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Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

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 VxFlex Ready Nodes
Ranking in HCI
24th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind Virtual SAN
Ranking in HCI
4th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
192
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.0%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Al Vasek - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of acquisition, simple deployment, and priced well
The support from Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes is okay. It could be better, they have to work on their approach. The approach they have I call "pass the baton". Every manufacturer does this, such as Cisco, Dell, and Microsoft. You call in, receive a call handler, and give them your problem. The first person you talk to can never fix your problem. They just collect information. There's probably a 5 percent chance that they could fix your problem. Then they pass it off to the next person, there is a lot of passing. That's why I call it "pass the baton". The company I work for the maintenance services is at 98 percent, we receive over 50,000 incidents a month, for those customers who have support through Dell, Cisco, or someone else, 98 percent of our incidents or ticket requests get resolved by your first point of contact. We try to take out that frustration. Knowing that it's possible to fix that model. I don't think it saves them much money, because they're tying up too many resources where if they could route those incidents to the person that could fix them the first time, it would just save a lot of frustration on the customer's behalf. It would make everything a lot more efficient, and a better overall customer support image. It is a bad model that many vendors use.
WJHG - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamless integrations, high availability, and offers a free version
Although I am generally satisfied with VSAN and its performance, there are some areas that could be improved to enhance its effectiveness even further. One area that could benefit from improvement is scalability. While the tool works well in its current configuration, allowing for greater ease and flexibility in adding new nodes to the cluster without complications would be very beneficial, especially in growing environments. Additionally, I would like to see additional features in the next version, such as better support for automated resource management. This could include proactive suggestions for optimizing storage and memory usage, as well as preventive alerts about the health status of the servers. A more intuitive interface or an improved dashboard for monitoring the cluster would also be helpful, as it would facilitate performance tracking and help identify potential issues before they affect services.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dell EMC VxFlex Ready Nodes can support what we call a heterogeneous environment. So you can have VMware workloads, Hyper-V workloads, bare metal Red Hat workloads, Kubernetes workloads all on the same cluster. You're not pigeonholed into either all bare metal or all virtualized. So it supports basically any platform."
"The most valuable features of Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes are the ease of acquisition."
"The iSCSI protocol is quite simple to configure."
"Having support is also very valuable to us as we are a small team."
"It has been extremely stable for the three years we've been running it."
"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"
"Without the need for any downtime, enterprises can simply grow their storage infrastructure using StarWind Virtual SAN by adding new servers or disks to the current infrastructure."
"I save both physical and virtual space."
"Immediately we noticed huge performance gains, even on older hardware and once we implemented a 10GB link between both servers, the sync was near-instant after the initial sync was complete."
"Azure AD is much more user-friendly and has a better integration with our existing infrastructure."
 

Cons

"Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes is a little less sophisticated than some of the other solutions out there. A full-blown cloud foundation has a lot more to it."
"From a technical perspective, it's a pretty rock solid solution. I would say the only area for improvement is around its price."
"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."
"I see no need for major improvements but there could be some improvements in the form of notifications and the simplifying of maintenance mode."
"Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."
"The main thing I would like to see improved is the level of documentation."
"You have to do a "full" sync on write-back cache disks instead of a quick sync if there is an issue."
"It would be nice if we could designate pools, or tiers, for storage of different speeds, and then assign rules to new VMs that would automatically place them into the proper pool."
"Management tools could be improved, sometimes the usage seems to be slowed down and confusing. A native web interface could also be an option. I love to see in the future port of the software on a general Linux distribution like RedHat or Ubuntu in order to avoid windows license costs. I would also like to see features like erasure coding implemented. On the VSAN software, I would like to see some improvements in the storage pools (eliminate the usage of the file as a data container and use the raw partition)."
"The documentation could be a little more concise, but, for the most part, it just works."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes is a cheaper solution than Nutanix and HyperFlex."
"This solution has a great price for the functionality."
"Once you buy the license, you are free to build your own hardware solution based on your needs."
"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."
"The premium support from StarWinds is a must have. The ability to have access to a storage engineer 24/7 is a must for a production environment."
"The support contract is well worth it. The price for it was very reasonable and their team has been very engaged whenever we reach out."
"The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."
"The cost was ultimately low to implement, which allowed us to be 3-2-1 complaint."
"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Retailer
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Educational Organization
10%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?
It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” acce...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
I can't give a sincere opinion on the installation and licensing costs because, as I have mentioned repeatedly, I am currently using the free version. However, I can say that I have submitted a req...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
More comprehensive reporting and educational resources for error resolution would enhance the user experience. There have been cases where not understanding exactly what's failing on the Virtual SA...
 

Also Known As

VxFlex Ready Nodes
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Boys Town
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.