Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS comparison

The compared Dell Technologies and NetApp solutions aren't in the same category. Dell Technologies is ranked #5 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 13.3% mindshare in the category. NetApp is ranked #5 in CI , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 8.7% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Dell PowerFlex

Read 26 Dell PowerFlex reviews

11,459 Views
7,276 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

FlexPod XCS

Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews

550 Views
274 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Dell PowerFlex

FlexPod XCS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell PowerFlex and FlexPod XCS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

January 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 PowerFlex

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

HCI (5th)

FlexPod XCS

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

295

Ranking in other categories

Converged Infrastructure (5th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. Dell PowerFlex is designed for HCI and holds a mindshare of 13.3%, up 7.5% compared to last year.
FlexPod XCS, on the other hand, focuses on Converged Infrastructure, holds 8.7% mindshare, down 10.7% since last year.

HCI

Converged Infrastructure

Featured Reviews

Ayodeji Oyewole

Managing Director at Atlantic factorial

A hyper-converged infrastructure that is like a mini data center of its own

There are two categories, namely, the appliances and the racks. The partners are able to set up the Dell PowerFlex appliances, but not fully. The partners are able to physically set up the appliances, while the OEM will set them up logically. The PowerFlex racks are fully set up by the OEM, both physically and logically. The solution's initial setup is not pretty straightforward in emerging markets at the moment.

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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 support team responds quickly."

"The most valuable feature is high availability."

"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."

"It has reduced downtime. Before, on our previous solution, we used to have downtime on some of the servers because of the sort of convention. But currently I've not experienced any downtime on any of the servers, and there is no more resource congestion."

"We're doing a lot of VMware for IT so this solution is really valuable from a VMH point of view. We're trying to assist our customers mainly with management, because that's what they want. The most important aspects are ease of management, as well as ease of configuration, allowing them to attach additional nodes and resources for the applications."

"Dell PowerFlex is a complete hyperconverge that makes automation easy to manage and extremely stable."

"The solution's most valuable feature is the storage space it offers."

"The resiliency and data protection are the most valuable features."

More Dell PowerFlex pros

"The Cisco Validated Designs are the most valuable feature along with the Industry-leading technology, put together; and the fact that it just works."

"Our data center rack space collapsed and our manpower decreased."

"It simplifies the management of our entire system."

"The most valuable is the one support. I have a 1-800 number. I call one number rather than figuring out whether it's a network, compute, or storage issue. It is beautiful and works out nicely."

"The flexibility and data deduplication have been the biggest practical applications."

"It can scale, compute, and storage independently by what we need."

"FlexPod has reduced our overall TCO and simplified our operations."

"One of the most valuable aspects is its integrated convergence infrastructure, particularly the LAN and SAN cloud features that offer a unified fabric."

More FlexPod XCS pros

Cons

"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."

"We're also running Hyper-V virtual machines. But we recently discovered that migration of the Hyper-V virtual machines is a bit challenging. Maybe if Dell EMC can come out with a tool that will make it very easy for us to migrate the Microsoft Hyper-V machine, that may be an improvement."

"The installation is complex."

"The solution’s automation and pricing could be improved."

"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."

"They should provide continuous support for data migration."

"The initial deployment was complicated and required a lot of data nodes, IPs, internal vLANs, data vLANs, and many other things."

"The solution must be more flexible."

More Dell PowerFlex cons

"The initial setup for FlexPod is complex."

"I'd like to see better integrations with some of the third-party tools, like Terraform. That would be good. We use Ansible to deploy and that's good, but it's slower than it needs to be."

"Areas for improvement would be the support for the engineering team, who seem to have no clue when you open a case, the communication with and recognition of resellers, and the documentation, with could be more detailed."

"Upgrades are always scary because you just don't know. Nobody has six or seven different systems sitting around that you can test on before you go into production data."

"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."

"The biggest problem we have seen is, we were using the vStorage which comes with the NetApp environment, a kind of fiber connect. We were missing fibre channel connectivity and we got lots of I/O errors."

"There is a lot of documentation that has to be reviewed before you go through an upgrade. It is not as straightforward as some other solutions."

"I would think more cloud integration, a lot more flexibility with adapting to different things."

More FlexPod XCS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."

"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."

"From my perspective, pricing is expensive. If they can reduce the pricing or offer more customer incentives, it would attract more users."

"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."

"The solution's price is medium."

"The solution's pricing could be much cheaper and affordable."

"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive."

"The price could be improved."

More Dell PowerFlex pricing and cost advice

"The main return on investment would be that instead of having to refresh all of our desktop hardware we have been able to go reimage existing machines and use those as thin clients, then also purchase new thin clients rather than buying actual hardware. It also reduces the overhead of having our technicians deploy those systems and maintain them."

"Overall, the solution works pretty well. The biggest complaint I have from customers is the cost."

"We have saved money using FlexPod. We have saved time and money for new service deployments."

"It created lower total cost of ownership. Previously, we had disparate storage and servers, and there were bits of kits everywhere. Now, we have two data centers with almost identical setups in both."

"We have saved time and money for new service deployments."

"Buy storage based on the solutions you need, the technologies you need, and what will make your life a lot easier down the road."

"We have saved time with Snapshots, SnapMirrors, and backup and DR capabilities versus other platforms that we have looked at in the past."

"It is cost-effective."

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

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

19%

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Educational Organization

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerFlex?

The support is highly responsive.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerFlex?

From my perspective, pricing is expensive. If they can reduce the pricing or offer more customer incentives, it would attract more users.

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

VxRail vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 49% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 15% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 8% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 7% of the time

Dell VxBlock System vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 1% of the time

More Dell PowerFlex Competitors

Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 11% of the time

VMware vSAN vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 11% of the time

Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 10% of the time

VxRail vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 10% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 10% of the time

More FlexPod XCS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerFlex

January 2025

Download Dell PowerFlex product report

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

January 2025

Download FlexPod XCS product report

Also Known As

VxFlex, VxRack FLEX, PowerFlex

No data available

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Dell Technologies

NetApp

Overview

VxRack System consists of hyper-converged rack-scale engineered systems, with integrated networking, to achieve the scalability and management requirements of traditional and cloud native workloads. The VxRack series is purposely designed to enable customers to quickly deploy Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and/or Private Cloud architectures. VxRack Systems tightly integrate hardware with software and management layers.

The result is a fully tested, pre-configured, hyper-converged system with simplified operations at data center and Service Provider scale. VxRack Systems support the deployment of a variety of application workloads, allowing IT to rapidly deliver new services while improving overall agility and efficiency.

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.

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, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: January 2025.

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