We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure 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 a very easy-to-use solution that can be quickly and easily deployed and configured without intimate and specific knowledge in the virtualization sphere."
"I like the asynchronous replication and failover features. They are what I'm primarily using it for. The asynchronous replication is helpful because our servers are backed up continuously throughout the day. If anything goes wrong we just fail over immediately. That is a very nice feature to have."
"The main benefit is that StarWind is almost maintenance-free."
"With an uptime of 384 days, StarWind has improved overall server reliability."
"We are able to execute maintenance on one server while the other is still running."
"vSAN we found was simple to set up, easy to configure and manage and allows us to achieve storage redundancy."
"I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to grow rapidly while still providing flexibility and reliability."
"The solution is scalable."
"The support is highly responsive."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."
"The setup was very straightforward."
"The support team responds quickly."
"The resiliency and data protection are the most valuable features."
"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."
"It is stable and scalable."
"The most useful feature is the solution's automation in terms of how we are able to spin up a certain workload in real-time when we are doing R&D."
"I like that you can add other types of services."
"The size of the hardware is what we need because it is very good for small configurations."
"The consolidation of the management in one control point is the most valuable. The whole infrastructure management is consolidated in just one console point. The documentation is also pretty good."
"Both the scalability and stability of this solution are excellent."
"We don't really have any issues with this product."
"The main issue we ran into was the documentation. We attempted to set up the product in our test environment by ourselves and ran into several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us."
"The setup and documentation for the installation with the free version could definitely be improved."
"It would be great to have more automated tooling around managing the iSCSI connections in Windows"
"It took a bit of knowledge and support to put in place but once installed it works fine. Migration (HyperV) from one server to another sometimes takes longer than expected but there is no data loss even if the host crashes."
"I wish there was online support because email return takes a long time and a faster solution should be found."
"Management of VSAN itself could be improved. A Web UI for management would be great rather than an application installation. StarWind is testing a command center virtual appliance that I have installed in my environment."
"To enable the proactive support capability that is part of our support agreement, I would ask that the terms and conditions be revised and made acceptable to corporate security."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"We're also running Hyper-V virtual machines. But we recently discovered that migration of the Hyper-V virtual machines is a bit challenging. Maybe if Dell EMC can come out with a tool that will make it very easy for us to migrate the Microsoft Hyper-V machine, that may be an improvement."
"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"The installation is complex."
"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"The support of containers needs to be improved. At present, it is limited to VMware. There needs to be direct communication with the hardware rather than through a hypervisor."
"The licensing policy needs to be improved. They have a licensing policy based on the number of CPU sockets. Nowadays what has happened is that the license they are trying to move is based on the number of CPU cores. With the advancement in technology there are now more cores in a single CPU. It's been very challenging in terms of managing the license around everything. Today we have a processor with 24 and 32 cores on the same physical CPU."
"It should be more user-friendly, in my opinion."
"It is not user-friendly, and it is very difficult to operate. You have to have a deep understanding of the technical details of the infrastructure to implement it. When you compare it with VMware, it is totally different because the graphical user interface is not that easy to understand. It is not intuitive. To use it, you have to read a lot of documentation and even understand what is going on behind the solution. It is not for someone who has a little bit of knowledge. Currently, it is too complex. I need something that is easy to implement. It should have a basic configuration as well as a complex configuration."
"This product is not so stable. Maybe it is just not mature enough in its development."
"The cloud deployment could be improved."
"The main issue is the initial investment. It is an expensive product, and it should be cheaper. It should also be easier to use and manage. The professional service for this solution is quite complex and expensive."
More Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure Pricing and Cost Advice →
Earn 20 points
Dell PowerFlex is ranked 8th in HCI with 20 reviews while Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is ranked 22nd in HCI. Dell PowerFlex is rated 8.0, while Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is rated 8.0. 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 Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure writes "Comes in a small, compact model that does not have any separate management but it is not so stable". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and HPE SimpliVity, whereas Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure report.
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