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Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS comparison

 

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 (5th)
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 6.0%, down 11.2% compared to last year.
FlexPod XCS, on the other hand, focuses on Converged Infrastructure, holds 12.7% mindshare, up 9.3% since last year.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerFlex6.0%
VxRail10.1%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.0%
Other74.9%
HCI
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.7%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.2%
Dell VxBlock System9.0%
Other67.1%
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
Infrastructure Director 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

"Dell PowerFlex improves our latency which allowed us to reduce a lot of our Microsoft Enterprise SQL licenses."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage, and it provides great scalability and reliability."
"The technical support for this solution is pretty good."
"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."
"We have been dealing with them for some time and we are happy with the product."
"Dell PowerFlex is a complete hyperconverge that makes automation easy to manage and extremely stable."
"The support is highly responsive."
"It was easy to deploy."
"It reduced the total cost of ownership."
"Our customers get their applications to market more quickly, and it has taken the risk out of their business, because there is less for them to try to figure out."
"It gives us pretty solid support from either Cisco or NetApp as well as an all-in-one infrastructure."
"The best thing about this solution is the tight integration with VMware, Cisco, and NetApp from both a hardware and software perspective."
"I am happy with the stability. I haven't had any major issues with it in four years. This includes upgrades."
"The integration part of things is the most valuable feature; you are getting a whole set of things under one roof and rack, there is support for everything, the designs are pretty good, and Cisco, NetApp, or the OS vendor keep on updating them, which is one of the good points."
"Honestly, we've standardized on it, so FlexPod has improved our company as far as ease of management, stability, and redundancy."
"The solution is resilient, because it has good scalability, and other products in the market don't have this. It has scalable storage and service."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"We've had some issues around the licensing. There were some issues in terms of using the VMware license."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution. The product really needs better and more support."
"The initial deployment was complicated and required a lot of data nodes, IPs, internal vLANs, data vLANs, and many other things."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."
"The installation is complex."
"I think the kind of restrictions in terms of VMware licensing is frustrating."
"I would like to see synchronous replication and easier automation in the next release."
"I'd like to see a little bit simpler management pane."
"I would like to see more CVDs and more published designs around a multi-hypervisor approach within a single pod."
"Product price is always a concern."
"The FlexPod service and support could be improved."
"The majority of the time, if we need more storage, then we need to work with customizing the NetApp deployment. Right now, we just do a generic deployment, then wherever we have a need for storage, we have to move some application out of the next FlexPod deployment. One thing is to customize based on the requirements, but the requirements change so frequently, they are absolutely obsolete in six months."
"We switched to the new NetApp clustered environment and discovered that the monitoring and reporting features are a little behind the older versions."
"We would like to see a new design that comes with more productivity or graphics. Currently, the vendors, like HPE and Dell EMC along with NetApp, all have very similar products. We want more diversification."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The solution's pricing could be much cheaper and affordable."
"We have a good contact in Dell and he prepared all the information and provided everything to us."
"The product is expensive."
"The pricing for this solution is good."
"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"The cost of this solution is fair."
"The solution's price is medium."
"We have saved money using FlexPod. We have saved time and money for new service deployments."
"We have saved time, money, space, and power consumption on new service deployments. We have a data center in Toronto which had ten racks on one of the new servers. This was all reduced to two racks with six chassis, which is amazing."
"Buy storage based on the solutions you need, the technologies you need, and what will make your life a lot easier down the road."
"The product is kind of expensive even from an entry-level standpoint. I would say FlexPod would be the way to go if you are a larger business or one with large data volume."
"We purchased FlexPod though Datalink."
"It is not cheap, but there is a return on investment in time saved and efficiency."
"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."
"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."
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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
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
13%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, Broadcom and others in HCI. Updated: July 2026.
907,372 professionals have used our research since 2012.