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Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes
Ranking in HCI
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certif...
Ranking in HCI
31st
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is 2.6%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes2.6%
Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node0.9%
Other96.5%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

HH
Systems Engineer at FNB South Africa
Virtual environment achieves seamless management and reduces downtime through improved fault tolerance
With regards to storage area networks versus virtual SAN, vSAN is better off. It is much faster because the disk is within, utilizing NVMe type disks running SSD for the OS and capacity, making it easier to expand storage. It is stable, and similar to any issues on a standalone machine, there's resilience; if we lose one host, data will not be lost because of the technology on vSAN that allows us to free up that host into maintenance mode without issues. The benefit of using vSAN is that it's easy to manage on vCenter. You can see if there are issues, get recommendations, and overall, it's highly fault-free which is beneficial because we want to minimize downtime. Operationally, we perform well enough during the week; the only time we are highly operational on vSAN is when we do switch upgrades on the MX7000 switches and firmware, which we schedule outside of business hours.
N_R - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Account Manager at Emirates Business Machines (EBM)
Provides a valuable concept of hyper-convergence, but its support services could be faster
The product’s most valuable feature is the concept of hyper-convergence Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node’s support services could be faster. We have been using Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node for four to five years. From the hardware perspective, it is a stable product. The product is…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This is a product I recommend."
"If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability."
"The most beneficial feature is the consolidated storage which is the vSAN. It handles most of the heavy work."
"The most valuable feature is the set of user tools that are available."
"The benefit of using vSAN is that it's easy to manage on vCenter, you can see if there are issues, get recommendations, and overall, it's highly fault-free which is beneficial because we want to minimize downtime."
"The most valuable feature of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is file sharing."
"They are heading in the right direction and moving to integrate everything with a hybrid cloud, and moving workloads back and forth."
"No concerns regarding the footprint in the data center."
"The product’s most valuable feature is the concept of hyper-convergence."
 

Cons

"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required. The price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes could be lowered."
"The Dell vSAN Ready Nodes can be improved if Broadcom reverts to VMware's previous licensing approach because they've made it difficult for smaller environments to consume the product."
"Dell vSAN Ready Nodes doesn't perform as well as IBM. There are significant limitations, especially with scalability and flexibility over time. For example, adding drives can be problematic if the specific drives aren't available with older nodes that are four or five years old. Unlike IBM, Dell vSAN Ready Nodes isn't as flexible and doesn't scale easily. Additionally, while present, features like deduplication and compression don't perform as efficiently as they do on IBM. Our experience shows that the tool isn't as robust or flexible as advertised."
"I think the upgrades could be improved. If you compare it to other HCI solutions, like VxRail, the upgrade process is fully automated whereas on vSAN ReadyNodes it's a bit complicated and we have to do it manually."
"When customers want to expand capacity but all the drive slots are full, they are forced to buy new servers or nodes which adds more costs with licenses and hardware, rendering it less scalable than other storage setups."
"Although vSAN ReadyNodes work well, a faster firmware lifecycle with the release of validated firmware catalogs more quickly would be a desired improvement."
"Upgrades are carried out manually."
"Currently, it's like a black box that only Dell technical support knows how to handle."
"Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node’s support services could be faster."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a problem, which is the lack of an integrated price structure."
"The price of the solution was reasonable."
"Comparing the price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes to other solutions it is not expensive."
"The tool's pricing is competitive compared to others. The tool's licensing is based on annual subscriptions."
"My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the solution. The solution is expensive."
"We have a four-year contract to use Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes."
"The solution is more expensive than a traditional array. The prices are skyrocketing."
"The product has competitive pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Government
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Educational Organization
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
There is no specific licensing model for vSAN ReadyNodes as it is linked with Broadcom VMware's solutions rather than Dell's. As a group under Comcast, we receive very good pricing from Dell due to...
What needs improvement with Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
I would want VMware to ensure that when there's a hardware failure on a host, it should gracefully migrate the VMs to another host available in the cluster without restarting, which would be a grea...
What is your primary use case for Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
I am familiar with VMware Workstation, but we don't actually use a workstation. We only use ESXi because we're running a big organization. We have people that are responsible for a Citrix farm that...
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Also Known As

vSAN Ready Nodes
Lenovo MX Certified Node, ThinkAgile MX Certified Node
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, Broadcom and others in HCI. Updated: July 2026.
909,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.