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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has automated a lot of workloads. It has automated us from ticketing a large number to a very small number."

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

"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 scalability is great, because it can scale independently."

"Now you don't have to be a storage administrator to provision or do anything, and any VMware system administrator, with the ease of a button, would get storage provision, which makes their lives easier."

"HCI definitely improved how flexible we scale, and our entrance into the cloud."

"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."

"NetApp HCI is a stable solution."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros

"I have found VxRail software can scale very well."

"The integration with VMware is great; I like it so much because it is so much cleaner and the VMware modeling with the VxRail Manager is very nice."

"We have seen a return on our investment; we see it mainly in the fact that we are saving money in space and storage, we can use two and a half racks for something else, we also cut down on power consumption because now we have an empty rack that isn't powered on, and we haven't had to replace it, fix it, or do anything that has cost us any money."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the performance."

"It's a simple product, fast, and reliable."

"Hyper-converged solutions seem a lot easier to manage, especially with the single pane of glass view into all the management pieces of it."

"We were able to speed up our gaming software, which was a big plus."

More VxRail pros

Cons

"I'm not a fan of how they don't log you out properly from some of their web tools for management."

"The product needs better support for installing the operating system on the machine."

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

"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."

"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 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."

"The setup was a bit challenging because it's a fairly new product and I think some of the stuff is not quite well baked yet."

"We went with a different solution and having run that for a while, I would say that there is a lot more than they could do to make it more streamlined."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons

"They need to keep upgrading the environment and improving automation so that the solution keeps getting better and better."

"There is an area for improvement with VxRail, specifically the upgrade process. Upgrading the is quite complex and almost exclusively requires Dell support. You can't do it alone, so you need to have support contracts running, which could be streamlined to improve the solution."

"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."

"My customers want more storage for university databases."

"Lifecycle management (LCM) should be enhanced"

"VxRail could be easier to set up. It's tricky to configure the network properly and match the requirements."

"The price should come down a little bit."

"Dell wants to implement the disaster recovery site in the new year, but they haven't decided yet."

More VxRail cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice

"Be mindful of your storage needs now and for the future."

"The current VxRail pricing structure is quite opaque for me, especially considering the recent changes."

"There is an administrative cost savings. Instead of having seven to 15 separate boxes that someone has to administer on 15 different terminals, you can do the majority of it from one interface. Therefore, it saves on manpower costs."

"The solution is on the higher end of the price range."

"VxRail is quite expensive and could be cheaper. I would say that the main difference between VxRail and the competition is cost. There may be some differences in features, but I would say that it's mainly the costs."

"It varies. It could be $100,000 at the smaller end and millions and millions of dollars at the higher end."

"It is reasonable. Compared to the legacy hardware that we had so far, we are not paying way more, but we have very good performance. Its price is good."

"The tool is expensive."

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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