Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes vs VxRail comparison

Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes and VxRail are both solutions in the HCI category. Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes is ranked #21, while VxRail is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.4. Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes holds a 0.6% mindshare in HCI, compared to VxRail’s 21.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of VxRail users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

VxRail and Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes are hyper-converged infrastructure solutions. VxRail seems to have an upper hand with features and user satisfaction, while VxFlex Ready Nodes provide a more robust and scalable architecture for specific infrastructure demands.

Features: VxRail features seamless VMware integration, simplified management, and automated lifecycle management, fitting well in VMware-centric environments. Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes offer flexibility with multi-hypervisor support, a highly scalable design, and robust performance, providing superior adaptability for various architectures.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VxRail offers a streamlined deployment and strong customer support, reducing setup complexity. Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes have a more complex deployment model due to customization options, requiring more initial effort but enabling tailored solutions. VxRail has an advantage in deployment ease.

Pricing and ROI: VxRail typically has a higher upfront cost, with integration efficiencies and lifecycle tools contributing to quicker ROI in VMware ecosystems. Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes present variable pricing based on configuration, potentially offering lower costs for specific setups and long-term ROI benefits for adaptable infrastructure needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes vs. VxRail Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes vs. VxRail

October 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 Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes is 0.6%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VxRail is 21.2%, up from 21.3% 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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Al Vasek

Executive Business Development Manager, Cloud and Managed Services at ConvergeOne

Apr 29, 2022

Ease of acquisition, simple deployment, and priced well

The support from Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes is okay. It could be better, they have to work on their approach. The approach they have I call "pass the baton". Every manufacturer does this, such as Cisco, Dell, and Microsoft. You call in, receive a call handler, and give them your problem. The first person you talk to can never fix your problem. They just collect information. There's probably a 5 percent chance that they could fix your problem. Then they pass it off to the next person, there is a lot of passing. That's why I call it "pass the baton". The company I work for the maintenance services is at 98 percent, we receive over 50,000 incidents a month, for those customers who have support through Dell, Cisco, or someone else, 98 percent of our incidents or ticket requests get resolved by your first point of contact. We try to take out that frustration. Knowing that it's possible to fix that model. I don't think it saves them much money, because they're tying up too many resources where if they could route those incidents to the person that could fix them the first time, it would just save a lot of frustration on the customer's behalf. It would make everything a lot more efficient, and a better overall customer support image. It is a bad model that many vendors use.

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Sushil MIshra

AG at SIS.

Apr 17, 2024

Trouble-free architecture, we don't have to juggle multiple components like in a traditional three-tier architecture

We mainly use it for virtualization across all our applications. We also have a DC/DR setup based on the VxRail infrastructure It's a trouble-free architecture. We don't have to juggle multiple components like in a traditional three-tier architecture. With VxRail, it's a pre-built solution…

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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

"It allows me to configure High Availability and failover clustering with some fault tolerance, at a cost point that doesn’t break the bank for a small business budget."

"It includes every feature that a traditional SAN offers and so much more."

"StarWind Virtual SAN can improve an organization's storage infrastructure by providing high availability, scalability, cost-effectiveness, performance, and ease of use."

"It also provides a seamless and efficient solution for personal storage requirements, showcasing the versatility and scalability of my Virtual SAN configuration."

"I like StarWind's high availability. The failover is almost immediate, so the end users have no idea the guest VM moved at all. We can failover all guest VMs onto a single hypervisor, place it into maintenance mode, install updates, and reboot a hypervisor all during the daytime and remotely, with confidence the process will be successful."

"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very mature software that supersedes its capabilities with my use cases."

"It integrates (fully) with VMware and Veeam, my hypervisor, and backup vendors, so for me, all the puzzle pieces simply fit and work smoothly."

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

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

"The most valuable features of Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes are the ease of acquisition."

"Dell EMC VxFlex Ready Nodes can support what we call a heterogeneous environment. So you can have VMware workloads, Hyper-V workloads, bare metal Red Hat workloads, Kubernetes workloads all on the same cluster. You're not pigeonholed into either all bare metal or all virtualized. So it supports basically any platform."

"Initial setup is straightforward, as everything is pre-installed."

"The stability is very nice. We haven't had any issues with the cluster. The cluster is very stable. No problems with slowness. Everything has been stable. It was well-architectured."

"One beneficial feature is that the solution can handle complex environments."

"A valuable feature of the solution is that it allows everything to be integrated into a single model, comprised of hardware and software."

"The VxRail is built on two specific platforms that have been in the industry for the last 15 to 20 years: the 1-U socket and the 2-U socket platforms from Dell. They're in their sixteenth generation of those platforms, I believe, so they're very stable."

"The most compelling aspect of VxRail lies in its unwavering guarantee of sustained performance for my systems, regardless of their geographical distribution."

"The most valuable features are ease of management and ease of applying updates."

"The most valuable feature is its high performance."

More VxRail pros

Cons

"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 documentation is good yet is still lacking in a few areas."

"It would be nice to see a new UI for the windows client, as it is not the easiest to find settings."

"There is no IPv6 support. That is our only issue at this time."

"Maybe in the future, the replication will be supported in more cloud providers."

"Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so."

"Android app for monitoring and receiving push notifications as alarms or monitoring I/O from any mobile device could be a good feature and nice to have as we are not always on our desk."

"The logs can also become very noisy when there is an issue, which is very infrequent."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

"Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes is a little less sophisticated than some of the other solutions out there. A full-blown cloud foundation has a lot more to it."

"From a technical perspective, it's a pretty rock solid solution. I would say the only area for improvement is around its price."

"It might offer better integration with other products."

"It still has some maturity to grow. It needs to be more tightly integrated with its own family of products. It has shown that it is open with the other products within the market, through its stack, but it needs to have the proof in the market (with use-cases), and it has to have the scalability with the integration."

"In the next release, I would like to see our graphical user interface allow us to manage VxRail clusters and everything on a single pane of glass where I can monitor and shut down the server, similar to a VxRail manager."

"VxRail should try to improve the pricing."

"We spend around six months waiting for a confirmation and firmware upgrade to confirm this step."

"It can be a bit complex for engineers who are new to it. There's a learning curve involved. They have to learn to operate it."

"I wish for the performance environment to be improved."

"Some of the features of the hyperconverged infrastructure could be integrated with external storage. Right now, for example, if I have surveillance going, I need to purchase very cheap storage. So, an integration between the hyperconverged infrastructure and external storage would be good."

More VxRail cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are happy with the price."

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

"The cost seems a bit steep, and I wish it was less expensive."

"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."

"The free version is great to use for labs or test environments."

"I think the cost of this solution is quite fair."

"This is the best priced solution for an SMB."

"This solution has competitive prices and the implementation is very easy."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

"Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes is a cheaper solution than Nutanix and HyperFlex."

"Most of hyper-converged solutions require additional licenses for the virtualization layer (like VMware)."

"While one could argue, from a strictly corporate standpoint, that the cost of VxRail has been in the higher range, the true evaluation lies in the return on investment."

"It's a mandatory cost with everything included"

"The licensing of vSAN and VMware for different editions of VxRail is not easy."

"There is an administrative cost savings. Instead of having seven to 15 separate boxes that someone has to administer on 15 different terminals, you can do the majority of it from one interface. Therefore, it saves on manpower costs."

"It's a highly expensive solution"

"The cost was cheaper compared to other virtualization solutions."

"When compared with others, the price is very reasonable."

More VxRail 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

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Retailer

10%

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

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...

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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...

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What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

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

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How does HPE Nimble Storage compare to VxRail?

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one, z...

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What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?

While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an e...

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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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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

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 3% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Dell PowerFlex vs Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes

Compared 14% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes

Compared 13% of the time

More Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes Competitors

Dell PowerFlex vs VxRail

Compared 33% of the time

VMware vSAN vs VxRail

Compared 21% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VxRail

Compared 15% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VxRail

Compared 7% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs VxRail

Compared 1% of the time

More VxRail Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

October 2024

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Buyer's Guide

HCI

November 2024

Download Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes product report

Buyer's Guide

VxRail

October 2024

Download VxRail product report

Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS

VxFlex Ready Nodes

VCE VxRail

Learn More

StarWind

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.

VxRack FLEX and VxFlex Ready Nodes, also known as the Flex family, create a server-based SAN by combining virtualization software, known as VxFlex OS, with Dell EMC PowerEdge servers to deliver flexibility, scalability, and capacity on demand. Local storage resources are combined to create a virtual pool of block storage with varying performance tiers. The platform enables you to start small (with as little as four nodes) and scale incrementally. The Flex family provides enterprise-grade data protection, multi-tenant capabilities, and add-on enterprise features such as QoS, thin provisioning, and snapshots. VxFlex OS is the key enabler and provides an unmatched combination of performance, resiliency and flexibility to address enterprise data center needs. The unique features of VxFlex OS make it an excellent complement to Kubernetes for stateful applications, such as databases, continuous integration, logging and monitoring platforms.

VxRail is a hyper-converged appliance based on VMware virtual SAN Software and is jointly engineered and built with VMware, for VMware, to enhance Vmware. VxRail software-defined architecture simplifies compute, storage, virtualization, and management. It will safeguard performance, reliability, and flexibility across your organization with a broad range of workloads and applications from business-critical to next-gen. With VxRail, you are covered.

VxRail is a single turn-key appliance that is a validated, fully integrated, pre-configured, pre-tested solution and offers non-disruptive scaling. Every node includes compute storage and IO. All-flash configurations can contain between 12-28 cores per node. The storage capacity options run from 7.6 TB to 19TB with either 256 GB or 512GB of memory. Hybrid appliances may have 6-20 cores per node, 3.6 TB to 10 TB of storage capacity, and 24GB to 256 GB of memory.

VxRail offers high availability fail-over, an active/active stretch cluster, and VSan Kernal integration. VxRail is a power-edged server with APIs built on automation. There are over 15 million different combinations of hardware available with VxRail. VxRail provides a simple, cost-effective solution that solves a large range of use cases. Additionally, you also get a mixed workloads automated system that is backed with fully automated system updates, and complete end-to-end lifecycle management all in a single two-rack appliance.

VxRail is a value-added suitable solution for distributed small to mid-sized enterprises, remote offices, private clouds, and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). You choose the deployment option that best suits your organizational needs, from appliance to integrated rack offerings, with or without networking, and it will be delivered to you, ready to deploy out-of-box.

If you know VMware, you know VxRail.

VxRail Features and Benefits

Seamlessly accelerate deployment to a hybrid cloud
Fast data center modernization
Create developer-ready Kubernetes platforms

Powerful performance and reliability
Improve and simplify operational efficiency
Excellent integration
Save time
Reduce costs

Reviews from Real Users

VxRail is an all-in-one solution: "You don't have to worry too much about the hardware and you don't have to work on integrating a storage device. We instead have this as an all-in-one solution and everything is available as a box."

VxRail is remarkable: “The cover points feature in VxRail is remarkable. It's unique. It has an intervention failover system as well as an automatic failover system, reaching clusters existing in VxRail…”

VxRail is a powerful performer: “...VxRail delivers a very high number of IOPS for a hybrid configuration or an all-flash configuration. The processors that are available in the Xeon family are very powerful. They are multi-core with typically 2 gigahertz, 2.4 gigahertz, or higher frequency, so the performance is very much appreciated.”

Sample Customers

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Boys Town

World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox

Buyer's Guide

Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes vs. VxRail

October 2024

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