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Rackspace OpenStack vs VxRail comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Rackspace OpenStack
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (3rd)
VxRail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
135
Ranking in other categories
HCI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. Rackspace OpenStack is designed for Converged Infrastructure and holds a mindshare of 7.4%, up 4.6% compared to last year.
VxRail, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 9.9% mindshare, down 16.9% since last year.
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Rackspace OpenStack7.4%
FlexPod XCS12.8%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.2%
Other68.6%
Converged Infrastructure
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VxRail9.9%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.0%
VMware vSAN7.9%
Other73.2%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

SS
Manager Dev Ops at MSD
Private cloud control has deepened my DevOps automation and strengthened security practices
For improvement, I feel the documentation available for setting up and creating infrastructure using Rackspace OpenStack could be enhanced, as I personally find the existing documents are not sufficient for new learners or beginners. We can also work on improving the user interface; the Horizon dashboard is functional, but compared to AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, the UI feels somewhat dated. A more modern, intuitive interface with better navigation would enhance the overall user experience, especially for new users. Improving the documentation, including more real-world deployment examples, troubleshooting guides, and architecture best practices, would make onboarding much easier. Faster upgrades would also help; Rackspace OpenStack upgrades can sometimes be complex, so simplifying the upgrade process and minimizing downtime would assist organizations in maintaining their environments more easily. Additionally, improving monitoring capabilities would be beneficial, with advanced monitoring and analytics dashboards providing administrators deeper visibility into performance, capacity, and potential issues without relying heavily on third-party tools. Adding more managed services, similar to what public cloud providers offer, could reduce operational overhead while still allowing customers to retain the flexibility of a private cloud. Lastly, integrating AI could be valuable, with AI-driven recommendations for capacity planning, security monitoring, and automated troubleshooting improving platform management.
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 is stable."
"In my experience, Rackspace OpenStack delivered a stable, flexible, and reliable private cloud environment."
"The initial setup isn't too difficult."
"The most useful opinion about Rackspace OpenStack is that it is very flexible, first of all, and the most important feature is that it is feature-rich."
"Administrators are very comfortable with the functionality and services OpenStack offers."
"I like its integration with GitLab and its simplicity. OpenStack has a lot of third-party libraries that it uses."
"The most valuable feature is the customization, and with the customization you can really give the customers what they want."
"Rackspace OpenStack positively impacts my organization by making processes easier since I do not need to manage all servers manually because it efficiently manages server operations and maintains proper data, which saves time."
"I like the new releases that Dell EMC is doing with VMware. They are allowing for flexibility across the hybrid cloud. This allows organizations to use containers and to be able to move into the public cloud, but also not have lock-in. They can come back to the private cloud when they want to, so it's creating a lot of flexibility across the stack."
"VxRail is a very good software-defined solution that has been simplified so that it's very easy to use, very robust, and especially well-suited for small or medium-sized organizations, with excellent built-in vSAN and strong support from Dell EMC."
"VxRail has improved our organization by providing our admin team with an easy-to-use interface."
"One beneficial feature is that the solution can handle complex environments."
"The scalability of VxRail is very good."
"Scalability is probably one of the biggest reasons people choose VxRail."
"VxRail's feature that we found most valuable was its really good performance. That was one of VxRail's advantages."
"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."
 

Cons

"OpenStack's UI, while user-friendly, could be improved to offer a more intuitive experience."
"The pricing for Rackspace OpenStack is sometimes not competitive according to other market products, as sometimes the price is high for some components like Advanced Cluster Management (ACM) and Advanced Cluster Security, which are very costly add-ons, not the main license."
"The line migration is a problem."
"The seamless integration between MySQL services and the rabbitMQ database can be revised during the debugging phase."
"As a beginner, I find some difficulties in understanding Rackspace OpenStack, as it can be complex without a foundational grasp of cloud and networking concepts."
"Rackspace OpenStack can be improved because it wasn't clear that you have to cancel 30 days before; otherwise they charge you for the month."
"For improvement, I feel the documentation available for setting up and creating infrastructure using Rackspace OpenStack could be enhanced, as I personally find the existing documents are not sufficient for new learners or beginners."
"OpenStack is difficult for the novice in terms of beginning to use cloud tools."
"There's a specific procedure to follow when shutting down a VxRail system."
"We are experiencing some issues with Dell's live-chat support as the support is different based on the support included with the hardware."
"We do not use the storage part of VxRail, we use Pure Storage to map out the VxRail because the disk performance from Pure Storage was far better than the performance of the disk on the inside of VxRail."
"Deployment was not initially straightforward for us. We had an incompatibility issue that was very difficult for Dell Professional Service to solve."
"Next release, we would like to see online applications."
"The only issue which is every now and again is that when you log in it will tell you that there's an issue with VxRail when there actually isn't. All that's required is a refresh or reload. The solution itself works but you may get some bad reports every now and again. Probably once every couple of months; there is no effect to the solution's capabilities."
"It would be nice if the update process was shortened and that patching would be simpler."
"Its price could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use it as an open-source tool."
"The pricing is low."
"It's a mandatory cost with everything included"
"The price would be in the middle to the expensive range. It is not cheap."
"When compared with others, the price is very reasonable."
"Be mindful of your storage needs now and for the future."
"A typical node that I would sell to a customer has a list price be between $80,000 and $100,000 per node. Organizations typically start with four nodes. That's the hardware, software, VMware licensing, everything. Customers typically pay about half of that - approximately $45,000 to $50,000 a node. On average, it costs about $200,000 to get your foot in the door."
"The VMware licenses are included and we do not have to worry about the license, everything is integrated."
"It has a yearly subscription. It can be for one year, three years, or five years."
"The solution can be pricey depending on the project."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
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 Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Rackspace OpenStack?
I cannot comment comprehensively on how Rackspace OpenStack can be improved, as I do not find that much difference; however, some areas can be improved, such as support for OEMs deploying highly sp...
What is your primary use case for Rackspace OpenStack?
My main use case for Rackspace OpenStack is that we are particularly using it for our OpenStack applications, where we are putting our applications on Rackspace OpenStack software day-to-day. A spe...
What advice do you have for others considering Rackspace OpenStack?
I rate Rackspace OpenStack an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. I chose 8 out of 10 for Rackspace OpenStack because every product has some space to improve. Regarding Rackspace OpenStack's AI capabilities, ...
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

OpenStack
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

X.commerce
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, NetApp, Rackspace Technology and others in Converged Infrastructure. Updated: July 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.