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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 5.9%, down 10.7% compared to last year.
FlexPod XCS, on the other hand, focuses on Converged Infrastructure, holds 12.8% mindshare, up 9.3% since last year.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerFlex5.9%
VxRail9.9%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.0%
Other75.2%
HCI
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.8%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.2%
Dell VxBlock System9.4%
Other66.6%
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

"PowerFlex allows us to scale compute and storage resources independently, which is extremely valuable for optimizing costs and right-sizing infrastructure based on workload demands, particularly in environments with variable AI and database workloads."
"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."
"The setup was very straightforward."
"Dell PowerFlex is a highly scalable solution."
"This product offers stability and easy management."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage, and it provides great scalability and reliability."
"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 haven't had any downtime in four years."
"FlexClone allows you to create copies of volumes in seconds, and without occupying physical space."
"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."
"Our footprint is lower than it used to be."
"Manual deployments of SAP workloads can take months, but with this automation that we have now, we can deploy within weeks or even hours in some cases."
"We have seen our data center rack space collapse about 90 percent, with a data center that only has two racks now out of the 20 that were there previously, and we have also reduced our manpower with the solution."
"You can add more boxes and you can have more IOPS available if you want. It's very easy to add new hardware to the cluster."
"Prior to FlexPod, we only had a physical environment; from a physical environment, we were able to work into the FlexPod where we leverage all the virtualizations, and it provides us with a lot of agility, on-demand or through orchestrations, as we deliver hundreds of servers."
 

Cons

"I think there might be some room for improvement when it comes to pricing, because although I know how to convert customers, at the end of day, it's quite expensive. Sometimes your feature architecture is still coming out much cheaper than hardware costs for your infrastructure."
"The solution is okay overall. It could be easier to learn."
"It would be great to get earlier access to beta builds because we have to develop providers on our own. The APIs and enablers for custom automation could also be improved."
"I think that stability is good for small and mid-level environments, but I don't think that it is suitable for high-end."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"The solution is not as scalable as it should be."
"Exporting data from the dashboard is not very user-friendly. It's just designed in a way that it's going to cover let's say 90%, 80%, of the end-users needs. If you need more sophisticated reporting it's not easy to have."
"The level of support needs improvement as the front-line support staff lack knowledge when we raise cases."
"My only concern is the limited integration with applications."
"The user interface isn't as friendly as I would like it to be."
"I would like to see, perhaps, an interface that's a little more intuitive than the existing one."
"It would be nice to have something like an automated, upgrade solution The tasks needed to upgrade the hardware within FlexPod are still quite behind compared to some of its other aspects. That's more on the Cisco side."
"Before the ONTAP 9 release, NetApp was cumbersome and not easy to manage."
"Stability is a big question mark. We suffered with lengthy downtime, so stability has not been fantastic."
"Product price is always a concern."
"I would like to see them reduce the complexity, that would be my number one request because. Right now, doing simple things is pretty complex. You have so many options. It might be better if it were more wizard-driven, as opposed to going through five hundred dials. It's not very easy or intuitive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"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."
"The pricing for this solution is good."
"The solution's pricing could be much cheaper and affordable."
"The cost of this solution is fair."
"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."
"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"The pricing and licensing are quite expensive. However, compared to other solutions, it is okay."
"Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year."
"The NetApp portion was a $5 million investment five years ago. That has served the customer well over five and a half years."
"Pricing and licensing is very affordable from a FlexPod perspective."
"The FlexPod licensing can adjust to your purse, i.e. there are different levels available for businesses of all sizes."
"We have seen a five to ten percent savings on new service deployments."
"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."
"I have saved time on new service deployments. I've done deployments in under a week, and if it's a cloud-based deployment, it's even faster."
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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%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
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.
907,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.