Enterprise Solution Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 5
2025-07-07T09:20:48Z
Jul 7, 2025
Area of Improvement: While PowerFlex Manager is powerful, the UI could be more intuitive, especially for first-time users or non-technical admins. Streamlined navigation, contextual help and guided workflows would improve day-to-day usability. Additional Features: Edge Deployment Models: Lightweight node configurations for PowerFlex at the edge to support industries like retail, telco, or manufacturing. Integration with Dell CloudIQ: Real-time insights and proactive health scoring for predictive maintenance and better performance tuning.
System & Network Specialist at Alfaisal University
Reseller
Top 20
2025-05-13T11:42:32Z
May 13, 2025
The support for Dell PowerFlex can be improved. The level of support needs improvement as the front-line support staff lack knowledge when we raise cases.
Product Owner at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-10-21T08:58:00Z
Oct 21, 2024
We are still hoping for better ways to incorporate AI. We have to extend third-party access to PowerFlex by calling the API. It would be easier if the product had built-in AI integration. If PowerFlex can contribute more to AI, it would be more useful.
The tool is a bit difficult to configure, making it an area where improvements are required. The first impression of the solution revolves around the fact that it has a complicated configuration. We end up doing the wrong configuration, which causes network issues. Our team gets confused when we configure the DNS and then the network configuration. We can solve the issues with the tool with the help of the principal. After we discussed or communicated with the principal from Jakarta, we learned that he had some issues configuring the network configuration. There are many complicated areas in the configuration.
Platform and Backup Support Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-05-20T18:07:00Z
May 20, 2024
The initial deployment was complicated and required a lot of data nodes, IPs, internal vLANs, data vLANs, and many other things. The prerequisites and deployment are complicated for me.
Lead Infrastructure Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-05-02T22:24:00Z
May 2, 2024
They need to work on improving the overhead for protecting the data. Although Dell PowerFlex is working on improving certain things but that needs to come forward. At present, if someone buys the solution, they get to use only fifty percent of the protection purposes. So the company should be more focused introducing Future Forward Data Protection, Data Resiliency schemes like Erasure Coding. Focusing on such things will bring the platform back to a great extent. The solution is also complex so the company should work on simplifying the solution. They should avoid locking into a specific virtualization partner. At present the solution only has two options, it's either PowerFlex or it is VMware or it's run on bare metal servers. There is a lack of ecosystem pertaining to the ones supporting PowerFlex. Lastly, the upgrade the process. It is cumbersome and it takes multiple days to get the solution upgraded.
System Administrator at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2023-06-20T14:57:00Z
Jun 20, 2023
The solution's support in terms of integration and firmware upgrades on the operating systems for Nutanix needs improvement. Also, they should provide continuous support for cloud integration and manage storage while migrating the data from the cloud to local devices. It will help while working with international clients.
BU Head Cloud, Computing, Storage & DP at Abdulla Fouad Group
Real User
2023-05-12T11:11:00Z
May 12, 2023
The support of containers needs to be improved. At present, it is limited to VMware. There needs to be direct communication with the hardware rather than through a hypervisor.
I think the kind of restrictions in terms of VMware licensing is frustrating. I might have some spare licenses which I would like to utilize, but it's not possible so it requires purchasing a different license that's locked with a particular box.
Lead Technical Product Manager at United Services Automobile Association
Real User
2022-05-04T03:44:31Z
May 4, 2022
It would be great to get earlier access to beta builds because we have to develop providers on our own. The APIs and enablers for custom automation could also be improved.
We've had some issues around the licensing. There were some issues in terms of using the VMware license. The VMware license was locked along with the box. Therefore, even if you want, you can't use it for some other purpose. That was the only challenge for us. The initial setup was not simple or straightforward.
When checking some of the components in the RCM during upgrades, it can be difficult, you have to check and upgrade the software-defined storage because it will get out of scale with the virtualization with VMware. You always have to consider this during upgrades but the process should be simplified.
The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem. The solution needs to adjust its pricing to make it more reasonable.
Infrastructure Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Reseller
2019-11-26T05:43:00Z
Nov 26, 2019
I think there might be some room for improvement when it comes to pricing because although I know how to convert customers, at the end of the day, it's quite expensive. Sometimes your feature architecture is still coming out much cheaper than hardware costs for your infrastructure. The guys normally say it's all about your management. If you do a feature architecture with VMware or Hypervisor with the management, you still get a lot of attitude from that as well.
The pricing of the solution could be lower. The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials. It would be helpful if they could simplify the solution for those that are new to the product, so that anyone could use it quite easily.
In terms of improvements, I think it would help to have easier access to the cost of installing VxRack infrastructure. I think including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement. This solution is a black box solution, meaning that you don't really know how it works exactly on the inside. A feature that would include that would be helpful.
IT Analyst at a wellness & fitness company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2019-10-16T06:52:00Z
Oct 16, 2019
The virtual machine configuration for networking should be improved. There should be more functionality available for routing. I would like to see better integration with other services because it can be difficult to merge into the environment.
Sr. Pre-Sales Engineer at Advanced Technology Company
Real User
2019-09-27T04:38:00Z
Sep 27, 2019
Something that needs to improve is that if you want to upgrade just one feature, you have to go to the highest model, which is the All-Flash Solution. 1- there are features like deduplicate and compersion, it's available only in the all-flash solution for Vxrack also auto-tiering and caching not available only in the all-flash scenario in VxRack flex 2- another way if you have the all-flash box from vxRack (SSD drive), cannot be mixed with normal HDD and the maintenance will be very expensive
Vice President - Head of Technology at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
2019-07-16T05:40:00Z
Jul 16, 2019
VxRail as a VM, as the extended version of VM, made the solution very powerful, unlike others like Nutanix or HP Synergy or SimpliVity. I can't see any problem other than one thing which is the vendor lock. It means if I want to extend my service if I want to add another stream or another data center and I want to have an integration, I have to have the VxRail bill as a total FCI solution on the other side. That's the only weakness that I see that needs to be improved; with VxRail they need to extend the licenses to any other solution. That's the only thing that I believe though. On the dashboard itself that I use on a daily basis, I can get most of the information that I want. If I want to have more details or analytics, however, it's a little bit tricky. I'm using one of my resources to keep pulling data from different sources to build custom made reporting for myself. For example, utilization of the different resources on the different servers is there as a part of the dashboard. However, if I want to have the kind of comparison between two different VMs running on the same application, it's a little bit tricky. I'm asking my team to pull data and design it in a different way and send it back and execute it and stuff like that. Exporting data from the dashboard is not very user-friendly. It's just designed in a way that it's going to cover let's say 90%, 80%, of the end-users needs. If you need more sophisticated reporting it's not easy to have.
For now, we just started using it, so we've not really identified the area where we see anything lacking. Maybe after we use it for around six months we'll be able to know some areas. Moreover, we're still doing the migration. We've re-migrated from our old environment, we have migrated from VM to the new environment. So far so good. We do not really have a lot of challenges right now. I think an area where maybe we'll need some improvement is that we have been, in our old environment, running VMware Virtual machines. We're also running Hyper-V virtual machines. But we recently discovered that migration of the Hyper-V virtual machines is a bit challenging. Maybe if Dell EMC can come out with a tool that will make it very easy for us to migrate the Microsoft Hyper-V machine, that may be an improvement.
I recommend adding some more monitoring tools. There are no, such monitoring tools inside the rack or the hardware. I recommend adding some hardware. It needs some monitoring. It would be a benefit for the engineers actually. No need for them to go and open the platform with their computers.
Dell PowerFlex is a software-defined storage infrastructure delivering modern architecture and versatile deployment for on-premises or cloud. It achieves high performance, scalable storage, and workload consolidation through advanced automation.PowerFlex's VMware compatibility ensures seamless integration, offering flexibility in compute and storage scaling. With its hyper-converged infrastructure, it caters to AI, cloud, and database environments, providing robust automation, resilience, and...
Area of Improvement: While PowerFlex Manager is powerful, the UI could be more intuitive, especially for first-time users or non-technical admins. Streamlined navigation, contextual help and guided workflows would improve day-to-day usability. Additional Features: Edge Deployment Models: Lightweight node configurations for PowerFlex at the edge to support industries like retail, telco, or manufacturing. Integration with Dell CloudIQ: Real-time insights and proactive health scoring for predictive maintenance and better performance tuning.
The support for Dell PowerFlex can be improved. The level of support needs improvement as the front-line support staff lack knowledge when we raise cases.
The solution is okay overall. It could be easier to learn. We haven't had any issues. They could have more AI functionality in the future.
We are still hoping for better ways to incorporate AI. We have to extend third-party access to PowerFlex by calling the API. It would be easier if the product had built-in AI integration. If PowerFlex can contribute more to AI, it would be more useful.
The tool is a bit difficult to configure, making it an area where improvements are required. The first impression of the solution revolves around the fact that it has a complicated configuration. We end up doing the wrong configuration, which causes network issues. Our team gets confused when we configure the DNS and then the network configuration. We can solve the issues with the tool with the help of the principal. After we discussed or communicated with the principal from Jakarta, we learned that he had some issues configuring the network configuration. There are many complicated areas in the configuration.
The initial deployment was complicated and required a lot of data nodes, IPs, internal vLANs, data vLANs, and many other things. The prerequisites and deployment are complicated for me.
They need to work on improving the overhead for protecting the data. Although Dell PowerFlex is working on improving certain things but that needs to come forward. At present, if someone buys the solution, they get to use only fifty percent of the protection purposes. So the company should be more focused introducing Future Forward Data Protection, Data Resiliency schemes like Erasure Coding. Focusing on such things will bring the platform back to a great extent. The solution is also complex so the company should work on simplifying the solution. They should avoid locking into a specific virtualization partner. At present the solution only has two options, it's either PowerFlex or it is VMware or it's run on bare metal servers. There is a lack of ecosystem pertaining to the ones supporting PowerFlex. Lastly, the upgrade the process. It is cumbersome and it takes multiple days to get the solution upgraded.
The tool needs to improve its storage. It should also make migration to the cloud easier.
The solution must be more flexible. It must be flexible with sizing and the combination of technologies inside the compute nodes.
The storage capability must be improved.
The solution's support in terms of integration and firmware upgrades on the operating systems for Nutanix needs improvement. Also, they should provide continuous support for cloud integration and manage storage while migrating the data from the cloud to local devices. It will help while working with international clients.
The support of containers needs to be improved. At present, it is limited to VMware. There needs to be direct communication with the hardware rather than through a hypervisor.
Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement.
I think the kind of restrictions in terms of VMware licensing is frustrating. I might have some spare licenses which I would like to utilize, but it's not possible so it requires purchasing a different license that's locked with a particular box.
It would be great to get earlier access to beta builds because we have to develop providers on our own. The APIs and enablers for custom automation could also be improved.
We've had some issues around the licensing. There were some issues in terms of using the VMware license. The VMware license was locked along with the box. Therefore, even if you want, you can't use it for some other purpose. That was the only challenge for us. The initial setup was not simple or straightforward.
When checking some of the components in the RCM during upgrades, it can be difficult, you have to check and upgrade the software-defined storage because it will get out of scale with the virtualization with VMware. You always have to consider this during upgrades but the process should be simplified.
The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem. The solution needs to adjust its pricing to make it more reasonable.
I would like to see a more user-friendly interface.
I think there might be some room for improvement when it comes to pricing because although I know how to convert customers, at the end of the day, it's quite expensive. Sometimes your feature architecture is still coming out much cheaper than hardware costs for your infrastructure. The guys normally say it's all about your management. If you do a feature architecture with VMware or Hypervisor with the management, you still get a lot of attitude from that as well.
The pricing of the solution could be lower. The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials. It would be helpful if they could simplify the solution for those that are new to the product, so that anyone could use it quite easily.
In terms of improvements, I think it would help to have easier access to the cost of installing VxRack infrastructure. I think including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement. This solution is a black box solution, meaning that you don't really know how it works exactly on the inside. A feature that would include that would be helpful.
The virtual machine configuration for networking should be improved. There should be more functionality available for routing. I would like to see better integration with other services because it can be difficult to merge into the environment.
Something that needs to improve is that if you want to upgrade just one feature, you have to go to the highest model, which is the All-Flash Solution. 1- there are features like deduplicate and compersion, it's available only in the all-flash solution for Vxrack also auto-tiering and caching not available only in the all-flash scenario in VxRack flex 2- another way if you have the all-flash box from vxRack (SSD drive), cannot be mixed with normal HDD and the maintenance will be very expensive
VxRail as a VM, as the extended version of VM, made the solution very powerful, unlike others like Nutanix or HP Synergy or SimpliVity. I can't see any problem other than one thing which is the vendor lock. It means if I want to extend my service if I want to add another stream or another data center and I want to have an integration, I have to have the VxRail bill as a total FCI solution on the other side. That's the only weakness that I see that needs to be improved; with VxRail they need to extend the licenses to any other solution. That's the only thing that I believe though. On the dashboard itself that I use on a daily basis, I can get most of the information that I want. If I want to have more details or analytics, however, it's a little bit tricky. I'm using one of my resources to keep pulling data from different sources to build custom made reporting for myself. For example, utilization of the different resources on the different servers is there as a part of the dashboard. However, if I want to have the kind of comparison between two different VMs running on the same application, it's a little bit tricky. I'm asking my team to pull data and design it in a different way and send it back and execute it and stuff like that. Exporting data from the dashboard is not very user-friendly. It's just designed in a way that it's going to cover let's say 90%, 80%, of the end-users needs. If you need more sophisticated reporting it's not easy to have.
For now, we just started using it, so we've not really identified the area where we see anything lacking. Maybe after we use it for around six months we'll be able to know some areas. Moreover, we're still doing the migration. We've re-migrated from our old environment, we have migrated from VM to the new environment. So far so good. We do not really have a lot of challenges right now. I think an area where maybe we'll need some improvement is that we have been, in our old environment, running VMware Virtual machines. We're also running Hyper-V virtual machines. But we recently discovered that migration of the Hyper-V virtual machines is a bit challenging. Maybe if Dell EMC can come out with a tool that will make it very easy for us to migrate the Microsoft Hyper-V machine, that may be an improvement.
I recommend adding some more monitoring tools. There are no, such monitoring tools inside the rack or the hardware. I recommend adding some hardware. It needs some monitoring. It would be a benefit for the engineers actually. No need for them to go and open the platform with their computers.