No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

SteelFusion vs VxRail comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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

SteelFusion
Ranking in HCI
30th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
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 September 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of SteelFusion is 1.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VxRail is 9.6%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VxRail9.6%
SteelFusion1.4%
Other89.0%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

it_user866178 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at MAZZETTI+GBA
Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices
The level of tech support depends on who you get. There are some techs that just read the script and ask you if you’ve rebooted, but once you get past that - or if you have a very technical issue - the support is great. They really know the product and get you up and running again ASAP.
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

"Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices. All services that need to be local to the user exist on local servers. Users run applications and access data locally while the data is constantly being synced to Central, and protected. If an edge device fails, we can recover quickly."
"That is why Riverbed SteelFusion has delivered a masterclass technology that not only abstracted and virtualized the storage vendors’ unique logical storage structures, it has made it logically closer and seamless to the branch applications from a performance and experience perspective."
"It helps our servers and it is very efficient."
"The assurance that my systems would not suffer a performance drop no matter where they are is valuable. I do not need any extra hardware."
"VxRail is stable and we have had no issues."
"VxRail is very mature because of VMware's operational technology in general; this maturity enables VxRail to handle diverse workloads effectively."
"We previously had a traditional infrastructure where we always had issues with the performance, the vendor then introduced us to VxRail and the performance improved drastically, and the time spent on reports and support went down a lot."
"One-click upgrade is valuable because upgrading an environment that is considered a traditional one is something that we never do or are never going to complete. It is very time-consuming for my team. With the one-click upgrade, it is much quicker. There are preparation stages, but it takes less time, so we are also saving time in the daily administration."
"The support for this solution is really good; I always use the chat medium because it is easy to open a ticket and get assistance."
"If you are wanting to improve your data centers this solution is one small box that can be used in a data center providing low power consumption and requiring minimal administration."
 

Cons

"Setting up disks for use is a multi-step process that could use some refinement. Setting up a core-to-core replication or DR strategy is also cumbersome."
"The UI could be a little more informative."
"I would like to see VxRail add duplication features to its hybrid solution."
"One challenge customers face with VxRail is the high cost of scalability. The price is higher if they want to add memory or capacity after purchasing the tool for three or five years. Each drive and RAM module is licensed separately, making the architecture costly. It would benefit Dell to review this licensing model and make it more cost-effective and flexible for customers."
"A disadvantage is that the initial first deployment can be complicated."
"We made a one-time purchase of the solution and the price is expensive."
"Some of the features of the hyperconverged infrastructure could be integrated with external storage. Right now, for example, if I have surveillance going, I need to purchase very cheap storage. So, an integration between the hyperconverged infrastructure and external storage would be good."
"The first layer of technical support is not well equipped to help you identify the root cause of issues."
"From a hardware and software perspective, there could be an improvement in the sales cycle, as there are a lot of hoops to go through to get pricing on a solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price is an issue – this is expensive stuff. My advice is to beat up Riverbed as much as possible on price. These things are expensive and there is room for negotiation."
"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."
"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 tool is expensive."
"VxRail is very cost-effective and affordable in the long term. It is more recommended when it comes to financial life, but it may depend upon the license. VxRail comes with VMware licensing, which may not be that cost-effective as compared to others. With VMware, it's an auto check competition. VMware is an expensive solution, especially for Nutanix. Nutanix have their own hypervisor called Acronis, which is very cost-effective against the VMware. Nutanix is cheaper for the hardware but not for the software. If you ask the Nutanix partners to deploy Nutanix over Cisco servers or Dell EMC servers, the cost will be higher. Nutanix wants to compete financially. Therefore, they propose their software over the Supermicro server, which is a very cheap Chinese server. In fact, I don't like their terms of service. HyperFlex has the highest price, and it is very expensive. I don't know why. It may be because this is a UCS system, which comes from Cisco and is already expensive. When it comes to HyperFlex, they need the labor to deploy Hyper-V, Citrix, or any other hypervisor."
"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."
"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 product is expensive compared to other solutions."
"Fees vary by license type."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise57
 

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...
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

Roxtec, Engen, Bobst, CBP, IUCN, Mahoning County, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet
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.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.