Dell PowerFlex and StarWind Virtual SAN compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure market, each with unique strengths. StarWind Virtual SAN appears to hold an advantage due to its cost-effectiveness and ease of use.
Features: Dell PowerFlex offers integration capabilities, scalability, and robust storage performance, making it appealing for comprehensive data center solutions. It is compatible with VMware and simplifies management. StarWind Virtual SAN provides cost-effective storage virtualization, high availability, and ease of installation. Its ability to integrate with existing infrastructures and utilize non-proprietary equipment is highly valued.
Room for Improvement: Dell PowerFlex could benefit from incorporating advanced data protection schemes and improved ecosystem integration. Users note complexity and inflexibility in some scenarios, and streamlined upgrades would enhance the experience. StarWind Virtual SAN could improve by providing more comprehensive documentation and user-friendly management interfaces. Enhancements to monitoring tools and simplifying initial setup could assist new users.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerFlex is generally praised for ease of deployment in on-premises and hybrid cloud setups, though some users find the process complex. Customer service receives mixed reviews, with some calling for faster issue escalation. StarWind Virtual SAN is lauded for its straightforward deployment and minimal support intervention. Users value the knowledgeable support and smooth implementation across environments.
Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerFlex is seen as a premium solution with a high cost, appealing mainly to large enterprises. Despite the price, it's considered a valuable investment due to performance and support. StarWind Virtual SAN is recognized for its affordability and simple licensing, offering a cost-effective solution ideal for SMBs. Users appreciate the balance of price with performance, noting solid ROI, especially with the fully functional free version for evaluations.
We don't sell a lot of redundant servers, so it's not a massive ROI, but the ability to rely on their technical support and the software's ease of setup allows us to reduce labor costs and go to market competitively.
The cost benefits, as far as we consider, are much better with a StarWind VSAN solution, and the training requirements with the ease of administration simplify and reduce our administrator and professional services costs.
Regarding cost savings, for my client, it was about 20K USD for his specific use and as for extending capacity, StarWind made that process easy.
The level of support needs improvement as the front-line support staff lack knowledge when we raise cases.
We do not have local Dell technical support.
Even in the instances where my technical team does not have the ability to manage or troubleshoot or resolve an issue, StarWind's technical team supports and resolves on our behalf very quickly.
They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly who will be able to connect, verify your setup, run its parameters, and see exactly what's working and what is not, and adjust it, and they really help you with that.
The customer support from StarWind Virtual SAN is great, as the people are knowledgeable and have great knowledge about the product and the functionality we require in the system.
The scalability is very good and is one of the key features of Dell PowerFlex.
If we want to expand our storage or add disks, it is easy to add them, configure the RAID, and then deploy it.
I believe that scalability should be further improved, especially considering the possibility that environments may grow exponentially.
When you move from a two-node cluster to a three-node cluster, you have to completely redo the way that they are connected to each other with iSCSI.
In my experience, StarWind Virtual SAN is very stable, and I have never had a single instability issue.
It has been working for five years and the customer is still happy with it.
I ran it on a two-node Hyper-V cluster setup, and I didn't experience any unexpected crashes or major issues.
They could have more AI functionality in the future.
The level of support needs improvement as the front-line support staff lack knowledge when we raise cases.
As more customers start deployment, I believe use cases will develop, leading companies to consider that.
A more intuitive interface or an improved dashboard for monitoring the cluster would also be helpful, as it would facilitate performance tracking and help identify potential issues before they affect services.
There have been cases where not understanding exactly what's failing on the Virtual SAN has been an issue.
Limited feedback in the management GUI is the main area where I would like to see StarWind Virtual SAN get better.
The costs are acceptable and very competitive compared to other hardware-only HCI solutions.
I talked to the sales team, they gave me a quote with a perpetual license with the support and everything went through smoothly.
This is a great product and good support even you are using free version!
Dell PowerFlex includes PowerFlex Manager, which integrates with this solution to provide complete orchestration; you can manage your entire hardware as well as software segment and application segment through a single pane of glass, making it very easy to use and manage.
The scalability is very good and is one of the key features of Dell PowerFlex.
Thanks to its seamless integration with Proxmox, the implementation of high availability servers has drastically reduced downtime, which is crucial for our security-focused company.
StarWind Virtual SAN helps us keep customer satisfaction and provides the solutions we need without having to hire many IT specialists.
StarWind's storage virtualization and failover capabilities have made a difference for my clusters through uptime improvements, with zero downtime specific to server host maintenance or even maintenance of the StarWind software itself.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Dell PowerFlex | 7.8% |
| StarWind Virtual SAN | 2.1% |
| Other | 90.1% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 8 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 8 |
| Large Enterprise | 15 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 165 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 54 |
| Large Enterprise | 34 |
Dell PowerFlex is a software-defined storage infrastructure delivering modern architecture and versatile deployment for on-premises or cloud. It achieves high performance, scalable storage, and workload consolidation through advanced automation.
PowerFlex's VMware compatibility ensures seamless integration, offering flexibility in compute and storage scaling. With its hyper-converged infrastructure, it caters to AI, cloud, and database environments, providing robust automation, resilience, and security. Flexible deployment options are complemented by a single-window management system, prioritizing cost optimization. However, enhancements are needed in monitoring tools, user interface, and AI functionality. Migration from Hyper-V and licensing flexibility also require attention, while improved documentation could simplify usage. Integration with services and streamlined upgrade processes are essential.
What are the key features of Dell PowerFlex?PowerFlex is essential in industries requiring support for mission-critical workloads and large-scale applications. It is instrumental for deploying storage, compute nodes, hyper-converged infrastructure, and private clouds. The platform integrates compute, storage, and networking, optimizing performance for modern applications like AI video analytics and disaster recovery.
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.
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