NetApp HCI [EOL] vs VxRail comparison

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

14,006 Views
13,306 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

NetApp HCI [EOL]

VxRail

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI.

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

Buyer's Guide

HCI

April 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 893,221 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

Saleh Khalid

computer scientist at Imam University

Experience improved integration and cost-efficiency while facing support challenges

The best features of VxRail are its compatibility with VMware, its hyper-converged solution capabilities, and its single line of support. These are the most beneficial aspects of VxRail. I switched from the previous HP solution to Dell solution because it was a good decision. With HP servers, we dealt with a vendor for the compute servers, another vendor for the storage servers, and another vendor for the networking, which required us to manage multiple vendors. Now, we have a single team who can handle VxRail and a single line of support. We don't need anything other than that, and these are the differences we noticed after we switched.

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

"It is easy to set up, and you don't have to do much work to get it to do what it needs to do."

"The stability is fantastic; in my mind, it's one of the best storage products and the software around it has got to be the best across all different storage environments."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the software design storage that really provided a faster, agile, easier to scale up and out storage path."

"It is scalable, and NetApp Deployment Engine (NDE) makes its deployment easier."

"It offers the ability to scale on demand which is important to the burst capability of scaling up and scaling down."

"Since implementing this solution, we have to do less work."

"The most valuables features of it are the deduplication and the compaction because the ratios are much better than what we normally get on our FAS storage."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros

"We like the design and that it meets data storage needs."

"Initial setup is straightforward, as everything is pre-installed."

"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."

"One of VxRail's most valuable features is its small footprint in the data center. Additionally, the solution's simplicity is a significant advantage. You don’t have to configure or learn about storage software and administer many things separately. You can do all the administration jobs in one pane, bringing agility and simplicity."

"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."

"The update process is very convenient."

"There is the logistical cost savings of the produced footprint of the equipment."

"I like VxRail because it's fully integrated, and we prefer VxRail for its physical integrations or lifecycle management, and it also has vCenter, which integrates the hardware lifecycle management so everything can be done from vCenter, and that is a big advantage for us."

More VxRail pros

Cons

"It would be great if they took something like kernel storage and integrated straight into the NetApp as well."

"I would like for them to fall a little closer to like the VMware release model. The new features and new solutions tend to come from the VMware side. I would like for NetApp to follow along closely with VMware's release schedule."

"They could improve the packaging."

"I would like to see higher level graphics support because we are going to be doing some virtual desktop for our CAD software, and I want to be able to support AutoCAD and Cantillo on remote desktop machines."

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

"The problem is that it needs to be much more stable, for example, when I want to do the upgrade to 1.7 that just released, I also need to issue a ticket to the support guy in India and he asked me to deploy another mlock. There are a lot of manual steps compared with other products."

"Because of the repeated failure of the motherboard that we experienced, we have doubts about the stability of the solution, but I'm sure that in the near future it will be a great, reliable solution for us."

"HCI has not enabled us to consolidate workloads or break down silos and has not increased application performance."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons

"During code upgrades, VxRail can be sensitive."

"The major issue with VxRail is the razoring process, which can only be performed by Dell."

"The only thing about the HCI solution is that troubleshooting is a little bit difficult because it is still a new technology."

"What I find very valuable is VxRail's life cycle management. The life cycle management takes care of everything from firmware to the actual upgrading of the hypervisor and keeps everything up to level."

"The solution is okay to scale vertically but a bit difficult to expend horizontally. For example, increasing RAM."

"The upgrade packages require a lot of bandwidth. This could be reduced for an improved experience."

"The SCL database sends out a warning and you have to download the adjacent file from the Dell website. You have to upload it and retest it."

"The licensing needs to be improved upon."

More VxRail cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."

"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."

"Where we lost nearly 75 percent of our infrastructure due to a malicious attack and were able to recover two and a half hours into it due to the integration, it saved us and all of our customers. Because we were able to recover so fast from the attack, the solution paid for itself right there."

"The licensing fees are renewed annually."

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

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

"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."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice

"While one could argue, from a strictly corporate standpoint, that the cost of VxRail has been in the higher range, the true evaluation lies in the return on investment."

"Compare it to what you spent on your last solution."

"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."

"It is just as cheap to move over to an HCI solution as it is to maintain a legacy system."

"There is a permanent vSAN license included since it is required, but vCenter\ESXi host licensing should be validated in the purchase process."

"The hardware cost associated is a bit high"

"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."

"The licensing costs can vary depending on the number of processors and specific requirements, which may result in considerable expenses."

More VxRail pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

14%

Marketing Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

Wholesaler/Distributor

Manufacturing Company

13%

Government

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

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

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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

Comparisons

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

Compared 30% of the time

VMware vSAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 16% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 10% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 9% of the time

More NetApp HCI [EOL] Competitors

Dell PowerFlex vs VxRail

Compared 21% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VxRail

Compared 16% of the time

VMware vSAN vs VxRail

Compared 15% 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]

April 2026

Download NetApp HCI [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

VxRail

April 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, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: April 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best HCI vendors.

We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.