Users describe pros and cons of hyperconverged storage products

When evaluating hyperconverged infrastructure products, IT Central Station users most often examine their price, simplicity and ease of manageability, compared to more traditional storage systems.

Four of the top hyperconverged infrastructure systems on the market are Nutanix, VMware Virtual SAN, FlexPod and HPE StoreVirtual, according to online reviews by enterprise users in the IT Central Station community.

But what do enterprise users really think about these tools? Here, users give a shout out for some of their favorite features, but also give the vendors a little tough love.

Editor’s note: These reviews of select hyperconverged infrastructure systems come from the IT Central Station community. They are the opinions of the users and are based on their own experiences.

Nutanix

Valuable features

“The Web-based management portal [Prism] is very robust and easy to understand.” — Charley H., Senior Systems Engineer at a manufacturing company.

“Very easy management (e.g. daily tasks and also major upgrades).” — Banc, Senior System Engineer at a tech services company.

“Monitoring and alerting features through Prism Web [user interface].” — Stephen S., Virtualization Architect, Office of the CTO at a tech services company.

Room for improvement

“It would be nice to have larger [hard disk drives]. It’s excellent, but expensive.” — Todd G., Account Executive at a tech services company.

“It would be nice to be able to converge the network switch required to connect the Nutanix nodes together. This can then be managed via the Nutanix Admin console.” — Ben V., Systems Engineer at a government.

“The processing power is OK, but for the future it needs to be better. Replacing all the hard drives with SSD would dramatically improve performance.” — Tommy L., Network Engineer at a financial services firm.

Read more Nutanix reviews on IT Central Station.

VMWare Virtual SAN

Valuable features

“Using VSAN Observer, we were able to see exactly what the VSAN environment is doing on a day-to-day basis, so we’ve gotten to really enjoy that interface.” — Matt B., Data Center Engineer at a tech services company.

“The main thing is the comprehensive data center management type of features. The overall management dashboard, capability to have multiple clusters, link clones, distributed computing, where you have vCenters in different geographies. Site Recovery Manager for failover, VSAN for storage, and the EVO:RAIL mechanism combining with the type of VSAN architecture that is out there, and previously, the automation capabilities of vCloud Automation Center. Previously, I had experience with vCloud Director, but obviously everything’s being transported onto vCloud Automation Center now.” — Anil S., Supervisor, Virtualization & Storage Services at a media company.

“Some of the most valuable features of VSAN include the ability to provision and grow your storage as you need to, without a very large up-front cost.” — Ritesh K., Principal at a tech services company.

Room for improvement

“There is a great way to replicate data now, but I’d like to see them focus on making recovery from snapshots, off-site, part of the core product.” — Ben G., Global Cloud Architect at a media company.

“We would really like to see encryption as part of the offering.” — Stelios X., Director at a tech services company.

“I’d like to see support for iSCI. Right now it’s all internal protocols, and they promise it in the next version.” — Anthony N., Director of IT Infrastructure and Operations at a university.

Read more VMWare Virtual SAN reviews on IT Central Station.

FlexPod

Valuable features

“NetApp’s scalability and high fault-tolerance are features that we, in our organization, like about deploying NetApp’s NAS solutions.” — Oliver V., Network Solutions Architect at a tech services company.

“Standardization, so there’s no question about how something should be set up.” — DirectorITSec936, Director of IT Security at a legal firm.

“With cDOT, it’s very easy to scale out, and that’s the reason we went with it in the first place.” — Shai P., IT Infrastructure Architect at an energy/utilities company.

Room for improvement

“Storage and compute could be better managed. Right now, there are two separate consoles for NetApp and Cisco components.” — Nabil K., Infrastructure Architect at a construction company.

“The price.” — Wesley H., IT Systems Administrator at a government agency.

“In the configuration adviser tool, it could be more specific in pointing out or letting you know what to fix when it confronts issues.” — Patrick F., Senior Storage Consultant at a tech services company.

Read more FlexPod user reviews on IT Central Station.

HPE StoreVirtual

Valuable features

“The StoreVirtual software provides us with a highly resilient storage platform for virtual machines.” — Ryan M., ICT Infrastructure Specialist at a healthcare company.

“Easy to support whether it is four or 40 storage nodes.” — Adrian C., Wintel Server Support Engineer at a university.

“High availability is the most valuable feature for us.” — Anthony Q., Service Desk Manager at a tech services company.

Room for improvement

“The management system, while OK, could be made a little more user-friendly.” — Doug C., IT Engineer at a local government.

“They need to create a separate management port to allow for sending email alerts via non-iSCSI network.” — Mark S., Infrastructure Engineer at a logistics company.

“The things that I wanted almost three years ago, when we purchased, have already been improved. Those [were] limited licensing and minimal support documentation.” — Rosa H., Network Administrator at a retailer.

Read more HPE StoreVirtual reviews on IT Central Station.