Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Ceph Storage comparison

The compared Dell Technologies and Red Hat solutions aren't in the same category. Dell Technologies is ranked #4 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.8, and holds a 7.0% mindshare in the category. Red Hat is ranked #3 in SDS , with an average rating of 9.3, and holds a 12.8% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 82% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Dell PowerFlex

Read 29 Dell PowerFlex reviews

8,176 Views
7,440 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Red Hat Ceph Storage

Read 27 Red Hat Ceph Storage reviews

13,833 Views
3,043 Comparison Views

82% willing to recommend

Dell PowerFlex

Red Hat Ceph Storage

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and Red Hat Ceph Storage based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, StarWind and others in HCI.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

January 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerFlex

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

HCI (4th)

Red Hat Ceph Storage

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), File and Object Storage (1st)

Mindshare comparison

Dell PowerFlex and Red Hat Ceph Storage aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Dell PowerFlex is designed for HCI and holds a mindshare of 7.0%, down 12.9% compared to last year.
Red Hat Ceph Storage, on the other hand, focuses on Software Defined Storage (SDS), holds 12.8% mindshare, down 21.6% since last year.

HCI Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dell PowerFlex	7.0%
VxRail	13.2%
VMware vSAN	10.7%
Other	69.1%

HCI

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Red Hat Ceph Storage	12.8%
DataCore SANsymphony	5.9%
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct	5.9%
Other	75.4%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Serdar De

IT Manager at ÜÇGE Shopfitting & Design

Initial setup has been straightforward and it has reasonable pricing

We are new to this, so we are still learning about the valuable features The solution is okay overall. It could be easier to learn. We haven't had any issues. They could have more AI functionality in the future. I have been using the solution for six months. I have not encountered any problems…

Read full review

Rifat Rahman

Infrastructure Architect & CEO at Tirzok Private Limited

Offers reliable performance and availability for large deployments

I would like to see improvements in Red Hat Ceph Storage not because I necessarily think it needs improvement, but because I generally prefer to do things manually rather than following the containerization part. Current deployments are based on containers, but I deploy manually with my scripts and controls. If there are no Kubernetes-like requirements, I often prefer to deploy a whole manual process. I don't ask for improvements in the deployment model because Red Hat has its own philosophy about making things, but it's my personal choice that I prefer things manually. Some features are available only in the containerization part, so if those are also available in manual deployment, that will help.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Dell PowerFlex is a complete hyperconverge that makes automation easy to manage and extremely stable."

"The most valuable feature is high availability."

"Dell PowerFlex is a highly scalable solution."

"Dell PowerFlex improves our latency which allowed us to reduce a lot of our Microsoft Enterprise SQL licenses."

"The support is highly responsive."

"The support team responds quickly."

"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."

"Perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."

More Dell PowerFlex pros

"Without any extra costs, I was able to provide a redundant environment."

"The community support is very good."

"Ceph was chosen to maintain exact performance and capacity characteristics for customer cloud."

"What I found most valuable from Red Hat Ceph Storage is integration because if you are talking about a solution that consists purely of Red Hat products, this is where integration benefits come in. In particular, Red Hat Ceph Storage becomes a single solution for managing the entire environment in terms of the container or the infrastructure, or the worker nodes because it all comes from a single plug."

"I can compare Red Hat Ceph Storage with products from other vendors; I explored quite a few, but I still find that Red Hat Ceph Storage is making the most disruption."

"We use the solution for cloud storage."

"I like the distributed and self-healing nature of the product."

"The ability to provide block storage and object storage from the same storage cluster is very valuable for us."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pros

Cons

"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."

"The tool is a bit difficult to configure, making it an area where improvements are required."

"The level of support needs improvement as the front-line support staff lack knowledge when we raise cases."

"Needs some more monitoring tools."

"They need to work on improving the overhead for protecting the data."

"They should provide continuous support for data migration."

"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."

"The solution’s automation and pricing could be improved."

More Dell PowerFlex cons

"Rebalancing and recovery are a bit slow."

"The storage capacity of the solution can be improved."

"The product lacks RDMA support for inter-OSD communication."

"While the documentation for Ceph Storage is helpful, it could be improved."

"Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about the Stratus case, which is one of the most reliable systems available in the world, but they are not aware that a system can keep working even if there is a hardware failure."

"Ceph is not a mature product at this time. Guides are misleading and incomplete. You will meet all kind of bugs and errors trying to install the system for the first time. It requires very experienced personnel to support and keep the system in working condition, and install all necessary packets."

"I have encountered issues with stability when replication factor was not 3, which is the default and recommended value. Go below 3 and problems will arise."

"Please create a failback solution for OpenStack replication and maybe QoS to allow guaranteed IOPS."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

"The product is expensive."

"We have a good contact in Dell and he prepared all the information and provided everything to us."

"The price could be improved."

"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive."

"The solution's price is medium."

"The cost of this solution is fair."

"From my perspective, pricing is expensive. If they can reduce the pricing or offer more customer incentives, it would attract more users."

More Dell PowerFlex pricing and cost advice

"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."

"There is no cost for software."

"We never used the paid support."

"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."

"The price of this product isn't high."

"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."

"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."

"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	15

Questions from the Community

What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?

VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company to invest in. Even if the user is working with a l...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerFlex?

Dell PowerFlex is a premium software-defined infrastructure solution and while the initial investment may seem higher than traditional SAN or mid-tier HCI solutions, the long-term TCO is competitive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerFlex?

Area of Improvement: While PowerFlex Manager is powerful, the UI could be more intuitive, especially for first-time users or non-technical admins. Streamlined navigation, contextual help and guided...

See all answers

How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?

Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This solution allows for multiple copies of replicated and coded pools to be kept, ea...

See all answers

What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?

The high availability of the solution is important to us.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?

Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about the Stratus case, which is one of the most reliable systems available in the world...

See all answers

Comparisons

VxRail vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 41% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 10% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 6% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 4% of the time

More Dell PowerFlex Competitors

MinIO vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 50% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 3% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 3% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 3% of the time

Scality RING vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 2% of the time

More Red Hat Ceph Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerFlex

February 2026

Download Dell PowerFlex product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ceph Storage

January 2026

Download Red Hat Ceph Storage product report

Also Known As

VxFlex, VxRack FLEX, PowerFlex

Ceph

Overview

Dell PowerFlex is a software-defined storage infrastructure delivering modern architecture and versatile deployment for on-premises or cloud. It achieves high performance, scalable storage, and workload consolidation through advanced automation.

PowerFlex's VMware compatibility ensures seamless integration, offering flexibility in compute and storage scaling. With its hyper-converged infrastructure, it caters to AI, cloud, and database environments, providing robust automation, resilience, and security. Flexible deployment options are complemented by a single-window management system, prioritizing cost optimization. However, enhancements are needed in monitoring tools, user interface, and AI functionality. Migration from Hyper-V and licensing flexibility also require attention, while improved documentation could simplify usage. Integration with services and streamlined upgrade processes are essential.

What are the key features of Dell PowerFlex?

VMware Compatibility: Ensures smooth integration and flexibility in deployment.
Scalability: Independently scales compute and storage resources as needed.
High Availability: Maintains continuous availability across deployed systems.
Low Latency Performance: Optimizes storage and compute operations for minimal delays.
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure: Combines compute, storage, and networking for streamlined operations.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Ease of Management: Simplifies administration with a unified management interface.
Cost Optimization: Provides opportunities for reduced operational costs.
Flexibility: Offers diverse deployment options tailored to specific needs.
Automation Tools: Enhances efficiency through robust automation capabilities.
Robust Storage Capacity: Supports growing data requirements with substantial storage options.

PowerFlex is essential in industries requiring support for mission-critical workloads and large-scale applications. It is instrumental for deploying storage, compute nodes, hyper-converged infrastructure, and private clouds. The platform integrates compute, storage, and networking, optimizing performance for modern applications like AI video analytics and disaster recovery.

Dell Technologies

Red Hat Ceph Storage is an enterprise open source platform that provides unified software-defined storage on standard, economical servers and disks. With block, object, and file storage combined into one platform, Red Hat Ceph Storage efficiently and automatically manages all your data.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Canopy, 8x8Inc., Atos, Canadian Pacific, City of Denton, CenturyLink, BNP Paribas, Asyaport, EDF, CSC, Fox Sports, Insight, Hunter, KPIT, Paetec, Rosetta Stone, Sonda, Xerox

Dell, DreamHost

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