We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and StarWind Virtual Tape Library based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Support keeps track of alerts of the system and verifies with us if we need help to fix any issues. They have great and quick technical support."
"StarWind vSAN is a great solution to create a redundant two-node-only Hyper-V cluster, both for domain or workgroup scenarios."
"The ProActive support gives me peace of mind because I am a one man shop, but with the technical support behind me, I feel like more than just one person. We spent two to three hours, depending on what we have to do, always on the phone, and they do not push to end the call."
"It provides shared storage to multiple hypervisor hosts. Times had changed, however. StarWind Virtual SAN is the “software replaces hardware” for SAN. We have access control and CCTV systems up and running using Microsoft clustering and shared storage"
"The most valuable features are high availability and real-time replication between two servers."
"The most useful aspect is the hyper-converged SD SAN and the ease to expand it by just adding cheap SSD or NVME disks."
"The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down."
"It has reduced the amount of switching, network connections, etc., because the converged StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to connect high-speed network interfaces between different boxes instead of having to connect SANs via the network, then connect those two clusters together."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"The support team responds quickly."
"The solution is scalable."
"It has reduced downtime. Before, on our previous solution, we used to have downtime on some of the servers because of the sort of convention. But currently I've not experienced any downtime on any of the servers, and there is no more resource congestion."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"The solution is quite stable."
"Dell PowerFlex is a one-stop-shop solution. Storage, compute, network, application monitoring, and support cases are all combined into one solution. It's very easy to administer compared to when you have a reference architecture where you need to design and build everything yourself. You would also then have to work with multiple vendors."
"The support is highly responsive."
"The most valuable feature of the StarWind Virtual Tape Library is the archiving to the AWS cloud."
"The solution made our backups way more reliable."
"StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud."
"I like the fact that we can simultaneously upload the virtual tapes to different cloud providers, and the settings can be adjusted to speed up the upload times even further."
"It is a stable solution."
"To enable the proactive support capability that is part of our support agreement, I would ask that the terms and conditions be revised and made acceptable to corporate security."
"Improvements in documentation and support resources could enhance the user experience."
"StarWind Virtual SAN architecture is slightly complex and requires the team to carefully identify and study how the solution integrates with VMware vSphere."
"StarWind doesn't really have any performance reporting, especially compared with other vSAN products we've used."
"We would like to see the documentation more fully developed."
"I had to buy upgraded support, which was not a problem, but it wasn't a prorated amount, so I paid for the support, the full upgrade, but I only got a couple of months out of it because it was only good until renewal time."
"Other vendors such as VMware vSAN have a bigger community of users, so it is easier to find more pre-sale or post-sale information from users."
"It runs until it does not - and disaster recovery documentation is sparse and mostly unclear."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"It would be great to get earlier access to beta builds because we have to develop providers on our own. The APIs and enablers for custom automation could also be improved."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"The installation is complex."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"Needs some more monitoring tools."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"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 initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."
"The solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough."
"The main thing that I felt could be improved was having an estimated time of completion for the virtual tape uploads to the cloud."
"I am not sure if this is a limitation of my physical hardware or if it is the software itself. However, I would like the throughput to be faster."
More StarWind Virtual Tape Library Pricing and Cost Advice →
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 10th in HCI with 19 reviews while StarWind Virtual Tape Library is ranked 15th in HCI with 6 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while StarWind Virtual Tape Library is rated 10.0. 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 StarWind Virtual Tape Library writes "Flexible and reliable with helpful support". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, whereas StarWind Virtual Tape Library is most compared with Red Hat Ceph Storage, HPE StoreVirtual, VMware vSAN and StorMagic SvSAN. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library report.
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