Dell PowerFlex vs VxRail comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and VxRail 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.
To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerFlex vs. VxRail Report (Updated: May 2023).
706,775 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?
Answer: VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company to invest in. Even if the user is working with a limited budget the platform offers freedom of choice and a number of different options. In contrast, Dell EMC PowerFlex does run on the more expensive side and cannot offer the same level of cost-effective solution. VxRail is able to provide both an ability to upgrade the system with an ever-growing library of resources as well as provide powerful processors.This is something that I greatly appreciate. Being able to simply add upgrades to the system without necessarily having to worry about the system being bogged down makes it invaluable. The ability that it provides to apply updates to the system with ease is something worthy of note. If you add this to the fact that VxRail runs on multiple cores at 2 gigahertz or higher then that means that in terms of ability, the VxRail is difficult to match. In terms of usability, it is hard to argue that VxRail delivers. It is pretty simple and easy to both set up and manage the VxRail system. Once the system is set up, all of the management tools are centrally located to assist in providing ease of use. The Dell EMC PowerFlex combines reliability and ease of management. Its connection to alternate storage locations makes it both reliable and an excellent choice. Management teams can use it with ease, because all of the tools are located in one location. Conclusion Both systems offer stable solutions, an ability to upgrade the system, and ease of use for management teams. In terms of cost VxRail is more cost effective and is also more intuitive to use than the Dell EMC PowerFlex.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The user interface for this application is amazing.""PowerShell library is pretty good feature as I created with APC PowerChute a script to put volumes on maintenance mode then turning off the StarWind nodes together with the VM and Hosts when UPS reaches 15 percent, this way after a blackout or electrical problems when turning servers on again, there is no issues for syncing or data loss due to energy interrupts.""Given the high availability of the server cluster, we were able to reduce separate physical servers onto one hyper-converged cluster - this saved in OPEX and CAPEX costs immediately, along with licensing costs of the Windows Server licenses.""The features that I found most valuable are ease of use of the software that StarWind offers - with the first setup being a bit painful.""This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business.""The StarWind Virtual SAN provides a clever and unique solution to the Computing Split Brain problem.""With an uptime of 384 days, StarWind has improved overall server reliability.""The StarWind VSAN is always up and allows us to move VMS to other nodes for maintenance, without interruption to service."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Pros →

"Saves us a lot of space in the data center.""We've had no issues with scaling the solution.""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 catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited.""The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."

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"We deploy VxRail systems to provide our customers with a distributed information solution. The customer was impressed because we delivered a serious data reduction. For example, we showed them that 10 terabytes on their traditional storage solution could be reduced to 1.5 terabytes in the VxRail systems. That's why the customers also like it so much,""I have found the vSAN is highly flexible. The documentation is good and the interface of the solution is responsive and fast. The interface has everything you need to manage the solution, such as the VxRail and VMware integration. You can manage the hardware from within the VMware plasma pan.""It improved from an operations standpoint as we have reduced failures compared to a previous vendor. The hardware that we previously used had a lot of issues with components failing regularly.""VxRail performs well in the VDI environment.""The implementation was quick, we used a checklist and it took approximately one hour.""You don't need to think about compatibility of components.""Initial setup is straightforward, as everything is pre-installed.""The tool's price is competitive and it is easy to use."

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Cons
"StarWind Virtual SAN could benefit from better integration with other tools and technologies, such as backup and disaster recovery solutions.""Proper training sessions should be included with the licensing.""Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful.""The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry.""If it's possible to make a driver/solution that does not make use of the iSCSI targets of Windows, that would be great. I don't know if that's possible, however, it could make the configuration a little easier.""The interface of the management console of the StarWind Virtual SAN is complex, and it's difficult for the novice user to interact with the management having less knowledge or training in the product.""Besides not being able to use any filesystem, I do not have any additional cons.""The main issue we ran into was the documentation. We attempted to set up the product in our test environment by ourselves and ran into several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Cons →

"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.""The support of containers needs to be improved. At present, it is limited to VMware. There needs to be direct communication with the hardware rather than through a hypervisor.""Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement.""We've had some issues around the licensing.""Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."

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"Dell wants to implement the disaster site in the new year, but they haven't decided yet. I hope we will have the opportunity to sell VxRail with this disaster site. It is not really clear at the moment, but hopefully, we will get some good news from the customers in the new year.""You cannot install another operating system such as Microsoft or Hyperflex or Nutanix. We have also had a hardware problem.""This solution needs to have the capability where even older versions of hardware can be seamlessly utilized and additional expansion becomes so much easier.""One area of the product that could be improved is the support.""The upgrade packages require a lot of bandwidth. This could be reduced for an improved experience.""They need to keep upgrading the environment and improving automation so that the solution keeps getting better and better.""The tool needs to improve its price.""They're getting better with their one-click upgrade. The success factor is now between 85% to 87% with the latest release. They should just continuously improve on that one-click factor and make it more seamless."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "This solution is very accessible and the pro-level for support is well worth the cost."
  • "We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."
  • "For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
  • "If you are looking at a traditional SAN for a small cluster, give StarWind vSAN because you will save thousands without any compromise."
  • More StarWind Virtual SAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The cost of this solution is fair."
  • "The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."
  • More Dell PowerFlex Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The solution is very expensive."
  • "I do not believe that the price should be lower, as I feel it to be reasonable."
  • "The price is rather on the high side."
  • "We made a one-time purchase of the solution and the price is expensive."
  • "VxRail is quite expensive and could be cheaper. I would say that the main difference between VxRail and the competition is cost. There may be some differences in features, but I would say that it's mainly the costs."
  • "The VMware licenses are included and we do not have to worry about the license, everything is integrated."
  • "The price could be lower."
  • "Price is a bit of a challenge, particularly if you want extra features or higher performance."
  • More VxRail Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Answers from the Community
    Netanya Carmi
    Emmanuel Alex - PeerSpot reviewerEmmanuel Alex
    Real User

    VxRail is a hyper converged infrastructure. While PowerFlex appliance is a flexible solution with a small starting point and massive scale potential.

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:I like StarWind's high availability. The failover is almost immediate, so the end users have no idea the guest VM moved… more »
    Top Answer:We underestimated how many guest VMs we would have running on these hypervisors after three years, and would have bought… more »
    Top Answer:The Command Center, a free guest VM for management and monitoring, leaves something to be desired. It could have more… 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 integration with AWS is a valuable feature.
    Top Answer:The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten.
    Top Answer:HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one,… more »
    Top Answer:While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an… more »
    Top Answer:VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company to… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    VxFlex, VxRack FLEX, PowerFlex
    VCE VxRail
    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.

    VxRail is a hyper-converged appliance based on VMware virtual SAN Software and is jointly engineered and built with VMware, for VMware, to enhance Vmware. VxRail software-defined architecture simplifies compute, storage, virtualization, and management. It will safeguard performance, reliability, and flexibility across your organization with a broad range of workloads and applications from business-critical to next-gen. With VxRail, you are covered.

    VxRail is a single turn-key appliance that is a validated, fully integrated, pre-configured,  pre-tested solution and offers non-disruptive scaling. Every node includes compute storage and IO. All-flash configurations can contain between 12-28 cores per node. The storage capacity options run from 7.6 TB to 19TB with either 256 GB or 512GB of memory. Hybrid appliances may have 6-20 cores per node, 3.6 TB to 10 TB of storage capacity, and 24GB to 256 GB of memory. 

    VxRail offers high availability fail-over, an active/active stretch cluster, and VSan Kernal integration. VxRail is a power-edged server with APIs built on automation. There are over 15 million different combinations of hardware available with VxRail. VxRail provides a simple, cost-effective solution that solves a large range of use cases. Additionally, you also get a mixed workloads automated system that is backed with fully automated system updates, and complete end-to-end lifecycle management all in a single two-rack appliance. 

    VxRail is a value-added suitable solution for distributed small to mid-sized enterprises, remote offices, private clouds, and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). You choose the deployment option that best suits your organizational needs, from appliance to integrated rack offerings, with or without networking, and it will be delivered to you, ready to deploy out-of-box. 

    If you know VMware, you know VxRail.

    VxRail Features and Benefits

    • Seamlessly accelerate deployment to a hybrid cloud 
    • Fast data center modernization
    • Create developer-ready Kubernetes platforms
    • Powerful performance and reliability
    • Improve and simplify operational efficiency
    • Excellent integration 
    • Save time
    • Reduce costs

    Reviews from Real Users

    VxRail is an all-in-one solution: "You don't have to worry too much about the hardware and you don't have to work on integrating a storage device. We instead have this as an all-in-one solution and everything is available as a box."

    VxRail is remarkable: “The cover points feature in VxRail is remarkable. It's unique. It has an intervention failover system as well as an automatic failover system, reaching clusters existing in VxRail…

    VxRail is a powerful performer: “...VxRail delivers a very high number of IOPS for a hybrid configuration or an all-flash configuration. The processors that are available in the Xeon family are very powerful. They are multi-core with typically 2 gigahertz, 2.4 gigahertz, or higher frequency, so the performance is very much appreciated.” 

    Offer
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    Try it today

    Learn more about Dell PowerFlex
    Learn more about VxRail
    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
    World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Educational Organization9%
    Construction Company9%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm25%
    Healthcare Company13%
    Energy/Utilities Company13%
    University13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government8%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Insurance Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Government10%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business63%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise15%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise59%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise67%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise60%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell PowerFlex vs. VxRail
    May 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerFlex vs. VxRail and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
    706,775 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell PowerFlex is ranked 13th in HCI with 5 reviews while VxRail is ranked 3rd in HCI with 49 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 7.4, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Dell PowerFlex writes "Stable with good technical support and the capability to scale". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "It's built on platforms that have been in the industry for more than 15 years, so it's very stable". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, HPE SimpliVity and CloudSphere, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. VxRail report.

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    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.