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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
30th
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
7.3
Number of Reviews
132
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Sunlight is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VxRail is 18.4%, down from 21.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

RajeshKANUMURY - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Rami Jadallah - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline management and integration with seamless upgrades
The primary reasons customers choose VxRail include ease of management, ease of upgrades, and integration with VMware. The hyper-converged infrastructure simplifies software and hardware upgrades. Customers prefer the single pane of glass management and integration with VMware, which makes it easier for them to proceed with decisions involving VMware products.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"There is a single vendor with the hardware, software, and maintenance. Thus, there is a single vendor with whom we can contact."
"The most valuable features are ease of management and ease of applying updates."
"It offers a very solid service alongside its innovative features and capabilities."
"The installation process is very quick. When you purchase it, it's up and running without much delay. Adding any additional components is simple, allowing for easy and fast scaling without adding complexity. The centralized management portal makes it easy to manage the entire system."
"It is the most valuable Software Defined Storage ever to manage all storage workloads, and also offers high availability."
"The scalability of VxRail is very good."
"Being able to perform upgrades and check the system through the VxRail Manager has been very helpful."
"The initial setup is simple."
 

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."
"There is an area for improvement with VxRail, specifically the upgrade process. Upgrading the is quite complex and almost exclusively requires Dell support. You can't do it alone, so you need to have support contracts running, which could be streamlined to improve the solution."
"If VxRail could also offer file services in addition to virtualization, that would be nice because sometimes people want to complement their environment with file services, and you don't have that in VxRail."
"The solution should offer more integration with other virtual software. VxRail runs just with VMware, however, maybe it should integrate with Hyper-V or with KVM as well."
"VxRail could improve by having domain protection."
"The SCL database sends out a warning and you have to download the adjacent file from the Dell website. You have to upload it and retest it. We cannot always connect our systems to the internet which means we sometimes miss these important updates."
"The implementation of a VxRail, it's straightforward, but the ongoing utilization, and integration, are where it can start to become difficult if you're not used to doing it."
"There could be better documentation and they should allow everyone to access the simulator."
"My customers want more storage for university databases."
 

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."
"Licensing and price for this solution is reasonable."
"The price is good."
"It's a mandatory cost with everything included"
"There is a permanent vSAN license included since it is required, but vCenter\ESXi host licensing should be validated in the purchase process."
"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 price is rather on the high side."
"The real ROI is the benefit of being able to do a true hybrid cloud, not having to move from CAPEX to OPEX in a pure break."
"The solution is very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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Comparisons

 

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: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.