We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and HPE SimpliVity based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."StarWind Virtual SAN is essentially hardware agnostic, allowing us to build out a specific hardware layer based upon the customer's unique requirements."
"A typical system administrator with minimal experience in Hyper-V, VMware, or Windows can do VSAN configuration and maintain VSAN operations."
"It has allowed me to effectively and confidently manage the maintenance of hosts where I can power off a host and have its VMs migrate to another one."
"The virtual tapes can be uploaded to the object storage of your choice with object locking/governance which gives you an extra layer of protection."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very easy-to-use solution that can be quickly and easily deployed and configured without intimate and specific knowledge in the virtualization sphere."
"A great feature is that I basically set it and forget it, as everything is automatic."
"StarWind has provided us with a top-notch, well-supported, robust vSAN offering when other vendors have moved to hyper-converged solutions that are outside of our average clients' reach from a financial and resource perspective."
"The ability for us to manage all of our nodes from the same console makes systems administration very easy."
"The solution is scalable."
"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."
"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"The support is highly responsive."
"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"I have saved time and money by moving to the platform."
"There is no single feature that's the most valuable. All of SimpliVity's components work together to make daily operations easier for our customers."
"The ease of managing this system."
"The most valuable feature is the quick restore."
"The solution is very stable."
"What I like about SimpliVity is the brand value of HP. I also like the data compression ratio, which is around more than 75% data compression ratio. HP's support and the ease of working with SimpliVity are also valuable features."
"The compression and deduplication ratio."
"Looking at the way that our infrastructure team works now, we don't think about infrastructure, storage, or compute anymore. The solution just works. It is same with the backup and replication side of things, as it just works on schedule. We don't have to manage it tightly, like we used to."
"StarWind Virtual SAN architecture is slightly complex and requires the team to carefully identify and study how the solution integrates with VMware vSphere."
"Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment."
"This product would benefit from having automated alerting functionality."
"StarWind currently has a Windows native application that it uses for management. There is not a web-based GUI at this time."
"The documentation can be better for the free tier."
"I had to buy upgraded support, which was not a problem, but it wasn't a prorated amount, so I paid for the support, the full upgrade, but I only got a couple of months out of it because it was only good until renewal time."
"The software could benefit from more tooling to help with initial deployment."
"There should be some kind of active monitoring connected to StarWind vSAN, so you will be able to act when needed."
"Needs some more monitoring tools."
"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."
"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"The installation is complex."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"Since it is a newer solution, there needs to be more knowledge transfer out there."
"The ease of new deployments could be improved."
"I think that they should have their own hyper-converged system."
"We had one call with technical support which was not completely answered to our satisfaction. We did not receive the right answer."
"While SimpliVity was a pioneer of cloud connect capability, they have simply not exploited it."
"SimpliVity's data management could be better. Nutanix's interface is a bit more user-friendly."
"I have some worries about the support after the acquisition. The support was better before HPE acquired SimpliVity."
"Not a lean architecture in terms of anything."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 8th in HCI with 19 reviews while HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 151 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.2, while HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.6. 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 HPE SimpliVity writes "Provides a unified management interface that allows administrators to manage all aspects of the infrastructure". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and HPE Hyper Converged, whereas HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. HPE SimpliVity report.
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