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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

"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."
"The API catalog helps us use Ansible automation."
"The support is highly responsive."
"The tool's most valuable features are its price and flexibility. It has high performance."
"Dell PowerFlex is a complete hyperconverge that makes automation easy to manage and extremely stable."
"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."
"The solution is very scalable."
"The technical support for this solution is pretty good."
"The most valuable feature is that it is all-in-one, and it is easy to get support on it."
"When our clients choose to call NetApp or Cisco directly, the cooperative support model means they can get passed back and forth between the two organizations freely. It works really well."
"It has also improved application performance by around 50%."
"All-flash storage and low latency I/O enhance performance."
"Flexpod helped us reduce the time required to deploy new applications by about 60%, and it has also reduced data centered costs, with maybe a 40% saving, which is significant."
"NetApp’s FAS system is an excellent line of product."
"Once the initial setup’s completed, it's very steady and continues to run great."
"You can just take out blades and replace them, and you're back up and running in no time."
 

Cons

"The initial deployment was complicated and required a lot of data nodes, IPs, internal vLANs, data vLANs, and many other things."
"In terms of improvements, I think it would help to have easier access to the cost of installing VxRack infrastructure."
"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."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."
"The tool is a bit difficult to configure, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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 level of support needs improvement as the front-line support staff lack knowledge when we raise cases."
"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."
"They should have an easier user interface to get it up and running."
"They just announced that they are going to move it along with Intersight from Cisco. That can be a private or public cloud, which is one of the areas where it can grow more and has a lot of potential."
"In a perfect world, I would also love to be able to manage everything from a single pane of glass."
"The ability to manage the templates across sites. We would like to easily take out the configuration of one FlexPod and copy it over, just making minor changes. There is a way to do it, but it's clumsy."
"The only thing that comes to mind is more hooks in the Citrix side for working with Citrix more interactively."
"There are apparently some new products coming around the whole FlexPod side of things with regards to auditing, to ensure everything is configured correctly. It's basically a "delta" if there have been any changes. It's important to us, from a support perspective, to know if there have been changes and what impact they have actually had."
"There was a little mixup with, at least NetApp, coming to the market with flash. They've slowly gained ground in that marketplace; I’m waiting to see how that plays out."
"A unified interface for all the components would be a great start."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a good contact in Dell and he prepared all the information and provided everything to us."
"The product is expensive."
"The price could be improved."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The pricing for this solution is good."
"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."
"The cost of this solution is fair."
"The scalability is very good. I wish it was a more cost-effective, but you get what you pay for."
"As a startup, for the amount of budget we have and the amount we spend, we are getting what we expected."
"We have saved time and money for new service deployments."
"The total cost of ownership with this solution is good."
"Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year."
"Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year."
"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."
"If your company really needs to be up 100% of the time, and you need to do a private data center, I don't know if I could realistically actually recommend another blueprint."
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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
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, StarWind and others in HCI. Updated: November 2026.
921,338 professionals have used our research since 2012.