We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and NetApp HCI [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI."I save both physical and virtual space."
"The management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very mature software that supersedes its capabilities with my use cases."
"The fact that we can expand our storage and add on to our compute nodes easily and how amazing the StarWind technical support team is really adding value to our purchase."
"StarWind allows us to move virtual machines from one physical host to another, which greatly reduces the downtime required for maintenance."
"The install itself is easy as pie."
"Integration with virtualization platforms helped us to resolve many issues we were facing while using the physical storage."
"The ROI is great on this product."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The solution is scalable."
"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."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"The solution is very scalable."
"Our goal with NetApp HCI is to have no single point of failure."
"We like SnapMirror and we've been using it for many years. We also like the object storage tools, as well as cloud sync for customers wanting to integrate between the cloud and local."
"Stability is one of the things we absolutely have to have, because if the HCI is down, our assembly lines are down, and that could potentially lead to our customer being down. If our customer is down, that's $10,000 a minute; and any time the assembly line is down, that could potentially lead to overtime. We don't get to charge one and a half times for something we billed just because you happened to build it on overtime. Any technology we bring in, has to be built for what I call "three in the morning." It can't be built for whenever everybody's in the plant, everybody can watch it, and everybody can babysit. It has to be built for three a.m. when you've got a skeletal staff there, and you just have to know that it's just running. As I stand here, right now, I don't have to check my phone, I don't have to check my email. I know it's running. Period"
"The most valuable feature is the software design storage that really provided a faster, agile, easier to scale up and out storage path."
"It is highly scalable. Their support is also extremely good."
"It is scalable, and NetApp Deployment Engine (NDE) makes its deployment easier."
"NetApp HCI is a stable solution."
"When StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere nodes go offline unexpectedly, the nodes have to re-sync disks fully which takes a long time. We had a power failure and when both nodes came online, VMware vSphere didn't see StarWind disks before I manually re-scanned them form ESXi administration console even though it should happen automatically"
"The gathering of monthly consumption and performance reports for future dissemination to concerned parties is very important. Unfortunately, StarWinds vSAN doesn't offer this functionality."
"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."
"Pricing is a bit high."
"If there are domain controllers inside the cluster, there needs to be some sort of logic allowing them to boot independently so all the rest of the domain clients can gain the authority they need to come online."
"Ongoing improvements in read and write performance would help meet increasingly demanding workloads."
"Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment."
"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."
"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."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"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 would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"I would like for them to fall a little closer to like the VMware release model. The new features and new solutions tend to come from the VMware side. I would like for NetApp to follow along closely with VMware's release schedule."
"Its stability is very bad. It has been crashing continuously. In one year, we got three crashes, which is unbelievable for an appliance that is guaranteed for 10 years without any crash."
"I'm not a fan of how they don't log you out properly from some of their web tools for management."
"It would be nice to have better access to tutorials and a test environment for simulations."
"I would like to have the ability to replicate to multiple sites."
"The product needs better support for installing the operating system on the machine."
"It would be great if they took something like kernel storage and integrated straight into the NetApp as well."
"There's a limitation with a block in the file. That's where I see that it's not very efficient for upgrades and for management."
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Dell PowerFlex is ranked 11th in HCI with 19 reviews while NetApp HCI [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in HCI with 32 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while NetApp HCI [EOL] is rated 8.0. 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 NetApp HCI [EOL] writes "Ease of provisioning has allowed us to implement large installations in a very short time frame". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, whereas NetApp HCI [EOL] is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI).
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