We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and FlexPod XCS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI.
"With an uptime of 384 days, StarWind has improved overall server reliability."
"For those basic uses, it's simple to set up and manage, and it seems to do a fine job."
"It's quite easy to install."
"We like their high availability. It reduces the downtime for our entire organization's environment."
"StarWind vSAN was very easy to integrate into our system and ran flawlessly during our entire use time."
"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"
"It allows you to use ANY consumer or enterprise HDDs and SSDs, and that's a really great thing!"
"The configuration is so much simpler than that of a traditional SAN with fewer points of failure to worry about."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."
"The program is stable."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"The solution is scalable."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"We're doing a lot of VMware for IT so this solution is really valuable from a VMH point of view. We're trying to assist our customers mainly with management, because that's what they want. The most important aspects are ease of management, as well as ease of configuration, allowing them to attach additional nodes and resources for the applications."
"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 team responds quickly."
"FlexPod is easy to setup, maintain and has great stability."
"The solution is resilient, because it has good scalability, and other products in the market don't have this. It has scalable storage and service."
"The ease at which it scales and its redundancy factors. It's extremely redundant and easy-to-scale."
"It is easy to add-on to the tool. If we need to add a new switch, a new server, or a new chassis for Blades, it is easy. It is not disruptive. You just do it."
"With FlexPod, it is about the synergy of the server, the storage, and the whole management layer. Together, it is really about minimizing staff. You don't have to hire more people. You can work with the minimum level of resources and the availability is really good. We have had very little downtime."
"It ships in a rack, so it is very easy to deploy."
"The most valuable features are the CVDs and the support behind it from both companies."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to integrate different products into one validated design. That allows customers to understand and get the value out of the hardware, as it was designed."
"Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful."
"The number of different ways you can set it up can make it a little daunting."
"Performance when in storage-separate configuration needs to be improved."
"The cluster configuration is time-consuming and tedious."
"There is one issue as far as licensing goes and that is a lack of documentation online for users when transitioning from the free version to the paid version, or vice versa."
"vSAN's free version does not have a graphical user interface."
"It runs until it does not - and disaster recovery documentation is sparse and mostly unclear."
"If it's possible to make a driver/solution that does not make use of the iSCSI targets of Windows, that would be great. I don't know if that's possible, however, it could make the configuration a little easier."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"One touch upgrades would be nice."
"We have had a bit of struggle on the support side. From a customer perspective, it has been up to us to make sure that we get both NetApp and Cisco involved when we have had an issue."
"We have had bugs which have been released, even though they have been minor."
"They need to improve the user interface to make it easier to work in this environment. The older version is poor."
"There could be room for improvement in terms of offering more flexibility in CBD options."
"Installation with FlexPod is a bit complex, but it can be upgraded easily. I think Flexpod is phasing out, but it is still the right solution."
"I would be interested to see more integration with other applications."
"We would like to see the automation improved because there has been a learning curve having to create the workflows."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 10th in HCI with 19 reviews while FlexPod XCS is ranked 2nd in Converged Infrastructure with 295 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while FlexPod XCS 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 FlexPod XCS writes "Integrates everything so you are using fewer tools". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Scale Computing HC3, whereas FlexPod XCS is most compared with Oracle Exadata, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VxRail, Dell VxBlock System and Dell PowerEdge VRTX.
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.
