We performed a comparison between Dell vSAN Ready Nodes and VMware vSAN 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."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."
"StarWind SANs come with outstanding support."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a highly flexible solution, as it can be deployed on physical servers or on top of virtual machines running on hypervisors such as VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V."
"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."
"I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN."
"The top-notch support before, during, and after deployments are better than any other vendor I have come across."
"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."
"It has allowed us to save a lot of time and money by letting us create a vSAN within a Windows VM on the environment it controls."
"The most valuable feature of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is the flexibility of the nodes. Additionally, if there are any critical issues they update us through emails. The issues are taken care of remotely on the system."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is scalable"
"I have found the most important features of Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes are the capacity to manage the storage because the storage is built in the servers. The type of profiles you can attribute to the storage is a benefit. You can manage the storage by profiles. Overall the solution is a good speed and performance."
"They are heading in the right direction and moving to integrate everything with a hybrid cloud, and moving workloads back and forth."
"The most valuable feature of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is file sharing."
"We find the initial implementation process simple and straightforward."
"The solution immediately expands storage area when you add nodes."
"I have found that the multi-homing feature is very valuable in VMware vSAN. It is an easy-to-use solution."
"The flexibility is most valuable. Being able to manage things quickly if something goes wrong is also valuable. Very recently, we had one node that went down due to a power problem, but there was really no major impact on the systems running on top of it."
"Technical support is very helpful and very good at resolving issues."
"High availability is a valuable aspect of this solution."
"It has a single pane of glass for management and operational control, which is the most valuable feature. The integrated storage is also valuable."
"The most valuable features are Erasure Coding, Deduplication and Compression, and the advancement in stretching regarding replication."
"It is very well known in the industry, and there are a lot of technical resources around it. This is a big thing for me because, at the end of the day, when you implement it, you need to support it."
"The implementation is simple, it was very straightforward. It took us approximately three weeks because it was installed in four locations."
"The setup and documentation for the installation with the free version could definitely be improved."
"Geolocation could be better, for example, for site mirroring for DR purposes."
"I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions."
"The gathering of monthly consumption and performance reports for future dissemination to concerned parties is very important. Unfortunately, StarWinds vSAN doesn't offer this functionality."
"While it is possible to implement disk encryption in StarWind using Windows Bitlocker, such a solution can be a little tricky to manage."
"StarWind Virtual SAN architecture is slightly complex and requires the team to carefully identify and study how the solution integrates with VMware vSphere."
"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."
"They require more media visibility."
"The solution doesn't scale."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is a great hyper-converged system that is a perfect platform for supporting any kind of workload. The only workload that it's not designed to support is big data."
"The power switch on the hardware is located in a poor location where it can accidentally be pushed. In an update, they should solve this issue so people do not push it accidentally to have their service go down. A possible solution is the switch should be inside."
"Scalability is an area that could be improved. We are looking at a maximum of 32 nodes now in a cluster, but going to 64 or 128 would be a major advantage."
"The solution should provide daily task alerts for data recovery maintenance, usage, and other instructions to ensure the systems are in a good status."
"The Dell VxRail solution is based on vSAN Ready Nodes, but the Dell VxRail is fully automated. It would be helpful if this automation feature could be added to the Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. For example, we need to install VMware ESXi, and manually expand the cluster."
"The deployment is done by doing it one by one and could be simplified."
"This product is very expensive."
"There is a lot that VMware could improve from a marketing perspective. The cloud is still new for many people, so extending storage should be effortless. It shouldn't be so complicated to extend the storage so workloads can access it no matter where they go."
"The pricing model is sometimes a challenge for us because their licenses are very costly."
"One area that could be improved is the management feature."
"The price for the hard drive, for vSAN, is very expensive."
"The solution could be improved by having more filtered and multiple view volumes instead of a single view."
"In a future release, they could add micro-segmentation or security level features integrated into vSAN."
"Customers who are using Essentials Plus or even Essentials have to pay for technical support. However, they should not have to pay for support."
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Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is ranked 10th in HCI with 7 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 3rd in HCI with 78 reviews. Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is rated 8.6, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes writes "Useful file sharing, simple setup, and scalable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources". Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is most compared with VxRail, Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, HPE Hyper Converged, HPE SimpliVity and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and HPE SimpliVity. See our Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs. VMware vSAN report.
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