No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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 Manager 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."
"We have been dealing with them for some time and we are happy with the product."
"The setup was very straightforward."
"The solution has the benefits of any hyper-converged infrastructure but also has good hardware integration."
"Dell PowerFlex is a highly scalable solution."
"Our primary use case of this solution is for storage nodes and compute nodes and I like that it is all in one box."
"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."
"The program is stable."
"It’s two vendors who have a good track records, so it’s a safe bet, and it’s innovative in that it's planned and being planned."
"We have been very happy with the product."
"We got the product and we have a small environment, but it was able to be scalable to when we started to grow."
"With the innovation of the AFF A800, its ease of management, and supportability, we have seen some performance improvement with the solution."
"The solution has allowed us to reduce the overall operational overhead – once you deploy the system, you run everything as policy based so everything is very simple."
"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."
"We haven't had one UCS or NetApp hardware problem on any of the FlexPods the whole time."
"It is a very well-thought-out solution with great virtualization. A good option we have is mapping a storage LUN onto an ESX cluster. That way, in case a particular ESX is down, it can migrate (using vMotion) to another host in the cluster, resulting in high-availability."
 

Cons

"We've had some issues around the licensing. There were some issues in terms of using the VMware license."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."
"They need to work on improving the overhead for protecting the data."
"The level of support needs improvement as the front-line support staff lack knowledge when we raise cases."
"The support of containers needs to be improved. At present, it is limited to VMware. There needs to be direct communication with the hardware rather than through a hypervisor."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."
"I recommend adding some more monitoring tools."
"Perhaps the automation interface could be improved."
"It was complex to train people in with it. It was a newer technology for our resources, so it did take some time to get them up to speed."
"My only concern is the limited integration with applications."
"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."
"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."
"Parts of the initial setup were complex, especially on the networking side."
"Possibly the UCS could get a bit better. Other than that, overall I don't necessarily have any sorts of constraints or issues with it. It's done the job that it's been bought to do."
"I would be interested to see more integration with other applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing could be much cheaper and affordable."
"The cost of this solution is fair."
"We have a good contact in Dell and he prepared all the information and provided everything to us."
"From my perspective, pricing is expensive. If they can reduce the pricing or offer more customer incentives, it would attract more users."
"The solution's price is medium."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive."
"The pricing for this solution is good."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"We have seen a five to ten percent savings on new service deployments."
"The cost is a little high."
"Overall, the solution works pretty well. The biggest complaint I have from customers is the cost."
"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."
"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."
"The FlexPod licensing can adjust to your purse, i.e. there are different levels available for businesses of all sizes."
"The scalability is very expensive."
"As a whole, it is inexpensive, and it uses the least amount of parts."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.
904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
16%
Construction Company
13%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing 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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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: June 2026.
904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.