We compared VMware vSAN and Dell PowerFlex based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Overall, VMware vSAN is praised for its simplicity, integration, and scalability, with positive feedback on customer service and ROI. On the other hand, Dell PowerFlex is highly regarded for its flexibility, performance, and reliability, with positive feedback on pricing and customer service. Users note varying deployment times for both products.
Features: VMware vSAN is valued for its simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and seamless integration. On the other hand, Dell PowerFlex is highly regarded for its flexibility, scalability, and reliability. Both offer high performance and user-friendly interfaces.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for VMware vSAN was initially deemed expensive by users, but it provided good long-term value. On the other hand, Dell PowerFlex had a reasonable and competitive pricing. Users found its setup cost to be straightforward and hassle-free, resulting in a smooth implementation process., Users report positive ROI for both VMware vSAN and Dell PowerFlex. vSAN offers improved virtualization performance and data protection, while PowerFlex enhances productivity and cost savings.
Room for Improvement: VMware vSAN has room for improvement in performance optimization, scalability for larger environments, configuration ease, and integration with third-party solutions. Dell PowerFlex needs enhancements in specific areas.
Deployment and customer support: The user reviews for VMware vSAN and Dell PowerFlex indicate that the duration required to establish a new tech solution can vary. Some users of VMware vSAN reported spending one week for both deployment and setup, while for Dell PowerFlex, some users mentioned needing a week for deployment and another week for setup. This suggests that the two products may have different timelines for deployment and setup., The customer service provided by VMware vSAN is described as top-notch, with users praising the support team's helpfulness, knowledge, and responsiveness in troubleshooting and providing timely solutions. Dell PowerFlex also offers efficient and helpful assistance, promptly addressing users' questions and concerns with knowledgeable and friendly representatives. Both products prioritize customer satisfaction and provide reliable support.
The summary above is based on 29 interviews we conducted recently with VMware vSAN and Dell PowerFlex users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere is a software-defined storage solution that has reduced administration time for storage. It's pretty straightforward to install and setup it and so far it has been robust and worked as advertised from StarWind."
"Recovery and maintenance are now less stressful and most importantly, it allows our users to keep working."
"It includes every feature that a traditional SAN offers and so much more."
"We are able to do maintenance by bringing down one node at a time, rather than having to schedule a complete shutdown."
"They offer top-tier support."
"As the client had acquired another company some distance away, they were concerned about having a single SAN in one location or the other. StarWind vSAN allowed us to keep a copy of the data local to each site without asking the client to pay for two SANs in addition to the two new servers they needed."
"StarWind vSAN is a great solution to create a redundant two-node-only Hyper-V cluster, both for domain or workgroup scenarios."
"Active-active work mode leads to true redundancy of storage and allows us to distribute the load between multiple nodes."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The program is stable."
"The feature we have found most valuable is the compatibility of VMware products with VCF and VMware Cloud Foundation."
"Data management and recovery processes are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable features are ease of deployment, and ease of management. If you compare it to other software-defined storage products, it's much easier. It's a checkbox. It's lot easier to manage."
"Good performance, reliable and agile."
"The most valuable features are secure IOPs and LAN security."
"We are finding that vSAN is a lot more scalable and adaptable, because we can go in with hybrid arrays for our lower-end storage needs or with all-flash versions of vSAN for places where we need more performance, and it's coming in at a lower cost point than an actual traditional array."
"The solution is quite stable."
"Technical support has been very good. They respond pretty fast, especially if we have a critical issue. Their responses have been great."
"Other vendors such as VMware vSAN have a bigger community of users, so it is easier to find more pre-sale or post-sale information from users."
"We have, in rare cases, received conflicting guidance between different support folks within StarWind."
"They need to improve the speed of the interfaces, thus allowing for better traffic on the network."
"If it's possible to make a driver/solution that does not make use of the iSCSI targets of Windows, that would be great. I don't know if that's possible, however, it could make the configuration a little easier."
"I wish the sync after a failure, such as hardware failure or power-related issues, for example, was faster."
"Besides not being able to use any filesystem, I do not have any additional cons."
"I would like to see different levels of support offered."
"It could have a dashboard so that you can check all servers' SAN health and performance."
"The support of containers needs to be improved. At present, it is limited to VMware. There needs to be direct communication with the hardware rather than through a hypervisor."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"Exporting data from the dashboard is not very user-friendly. It's just designed in a way that it's going to cover let's say 90%, 80%, of the end-users needs. If you need more sophisticated reporting it's not easy to have."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."
"The installation is complex."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"Needs some more monitoring tools."
"I would like to see some of the more traditional SAN functions that are out the now. I can list them: being able to Snapshot on the back-end, better de-dupe, and better compression. Those are the major ones."
"The integration could be improved. I would like to see integration with other platforms."
"When designing the implementation for vSAN, I have noticed that it requires a minimum of six nodes, and this creates a problem when it comes to maintenance. If, out of the six nodes, I put one node in maintenance mode, then vSAN does not create other VM components."
"The customer service is good but there is a cost for it. It does not come free."
"The solution could maybe improve failure protection."
"The only thing that can be improved is the cost."
"The solution could be improved by having more filtered and multiple view volumes instead of a single view."
"There is a room for improvement on the latest version of compatibility with the VMware product, especially for vSAN and with other vendors on their motherboards and driver configurations."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 8th in HCI with 19 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Dell PowerFlex writes "Infrastructure management solution that offers rapid provisioning of computer storage but the APIs and enablers for custom automation could be improved". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity, HPE Alletra dHCI and HPE Hyper Converged, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. VMware vSAN report.
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