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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 5.8%, down 10.0% compared to last year.
FlexPod XCS, on the other hand, focuses on Converged Infrastructure, holds 12.7% mindshare, up 10.0% since last year.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerFlex5.8%
VxRail9.6%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)8.9%
Other75.7%
HCI
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.7%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.1%
Dell VxBlock System9.8%
Other66.4%
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

"The solution saves a lot of space in the data center and that is a key advantage for us."
"The technical support for this solution is pretty good."
"All of the features are useful, and we found that the issue we were having in our previous environment, which was high latency on the storage, we are not experiencing anymore because the high IOPS on the storage are very good for us."
"It was easy to deploy."
"This product offers stability and easy management."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage, and it provides great scalability and reliability."
"Dell PowerFlex is a complete hyperconverge that makes automation easy to manage and extremely stable."
"Dell PowerFlex is a one-stop-shop solution. Storage, compute, network, application monitoring, and support cases are all combined into one solution. It's very easy to administer compared to when you have a reference architecture where you need to design and build everything yourself. You would also then have to work with multiple vendors."
"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."
"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."
"We have been using this FlexPod since then, and now, we have grown to about mid-scale, however, FlexPod is still able to scale out the way we want, and we are happy with it."
"It takes all of the homework out of building the solution. The prearchitected design simplifies your deployment, gets you a quicker time to market, and a single point of support."
"For me, the most valuable feature is probably just the orchestration and automation that can be done around the whole solution from top to bottom, from servers to storage, networking, and using UCS Director."
"It is easy to deploy, works well, the reps are good, and the support is great."
"Once it is in place, we do not touch it, so it is more stable than other solutions."
"FlexPod's native integration with hyperscalers is one of the reasons we chose to look at it and NetApp. That is one of the key components of our infrastructure. That native integration is very important."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."
"We've had some issues around the licensing. There were some issues in terms of using the VMware license."
"They need to work on improving the overhead for protecting the data."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution. The product really needs better and more support."
"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."
"I recommend adding some more monitoring tools."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"FlexPod is not cheap and the way things are going, you could probably get the same thing at half the price from another vendor."
"We use technical support from time to time. Most of the time if we really need assistance we end up having to get above the tier one support. We're able to do a lot of the tier one troubleshooting on our own."
"I think that a unified dashboard would be beneficial across all three of the components to show you the status of all three components."
"The nature of running FlexPod in its pre-defined infrastructure is that it's not pre-configured."
"Add more automation into the Cisco UCS firmware upgrade process to make it more streamlined than it is today."
"I'd like to see a little bit simpler management pane. Using UCS Director to front everything is good but for a lot of that upper mid-market, it's probably a little bit of overkill for what they need. They just want a nice, simply portal to go through and see what's going on. So if there was something that was middle of the road, it would be well received."
"FlexPod XCS' pricing could be cheaper. You need to find the right person for support."
"Hyper-V is not well supported. NetApp and Cisco don't know as much about running Hyper-V as they do VMware on top of the platform."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"The price could be improved."
"From my perspective, pricing is expensive. If they can reduce the pricing or offer more customer incentives, it would attract more users."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The product is expensive."
"The cost of this solution is fair."
"The pricing for this solution is good."
"The solution's pricing could be much cheaper and affordable."
"We have saved time and money for new service deployments."
"In terms of the cost, the last bill I saw was about $3.5 million, from the latest contract. That might have been for a five-year contract."
"Anytime that you are buying any storage make sure you understand storage. Do not just buy storage based on what somebody sells you in terms of IO or throughput."
"Make sure that you engage as much with whom you are buying from as a partnership, not just as a purchase."
"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 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 have saved time with Snapshots, SnapMirrors, and backup and DR capabilities versus other platforms that we have looked at in the past."
"FlexPod has saved data center costs, due to the fact that we reduced our footprint for storage in a big way. We went from three complete racks down to a 2U storage array for more than 300 terabytes of storage."
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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
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
 

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 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: August 2026.
912,930 professionals have used our research since 2012.