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Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Ceph Storage comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Dell PowerFlex
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
HCI (5th)
Red Hat Ceph Storage
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (2nd), File and Object Storage (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Dell PowerFlex and Red Hat Ceph Storage aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Dell PowerFlex is designed for HCI and holds a mindshare of 12.6%, up 8.7% compared to last year.
Red Hat Ceph Storage, on the other hand, focuses on Software Defined Storage (SDS), holds 20.6% mindshare, down 20.9% since last year.
HCI
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

Serdar De - PeerSpot reviewer
Initial setup has been straightforward and it has reasonable pricing
We are new to this, so we are still learning about the valuable features The solution is okay overall. It could be easier to learn. We haven't had any issues. They could have more AI functionality in the future.  I have been using the solution for six months. I have not encountered any problems…
ANDRE VINICIUS HAMERSKI - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers cost-effective scalability through open-source storage integration
Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage. We appreciate the scalability of the open-source solution, allowing us to address our growing data needs without encountering major issues. Having used it as a pilot system in Brazil, we gained significant knowledge and the ability to manage our infrastructure as code.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The setup was very straightforward."
"It has reduced downtime. Before, on our previous solution, we used to have downtime on some of the servers because of the sort of convention. But currently I've not experienced any downtime on any of the servers, and there is no more resource congestion."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"The support is highly responsive."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."
"Dell PowerFlex is a one-stop-shop solution. Storage, compute, network, application monitoring, and support cases are all combined into one solution. It's very easy to administer compared to when you have a reference architecture where you need to design and build everything yourself. You would also then have to work with multiple vendors."
"The resiliency and data protection are the most valuable features."
"The setup is very easy, deserving a ten out of ten."
"It has helped to save money and scale the storage without limits."
"Data redundancy is a key feature, since it can survive failures (disks/servers). We didn’t lose our data or have a service interruption during server/disk failures."
"We have not encountered any stability issues for the product."
"Ceph has simplified my storage integration. I no longer need two or three storage systems, as Ceph can support all my storage needs. I no longer need OpenStack Swift for REST object storage access, I no longer need NFS or GlusterFS for filesystem sharing, and most importantly, I no longer need LVM or DRBD for my virtual machines in OpenStack."
"Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage."
"It's a very performance-intensive, brilliant storage system, and I always recommend it to customers based on its benefits, performance, and scalability."
"I would definitely recommend Red Hat Ceph Storage. It is a complete solution for cloud-native storage needs."
 

Cons

"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"We are still hoping for better ways to incorporate AI. We have to extend third-party access to PowerFlex by calling the API. It would be easier if the product had built-in AI integration. If PowerFlex can contribute more to AI, it would be more useful."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"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."
"The initial deployment was complicated and required a lot of data nodes, IPs, internal vLANs, data vLANs, and many other things."
"The tool needs to improve its storage. It should also make migration to the cloud easier."
"An area for improvement would be that it's pretty difficult to manage synchronous replication over multiple regions."
"If you use for any other solution like other Kubernetes solutions, it's not very suitable."
"The storage capacity of the solution can be improved."
"The product lacks RDMA support for inter-OSD communication."
"The licensing cost is excessively high. This is a significant issue from my perspective."
"I've heard the integration with OpenShift is great, however, the licensing cost is excessively high."
"Ceph does not deal very well with, or takes a long time to recover from, certain kinds of network failures and individual storage node failures."
"This product uses a lot of CPU and network bandwidth. It needs some deduplication features and to use delta for rebalancing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."
"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"The product is expensive."
"We have a good contact in Dell and he prepared all the information and provided everything to us."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive."
"From my perspective, pricing is expensive. If they can reduce the pricing or offer more customer incentives, it would attract more users."
"The solution's pricing could be much cheaper and affordable."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."
"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."
"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."
"There is no cost for software."
"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."
"We never used the paid support."
"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription​​ as a bundle.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerFlex?
I don't know the cost of PowerFlex. I understand it is reasonable.
How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?
Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This solution allows for multiple copies of replicated and coded pools to be kept, ea...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?
The high availability of the solution is important to us.
What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?
I have not identified any drawbacks, however, the response to public platform inquiries could be faster.
 

Also Known As

VxFlex, VxRack FLEX, PowerFlex
Ceph
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Canopy, 8x8Inc., Atos, Canadian Pacific, City of Denton, CenturyLink, BNP Paribas, Asyaport, EDF, CSC, Fox Sports, Insight, Hunter, KPIT, Paetec, Rosetta Stone, Sonda, Xerox
Dell, DreamHost
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842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.