Dell VPLEX enhances storage management by offering virtualization, seamless data migration, and data center mirroring, making it ideal for enterprise applications needing high availability and data security.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Dell VPLEX | 6.6% |
| NetApp OnCommand Insight | 7.9% |
| SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor | 6.9% |
| Other | 78.6% |
| Type | Title | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Storage Management | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Product | Reviews, tips, and advice from real users | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | Dell VPLEX vs NetApp BlueXP | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | Dell VPLEX vs NetApp OnCommand Insight | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | Dell VPLEX vs Dell Storage Resource Manager (SRM) | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Title | Rating | Mindshare | Recommending | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NetApp OnCommand Insight | 4.2 | 7.9% | 92% | 37 interviewsAdd to research |
| SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor | 4.0 | 6.9% | 100% | 3 interviewsAdd to research |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 4 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 2 |
| Large Enterprise | 11 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 52 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 15 |
| Large Enterprise | 43 |
Dell VPLEX stands out with its ability to integrate with multiple storage back-end systems, providing transparent data movement and deduplication. Its metro and geo-clustering capabilities ensure high availability, making it suitable for enterprise applications requiring maximum uptime. Supporting online migrations without disruptions, it offers high RPO and RTO for replication. However, it faces challenges in storage tiering, administration ease, and reducing costs, with users seeking better replication capabilities, cloud integration, and a web-based interface. Its licensing model and hardware dependencies can raise expenses, and configurations may be complex due to outdated technologies.
What are Dell VPLEX's Key Features?In industries like finance and healthcare, Dell VPLEX is crucial for centralized storage in VMware environments and databases, helping manage redundancy and virtualization. They implement it as a front-end appliance, enabling connectivity between servers and storage appliances, facilitating seamless multi-vendor environment operations.
| Author info | Rating | Review Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Solution Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees | 3.5 | As a system integrator, I've worked with Dell VPLEX for years, finding it an expensive, enterprise-only solution with good support. While some implementations are tough, I rate it a seven out of ten. |
| Sr. Storage And Backup Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees | 3.5 | Dell VPLEX effectively consolidates and virtualizes various storage types, enhancing availability and mobility through features like metro and geo-clustering. While powerful in replication, it needs a web-based management interface and better data encryption. |
| Senior System Engineer at Unilab Systemhaus GmbH | 4.0 | I primarily use Dell VPLEX for VMware services to ensure constant online availability across two data centers. Its valuable mirroring feature allows seamless operations during a failure. However, advancements in Dell's PowerStore systems now integrate VPLEX's capabilities without extra hardware. |
| Storage and Backups Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees | 4.5 | I find VPLEX very reliable and effective for virtualization during migrations, giving it a 9/10. However, the cost is high, and I dislike needing to buy multiple separate products instead of an all-in-one solution. |
| Information Technology Service Delivery Manager at Sat Microsystem | 2.5 | We use Dell VPLEX for backend connectivity and storage redundancy management. It requires improvement in integration, user interface, and configuration ease. The command-line dependence and high installation costs due to licensing are challenging, along with administrative issues like password management. |
| Sr Consultant at T-Systems ICT India Pvt. Ltd. | 4.5 | I find Dell VPLEX valuable for its replication and data mobility features, allowing seamless internal migration. However, performance report delays can be an issue, and cloud integration would be a significant improvement. VPLEX integrates well with diverse back-end storage systems. |
| Expert Stockage at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees | 4.0 | We rely on Dell EMC VPLEX for core storage, valuing its migration and excellent support. While stable, a significant Broadcom bug caused a major outage, impacting our 8/10 rating, despite our favorable contract. |
| Governor at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees | 4.0 | I find EMC VPLEX stable with valuable deduplication and good support. However, administration is difficult, and I desire site-to-site replication. I recommend HCI for easier management and better features, rating it an 8/10 overall. |
| CEO with 11-50 employees | 5.0 | I appreciate this solution's excellent storage virtualization, geographic resilience, and performance for my multi-vendor storage needs. However, I believe the VPLEX hardware migration process during disaster recovery requires significant improvement. |
| Infrastructure Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees | 4.5 | I've used VPLEX for over five years for migrations and high availability, seeing performance improvements. Setup with VMAX was complex, and scaling required care, but EMC support is exceptional, with no stability issues. |
We are implementing Cohesity, Hitachi, Dell, and Nutanix, VMware, vSAN; multiple products.
We have recently started working with Cohesity because there was not much presence in India for Cohesity, and now since it is gaining traction, we have started looking for other solutions. Cohesity is one of the contenders in the market, and we look forward to that.
We are working with Nutanix, VMware, Dell, and HP.
We are system integrators and resell the HCI solution.
We have worked with Dell VPLEX for approximately two to three years. We have been in several RFCs, and Dell VPLEX is implemented in the enterprise segment only.
The solution is expensive and requires more budget, so people in the SMB segment do not prefer it.
We typically recommend Dell VPLEX for customers who already work with other Dell products.
Some of the products are very easy to implement, while others are more difficult, and our team seeks support help when required.
Regarding the integration part, the delivery team handles all integration-related matters.
I have been working in the IT industry for more than 15 years.
Technical support from Dell is quite good.
Positive
We handle implementation, support, and after-sales service.
As part of management focusing on positioning, my delivery team takes care of the actual usage.
Hitachi Systems Microclinic has been renamed to Hitachi Systems India Private Limited.
The email address has been changed to shailendra.chaudhry.hd at hitachi-systems.com from shailendra_singh.chaudhry.yz.
On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell VPLEX a seven.
Dell VPLEX is a front-end appliance that connects to the backend fabric switches. The primary purpose is to abstract physical storage into virtual storage. You have high-end or mid-range physical storage from HP, Dell EMC, IBM, etc., and VPLEX virtual appliances are an intermediary between the storage and the whole.
VPLEX consolidates multiple kinds of storage into one and creates availability for a higher level of storage. There are two redundant paths between the server and the storage appliances, and we need two MDS switches for them. One is the Dell Fabric switch, which fulfills our requirements for redundancy, and the second is a load balancer. The best practice in any small environment is to use two MDS switches to connect the host and storage, whether you use VPLEX virtualization or not.
The best feature of VPLEX storage is its ability to consolidate storage. It also provides the highest RPO and RTOs for replication technology. VPLEX enables application mobility.
For example, say you are building an application, and you need two cluster servers. The cluster contains two nodes at the same site, so if that location goes down, then your application will go offline.
To overcome this issue, we establish another node at a separate site that may be within the same city or another part of the world. That is called metro-clustering and geo-clustering. Both nodes have access to the same storage, creating high availability and redundancy.
In the event of a disaster, your application will be moved to any other node or passed to any available site, and your application can access storage. This is VPLEX's critical feature.
Dell VPLEX currently requires Flash Player to access the GUI. It would be better to have a web-based HTML management interface. The encryption could also be improved. When the host writes data, it goes from VPLEX back to the physical storage.
The physical storage device will do encryption or use an algorithm called Data Address Encryption. If there are vulnerabilities between the host and the storage device, you can lose your data. I suggest encrypting the data before it is sent from the host to the storage.
I would also recommend using the NVM protocol in VPLEX. It still has Flash Player and a local SATA disk built into the Flash Player. You need to Flash the disk to SAS and then SATA. The NVM protocol is better.
I have used Dell storage for the last 20 years.
VPLEX is highly stable.
VPLEX is highly scalable
I rate Dell support eight out of 10.
Positive
My first choice is always Dell EMC, but I will recommend other solutions depending on the customer's budget. IBM Volume Control is an option, but VPLEX is much better.
NetApp also has a virtualization solution. We have used their appliance storage virtualization, but it depends on the customer's budget. The decision is typically not based on the technology. Most vendors offer similar features. However, VPLEX offers better data mobility. You can migrate data online with no downtime and minimal disruption.
Setting up Dell VPLEX is difficult and takes a full day. The deployment procedure isn't user-friendly.
I rate Dell VPLEX seven out of 10. VPLEX is a good solution for migration, application mobility, and replication. I recommend VPLEX if you need to set up disaster recovery across multiple sites. You don't need VPLEX if you aren't doing this. If you don't have DR, if your business is not running or multiple sites, then I think the VPLEX is not required.
VPLEX has drawbacks. For example, the command line interface is complicated and difficult for new engineers to learn. If you're a beginner who can't use the CLI, you must rely on the GUI, which uses Flash Player. Most customers don't have Flash installed, so they may need to buy additional licenses.
VPLEX's engine-based architecture is complex, so the implementation is challenging and takes more time. It's also difficult to fix hardware issues. When an appliance fails, it takes Dell EMC a long time to fix it because spare parts are in short supply.
The primary use case for Dell VPLEX is for normal VMware services when there are two different data centers involved and the user wants to stay online all the time.
The most valuable feature of Dell VPLEX is its mirroring capabilities. This feature allows for data to be mirrored across two different data centers, so if one center were to crash or fail, the other center could take over and keep everything running smoothly.
There is room for improvement with Dell VPLEX, but Dell EMC has also improved by incorporating some of VPLEX's features into the new PowerStore systems without requiring additional hardware such as Mitra notes.
The additional hardware required for VPLEX is no longer needed with the new PowerStore systems. Everything is now inside the PM/PMEM feature of the storage system, so you no longer need VPLEX.
I have made about eight to ten installations in the last six to eight years. I do not use it very frequently.
Dell VPLEX was stable all the time.
I cannot answer exactly as we installed the product at the right size and it ran for five years without any escalations or need to do anything on the installed base.
Dell's technical support is good overall, but it depends on the person you get for assistance.
The initial setup is complex. The deployment of Dell VPLEX involves additional hardware installation, maintenance, and fiber channel zoning on both sides, which can take a longer time.
However, with the new improvements in the PowerStore system, these additional hardware requirements are no longer necessary, which could potentially simplify the deployment process.
VPLEX is a little bit expensive in my personal opinion, but the cost depends on the size of the system.
Our company works with Dell as well as two or three other vendors. Since the technology has changed, various vendors have built high-availability features inside storage systems. Therefore, our company uses Dell EMC, Fujitsu, Huawei, and sometimes IP depending on the customer's wants and needs.
Overall, I would rate the product an eight out of ten. Since high availability features have been incorporated into storage systems, products like VPLEX may no longer be needed in the future. It may still be useful for very large companies that require high performance, but for medium-sized businesses, it may not be necessary for achieving high availability.
We only use VPLEX for VMware Cloud or IBM Cloud and some physical servers with Windows, Linux and maybe we have some IEX servers connected to the VPLEX.
The best part of the solution is the virtualization layer due to the fact that, for all our pain points, during migration, we use the virtualization with VPLEX.
The solution works well. It's very reliable.
The technical support is good.
The price is a problem with EMC due to the fact that it's more expensive than the other vendors. If we want to use VPLEX we need to purchase VPLEX and then we need to purchase VMAX. If we want to replicate we need to purchase another product. While you can do everything with EMC products, you need to purchase one box for each solution. It would be ideal if they had some sort of all-in-one solution, or if they lowered the price on their items.
The solution is reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The stability appears to be decent.
While we do use a lot of Dell EMC products, there is different support on offer for a lot of them. It's not all the same across the board. However, we don't have any issues with it when we use it.
The pricing is expensive and you need to purchases so many EMC items to cover your needs, as not everything is included.
We use a lot of Dell. We have all the products from EMC including VMAX, PowerStore, and Data Domain.
We have connections for our clouds. We have EMC, Hitachi, and IBM due to the fact that we have different VMware Clouds in our data centers. There are two data centers in which we have VMAX and in other data centers, we have Hitachi or Huawei.
In general, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've been quite happy with the product in general.
We use Dell VPLEX for backend connectivity within the storage. We also use it when we want to manage redundancy for any storage.
Dell VPLEX should improve its integration and user interface and be easier to configure.
Any EMX product, be it PowerMax, VMAX, or DMAX, works based on the CLI. A person has to be very good at running the solution through commands. Even if you memorize the commands, some don't work with a few software versions EMC releases yearly, which is difficult to manage. From the data center perspective, installing drives is not easy. Those involve a lot of costs because you need to purchase many licenses.
Additionally, we still face administrative issues if a password expires, and we need to manage anything.
I've been working with Dell VPLEX for the past six months.
Dell's technical support is awesome. We received instant support from EMC as long as we had an active contract.
Positive
The initial setup is fine. I've experienced a few performance issues. I've had a few bugs, even in the new versions of EMC's enterprise products. Every time we need to go through advisory channels, we need to understand the bugs, get in touch with the vendor, apply their recommendation, and apply the fix promptly. If we don't do it on time, the product may get hung, or something that has not been documented yet may happen. There could also be a document not made available to customers, which may be internal to the vendor. Even if the customer is familiar with the issue, they must apply the fix promptly, or the issue will reappear in the next few days.
When it comes to troubleshooting, every product exhibits a similar kind of behavior. The first point is that the customer must be aware of the issue. If they do not fix the issue within a few days, the customer's environment may get screwed up again.
I rate Dell VPLEX a five out of ten.
This is a kind of front-end product for back-end storage systems. It's useful for migration solutions. We were partnersThe company has a partnership with Dell. I'm a senior consultant and previously worked at this enterprise business solution center.
Replication is a good feature of this product. Mobility is also valuable, it enables us to carry out an internal migration of data. VPLEX can be integrated with any kind of back-end storage and with servers in the front end.
There are sometimes delays in getting performance reports. It would be great if VPLEX could be integrated with the cloud.
I used this solution for nine years up until a few months ago.
The solution is stable.
The solution is scalable.
The implementation is relatively straightforward and doesn't take much time, perhaps a day or two. The vendor generally takes care of the implementation. The solution is maintained by the storage administrator.
This is an enterprise solution so licensing costs are generally on the higher side. There will be additional costs if you want to do a network cluster for business servers.
I rate this solution nine out of 10.
We use VPLEX on all of our net production machines — integration, migration, development. VPLEX is our main storage solution for our architecture. We have a lot of machines on it. We also use VPLEX on our virtual cluster.
Our company has roughly 15,000 employees. Currently, we have eight VPLEX clusters. We have moved all of our architecture onto VPLEX.
The capacity to migrate machines onto VPLEX is great — it's very clean. We can migrate machines and add arrays easily.
With Dell VPLEX, there are some bugs with Broadcom and old SAN fabrics.
VPLEX is currently on Fiber Channel. The future is ethernet, not Fiber Channel.
We are absolutely satisfied with Dell's technical support. They're probably one of the best. If I had to rank technical support, in first-place would be Dell EMC, second-place would be Huawei, and third-place would be HPE. Huawei offers great support in Chinese but not in French.
The first time we installed Dell EMC VPLEX it was very complex. Now that we're used to it, it takes us about four hours to create a cluster.
We always implement this solution with the help of a Dell EMC consultant. A customer can't integrate VPLEX. It always has to be installed by Dell EMC support.
We struck a great deal with Dell EMC, so for us, VPLEX was not very expensive. Because our contract is so big, they gave us a great deal. Also, there were no hidden costs.
Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Dell EMC VPLEX a rating of eight.
Due to the bug with Broadcom, we have had a massive crisis on VPLEX. This little bug has caused roughly one thousand machines to go down. For this reason, I can't give it a higher rating.
This is our centralized storage for our applications and data.
The most valuable feature is deduplication, as we have no duplication in the snapshots.
The administration is difficult, so we want to add hyper-converged infrastructure.
I would like to have site-to-site replication capability for applications. This is something that is available in other products and it would make new sites very easy and fast to set up.
I have been working with EMC VPLEX for five years.
This storage system is in constant use and we have found it to be stable.
We have not tried to scale it. There is a team of three of us who manage it.
Over the years, we have been in touch with technical support for upgrades to firmware and other maintenance issues. The support is good, and you don't have to wait long before things get done.
The support is also proactive, where they receive alerts if there are problems detected, and they call us immediately.
Prior to using Dell EMC VPLEX, we used NetApp. Both of these are good products and are very powerful.
The initial setup is easy.
We had a partner of the vendor attend on-site to assist with the implementation. The deployment took about four months and once it was complete, we were able to take care of the administration on our own.
My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to use HCI. It has more features than the traditional approach, the administration is easier, and the performance is better. Troubleshooting something that is all-in-one will also be easier.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
Corporate storage for VMware, databases, and file servers supporting a multi-vendor structure with several storage models.
Storage virtualization and geographic resilience for Metro Sans, plus a great performance improvement.
We have see performance improvement in our databases. We can use older arrays for archiving.
I have used VPLEX for over five years.
We have not had any stability issues.
While scaling VPLEX from 2-engine to 4-engine, you need to be careful with the design connecting to VMAX. In our environment, we encountered an imbalance on VPLEX BE ports. But, we resolved that issue with the help of EMC.
Technical support is exceptional.
We did not previously use a different solution.
Initial setup was a little bit complex when connecting to VMAX.
We evaluated IBM SVC.
Initial architecture is important. It will help you to scale-out the solution easily.
