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Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS comparison

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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

Dell PowerFlex
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
HCI (7th)
FlexPod XCS
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. Dell PowerFlex is designed for HCI and holds a mindshare of 5.6%, down 8.8% compared to last year.
FlexPod XCS, on the other hand, focuses on Converged Infrastructure, holds 12.7% mindshare, up 12.0% since last year.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerFlex5.6%
VxRail9.3%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.0%
Other76.1%
HCI
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.7%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.0%
Dell VxBlock System9.5%
Other66.8%
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

Serdar De - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at ÜÇGE Shopfitting & Design
Initial setup has been straightforward and it has reasonable pricing
We are new to this, so we are still learning about the valuable features 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.  I have been using the solution for six months. I have not encountered any problems…
John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Scientist Assistant at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Enforces standardized setup procedures following Certified Validated Design (CVD) guidelines and offers greater flexibility and control over the system compared to traditional systems
The GUI setup follows the right setup, meaning we have to follow the CVDi.e. Certified Validated Design. Everything is clear, because you can build CI yourself, but without rules, it can be messy. With FlexPod, there are rules to follow, making it more standardized. This helps with troubleshooting and compatibility assessments, simplifying troubleshooting significantly. We also use FlexPod pre-validated architectures to validate the design. It is very, very important to us because we had a bad case in 2015 where separate items integrated poorly due to no version or firmware compatibility certification. Troubleshooting became a nightmare. So, standards are crucial for us, and everything entering production should be verified or at least documented for certification.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It was easy to deploy."
"Dell PowerFlex improves our latency which allowed us to reduce a lot of our Microsoft Enterprise SQL licenses."
"This product offers stability and easy management."
"PowerFlex offers us more IOPS, improving the application performance. It also helps us reduce our storage and eliminate redundancy. The primary thing is that we work 24/7, so we shouldn't have operational issues."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the storage space it offers."
"My opinion is that HP Hyperconvergence is a technology that perfectly suits customers dealing with the combination of future storage needs and, at the same time, keeping up their computing power."
"My overall product rating would be nine out of ten."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"I think that the most valuable feature is the pre-validated design, the reference configuration, as all the integrations have been done, and you don’t need to go through a teething phase."
"It's an all-in-one validated design; we don't have to worry about making sure that thing A supports thing B, as it's all top-down, integrated, and validated, which means for us, it's going to just work."
"There are no issues at all with stability; everything is redundant, the Cisco UCS platform is rock solid, the switches are rock solid, you have Nexus switches that are redundant in power and in usability, and the NetApps are all rock solid because they have dual controllers."
"We have had two FlexPods for five years now, are currently purchasing a third one, have never had any problems with them in that time, and its performance is great."
"The most valuable features are reliability and the ability to give our end-users a reliable system with the performance, the IOPS, and the latency that they want."
"The usability and the functionality of the solution as it integrates with the UCS system and Cisco devices makes it absolutely great for our environment."
"The flexibility and data deduplication have been the biggest practical applications."
"The solution’s validated designs for major enterprise apps are also extremely important in our organization. We don't always have time to research products and solutions ourselves. By going with a validated design, we're assured that it's the latest and greatest. It's supported by the three major vendors that we deal with."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to improve its storage. It should also make migration to the cloud easier."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"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 initial deployment was complicated and required a lot of data nodes, IPs, internal vLANs, data vLANs, and many other things."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."
"The solution is not as scalable as it should be."
"You must build each block separately, that's a disadvantage sometimes."
"I'd like to see a little more on the provisioning and the replication piece... Also, I don't want to say analytics are lacking but I'd like to see more analytics."
"FlexPod has not decreased the unplanned downtime incidents in our company. There was a problem with the back-end configuration and we had a downtime of three hours."
"As the technology grows, we're looking to upgrade our storage systems to something faster, and we're hoping to improve our servers with next-generation technology. So we want to enhance our server infrastructure and explore server virtualization with VMware. That's the improvement that our clients are demanding."
"Technical support is not fantastic."
"I would like to see a single upgrade download, so you could download an upgrade that would upgrade the NetApps that would have all the parts."
"FlexPod XCS' pricing could be cheaper. You need to find the right person for support."
"We did run into some hiccups around some different things."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."
"The pricing for this solution is good."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"The cost of this solution is fair."
"The price could be improved."
"Buy storage based on the solutions you need, the technologies you need, and what will make your life a lot easier down the road."
"Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year."
"Licensing can be interesting with the new version because of the Intersight integration. I don't know what that looks like yet. I have seen some of the different licensing models, but with the new purchasing, all customers are going to have to buy some sort of Intersight licensing with the Blades or FlexPod. I am curious to see how that option shakes out. Previous to the UCS X-Series, the licensing was the same."
"We have seen a five to ten percent savings on new service deployments."
"We have seen our data center rack space collapse about 90 percent. We have a data center which only has two racks now out of the 20 that were there previously."
"It is cheaper than other products. For example, Dell EMC VxBlock is more expensive."
"We would like everything in one piece of hardware. This way we can just sell the product like a silo by putting everything in a stack together."
"Coming from a rack and stack server model to FlexPod, it has saved us a lot of time (approximately hundreds to thousands of hours)."
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerFlex?
Dell PowerFlex is a premium software-defined infrastructure solution and while the initial investment may seem higher than traditional SAN or mid-tier HCI solutions, the long-term TCO is competitive.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerFlex?
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...
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Also Known As

VxFlex, VxRack FLEX, PowerFlex
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Canopy, 8x8Inc., Atos, Canadian Pacific, City of Denton, CenturyLink, BNP Paribas, Asyaport, EDF, CSC, Fox Sports, Insight, Hunter, KPIT, Paetec, Rosetta Stone, Sonda, Xerox
University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
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