No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Sunlight vs VxRail 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

Sunlight
Ranking in HCI
28th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VxRail
Ranking in HCI
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
135
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Sunlight is 1.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VxRail is 9.9%, down from 16.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VxRail9.9%
Sunlight1.4%
Other88.7%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

RajeshKANUMURY - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Executive Officer at GniYes Inc.
Performs well, effective, and has responsive remote technical support
Sunlight is a scalable solution. It supports on-premises and distributed deployments, as well as public deployments. It has a single pane of management so I can manage all of my VM installations in a distributed manner. It also has a footprint, that allows me to operate on Edge. If for example, you have a retail shop with 2,000 locations and they use a networked point of sale system, or if you are Chipotle and they have so many locations and they have to use a backend system at each location. At the moment, these are all standalone systems that operate with very little connection to the central. We could, however, connect and create a network using Sunlight. We can virtualize and run with Edge thanks to Sunlight. This allows us to operate and obtain high-end computing on Edge for retail. Sunlight is a startup. I am not sure how many users they have, but we have been using it constantly and using the technology to bring in customers.
John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Director at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Automation has streamlined lifecycle management and improved ongoing operational efficiency
For the first three years, I have a combo pricing policy. For the fourth year and fifth year, I have to buy separately for the licensing from VMware and from VxRail, so I think the combo cost for the fourth and fifth year is huge and does not make sense. Due to the pricing policy, I would not like to see additional functionalities at this time as it is not in my strategy. I would rate VxRail an eight out of ten because of the pricing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If I had to use VMware or Nutanix, the same application would take three nodes and provide 400,000 IOPS, or input-output operations, but with Sunlight, I can get four million IOPS for the same price, allowing me to run an application on much less hardware."
"The performance and small footprint of this solution are its most valuable features. I am able to obtain and use more than 90 percent of the physical hardware capacity."
"It supports the latest technology of NVMe SSD, which is PCIe-based SSD. It has a very good IOPS performance as compared to vSAN. For the same system, I get 1,000 IOPS with vSAN, and with Sunlight, I am able to get almost 10,000 IOPS. In terms of features, it has almost all the features, such as HA and centralized dashboards. It can be managed centrally, and the visibility of the system is very good. They also have very good technical support and customer or partner training."
"VxRail has high performance and has great efficiency. There is a single place for us to manage all of our virtual machines. The ability to right-size instead of overcommit VMs is a large benefit."
"There is a single vendor with the hardware, software, and maintenance. Thus, there is a single vendor with whom we can contact."
"The solution is very easy to manage, as it is software-defined storage where one person can manage the whole infrastructure instead of two to three people managing the servers and the storage, and the one-click update for everything significantly simplifies IT operations because we don't have to upgrade our VMware and other systems separately, since everything is managed from a single console."
"The solution is really stable."
"It's a very good solution with multiple options with VxRail series like based on customer requirements whether they're focused on compute, storage, scalability and high performance, etc."
"VxRail comes from Dell and they have a one-stop service; you can work with Dell to get everything solved, and any issues in hardware or in software, whether it be VMware related or Dell related, are all handled by one team from Dell."
"It has a valuable deduplication feature."
"Compared to other HCI products, VxRail has advantages in stability and support from the vendors."
 

Cons

"Its reporting and dashboards need to be improved. It currently has very basic reporting options. It should also be made easier to deploy on Unix operating systems. It is easy to deploy on Windows and Linux, but it is currently not easy to deploy on Unix."
"My recommendation would be to add this technology to Azure, Microsoft Azure so that we can bring it to the market, or deploy it on public clouds such as Microsoft Azure and Google. It is currently only available on Amazon's public cloud."
"It lacks the bells and whistles that are typically associated with Amazon Services or Nutanix."
"I wish for the performance environment to be improved."
"The tool needs to improve its price."
"Sometimes during the upgrade process of VxRail, we experience errors that have nothing to do with reality and I cannot troubleshoot them without calling Dell and bringing in an engineer to figure it out."
"VxRail could improve by having domain protection."
"The solution's setup is a bit complex, and the complexity needs to be reduced."
"From a hardware and software perspective, there could be an improvement in the sales cycle, as there are a lot of hoops to go through to get pricing on a solution."
"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."
"VxRail's scalability is a bit of a challenge."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is an operating cost for the VDIs, which is an additional cost. However, the licensing fee is half that of VMware or Nutanix."
"Since VMware is detached from Dell, the solution's pricing is a bit higher than before."
"It's a mandatory cost with everything included"
"VxRail is still more expensive than its competitor solutions."
"There is a permanent vSAN license included since it is required, but vCenter\ESXi host licensing should be validated in the purchase process."
"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 price is rather on the high side."
"The licensing aspect is the most painful for some of our customers. Customers go for a VMware license that's standard and then they find they have to go with the enterprise solution and adjust the license. If you have a limited budget, that's difficult."
"The hardware cost associated is a bit high"
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
How does HPE Nimble Storage compare to VxRail?
HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one, zero rule. That means I need three copies of my data on two different types of me...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...
What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?
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 l...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lavazza, Infraspace
World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Sunlight vs. VxRail and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.