We performed a comparison between Azure Stack HCI and VxRail based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI."The StarWind VSAN is always up and allows us to move VMS to other nodes for maintenance, without interruption to service."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is essentially hardware agnostic, allowing us to build out a specific hardware layer based upon the customer's unique requirements."
"The access to our data is quicker and cheaper than it used to be in a traditional storage system."
"One of the most valuable features is the way it sets up the virtual SAN, because we don't have to buy a separate appliance for storage. It uses the existing storage on the servers, which is definitely a cost savings 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."
"We have experienced multiple hardware failures at one site and the fault-tolerant volume worked exactly as expected with zero downtime."
"The control panel is nice. It gives you a lot of good feedback as to the status and health of the VSAN."
"It also provides a seamless and efficient solution for personal storage requirements, showcasing the versatility and scalability of my Virtual SAN configuration."
"In my hybrid cloud setup, there are three features I've found very efficient. The first is software-defined networking. Similar to Azure where you create virtual networks and software load balancing, Azure Stack HCI lets you configure them with a drag-and-drop experience on the on-premises cluster. That's one of the good feature."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to manage VMs."
"The solution has the latest processor."
"The solution has simplified our operations."
"Valuable features for us are the VDI, UCC, and HCI."
"The solution is really stable."
"It's somewhat hard to speak about specific features, but I like VxRail's simplicity and ease of use. It's a decent solution for customers with a small footprint. If you're operating a big data center, it's not easy to position VxRail or HCI solutions, but when you have a small customer managing many different components, it's easier to work only with one solution."
"I like the new releases that Dell EMC is doing with VMware. They are allowing for flexibility across the hybrid cloud. This allows organizations to use containers and to be able to move into the public cloud, but also not have lock-in. They can come back to the private cloud when they want to, so it's creating a lot of flexibility across the stack."
"There is a single vendor with the hardware, software, and maintenance. Thus, there is a single vendor with whom we can contact."
"The most valuable feature is the fact that the storage is integrated with the VxRail so I don't have to go in between systems when I have to monitor my storage."
"VxRail's integration with VMware environments is very good. Our VxRail is built on VMware, and the integration is seamless. We haven't faced any challenges. We can migrate VMs between servers in real-time and replicate them to our DR site without any problems."
"The documentation can be better for the free tier."
"vSAN's free version does not have a graphical user interface."
"High availability for direct attached hardware drives could be useful for increasing the performance of a storage appliance."
"StarWind Virtual SAN could benefit from better integration with other tools and technologies, such as backup and disaster recovery solutions."
"The gathering of monthly consumption and performance reports for future dissemination to concerned parties is very important. Unfortunately, StarWinds vSAN doesn't offer this functionality."
"For someone entering the IT sector with little knowledge of storage, iSCSI, and virtual disks, they might not find the GUI immediately obvious."
"The interface of the management console of the StarWind Virtual SAN is complex, and it's difficult for the novice user to interact with the management having less knowledge or training in the product."
"We have, in rare cases, received conflicting guidance between different support folks within StarWind."
"The product's initial setup phase can be a bit complex, making it an area where improvements are required."
"We faced multiple problems with the product’s stability."
"There are a lot of areas for improvement. Since I've been working very closely with this product, there are many areas, especially in software-defined networking. We had to improve multiple areas because we depended on the service fabric cluster to manage the software-defined network. That means we're already running a hypervisor inside a VM, and we're managing the control plane of the software-defined network. That's another cluster. So, multiple layers make the complexity more. So, from an operational perspective, it's very difficult to manage."
"It needs faster deployment of security patches."
"Troubleshooting can be a little more difficult than legacy systems."
"I would like to see VxRail add duplication features to its hybrid solution."
"If we could have some out of the box ideas in integration, I think that would be a great feature."
"I would like better integration with VCF from VMware, which is the Cloud Foundation tool set, so we can easily provision servers very quickly."
"It's not really flexible with different use cases."
"The update for the graphics integration and the media drivers isn't included in the VxRail update."
"Lacks integration of licenses so that it's an expensive solution."
Azure Stack HCI is ranked 17th in HCI with 3 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 120 reviews. Azure Stack HCI is rated 8.4, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Azure Stack HCI writes "Performs well, provides good features, and has the latest processor". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". Azure Stack HCI is most compared with VMware vSAN and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and HPE Hyper Converged.
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