Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs FlexPod XCS comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the Converged Infrastructure category. Dell Technologies is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2, while NetApp is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.4. Dell Technologies holds a 20.8% mindshare in CI, compared to NetApp’s 9.4% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Dell PowerEdge VRTX

Read 20 Dell PowerEdge VRTX reviews

1,585 Views
502 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

FlexPod XCS

Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews

500 Views
228 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Dell PowerEdge VRTX

FlexPod XCS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

FlexPod XCS and Dell PowerEdge VRTX compete in the integrated IT solutions category. FlexPod appears to have the upper hand due to its robust scalability and integrated management across multiple vendors.

Features: FlexPod XCS focuses on integration, flexibility, and unified management, excelling in scalability for large-scale deployments. Dell PowerEdge VRTX is designed for affordability with a compact design, offering easy setup and efficient resource usage, ideal for small to mid-sized organizations.

Room for Improvement: FlexPod users seek more streamlined support processes, unified management interfaces, and enhanced cloud integration. Dell PowerEdge VRTX could improve by adding advanced networking features, scalability options, and support for emerging storage technologies.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FlexPod XCS provides a consistent deployment experience across on-premises and hybrid cloud environments, supported by vendor collaborations, though multiple vendor support can be challenging. Dell PowerEdge VRTX is praised for simple setup and management with generally positive customer service, although response times may vary.

Pricing and ROI: FlexPod XCS is costlier but perceived as a worthwhile investment for its comprehensive features and favorable long-term ROI, especially in large deployments. Dell PowerEdge VRTX offers an affordable, practical solution for midsized enterprises, considered cost-effective compared to competitors.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs. FlexPod XCS Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs. FlexPod XCS

March 2025

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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

Dell PowerEdge VRTX

Ranking in Converged Infrastructure

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

FlexPod XCS

Ranking in Converged Infrastructure

6th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

295

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Dell PowerEdge VRTX is 20.8%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FlexPod XCS is 9.4%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Converged Infrastructure

Featured Reviews

Lakshmanan A

IT Manager at Heat and Control

A very good online UI and fit for lower budgets but nodes don't sync with the server

Our company uses the solution for 15 mediums with virtual machines. The online UI is very good in comparison to others. The nodes should be synced with the server so that the solution can be used from the cloud when any or all nodes are down. I have been using the solution for five years.…

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Chris Haight

Sr. Solutions Architect at CDW Canada Inc.

Integrates everything so you are using fewer tools

The traditional UCS Blades do not take much storage internally. You would be challenged to create an HCI (Hype converged Infrastructure) solution on FlexPod / UCS or any other solution that pools internal storage. Now, with UCS X-Series, you can carve off an HCI solution, software defined pooled solution if you want. This was one area of improvement that I wanted to see and can now realize with the refresh of the Cisco UCS infrastructure. With modern modular infrastructure, RESTful API has been added, there are more integrations, ServiceNow and vCenter along with tighter plug-ins. There is cross-user interface launching, for example with Windows Admin Center. The solutions are using Ansible and Terraform for deploying infrastructure as code. All the improvements that I wanted from the last gen are here or coming. With modern workloads and GPU use on the rise, adding GPUs to modern modular infrastructure will have some pros and cons. Typically, you can add one or two GPU's to a blade with no or little trade off. With the UCS X-Series, if you are doing a GPU farm, then you may have to sacrifice compute blades in the front slots to put in a GPU tray / module. A chassis holds eight compute blades, but if you are adding a ton of GPUs, a single GPU tray or more will reduce your blade count by as many GPU trays you add. This is not just a Cisco UCS X-Series problem. It is an industry problem with modular infrastructure and one that I would like to see get solved! I am looking into one such solution, VMware BITFUSION where you can send CUDA requests over the network to a BITFUSION server with the results sent back to the requestor, early stages here and only scratched the surface thus far. With Cisco UCS X-Series, I would like to see the fabric interconnects built into the chassis instead of being external. With the fabric interconnects, the real footprint of UCS X-Series is 9U, where some of the competing solutions are 7U and have collapsed the network fabric into the chassis. This is another thing that I would like to see from Cisco, though, not really on the NetApp side of the fence, NetApp is solid storage.

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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

"The solution is stable."

"Dell PowerEdge VRTX's most valuable feature is its reliability. It offers a good experience for my IT teams."

"We were satisfied after we upgraded to a professional next-day on-site support."

"The main advantage, as I observed, was Dell VMware, which was pre-installed on the device."

"With Dell PowerEdge VRTX, there are fewer points, and it is easier to troubleshoot and find your way around it."

"It's a good solution when you don't need a lot of IT."

"It is pretty easy to install."

"Dell PowerEdge VRTX supports a lot of memory which has allowed us to keep our system size smaller."

More Dell PowerEdge VRTX pros

"The most valuable feature for me is that you can swap out pieces when you have to lifecycle your equipment."

"The most valuable feature is that it is all-in-one, and it is easy to get support on it."

"The product is easy to deploy and use."

"The ease at which it scales and its redundancy factors. It's extremely redundant and easy-to-scale."

"The product is very stable and it does what it needs to do."

"The most valuable features are that the solution is vetted and validated and it's supported end-to-end."

"It is innovative because it's bare metal and you can customize it easily. This brings a lot of benefits to the solution."

"It's flexible. You can scale up or out. Our environment has never needed it, but the option has always been there."

More FlexPod XCS pros

Cons

"The support must be improved."

"The storage can be improved."

"VRTX is a bit simplified to the extent that it is a mainstream type of solution for small businesses. If a company needs a more complex solution or something that is a time saver or has more power or scalability, it is probably not the best solution. However, when a company grows and its needs grow, this type of environment can be definitely migrated towards a lab environment or pre-prod testing, not necessarily production. It can still have a second life for the other types of use."

"When we first started with this product, we had some difficulty with it."

"The nodes should be synced with the server so that the solution can be used from the cloud when any or all nodes are down."

"The cost of Dell PowerEdge VRTX is high, making it difficult for small and medium businesses to bear."

"I'd like to be able to increase capacity."

"Dell PowerEdge VRTX can improve by providing support for M2 drives."

More Dell PowerEdge VRTX cons

"The procedure for contacting technical support could be simplified."

"Cisco support is much slower. Opening cases with Cisco tech is sometimes a bit tedious. The return time for less important calls can be slower. Even Priority 1 calls can sometimes be a bit long and they will have to call me back."

"The upgrades should be improved. We would like to have the ability to do unified upgrades of the whole infrastructure from beginning to end."

"There are apparently some new products coming around the whole FlexPod side of things with regards to auditing, to ensure everything is configured correctly. It's basically a "delta" if there have been any changes. It's important to us, from a support perspective, to know if there have been changes and what impact they have actually had."

"The interface is a little convoluted."

"The only support call that we have had in six years was related to an ONTAP upgrade, where one of the controllers didn't patch properly."

"We would like more security features."

"If there were going to be any improvements, they should probably be UI improvements, overall. It can get a little kludgy sometimes when trying to figure out what to do."

More FlexPod XCS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fully configured, it costs about $50,000 or $55,000. I did purchase a used one or refurbished one. I have been very happy with it so far. Even if it is an older unit, it doesn't look like its age, and I would say it has been a great choice so far for me. Obviously, I would have thought twice if I had to pay for a brand new one because it is still an older technology with the risk of being discontinued. I talked to Dell, and they're still selling it, but they're not promoting it. They're promoting another line of products right now for hyper-converged, which are much more expensive."

"We bought a license for seven years."

"The tool's pricing is fine."

"On the scale of pricing, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I would rate it as a three. I am familiar with the overall cost, which involves licenses from Dell and VMware, among others, making it a combination of various license types."

"We are renewing the support and we are purchasing the license for the software."

"This product is more reasonably-priced than similar solutions by HPE."

"The solution price of Dell PowerEdge VRTX could be reduced. However, when comparing the price of Dell PowerEdge VRTX to other solutions, such as HP and Lenovo, it was the best price for what they offer."

"The solution is less expensive than competitors."

"If your company really needs to be up 100% of the time, and you need to do a private data center, I don't know if I could realistically actually recommend another blueprint."

"You get better management and orchestration, but it still costs you money."

"The investment has been great. We put our money into it and it has given us something that we have been able to rely on for years."

"The total cost of ownership with this solution is good."

"We definitely saw a lot of operational cost savings using FlexPod. As far as capital outlay goes, that was a little bit too much for us to swallow and we weren't able to recognize enough savings in that area to afford it."

"We have seen an 80 percent improvement in application performance."

"It is expensive. My company is small. When you look at the price point, this is a big thing for us to invest in."

"We have saved time and money for new service deployments. Without FlexPod, it probably takes about ten hours. With FlexPod, within two hours, we are up and running. So, we have seen about an 80 percent time decrease."

More FlexPod XCS pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user244362

Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees

Aug 30, 2015

Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod

Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

21%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

21%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Educational Organization

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell PowerEdge VRTX?

The system is very intuitive.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerEdge VRTX?

The cost of Dell PowerEdge VRTX is high, making it difficult for small and medium businesses to bear. I would rate the pricing as seven out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell PowerEdge VRTX?

It would be much better for customers if Dell could provide firmware updates even after the end of the product's life, enabling them to manage and keep their hardware for a longer time.

See all answers

What do you like most about FlexPod?

The system is designed for easy scaling. Because we define everything clearly. So when we plug the system in, we apply the profile, and it scales easily.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FlexPod?

The pricing is not cheaper, but stability is more important for us now. We focus on business gains, not static numbers. Following XCS rules ensures a stable environment, which is crucial. For me, C...

See all answers

What needs improvement with FlexPod?

FlexPod should focus more on automation. Integrating an automation tool with FlexPod would enable customers to leverage automation capabilities. More automation would be helpful. Currently, we cont...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 67% of the time

IBM PureSystems vs Dell PowerEdge VRTX

Compared 11% of the time

Dell VxBlock System vs Dell PowerEdge VRTX

Compared 10% of the time

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Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 26% of the time

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 13% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 11% of the time

Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 10% of the time

VMware vSAN vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerEdge VRTX

March 2025

Download Dell PowerEdge VRTX product report

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

March 2025

Download FlexPod XCS product report

Overview

PowerEdge VRTX modular infrastructure platform integrates servers, storage, networking and management together in a single compact chassis.

Dell Technologies

FlexPod XCS is the secure platform your applications need from edge to cloud. Easily manage your suite of cloud-native, edge, and enterprise apps. Integrate advanced cloud services without compromising performance, security, reliability, or scale.

NetApp

Sample Customers

University of Dundee, GE Healthcare Japan

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs. FlexPod XCS

March 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs. FlexPod XCS

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