We performed a comparison between Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes and VxRail based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI.
"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."
"It's quite easy to install."
"The vSAN provides full redundancy for storage while reclaiming some rack space."
"The install itself is easy as pie."
"The most important feature is the ability to experience the loss of one node or one storage device, and not lose the entire cluster."
"When we need additional storage but want to keep the size of the SANs manageable, the StarWind Virtual SAN has allowed me to do everything needed."
"StarWind is very easy to use, even if you have had no experience using a SAN before."
"The control panel is nice. It gives you a lot of good feedback as to the status and health of the VSAN."
"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."
"The most valuable features of Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes are the ease of acquisition."
"Depending on your architecture type, it's simple to manage and implement VxRail compared to other solutions. That's why most of our customers use it."
"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."
"VxRail simplifies IT infrastructure management by providing a single management console for compute, storage, and network. The second advantage is that VxRail offers a continuously validated architecture from the OEM. This means that Dell thoroughly tests all firmware updates before being released or installed on the product, helping to prevent compatibility issues. The third benefit is its ten-year roadmap. Dell consistently announces a roadmap for the product spanning the next decade."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the automation and integration points with other automation tools."
"The recent technologies and management features that have been implemented."
"For me, VxRail's most valuable feature is its life-cycle management."
"VxRail does not require fiber switches or external storage. It's easy to replace and manage. It's centralized management through VxRail Manager."
"Our clients value being able to upgrade with one click or a few clicks."
"I would like to see an extensive set of cmdlets that could allow for easier automation as well as status management."
"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."
"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 documentation could be clearer in terms of explaining the installation."
"The most disappointing side of the application is the free edition. There used to be GUI attached. That has recently changed to only CLI management of the application."
"There should be some kind of active monitoring connected to StarWind vSAN, so you will be able to act when needed."
"The console is something that I believe could be enhanced."
"We would like to see the documentation more fully developed."
"From a technical perspective, it's a pretty rock solid solution. I would say the only area for improvement is around its price."
"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."
"VxRail could improve by having domain protection."
"It might offer better integration with other products."
"One challenge customers face with VxRail is the high cost of scalability. The price is higher if they want to add memory or capacity after purchasing the tool for three or five years. Each drive and RAM module is licensed separately, making the architecture costly. It would benefit Dell to review this licensing model and make it more cost-effective and flexible for customers."
"The price should come down a little bit. It has become better than it was at the beginning. There was a really big price difference between a hyper-converged infrastructure and the classic servers and storage. The gap is lessening, however, it's still there."
"While VxRail offers compatibility with AMD processors, its capabilities in this area could benefit from further development."
"The upgrade packages require a lot of bandwidth. This could be reduced for an improved experience."
"When we have a vulnerability or we need to upgrade VxRail, it takes a long time. It takes eight hours each time we upgrade."
"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."
Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes is ranked 20th in HCI while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 119 reviews. Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes is rated 9.0, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes writes "Single platform for a mix of virtualized and physical workloads". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". Dell VxFlex Ready Nodes is most compared with HPE Alletra dHCI, VMware vSAN and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Rackspace OpenStack.
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