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Azure Local vs HPE Alletra dHCI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 21, 2026

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

Azure Local
Ranking in HCI
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE Alletra dHCI
Ranking in HCI
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Azure Local is 3.2%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Alletra dHCI is 4.0%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE Alletra dHCI4.0%
Azure Stack HCI3.2%
Other92.8%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

MC
IT Solution Architect at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
Experience with seamless cost-saving capacity, though integration and support need refinement
An area that could be possibly improved with Azure Stack HCI is the stretched cluster functionality, which was included in version 23H2 for disaster recovery purposes. However, this functionality has been put on hold for the next release, and Microsoft has decided to discontinue stretched cluster technology completely, which is disappointing. They promise to bring back a significant or similar solution in a future release, but currently, there is no such functionality for stretched clusters between two sites in the latest versions of Azure Stack HCI, which poses a problem as we were looking forward to utilizing it. The integration with Azure Arc provides a unified management experience, but I find it to be fairly clunky. The integration exists, but it is not smooth or very easy to use. While they've started to integrate the two, the integration lacks maturity and makes it difficult to manage effectively. There are discrepancies between managing VMs through Azure Arc versus managing them directly, as changes made not using the Azure Arc integration are not easily reflected in Azure Arc. For instance, if I have an Arc-enabled VM and make changes to it outside the Arc interface, those changes may not be registered directly in Azure Arc, leading to issues in fully viewing the status and configuration of VMs depending on the management tool used. You either manage VMs fully through Arc or not at all because mixing the two methods results in incomplete visibility and inconsistencies.
TW
IT Consultant at Autonubil System GmbH
Synchronous replication and strong support enhance storage and data protection
The most valuable features of HPE Alletra dHCI are the synchronous replication, the easy extension for more storage, and its strong support. Data protection is very good, offering features such as virtual lock for snapshots, multi-factor authentication, and encryption for volumes. The solution handles workload variability very well without any performance issues even for demanding applications like SAP, SQL, and Citrix.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Azure Local, formerly known as Azure Stack HCI, is gaining attention due to its offering of a cloud experience on-premises."
"Azure Stack HCI has been very beneficial for disaster recovery operations, though the main data center still has a mix of infrastructure between other products."
"In my hybrid cloud setup, there are three features I've found very efficient. The first is software-defined networking. Similar to Azure where you create virtual networks and software load balancing, Azure Stack HCI lets you configure them with a drag-and-drop experience on the on-premises cluster. That's one of the good feature."
"The features of Azure Stack HCI that have proven to be the most beneficial for optimizing our company's data center operations revolve around its performance."
"Some of the best features of Azure Stack HCI are that, as we are primarily a Microsoft Windows Server organization using Microsoft Windows Server on most of our servers, we already own data center licenses for Microsoft operating systems, and the hypervisor, Azure Stack HCI, actually comes with that license, which allows us to switch from VMware to Azure Stack HCI without any additional cost, significantly reducing our operational costs, especially now that Broadcom has purchased VMware, to $0."
"The solution has the latest processor."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to manage VMs."
"The integration with Azure using Azure Arc is excellent."
"The most valuable feature of HPE Alletra dHCI is the one-click upgrade function, which allows all drivers and services to be downloaded to all servers easily."
"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI has the most valuable features for performance, resilience, and scalability."
"It's helpful as you stand on high-end storage. Alletra offers up to 99% availability, providing excellent stability. You also get the benefits of an HCI solution with a template and upgradability at any time."
"The solution is useful for taking storage snapshots, has high performance, and the CASL architecture is good for optimizing workloads."
"Nimble DHCI is really user friendly and not complex"
"I love InfoSite. That gets you a lot of good detailed information."
"The most valuable feature of HPE Alletra dHCI is the one-click upgrade function, which allows all drivers and services to be downloaded to all servers easily."
"Nimble is easy to use, but hard to install. Once it's installed, it's user-friendly. Reporting is another advantage because we get a lot of statistical forecasting. It helps us see into the future with that."
 

Cons

"There are a lot of areas for improvement. Since I've been working very closely with this product, there are many areas, especially in software-defined networking. We had to improve multiple areas because we depended on the service fabric cluster to manage the software-defined network. That means we're already running a hypervisor inside a VM, and we're managing the control plane of the software-defined network. That's another cluster. So, multiple layers make the complexity more. So, from an operational perspective, it's very difficult to manage."
"A little bit of the storage architecture could be improved."
"Hyper V seems to lag behind compared to VMware."
"The product's initial setup phase can be a bit complex, making it an area where improvements are required."
"We faced multiple problems with the product’s stability."
"The implementation was very difficult for the operation team at that time, as the necessary skills to implement and integrate this product were not available."
"The biggest challenge with the tool is not being able to manage everything from Microsoft Azure Portal."
"I would like the HPE Alletra dHCI to provide options to install products separately."
"This year 2022, we have the possibility to include new kinds of storage with a high disk availability, such as Alletra 6000 and Alletra 9000. Those are the new storage available. If we would like to improve the quality and the capability and the high availability of these products, we can choose between different costs. This is another benefit from this HPE Nimble Storage dHCI solution of hyper-converged."
"The implementation process was problematic due to firmware incompatibilities and lengthy support intervention."
"Sometimes the technical support would get back to us in two hours, but other times it would take them two or even three days to respond."
"The deployment of a new server could be improved."
"I can tier my data in different storage on the cloud, but I cannot tier the data with HPE Alletra dHCI."
"Cost-wise, this solution is slightly more expensive than other hyperconverged solutions."
"Software upgrade is still more complicated than the competitors, so that's an area of improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The main licenses are the OS licenses, the OEM licenses, and so on. They are very much aligned with the cost of expectations. We never had any challenges with the licensing at all."
"The pricing is high compared to other tools."
"The solution’s pricing was very good."
"The cost of the licensing is reasonable."
"I think it's priced right and it's extremely intelligent."
"The product licensing costs vary depending on whether VMware or other solutions are used."
"The product is very affordable."
"The customers have found the solution to be expensive. However, when compared to the competition the price is reasonable."
"The prices are very high."
"The product is costly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Stack HCI?
This solution costs €10 per core per month. The whole stack is free if you are renting Windows Server Datacenter.
What needs improvement with Azure Stack HCI?
There could be improvements with Azure Stack HCI regarding the license and price, as they have significantly higher prices compared to other competitors. The end-to-end encryption provided by Azure...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Nimble Storage dHCI?
Pricing is rated at six, which is normal. The price is appropriate for the capabilities and features that the customers receive.
What needs improvement with HPE Nimble Storage dHCI?
I would like the HPE Alletra dHCI to provide options to install products separately. When extending or when servers are already present, normal Alletra systems are more suitable. dHCI projects ofte...
What is your primary use case for HPE Nimble Storage dHCI?
Our customers' usual use cases for HPE Alletra dHCI ( /products/hpe-alletra-dhci-reviews ) are the same as with the Nimble ( /products/nimble-32125-reviews ) systems: virtualization, storage for bu...
 

Also Known As

No data available
HPE Nimble Storage dHCI
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Local vs. HPE Alletra dHCI and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.