We compared Dell PowerFlex and VxRail based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
In summary, Dell PowerFlex is praised for its flexibility, scalability, and reliability, while VxRail is appreciated for its excellent performance and seamless integration. Dell PowerFlex offers strong customer service, pricing, and return on investment, while VxRail is commended for its support and pricing structure. Dell Powerflex users emphasize the ease of use and efficient operations, while VxRail users highlight the scalability and flexibility. Dell PowerFlex could benefit from enhancements, while VxRail users suggest improvements in scalability, compatibility, setup process, monitoring, customer support, and documentation. Overall, both products have positive user feedback with some areas for enhancement.
Features: The valuable features of Dell PowerFlex include its flexibility, scalability, and reliability. Users also praise its performance and user-friendly interface. On the other hand, VxRail is highly appreciated for its excellent performance, seamless integration, and highly scalable infrastructure solution.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for Dell PowerFlex was reported as straightforward and hassle-free, making the implementation process smooth. Users found the pricing of Dell PowerFlex to be reasonable and competitive. On the other hand, VxRail also offers a favorable pricing structure with reasonable setup costs and flexible licensing options., Dell PowerFlex product delivers enhanced productivity, improved efficiency, and cost savings. VxRail offers increased efficiency, improved performance, scalability, ease of use, and reliability. Both products have positive ROI.
Room for Improvement: The Dell PowerFlex could benefit from enhancements in certain areas, while suggestions for improving the VxRail include scalability, flexibility, compatibility, setup process, monitoring capabilities, customer support, and troubleshooting documentation.
Deployment and customer support: Based on user feedback, the duration required to establish a new tech solution varies for both Dell PowerFlex and VxRail. However, while Dell PowerFlex users reported separate timeframes for deployment and setup, VxRail users had varying experiences with some indicating that both terms may refer to the same period., The customer service for Dell PowerFlex is highly praised by users. They appreciate the efficient and helpful assistance provided by Dell's support team. Customers report that their questions and concerns are promptly addressed and resolved. Dell's commitment to a smooth experience and timely solutions is lauded. On the other hand, customers express satisfaction with the level of support received for VxRail. They appreciate the helpfulness and responsiveness of the customer service team. Users also value the knowledgeable and friendly staff during installation and troubleshooting. Overall, the customer service and support of VxRail are well-regarded.
The summary above is based on 32 interviews we conducted recently with Dell PowerFlex and VxRail users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"This software lets us maintain storage redundancy across both of our Hyper-V hosts, so if one goes down the environment fails over to the other and we have minimal to no downtime."
"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."
"Having the ability to scale horizontally if needed is a huge plus for future growth."
"It's quite easy to install."
"Active-active work mode leads to true redundancy of storage and allows us to distribute the load between multiple nodes."
"The most useful aspect is the hyper-converged SD SAN and the ease to expand it by just adding cheap SSD or NVME disks."
"Being hardware agnostic is a must and definitely scored points for us."
"StarWind Virtual SAN offers high availability and data resilience features to prevent data loss if hardware fails."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"The support team responds quickly."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"This is a good solution for medium-sized installations especially when it will be coupled with VMware."
"The initial setup was not complex."
"This is a good solution if you want to deploy an ACI Environment but don't have all the necessary resources."
"There is no in-depth config involved nor third-party needed, saving us time and money."
"The solution is easy to use. When turning on a server or a machine that is required for, deployment or quality assurance, the dynamic deployment of resources is good."
"The most valuable feature in the VxRail solution is the software that binds the management portal and its ease of use of managing the environment. The guys don't have to worry about getting multiple solutions specialist. You can have one person looking at and managing the whole environment."
"It has a valuable deduplication feature."
"The support has been excellent, especially if you compare it to IBM."
"It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI."
"There should be some kind of active monitoring connected to StarWind vSAN, so you will be able to act when needed."
"The main thing I would like to see improved is the level of documentation."
"We have, in rare cases, received conflicting guidance between different support folks within StarWind."
"The configuration can a bit cumbersome."
"A web management interface would be good, especially for those coming from other solutions that have one."
"I did not see any indication that StarWinds vSAN is a usable solution with non-GUI instances of Hyper-V."
"It would be helpful to have a little more insight into what kind of performance the VSAN cluster is utilizing; something that would be more proactive on our side, versus their ProActive Support."
"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"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."
"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."
"Needs some more monitoring tools."
"The installation is complex."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"We spend around six months waiting for a confirmation and firmware upgrade to confirm this step."
"The initial setup was not that easy, it was a medium difficulty level."
"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."
"Pricing could be improved."
"The configurations of VxRail can be difficult. However, it has improved in the newer version. From version 6 to 7, there has been a lot of changes."
"From a hardware and software perspective, there could be an improvement in the sales cycle, as there is a lot of hoops to go through to get pricing on a solution."
"Some of the features of the hyperconverged infrastructure could be integrated with external storage. Right now, for example, if I have surveillance going, I need to purchase very cheap storage. So, an integration between the hyperconverged infrastructure and external storage would be good."
"Technically speaking, the vCenter and the administration of the integration of the vCenter could be improved."
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Dell PowerFlex is ranked 11th in HCI with 7 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 23 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while VxRail is rated 8.6. 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 VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and HPE Hyper Converged. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. VxRail report.
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VxRail is a hyper converged infrastructure. While PowerFlex appliance is a flexible solution with a small starting point and massive scale potential.