We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and Scale Computing HC3 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."The StarWind Virtual SAN provides a clever and unique solution to the Computing Split Brain problem."
"Being hardware agnostic is a must and definitely scored points for us."
"We are running Hyper-V on twin servers in failover, and being able to manage servers from anywhere I need to, virtually, has been a game changer."
"It also provides a high degree of mobility, as the virtual SAN can be moved relatively painlessly between on-site devices and the cloud."
"StarWind vSAN is easy to deploy and administer."
"StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN) offers a significant breadth of features."
"The solution offers easy one-click PowerShell scripts that are ready to run."
"PowerShell library is pretty good feature as I created with APC PowerChute a script to put volumes on maintenance mode then turning off the StarWind nodes together with the VM and Hosts when UPS reaches 15 percent, this way after a blackout or electrical problems when turning servers on again, there is no issues for syncing or data loss due to energy interrupts."
"The program is stable."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."
"The setup was very straightforward."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"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."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"The resiliency and data protection are the most valuable features."
"The solution is scalable."
"The product's initial setup phase is too easy."
"The most valuable feature of Scale Computing HC3 is if one of the devices fails, you won't even notice, the service maintains operation. The customers don't have to waste two, or three days on delays. Additionally, you do not have to waste time with recovery software, it is a lot easier."
"I rate Scale Computing support 10 out of 10. They're accessible and responsive."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the nice GUI."
"I like that Scale Computing HCR is slimmed down and gives me the features I need and not features that I don't need."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The most valuable features are the appliance-type feel and that you don't need additional licenses as everything is built-in."
"I see no need for major improvements but there could be some improvements in the form of notifications and the simplifying of maintenance mode."
"Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."
"With data verification, I would like to know how does the solution perform validation of data being synced between two VSANs."
"This is a great product."
"Management tools could be improved, sometimes the usage seems to be slowed down and confusing. A native web interface could also be an option. I love to see in the future port of the software on a general Linux distribution like RedHat or Ubuntu in order to avoid windows license costs. I would also like to see features like erasure coding implemented. On the VSAN software, I would like to see some improvements in the storage pools (eliminate the usage of the file as a data container and use the raw partition)."
"We have, in rare cases, received conflicting guidance between different support folks within StarWind."
"One main thing this product needs to work on is reporting."
"StarWind Command Center's single-pane management solution only works with Hyper-V."
"I think there might be some room for improvement when it comes to pricing, because although I know how to convert customers, at the end of day, it's quite expensive. Sometimes your feature architecture is still coming out much cheaper than hardware costs for your infrastructure."
"The storage capability must be improved."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"It would be great to get earlier access to beta builds because we have to develop providers on our own. The APIs and enablers for custom automation could also be improved."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"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."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"Scale HC3 improvements would involve literally fixing up the replication."
"I've had so many issues with the sales team when I was looking to make some improvements, and improve the performance. They would create so many excuses to force me to buy new nodes all the time and not let me add more memory to each node."
"The snapshot technology takes up 500 times more space compared to other solutions."
"The product struggles to cope with bigger workloads. In the next release, I'd like some backup solutions to be added."
"Scale Computing HC3 said in an announcement they were going to integrate with a backup service which would be good. If they could do this it would be beneficial."
"I would like bigger clusters with more than eight nodes."
"On the fly, you cannot do anything on Scale Computing HC3, though it is a very rarely needed area."
"The product could use a better control center."
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 8th in HCI with 20 reviews while Scale Computing HC3 is ranked 16th in HCI with 8 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.0, while Scale Computing HC3 is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Dell PowerFlex writes "Is very resilient and protects our data, but the solution is complex". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Scale Computing HC3 writes "A reliable stripped-down solution that comes with excellent support". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, whereas Scale Computing HC3 is most compared with VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VxRail, Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure and DataCore SANsymphony. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. Scale Computing HC3 report.
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