three years, there were two instances where our cluster had an issue, yet StarWind proactively notified me of those issues and effortlessly guided me through the process of correcting the issue with minimal effort on my part."
"The overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification."
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Dell PowerFlex is ranked 10th in HCI with 19 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. 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 StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Dell VxBlock System, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, VxRail, StorMagic SvSAN and HPE SimpliVity. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
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