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Dell XC Appliance vs VxRail comparison

 

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
18th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VxRail
Ranking in HCI
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Dell XC Appliance is 0.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VxRail is 15.8%, down from 20.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VxRail15.8%
Dell XC Appliance0.7%
Other83.5%
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.
Rami Jadallah - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline management and integration with seamless upgrades
The primary reasons customers choose VxRail include ease of management, ease of upgrades, and integration with VMware. The hyper-converged infrastructure simplifies software and hardware upgrades. Customers prefer the single pane of glass management and integration with VMware, which makes it easier for them to proceed with decisions involving VMware products.

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 hardware is great."
"The solution's best feature is its simplicity. It's so simple to deploy it. You've got the VMware, and it's own appliance. It is really helpful. The system is online within half a day and saves so much time."
"The most valuable feature is that you can assign a volume to an off-shore workload on the fly."
"The most valuable features are the deduplication and the compression features."
"It's an extremely stable solution, and I highly recommend it."
"When we compare it to normal hardware servers, I'd say it is quite easy to configure and deploy."
"The most valuable feature is the low management overhead, and the lower skill set required to manage it."
"What I like the most is that it is easy to implement, easy deployment and that it's easy to manage."
"It is truly a hyper-converged infrastructure, so everything is there together."
"VxRail can manage the whole cluster at the same time, so it's easy to expand. VxRail has more features vSAN ReadyNodes that make it easier to implement from scratch."
"One-click upgrade is valuable because upgrading an environment that is considered a traditional one is something that we never do or are never going to complete. It is very time-consuming for my team. With the one-click upgrade, it is much quicker. There are preparation stages, but it takes less time, so we are also saving time in the daily administration."
"The tool's price is competitive and it is easy to use."
"There are so many features, but if I have to choose, I would go for scale-out upgrades and performance. Scale-out upgrades are very valuable. Typically, when customers engage in virtualization, they're committing themselves to run many virtual machines on a fewer number of hosts. They'll have five or six hosts, and they will run all their virtualization on vSphere. They could be having anywhere from 50 to 100 or even more virtual machines. Once all these go into production, getting downtime or getting planned maintenance windows is extremely difficult. It is something that typically businesses will frown upon. With VxRail, you can just go ahead and add a node without disrupting the existing environment, which works very well. That's why scale-out upgrades are a key feature. Its performance is also valuable. It delivers a very high number of IOPS for a hybrid configuration or an all-flash configuration. The processors that are available in the Xeon family are very powerful. They are multi-core with typically 2 gigahertz, 2.4 gigahertz, or higher frequency, so the performance is very much appreciated."
"It helps our servers and it is very efficient."
"The solution is stable and reliable. This is one of the main reasons why we purchased this solution."
"VxRail has improved out organization because we are trying to be a little more proactive and elastic. We are trying to change our conventional approach to development."
 

Cons

"We are not always advised of new features or updates, so we must research to stay up to date."
"In the next release, I would like to see support for Docker and containers."
"Currently, there is no support for the servers that are not in the cluster."
"The cost of using the public cloud deployment is astronomical."
"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."
"The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor."
"The solution's storage size could be improved."
"There should be more provisioning capabilities within the solution."
"The price could be better. The backup mechanism could also be better. Some of our clients prefer to work with backup software from a different vendor. They don't do a built-in backup solution. It would be better if they had guidelines on proper sizing and the whole life cycle from the requirement collection. If there aren't any proper guidelines, how do I go to the customer and evaluate their existing infrastructure? How can you do appropriate sizing to migrate to a hyper-converged environment? I think this is a requirement because most of our clients are migrating to a hyper-converged environment. In the next release, they can improve absolutely anything you can think of to improve the product in general—for example, the clusters and backup software."
"The agility of the support team to provide you with better solutions should be improved. VxRail also has to be improved in terms of simplicity. Adding a simple node seemed like quite a project."
"The solution should offer more integration with other virtual software. VxRail runs just with VMware, however, maybe it should integrate with Hyper-V or with KVM as well."
"It still has some maturity to grow. It needs to be more tightly integrated with its own family of products. It has shown that it is open with the other products within the market, through its stack, but it needs to have the proof in the market (with use-cases), and it has to have the scalability with the integration."
"It could be improved by having more information on the integration portion of ACI."
"Its price could be better."
"There is a limitation on the number of nodes."
"The present SaaS model license structure can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We received a good price from Dell."
"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 is good."
"The pricing for Dell EMC solutions is quite expensive and not really made for small or medium-sized businesses."
"The pricing is dependent on the technology and is in direct relation to the manufacturer and the components."
"The licensing aspect is the most painful for some of our customers. Customers go for a VMware license that's standard and then they find they have to go with the enterprise solution and adjust the license. If you have a limited budget, that's difficult."
"When compared with others, the price is very reasonable."
"It varies. It could be $100,000 at the smaller end and millions and millions of dollars at the higher end."
"There is an advantage for those who have a good deal with Dell. Its price is good. From a company's perspective, it is always too expensive, but it is about value for money."
"The solution is competitively priced but it is expensive. However, this is expected as we are a corporate enterprise and we need this environment."
"The pricing is very accurate, and we haven't had any problems with the licensing costs."
"We made a one-time purchase of the solution and the price is expensive."
"Compare it to what you spent on your last solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Performing Arts
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
10%
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 Business41
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise56
 

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...
How does HPE Nimble Storage compare to VxRail?
HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one, zero rule. That means I need three copies of my data on two different types of me...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cardlytics, AEW Energie, Aubert, Zhongtong Information Service, Commune de Villepinte, Teikyo University Hospital
World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell XC Appliance vs. VxRail and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,785 professionals have used our research since 2012.