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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
16th
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
6.8
Number of Reviews
135
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 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 VxRail is 9.9%, down from 16.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VxRail9.9%
Dell XC Appliance1.7%
Other88.4%
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.
John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Director at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Automation has streamlined lifecycle management and improved ongoing operational efficiency
For the first three years, I have a combo pricing policy. For the fourth year and fifth year, I have to buy separately for the licensing from VMware and from VxRail, so I think the combo cost for the fourth and fifth year is huge and does not make sense. Due to the pricing policy, I would not like to see additional functionalities at this time as it is not in my strategy. I would rate VxRail an eight out of ten because of the pricing.

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 most valuable features are the deduplication and the compression features."
"It's an extremely stable solution, and I highly recommend it."
"The solution's best feature is its simplicity."
"The most valuable feature is that you can assign a volume to an off-shore workload on the fly."
"The stability of the product is pretty good, as there have been no bugs, glitches, or crashes that I'm aware of."
"When we compare it to normal hardware servers, I'd say it is quite easy to configure and deploy."
"Dell's appliances provide several key benefits, including horizontal and vertical scalability up to 64 nodes, proprietary artificial intelligence tools that are uncommon in the industry, seamless iDRAC integration with VMware to monitor VM details, performance, and hardware issues from one screen, and CloudIQ software that proactively addresses configuration errors."
"We have a customer, for example, that has a factory; before they used the VxRail solution, tasks would take hours, and with VxRail, a comport starts working in 30 minutes, saving so much time and giving a competitive gain for the organization."
"We were able to speed up our gaming software, which was a big plus."
"The stability is very nice. We haven't had any issues with the cluster. The cluster is very stable. No problems with slowness. Everything has been stable. It was well-architectured."
"The VxRail has allowed an environment to be created that is easy to manage and back up."
"First and foremost, I would advise people to purchase this solution mainly for the simplicity of the system, and it's all managed in one place, which is nice compared to Nutanix where you had to administrate multiple places, and the support now is very good."
"The most valuable feature is its high performance."
"Scalability is easy with VxRail, and I would rate it almost a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable aspect of VxRail is its ease of implementation."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see support for Docker and containers."
"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 pricing for Dell EMC solutions is quite expensive and not really made for small or medium-sized businesses."
"The cost of using the public cloud deployment is astronomical."
"The solution's storage size could be improved."
"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."
"We are not always advised of new features or updates, so we must research to stay up to date."
"There should be more provisioning capabilities within the solution."
"There could be better documentation and they should allow everyone to access the simulator."
"We are experiencing some issues with Dell's live-chat support as the support is different based on the support included with the hardware."
"The product's integration could be improved. Its price is also a bit of a challenge, particularly if you want extra features or higher performance."
"Troubleshooting can be a little more difficult than legacy systems."
"All updates are supposed to be done through VxRail, however, the vCenter actually showed that there was an update it needed. I've just started using the product. I didn't know what I was doing. I actually updated my vCenter and that actually threw the VxRail system offline. We had to spend some time trying to get that working again. If possible, they should make the process a bit more clear so we don't make mistakes like this in the future. There should maybe be some sort of pop-up that can direct you."
"The initial setup between the different Dell departments is fragmented. The engineers who come to rack/stack and do the initial config should be trained on all the areas and work with the different Dell departments whilst they are onsite to give a smoother install and better experience for customer."
"We'd like integration with Avamar."
"The support protocols have changed after Broadcom acquired VMware."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 dependent on the technology and is in direct relation to the manufacturer and the components."
"We received a good price from Dell."
"The pricing is good."
"The price point needs improvement, certainly for smaller SMBs. The cost of it is still quite painful. I think all vendors should do a product which is capped either by terabytes, IOPs, or VM instances. It should be an SMB solution that's going to make hyper-converged solutions easier for SMBs to get hold of. It's fine for those big guys that have billions of dollars of budget, but not for customers who have barely a 100,000 dollars or pounds in budget."
"VxRail is an expensive solution."
"Pricing is competitive."
"Since VMware is detached from Dell, the solution's pricing is a bit higher than before."
"Most of hyper-converged solutions require additional licenses for the virtualization layer (like VMware)."
"It is expensive as compared to other products in the same category."
"We pay for annual support from VxRail."
"We were expecting Dell EMC to bring us something that would work very quickly and easily, but also be at a reasonable price point, and they did."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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 Business42
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise57
 

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: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.