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.
"The top-notch support before, during, and after deployments are better than any other vendor I have come across."
"The most valuable feature is the fact that the nodes are Active/Active, and allow us to do upgrades on any node without any downtime."
"This solution enables us to make better cost-effective use of our existing hardware and leverage the current infrastructure at a higher level than we could before."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is essentially hardware agnostic, allowing us to build out a specific hardware layer based upon the customer's unique requirements."
"The best part is the easy way it operates with a very clear GUI without any unnecessary items."
"The management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard."
"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."
"The iSCSI protocol is quite simple to configure."
"We're doing a lot of VMware for IT so this solution is really valuable from a VMH point of view. We're trying to assist our customers mainly with management, because that's what they want. The most important aspects are ease of management, as well as ease of configuration, allowing them to attach additional nodes and resources for the applications."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"The support is highly responsive."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"The support team responds quickly."
"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."
"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."
"I have used VMware for 15 years and I never had any problems with stability."
"The valuable features are its scalability and the standardization - one size fits all. It's also intuitive and easy to use because one size fits all. Obviously, it scales out, but it's the same solution at every physical location I manage."
"The most valuable feature is the fast performance."
"The installation is very easy."
"The ability to have an HA cluster in the absence of a shared storage device or SAN."
"We can scale it very easily for a test environment. We were able to segment our DMZ so it wasn't connected to anything, which we really liked."
"Technical support has been fantastic. We always get answers quickly whenever we call."
"The valuable features of vSAN are that you can get it up and running quickly, you get redundancy built-in, and it's pretty much the perfect solution for a cluster."
"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."
"The main thing I would like to see improved is the level of documentation."
"High availability for direct attached hardware drives could be useful for increasing the performance of a storage appliance."
"The GUI deserves a little love."
"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."
"It took a bit of knowledge and support to put in place but once installed it works fine. Migration (HyperV) from one server to another sometimes takes longer than expected but there is no data loss even if the host crashes."
"The console is something that I believe could be enhanced."
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"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."
"The storage capability must be improved."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"I would like to see a little bit more documentation on the initial setup, and a little bit more explanation on the expandability: How to extend out your vSAN much more simply through the console because, a lot of the time, you have to do it through the command line."
"Hardware load balancing is available on the enterprise version of the solution, however, it's extremely expensive and therefore out of our budget."
"I would like to be able to limit IOPS."
"I lose a node in a cluster vSAN, which is also used as a cluster HA. I lose not only the storage part, which is not necessarily serious (depending on the configuration of the vSAN cluster), but on the other hand, I lose also a node of Compute, which can make things complicated quickly."
"I see room for improvement with vSAN in particularly in the reporting realm. Now, with vSAN 6.7, they're starting to include vRealize Operations components in the vSphere Client, even if you're not a vRealize Operations customer. So, that's really good. It exposes some really low-level reporting. I would like to see more of that. However, you have to be a vRealize Operations customer to obtain that. I would like to see more include of this included in the vSAN licensing."
"Lacks sufficient storage terabytes."
"There's a lot that can be done to segregate. That may be available now in vSAN 7, I suppose, however, the deduplication and compression can be segregated."
"I would like for the next release to be a bit cheaper."
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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