Dell PowerFlex vs NetApp HCI [EOL] comparison

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Executive Summary

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.
To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"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."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Pros →

"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."

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"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."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] Pros →

Cons
"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."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Cons →

"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."

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"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."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."
  • "We are happy with the price."
  • "The license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running."
  • "The pricing is fine for the work that it does."
  • "When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."
  • "The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."
  • "The pricing is excellent. It will run on anything. You don't have to buy a $100,000 server, with hardware you don't need. You just pay for the license and you're good to go."
  • "The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."
  • More StarWind Virtual SAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The pricing for this solution is good."
  • "The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
  • "The cost of this solution is fair."
  • "The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."
  • "The solution's price is medium."
  • "The price could be improved."
  • "The product is expensive."
  • More Dell PowerFlex Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "This solution saved our organization time (35 percent) and money. We have a hefty group of developers, and if you multiply that by 30 to 35 percent, that is quite a bit of money."
  • "Where we lost nearly 75 percent of our infrastructure due to a malicious attack and were able to recover two and a half hours into it due to the integration, it saved us and all of our customers. Because we were able to recover so fast from the attack, the solution paid for itself right there."
  • "There are the overall infrastructure costs. Even though the initial costing was higher, we calculated for year-to-year for five years. That brought us into a position where we decided, we have to go for HCI rather than having distributor systems."
  • "All the licenses are included when you buy the program."
  • "You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."
  • "This solution reduced our maintenance costs. We were going to have to pay one to two million dollars to put in compute nodes. We are avoiding those costs."
  • "Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."
  • "The licensing fees are renewed annually."
  • More NetApp HCI [EOL] Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines… more »
    Top Answer:The cost of this is less than you expect. Since they're selling a software stack, you do need to consider your own… more »
    Top Answer:You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings the… more »
    Top Answer:VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being… more »
    Top Answer:The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten.
    Top Answer:It is scalable, and NetApp Deployment Engine (NDE) makes its deployment easier.
    Top Answer:Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market.
    Top Answer:At the moment, I am not looking for new features. Quality of Service (QoS) and capacity efficiency are the two things… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    StarWind SAN & NAS
    VxFlex, VxRack FLEX, PowerFlex
    Learn More
    Overview

    StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

    VxRack System consists of hyper-converged rack-scale engineered systems, with integrated networking, to achieve the scalability and management requirements of traditional and cloud native workloads. The VxRack series is purposely designed to enable customers to quickly deploy Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and/or Private Cloud architectures. VxRack Systems tightly integrate hardware with software and management layers.

    The result is a fully tested, pre-configured, hyper-converged system with simplified operations at data center and Service Provider scale. VxRack Systems support the deployment of a variety of application workloads, allowing IT to rapidly deliver new services while improving overall agility and efficiency.

    NetApp HCI is the only true enterprise-scale hyper converged cloud infrastructure. NetApp HCI comes in a 2 RU chassis with 4 node expansion slots.

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    Learn more about Dell PowerFlex
    Learn more about NetApp HCI [EOL]
    Sample Customers
    Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
    Canopy, 8x8Inc., Atos, Canadian Pacific, City of Denton, CenturyLink, BNP Paribas, Asyaport, EDF, CSC, Fox Sports, Insight, Hunter, KPIT, Paetec, Rosetta Stone, Sonda, Xerox
    American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Construction Company8%
    Educational Organization8%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government9%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Healthcare Company11%
    Wellness & Fitness Company11%
    Computer Software Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Government8%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company15%
    Transportation Company15%
    Pharma/Biotech Company10%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    Government12%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business64%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise66%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise53%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise66%
    Buyer's Guide
    HCI
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    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.