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Dell XC Appliance vs VxRail comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

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 XC Appliance
Ranking in HCI
19th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VxRail
Ranking in HCI
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
130
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Dell XC Appliance is 0.2%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VxRail is 19.7%, down from 21.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Enables seamless integration with multiple software and outstanding AI tools
The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor. If multi-hypervisor support is required and VMware does not provide it, then Dell's appliance won't support it. I find it overly reliant on VMware. In cases of company mergers involving different platforms, software that can handle a multi-hypervisor environment would facilitate quicker integration.
Rami Jadallah - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline management and integration with seamless upgrades
The primary reasons customers choose VxRail include ease of management, ease of upgrades, and integration with VMware. The hyper-converged infrastructure simplifies software and hardware upgrades. Customers prefer the single pane of glass management and integration with VMware, which makes it easier for them to proceed with decisions involving VMware products.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From a single screen, I can view VM details, performance, and hardware issues, such as power supply or fan malfunctions, along with RAM module problems."
"The solution's best feature is its simplicity. It's so simple to deploy it. You've got the VMware, and it's own appliance. It is really helpful. The system is online within half a day and saves so much time."
"The most valuable features are the deduplication and the compression features."
"It's an extremely stable solution, and I highly recommend it."
"The most valuable feature is that you can assign a volume to an off-shore workload on the fly."
"The most valuable feature is the low management overhead, and the lower skill set required to manage it."
"When we compare it to normal hardware servers, I'd say it is quite easy to configure and deploy."
"What I like the most is that it is easy to implement, easy deployment and that it's easy to manage."
"Initial setup is straightforward, as everything is pre-installed."
"There is a single vendor with the hardware, software, and maintenance. Thus, there is a single vendor with whom we can contact."
"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. This makes all files act as a single file with a large and huge resource, and, of course, with customized administration, configuration, and resources. It provides automatic failover for redundancy and data recovery."
"One beneficial feature is that the solution can handle complex environments."
"I have found that the admin deployment, monitoring off-premises, and the many services important features. Additionally, the solution has good integration."
"There are so many features, but if I have to choose, I would go for scale-out upgrades and performance. Scale-out upgrades are very valuable. Typically, when customers engage in virtualization, they're committing themselves to run many virtual machines on a fewer number of hosts. They'll have five or six hosts, and they will run all their virtualization on vSphere. They could be having anywhere from 50 to 100 or even more virtual machines. Once all these go into production, getting downtime or getting planned maintenance windows is extremely difficult. It is something that typically businesses will frown upon. With VxRail, you can just go ahead and add a node without disrupting the existing environment, which works very well. That's why scale-out upgrades are a key feature. Its performance is also valuable. It 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."
"RecoverPoint give us peace of mind knowing any corruption or server issue can be rectified very quickly, making sure the business impact is minimal."
"The most valuable feature of VxRail is the VxRail Manager, which centralizes resources like storage built with vSAN."
 

Cons

"The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor. If multi-hypervisor support is required and VMware does not provide it, then Dell's appliance won't support it."
"There should be more provisioning capabilities within the solution."
"We are not always advised of new features or updates, so we must research to stay up to date."
"The cost of using the public cloud deployment is astronomical."
"In the next release, I would like to see support for Docker and containers."
"The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor."
"The solution's storage size could be improved."
"Dell needs to do a lot of work to simplify the maintenance and life-cycle upgrades for the product."
"I would like an easier migration. This way, if a node fails like it did, the data would have been migrated and I would not have had to get up at three in the morning."
"The cost is quite high. It's a very expensive solution to run."
"The licensing needs to be improved upon."
"There is a limitation on the number of nodes."
"The solution could improve by having more storage performance because in some other solutions you can have a file system that can be mounted at several places at one time."
"During code upgrades, VxRail can be sensitive. It requires a very clean environment to proceed without issues."
"It would be nice if the update process was shortened and that patching would be simpler."
"if we're looking at costs, Nutanix will win because it allows flexibility in the type of hardware you can use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We received a good price from Dell."
"The pricing for Dell EMC solutions is quite expensive and not really made for small or medium-sized businesses."
"The pricing is good."
"The price point is very fair for a product in this category but can vary depending on the components selected within the family of products."
"The pricing is dependent on the technology and is in direct relation to the manufacturer and the components."
"We were expecting Dell EMC to bring us something that would work very quickly and easily, but also be at a reasonable price point, and they did."
"This is an expensive product and that should be considered a point to be improved."
"The current VxRail pricing structure is quite opaque for me, especially considering the recent changes."
"VxRail is still more expensive than its competitor solutions."
"Most of hyper-converged solutions require additional licenses for the virtualization layer (like VMware)."
"We pay for annual support from VxRail."
"Compare the VxRail product to Nutanix. Nutanix has more features, but its pricing is higher."
"It is just as cheap to move over to an HCI solution as it is to maintain a legacy system."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What advice do you have for others considering Dell XC Appliance?
My advice for people who are selling this product is to first make sure that you educate the customers. The customer doesn't often know much about HCI and what the need to be using it for. If they ...
What needs improvement with Dell XC Appliance?
The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor. If multi-hypervisor support is required and VMware does not provide it, then Dell's applian...
What is your primary use case for Dell XC Appliance?
Dell offers several benefits with its appliances. Primarily, I can combine them horizontally and vertically, reaching up to sixty-four nodes. Additionally, Dell employs its own artificial intellige...
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, zero rule. That means I need three copies of my data on two different types of me...
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 engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cardlytics, AEW Energie, Aubert, Zhongtong Information Service, Commune de Villepinte, Teikyo University Hospital
World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell XC Appliance vs. VxRail and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.