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Dell XC Appliance vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

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 XC Appliance
Ranking in HCI
15th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSAN
Ranking in HCI
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
234
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Dell XC Appliance is 1.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 7.7%, down from 14.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware vSAN7.7%
Dell XC Appliance1.7%
Other90.6%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Enables seamless integration with multiple software and outstanding AI tools
The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor. If multi-hypervisor support is required and VMware does not provide it, then Dell's appliance won't support it. I find it overly reliant on VMware. In cases of company mergers involving different platforms, software that can handle a multi-hypervisor environment would facilitate quicker integration.
ShyamikaThamel - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium
Managing mixed RAID workloads has improved data protection and delivers strong performance
VMware vSAN can be improved in certain areas. In cases involving our large data stores with large VMs, we experience some latency, not during normal operation, but during database backup operations. We observed latency due to buffer issues from the top-of-the-rack switches. These issues are mostly network-related because all storage data traffic travels through the network. I have recently used Nutanix, and I observed that Nutanix provides better performance than VMware vSAN due to its data locality features. VMware vSAN is now providing data locality, but we did not use that option. If VMware vSAN provides additional features in the next release, such as the VM balancing feature called DRS on the cluster that VMware previously had, it would be beneficial. With DRS, VMs can move easily from one node to another within the same cluster. Nutanix does not provide that flexibility. When placing a VM on a cluster in Nutanix, the placement uses a balancing component. After that, the VM remains on the same host. If any contention occurs on the CPU or memory side, the VM stays in place until contention happens. If issues occur, the VM migrates to another host while transferring all objects to the same host. This is how their data locality is maintained. When a VM moves to any host, it moves with all VM objects. VMware vSAN does not currently offer this option. If a VM moves to another host, it accesses the disk object through the network, which increases latency. VMware vSAN now offers an option to select data locality, but it does not function like Nutanix. This is why some latency remains. If VMware vSAN can improve this feature, it would be very helpful and VMware would regain its top position.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's best feature is its simplicity."
"The solution's hardware is great."
"The most valuable features are the deduplication and the compression features."
"Overall, the Dell XC Appliance is a very good product."
"The most valuable feature is the low management overhead, and the lower skill set required to manage it."
"To other customers who are looking to implement Dell XC, it's a very good hyper-converged solution."
"What I like the most is that it is easy to implement, easy deployment and that it's easy to manage."
"The stability of the product is pretty good, as there have been no bugs, glitches, or crashes that I'm aware of."
"The installation is very easy."
"So far, we've been able to replace two Compellents which have cost an arm and a leg, and they're just not as performant as the vSAN, so the ROI has been good."
"Data management and recovery processes are the most valuable features."
"I like the reliability of this product because we can lose more than one host, more than one disk, and everything still works okay."
"The opportunity gained with the relationship we have now is limitless, as new features and products roll out, especially with today's announcements: the news about microsegmentation, the RDS in the cloud with AWS, as well as some security features."
"The ROI data on vSAN: I would definitely say it's my staff cutting their time by something like 90 percent."
"The solution is simple to use compared to other solutions, such as Hyperflex, VxRail, and Nutanix"
"The solution is easy to use."
 

Cons

"The pricing for Dell EMC solutions is quite expensive and not really made for small or medium-sized businesses."
"To improve this product, I think there is a lot of work that is required by Dell to simplify the maintenance and life cycle upgrades."
"The cost of using the public cloud deployment is astronomical."
"In the next release, I would like to see support for Docker and containers."
"We are not always advised of new features or updates, so we must research to stay up to date."
"The solution's storage size could be improved."
"There should be more provisioning capabilities within the solution."
"Currently, there is no support for the servers that are not in the cluster."
"An integrated backup solution within the vSAN platform would improve the product."
"Compared to other vendors, vSAN is compatible with more expensive hardware, and Nutanix is available on multiple hardware platforms, like Supermicro, Dell and Lenovo."
"I need some additional features, and to learn more, to develop best practices for the Brazilian federal government."
"The license price is too expensive compared to other market actors."
"The big thing is pricing, and the rest of it is mostly good. From a scalability point of view, scaling the storage from network or compute should be easier. It is again all around the cost, and it would be good if it was easier to scale your storage separately from your compute."
"It's not quite there yet. We've had a few outages that were addressed."
"If the vSAN cluster can’t self-heal due to an internal error, we can’t repair the vSAN cluster ourselves. A case with VMware is always needed to fix the issue, resulting in an increased time to resolve."
"On the DevOps side, if there could be more automation it would be more helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We received a good price from Dell."
"The pricing is dependent on the technology and is in direct relation to the manufacturer and the components."
"The price point is very fair for a product in this category but can vary depending on the components selected within the family of products."
"The pricing for Dell EMC solutions is quite expensive and not really made for small or medium-sized businesses."
"The pricing is good."
"We are using the VMware vSAN ROBO which allows us to have a maximum of 25 virtual machines. The approximate cost is €10,000 for a perpetual license."
"The cost is expensive. I purchased two servers. The hardware cost was $19,000. The software cost for these two servers, including the vSAN, was $30,000, which is $11,000 more than the hardware. Then I had to pay another $5,000 for installation and implementation for professional services. In total, it was $54,000 for two vSAN Servers."
"Every product is licensed with full support for a certain number of years. The licensing could be cheaper."
"I would rate the licensing model a three out of ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap."
"With the new pricing model, it's expensive for the customer."
"My customers have found VMware vSAN to be a little expensive."
"Clients have to pay for VMware vSAN licensing based on the number of CPUs. The purchases would be lifetime or perpetual, but you need to have support, e.g. the support is negotiated from one, two, three, or four years."
"We pay for a license to use the solution through our company CapEx and then we continue to pay annually."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business102
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise135
 

Questions from the Community

What advice do you have for others considering Dell XC Appliance?
My advice for people who are selling this product is to first make sure that you educate the customers. The customer doesn't often know much about HCI and what the need to be using it for. If they ...
What needs improvement with Dell XC Appliance?
The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor. If multi-hypervisor support is required and VMware does not provide it, then Dell's applian...
What is your primary use case for Dell XC Appliance?
Dell offers several benefits with its appliances. Primarily, I can combine them horizontally and vertically, reaching up to sixty-four nodes. Additionally, Dell employs its own artificial intellige...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...
How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is best suited for small- to medium-sized organizations. It is easy to create load bal...
 

Also Known As

No data available
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cardlytics, AEW Energie, Aubert, Zhongtong Information Service, Commune de Villepinte, Teikyo University Hospital
Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell XC Appliance vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.