Cohesity C4000 Series vs Dell PowerFlex comparison

Cohesity and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the HCI category. Cohesity is ranked #30, while Dell Technologies is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.5. Cohesity holds a 0.1% mindshare in HCI, compared to Dell Technologies’s 12.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cohesity users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cohesity C4000 Series and Dell PowerFlex based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

November 2024

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Categories and Ranking

StarWind Virtual SAN

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the HCI category, the mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.3%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cohesity C4000 Series is 0.1%, down from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerFlex is 12.6%, up from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Hosni

Senior System Engineer at Giza Systems

Feb 24, 2024

Provides a cost-effective way to run an HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor

You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings the cost of a Highly Available HCI solution down to a very cost-effective point. Having used Starwind Virtual SAN for many years both for clients and for internal systems, it has always done exactly what it set out to do. It provides a cost-effective way to run an HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor, but it is most effective with Hyper-V. It's simple and easy to use, The software monitoring should be web-based to be reachable from any VLAN workstation.

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reviewer1336899

Solution Architect at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 17, 2021

Provides superior backups, protection from ransomware, and the ability to move data to the public cloud

It has provided superior backups and protection from ransomware I find all the features of this solution excellent. The ability to move data to the public cloud is valuable. The pricing and the partnerships with AWS and Azure can be improved. I have worked with it for two years. Its stability…

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Ayodeji Oyewole

Managing Director at Atlantic factorial

Aug 12, 2024

A hyper-converged infrastructure that is like a mini data center of its own

Dell PowerFlex is used for on-prem cloud solutions. It's a hyper-converged infrastructure, which means you can integrate it directly into your core network. You get all the computing and storage you need without bothering much about the network connection between the servers because all that comes…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution offers easy one-click PowerShell scripts that are ready to run."

"StarWind vSAN has a lot of great features and is a perfect solution for mirroring internal disks and flash between servers."

"StarWind SANs come with outstanding support."

"The StarWind tech support is extremely helpful, especially during the initial setup."

"It has reduced our overall maintenance and overhead by having to only maintain physical boxes for one cluster instead of having to manage physical boxes for two clusters."

"You can build cheap, reliable, replicated virtual machines clusters using simple servers with an all flash disk or SAS\SATA hybrid tiered by performance storage."

"We are able to execute maintenance on one server while the other is still running."

"StarWind Virtual SAN offers high availability and data resilience features to prevent data loss if hardware fails."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

"I find all the features of this solution excellent. The ability to move data to the public cloud is valuable."

"The resiliency and data protection are the most valuable features."

"The support team responds quickly."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."

"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."

"PowerFlex offers us more IOPS, improving the application performance. It also helps us reduce our storage and eliminate redundancy. The primary thing is that we work 24/7, so we shouldn't have operational issues."

"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."

"Dell PowerFlex is a complete hyperconverge that makes automation easy to manage and extremely stable."

"The most valuable feature is high availability."

More Dell PowerFlex pros

Cons

"It would be helpful if StarWind provided more precise and detailed documentation explaining how to configure the solution in various scenarios, including the advantages and disadvantages of each."

"The cluster configuration is time-consuming and tedious."

"Sometimes documentation on their site can be out of date."

"The documentation could be better."

"I struggled when bit figuring out how to go about doing the evaluation."

"Improvements in documentation and support resources could enhance the user experience."

"I would like to see options for automated notifications of any changes, including, for example, synchronization issues."

"It would be helpful to have a little more insight into what kind of performance the VSAN cluster is utilizing; something that would be more proactive on our side, versus their ProActive Support."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

"The pricing and the partnerships with AWS and Azure can be improved."

"It would be great to get earlier access to beta builds because we have to develop providers on our own. The APIs and enablers for custom automation could also be improved."

"They need to work on improving the overhead for protecting the data."

"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."

"I think there might be some room for improvement when it comes to pricing, because although I know how to convert customers, at the end of day, it's quite expensive. Sometimes your feature architecture is still coming out much cheaper than hardware costs for your infrastructure."

"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."

"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."

"We've had some issues around the licensing."

"The tool needs to improve its storage. It should also make migration to the cloud easier."

More Dell PowerFlex cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."

"When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."

"We are happy with the price."

"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."

"Cost is affordable and licensing is smooth."

"The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."

"The pricing is fine for the work that it does."

"Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

"It is on a per case basis."

"From my perspective, pricing is expensive. If they can reduce the pricing or offer more customer incentives, it would attract more users."

"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

"The product is expensive."

"The price could be improved."

"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."

"The pricing for this solution is good."

"The solution's price is medium."

"We have a good contact in Dell and he prepared all the information and provided everything to us."

More Dell PowerFlex pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

No data available

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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) combin...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

If you are comfortable with the solution and you feel that you don't need support, you can begin with the free licenc...

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

Areas for improvement in StarWind Virtual SAN include simplifying the setup process, especially for users with limite...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

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 bein...

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What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerFlex?

The support is highly responsive.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerFlex?

If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive.

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 28% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 17% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 13% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 6% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

HPE SimpliVity vs Cohesity C4000 Series

Compared 100% of the time

More Cohesity C4000 Series Competitors

VxRail vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 50% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 15% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 6% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell PowerFlex Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

October 2024

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Buyer's Guide

HCI

November 2024

Download Cohesity C4000 Series product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerFlex

November 2024

Download Dell PowerFlex product report

Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS

No data available

VxFlex, VxRack FLEX, PowerFlex

Learn More

StarWind

Cohesity

Dell Technologies

Overview

StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

Building blocks for the Cohesity DataPlatform
Each Cohesity C4000 hyperconverged node provides compute, flash and HDD capacity to consolidate data and execute workflows. Scale your capacity as needed, starting with as little as three nodes, and scale out linearly by adding individual nodes.

VxRack System consists of hyper-converged rack-scale engineered systems, with integrated networking, to achieve the scalability and management requirements of traditional and cloud native workloads. The VxRack series is purposely designed to enable customers to quickly deploy Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and/or Private Cloud architectures. VxRack Systems tightly integrate hardware with software and management layers.

The result is a fully tested, pre-configured, hyper-converged system with simplified operations at data center and Service Provider scale. VxRack Systems support the deployment of a variety of application workloads, allowing IT to rapidly deliver new services while improving overall agility and efficiency.

Sample Customers

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Cisco, Kyriba, WHOA.com, Aller, Master

Canopy, 8x8Inc., Atos, Canadian Pacific, City of Denton, CenturyLink, BNP Paribas, Asyaport, EDF, CSC, Fox Sports, Insight, Hunter, KPIT, Paetec, Rosetta Stone, Sonda, Xerox

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: November 2024.

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