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."Before VSAN, hypervisor configuration changes and updates resulted in VM outages. Now, downtime is dramatically reduced."
"The management interface on the software is very simple. It is insanely simple compared to most SANs. The interface is also powerful when used to complete tasks that an IT administrator needs to complete."
"Having the ability to migrate machines live in our environment was made possible by this software."
"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 ability to run a two-node cluster without a dedicated witness has made this an excellent product for small deployments, which is right on target for our needs in regional offices."
"StarWind support has been great in helping resolve other issues not caused by their software."
"The most valuable feature for us is having the ability to configure our local storage using a limited number of disks and using the StarWind VSAN software to keep the cluster nodes in perfect sync."
"This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business."
"The program is stable."
"The support team responds quickly."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"The solution is scalable."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."
"The setup was very straightforward."
"It is easy to administrate the solution, and the company handles its technical support well."
"The solution integrates well with all the other applications that we use on our environment."
"HCI has helped with storage persistence across private and hybrid clouds for the last year. It's faster and more reliable with minimal downtime, as it doesn't require any maintenance."
"The solution is very scalable."
"It is a unique product with simplified setup and independent control over storage and compute."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the SolidFire interface."
"It is scalable, and NetApp Deployment Engine (NDE) makes its deployment easier."
"When you are doing lifecycles for your equipment, you can just swap out pieces of equipment. We used to do one big iron to another big iron, and that's a major migration hassle. Whereas, with this environment, you can go with small nodes, one at a time, and do a refresh."
"We don't really have any issues with this product."
"Having more support plan options would be nice."
"With data verification, I would like to know how does the solution perform validation of data being synced between two VSANs."
"The documentation is good yet is still lacking in a few areas."
"StarWind currently has a Windows native application that it uses for management. There is not a web-based GUI at this time."
"There should be some kind of active monitoring connected to StarWind vSAN, so you will be able to act when needed."
"The Command Center, a free guest VM for management and monitoring, leaves something to be desired. It could have more accurate real-time information and better reporting visuals, which seem to be an afterthought."
"I would like them to invest time in reducing the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure."
"Needs some more monitoring tools."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for 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."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"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."
"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 biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"The vCenter keeps crashing, meaning that there is no stability in our environment."
"It would be great if they took something like kernel storage and integrated straight into the NetApp as well."
"There are some legacy applications which still cannot be migrated. That is why we have to keep two environments: legacy and the new one. We would like to see more compatibility to move stuff."
"The price should be lowered. It's a little expensive."
"HCI has not enabled us to consolidate workloads or break down silos and has not increased application performance. It has also not resulted in more efficient use of compute resources."
"In the next version I would like to see bigger GPU types and insurance for including transparency."
"The product needs better support for installing the operating system on the machine."
"I'm not a fan of how they don't log you out properly from some of their web tools for management."
Try it today
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).
See our list of best HCI vendors.
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.