NetApp HCI [EOL] vs VxRail comparison

Why PeerSpot?

NetApp and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 88% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

NetApp HCI [EOL]

Read 32 NetApp HCI [EOL] reviews

88% willing to recommend

VxRail

Read 135 VxRail reviews

17,957 Views
17,059 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

NetApp HCI [EOL]

VxRail

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between NetApp HCI [EOL] and VxRail based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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

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

Buyer's Guide

HCI

August 2026

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Helped 913,683 peers since 2012

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

NetApp HCI [EOL]

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VxRail

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

135

Ranking in other categories

HCI (1st)

Featured Reviews

Massimiliano Bartolozzi

Chief Information Officer at Lucart S.p.A.

Crashed continuously, complex to deploy, and bad after-sales support - NETAPP FIXED the problems in 2022

Their after-sales support, SLA, and third-parties availability should be improved. NetApp's support is very difficult to engage. We have an SLA of onsite support within 24 hours. but they don't respect the SLA. Its stability was very bad. It has been crashing continuously. In one year, we got three crashes, which is unbelievable for an appliance that is guaranteed for 10 years without any crashes. In 2022, NetApp Italy, driven by the country manager Davide Marini, fixed all our issues and added additional computation power for free. This is a great example of customer care. They could have done it right the first time of course, but admitting the errors and putting in place such a remediation plan has been a very professional behavior.

Read full review

John Kevin

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.

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

"NetApp HCI has improved our organization by allowing us to put more time into investing in new ideas and spending less time in the administration of the solution."

"It allows me to move a VM set and require extra performance. I can easily move them onto it and have it just run."

"NetApp HCI is used for enterprise-scale hybrid cloud infrastructure and we are using the standard version."

"Stability is one of the things we absolutely have to have, because if the HCI is down, our assembly lines are down, and that could potentially lead to our customer being down. If our customer is down, that's $10,000 a minute; and any time the assembly line is down, that could potentially lead to overtime. We don't get to charge one and a half times for something we billed just because you happened to build it on overtime. Any technology we bring in, has to be built for what I call "three in the morning." It can't be built for whenever everybody's in the plant, everybody can watch it, and everybody can babysit. It has to be built for three a.m. when you've got a skeletal staff there, and you just have to know that it's just running. As I stand here, right now, I don't have to check my phone, I don't have to check my email. I know it's running. Period"

"I like how the solution gives you the ability to basically grow compute and storage separately, and there is no compute processing used for storage IO so that means that the compute is purely satisfying user workloads."

"HCI has provided us with efficiencies and mobilities similar to that of the public cloud."

"The ability to size the available space in a way that matches our company's needs is most valuable. For instance, you can decide if you want 80/20, 70/30, or 60/40 space. Redundancy depends on your needs without changing the appliance. You just add space and decide the percentage of space that you need free and the percentage of space that you need for backup. It is all automatic, and you don't have to do anything. You just add space, and the system automatically configures itself with the chosen option."

"The ability of this solution to scale on-demand is great."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros

"The tool's price is competitive and it is easy to use."

"The storage virtualization feature of VxRail has been the most vital part of our company's improvement in operations."

"With VxRail, we can manage the life cycle of a virtual machine."

"The VxRail has allowed an environment to be created that is easy to manage and back up."

"This solution, on the other hand, does not need heavy system maintenance; people prefer to use the system rather than the desktop, which makes it convenient for them to work from anywhere."

"It gives us tons of flexibility. We can create new machines, then destroy them if they don't work out. We test a lot of use cases that may or may not play out. We can build all types of scenarios into virtual machines that we may or may not use. If we don't use them, we just turn them off, no using up resources."

"VxRail is an agile solution with easily scalable, simplify operations with software driven automation and lower operational cost."

"Overall, this is a good product and I recommend it."

More VxRail pros

Cons

"The fact that it doesn't have all the data points we need and all the historical data that I would like. I find that a lot of the performance analysis is done through support, where they have something that we don't have. It would be nice just to have all that on-prem."

"The reason I give it a nine instead of a ten is because of the need for pre-check work. While it is simpler than most products, there is still a lot of configuration that needs to be done."

"There have been some drive type of issues where we have to apply a new code level. Storage nodes kick certain drives until they act as though they have failed when really they haven't. You just have to reinsert them, then they go on about their happy way. It's sort of a bug."

"The administration side of it needs to be improved. We expect an easier interface and a single upgrade for updating the infrastructure."

"There's a limitation with a block in the file. That's where I see that it's not very efficient for upgrades and for management."

"I would like to see a better upgrade process, like the one that ONTAP has."

"I would like to have more variety, like GPU cards."

"The initial setup is very painful. It's not straightforward, requires a lot of knowledge to get it going."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons

"What I did not like so much was the amount of VMware that you have to put in your system related to the VxRail."

"The update for the graphics integration and the media drivers isn't included in the VxRail update."

"It still has compatibility issues with the latest version of VMware vSphere 6.5. In fact, we spend around six months waiting for a confirmation and firmware upgrade to confirm this step."

"The product is very, very expensive, even when you are renewing."

"From my perspective, the main area for improvement is the license cost, particularly for the standard vSAN offering."

"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."

"The only problem with it is the usage of the cloud is being promoted to its peak, so the next expansion would be on the cloud."

"The performance of data centers needs to be improved. They need to process more and deliver more in the space of the storage and offer better performance."

More VxRail cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are the overall infrastructure costs. Even though the initial costing was higher, we calculated for year-to-year for five years. That brought us into a position where we decided, we have to go for HCI rather than having distributor systems."

"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."

"This solution reduced our maintenance costs. We were going to have to pay one to two million dollars to put in compute nodes. We are avoiding those costs."

"The licensing fees are renewed annually."

"Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market."

"Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."

"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."

"This solution saved our organization time (35 percent) and money. We have a hefty group of developers, and if you multiply that by 30 to 35 percent, that is quite a bit of money."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice

"It's a highly expensive solution"

"The price is a little bit on the higher side but the system and management are so quick and easy that it's worth it for the customer."

"VxRail is expensive because it's based on VMware and V-SAN. The price is not the cheapest. The technical support is expensive, but it is a good service."

"The price is rather on the high side."

"It has a yearly subscription. It can be for one year, three years, or five years."

"VxRail is not cheap, but it's not expensive either."

"The pricing is very accurate, and we haven't had any problems with the licensing costs."

"The solution is priced well for businesses."

More VxRail pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

21%

Outsourcing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Marketing Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

13%

Government

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	19

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	42
Midsize Enterprise	43
Large Enterprise	57

Questions from the Community

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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...

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

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Comparisons

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 24% of the time

VMware vSAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 10% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 8% of the time

Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

More NetApp HCI [EOL] Competitors

Dell PowerFlex vs VxRail

Compared 26% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VxRail

Compared 13% of the time

VMware vSAN vs VxRail

Compared 11% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VxRail

Compared 9% of the time

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs VxRail

Compared 4% of the time

More VxRail Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NetApp HCI [EOL]

September 2026

Download NetApp HCI [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

VxRail

August 2026

Download VxRail product report

Also Known As

No data available

VCE VxRail

Overview

NetApp HCI is the only true enterprise-scale hyper converged cloud infrastructure. NetApp HCI comes in a 2 RU chassis with 4 node expansion slots.

NetApp

VxRail is a hyper-converged infrastructure appliance co-engineered by Dell Technologies and VMware, designed to optimize VMware environments by simplifying compute, storage, virtualization, and management.

Built on VMware vSAN software, VxRail ensures high performance, reliability, and flexibility. It supports a broad array of workloads, from business-critical applications to next-generation use cases. VxRail simplifies infrastructure management with powerful integration and seamless scalability, offering centralized management and user-friendly interfaces. Streamlined updates, robust lifecycle management, and one-click upgrades facilitate a user-centric experience that minimizes deployment complexity and staffing needs. However, its performance with disk deduplication, integration with public clouds, and processor support can be enhanced, along with pricing and licensing improvements.

What features define VxRail?

High Performance: Optimized for superior efficiency in VMware environments.
Seamless Scalability: Scales effortlessly to accommodate growing demands.
Centralized Management: Simplifies control through unified interfaces.
Effortless Integration: Easily integrates with VMware tools and services.
Automated Updates: Ensures ongoing system availability through streamlined updates.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Resource Efficiency: Reduces staffing requirements and optimizes resource use.
Flexibility: Supports a variety of use cases and workloads.
Reliable Support: Provides robust support to ensure operational continuity.
Reduced Complexity: Facilitates ease of deployment and minimized setup times.

Organizations across sectors such as finance, telecommunications, education, and manufacturing utilize VxRail for its scalability, ease of deployment, and infrastructure management capabilities. It aids in server and application hosting, storage, and virtualization management, often employing VMware integration. The platform is valued for its ability to consolidate IT components, support VDI solutions, and enhance cloud readiness and resource allocation.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology

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 Technologies, Nutanix, Broadcom and others in HCI. Updated: August 2026.

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