Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Ceph Storage comparison

The compared Dell Technologies and Red Hat solutions aren't in the same category. Dell Technologies is ranked #5 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 12.1% mindshare in the category. Red Hat is ranked #3 in SDS , with an average rating of 7.8, and holds a 19.4% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and Red Hat Ceph Storage based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: September 2024).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

September 2024

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Categories and Ranking

StarWind Virtual SAN

Mindshare comparison

HCI

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Hosni

Senior System Engineer at Giza Systems

Feb 24, 2024

Provides a cost-effective way to run an HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor

You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings the cost of a Highly Available HCI solution down to a very cost-effective point. Having used Starwind Virtual SAN for many years both for clients and for internal systems, it has always done exactly what it set out to do. It provides a cost-effective way to run an HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor, but it is most effective with Hyper-V. It's simple and easy to use, The software monitoring should be web-based to be reachable from any VLAN workstation.

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Ayodeji Oyewole

Managing Director at Atlantic factorial

Aug 12, 2024

A hyper-converged infrastructure that is like a mini data center of its own

Dell PowerFlex is used for on-prem cloud solutions. It's a hyper-converged infrastructure, which means you can integrate it directly into your core network. You get all the computing and storage you need without bothering much about the network connection between the servers because all that comes…

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Soner BÜYÜKATALAY

Chief Software Engineer at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Nov 9, 2023

Provides efficient stability and archive storage features, but its maintenance process needs improvement

We use the product for archive storage, video surveillance systems, and media storage Red Hat Ceph Storage is difficult to maintain. We use CLI tools for maintenance, and the concept seems challenging. Additionally, it is difficult to expand the product due to balancing errors. It takes some time…

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"StarWind vSAN was very easy to integrate into our system and ran flawlessly during our entire use time."

"StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN) offers a significant breadth of features."

"StarWind support has been great in helping resolve other issues not caused by their software."

"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."

"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."

"The customer support provided by StarWind is excellent."

"It also provides a high degree of mobility, as the virtual SAN can be moved relatively painlessly between on-site devices and the cloud."

"Virtual SAN runs on iSCSI, which is free and easy to configure. It's easy to manage from StarWind's GUI console, and it only required a few extra switch ports."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

"The program is stable."

"Dell PowerFlex improves our latency which allowed us to reduce a lot of our Microsoft Enterprise SQL licenses."

"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."

"Dell PowerFlex is a complete hyperconverge that makes automation easy to manage and extremely stable."

"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."

"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."

"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."

"The support team responds quickly."

More Dell PowerFlex pros

"Replicated and erasure coded pools have allowed for multiple copies to be kept, easy scale-out of additional nodes, and easy replacement of failed hard drives. The solution continues working even when there are errors."

"Data redundancy is a key feature, since it can survive failures (disks/servers). We didn’t lose our data or have a service interruption during server/disk failures."

"Most of the features are beneficial and one does not stand out above the rest."

"The solution is pretty stable."

"We have not encountered any stability issues for the product."

"radosgw and librados provide a simple integration with clone, snapshots, and other functions that aid in data integrity."

"The high availability of the solution is important to us."

"I like the distributed and self-healing nature of the product."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pros

Cons

"It would be great if the Linux version of the management console offered the same features as Windows."

"While we had little to no issues in setting up StarWind and received excellent support from the StarWind technicians, we would have appreciated a clearer guideline for a setup with the free version of StarWind Management Console or, in other words - for the setup with the PowerShell."

"For someone entering the IT sector with little knowledge of storage, iSCSI, and virtual disks, they might not find the GUI immediately obvious."

"Feature-wise we are only waiting for the release of a "planned disaster" feature that would allow us to patch a hypervisor node without having to take the full storage offline."

"Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."

"The documentation is good yet is still lacking in a few areas."

"Initially, when we first started, the sync was horrible."

"It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."

"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."

"The tool needs to improve its storage. It should also make migration to the cloud easier."

"The installation is complex."

"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."

"The storage capability must be improved."

"The solution’s automation and pricing could be improved."

More Dell PowerFlex cons

"It would be nice to have a notification feature whenever an important action is completed."

"The product lacks RDMA support for inter-OSD communication."

"It needs a better UI for easier installation and management."

"Ceph is not a mature product at this time. Guides are misleading and incomplete. You will meet all kind of bugs and errors trying to install the system for the first time. It requires very experienced personnel to support and keep the system in working condition, and install all necessary packets."

"Rebalancing and recovery are a bit slow."

"Routing around slow hardware."

"I have encountered issues with stability when replication factor was not 3, which is the default and recommended value. Go below 3 and problems will arise."

"Please create a failback solution for OpenStack replication and maybe QoS to allow guaranteed IOPS."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the bang for the buck is much better with StarWind Virtual SAN."

"The premium support from StarWinds is a must have. The ability to have access to a storage engineer 24/7 is a must for a production environment."

"The Price/Performance ratio for this solution is outstanding!"

"Their pricing seems pretty good, and their licensing structure is pretty straightforward."

"We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."

"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."

"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."

"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

"We have a good contact in Dell and he prepared all the information and provided everything to us."

"The pricing for this solution is good."

"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."

"The solution's price is medium."

"The product is expensive."

"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive."

"The cost of this solution is fair."

"The solution's pricing could be much cheaper and affordable."

More Dell PowerFlex pricing and cost advice

"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."

"The price of this product isn't high."

"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."

"We never used the paid support."

"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription as a bundle."

"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."

"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."

"There is no cost for software."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?

It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combin...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

If you are comfortable with the solution and you feel that you don't need support, you can begin with the free licenc...

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

Areas for improvement in StarWind Virtual SAN include simplifying the setup process, especially for users with limite...

See all answers

What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?

VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not bein...

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerFlex?

The support is highly responsive.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerFlex?

If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive.

See all answers

How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?

Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?

The high availability of the solution is important to us.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?

Some documentation is very hard to find. The documentation must be quickly available.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 28% of the time

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Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 17% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 6% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 5% of the time

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VxRail vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 50% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 16% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 10% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 5% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 3% of the time

More Dell PowerFlex Competitors

MinIO vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 47% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 7% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 4% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 3% of the time

More Red Hat Ceph Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

September 2024

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerFlex

October 2024

Download Dell PowerFlex product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

September 2024

Download Red Hat Ceph Storage product report

Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS

VxFlex, VxRack FLEX, PowerFlex

Ceph

Learn More

StarWind

Dell Technologies

Red Hat

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.

Red Hat Ceph Storage is an enterprise open source platform that provides unified software-defined storage on standard, economical servers and disks. With block, object, and file storage combined into one platform, Red Hat Ceph Storage efficiently and automatically manages all your data.

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

Dell, DreamHost

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: September 2024.

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