Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS comparison

The compared Dell Technologies and NetApp solutions aren't in the same category. Dell Technologies is ranked #4 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 11.2% mindshare in the category. NetApp is ranked #5 in CI , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 9.2% 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 29 Dell PowerFlex reviews

9,915 Views
9,122 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

FlexPod XCS

Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews

1,666 Views
583 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Dell PowerFlex

FlexPod XCS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 861,524 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in other categories

HCI (4th)

FlexPod XCS

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

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 11.2%, up 10.2% compared to last year.
FlexPod XCS, on the other hand, focuses on Converged Infrastructure, holds 9.2% mindshare, down 9.7% since last year.

HCI

Converged Infrastructure

Featured Reviews

Serdar De

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…

Read full review

John Kevin

Deputy IT Manager at MBBank

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"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 most valuable feature is the overall integration and just seeing the three different layers which make up the machine software. Altogether, it's something that I would say is much better than any other solution that I have experienced before."

"It was easy to deploy."

"The solution was connected to alternate storage. It provides great scalability and reliability."

"My overall product rating would be nine out of ten."

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

"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."

"Dell PowerFlex improves our latency which allowed us to reduce a lot of our Microsoft Enterprise SQL licenses."

More Dell PowerFlex pros

"The ease of set up is probably the most valuable feature for us."

"It is an easy, straightforward system to set up and maintain."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is that there is one call for support."

"I like the combination of the brands that they decided to include, in terms of its compatibility, e.g., they integrated UCS into this solution."

"Integrated support: It is all under one support contract."

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

"It makes us more lateral and faster to production."

More FlexPod XCS pros

Cons

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

"The installation is complex."

"There should be more functionality available for routing."

"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."

"The level of support needs improvement as the front-line support staff lack knowledge when we raise cases."

"The solution is okay overall. It could be easier to learn."

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

More Dell PowerFlex cons

"Since 2018 or 2019, maybe due to COVID and the chipsets, my DIMMs are dying left and right."

"I would be interested to see more integration with other applications."

"We would like them to improve the validate designs. It is hard to stay in a supported config with the software and firmware versions of the platform. It's always a concern to ensure things not only work well, but they work at all. If we run into incompatibility inside of the NetApp, Cisco, or VMware versions, it can cause real issues."

"The initial setup was complex. UCS is not the easiest thing to configure from the ground up. The networking pieces can get confusing, especially when you are talking about virtual segmentation. It is not as easy as other things now on the market, such as hyperconverged."

"I would like more support for different platforms, possibly different database platforms. I don't know if it supports Oracle today, but that would be a big improvement."

"I would like them to integrate the NVIDIA GRID into the system, so we could easily deploy certain solutions with the FlexPod."

"They should cram more space in there and find a way to compress things more; dedupe better."

"Hardware stability needs improvement. We replaced a lot of RAM this past year. We had to replace the complete blade once after extensive troubleshooting. Any given time, we have approximately one blade down within the entire infrastructure, unfortunately."

More FlexPod XCS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 cost of this solution is fair."

"The pricing for this solution is good."

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

"The product is expensive."

"The solution's price is medium."

"We have a good contact in Dell and he prepared all the information and provided everything to us."

More Dell PowerFlex pricing and cost advice

"Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year."

"We have saved 50 percent on new service deployments."

"We immediately saw a return on investment due to the fact that replacing our legacy storage arrays with the new AFFs reduced the footprint and maintenance costs. Overall, we saw an almost immediate ROI."

"Storage is very expensive. To buy MIC cards and additional storage either on-prem or in the cloud, the IT department does not have money for it, so you need a more niche product or a more flexible way to store your data. That is the benefit that you get from this product."

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

"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."

"Pricing and licensing is very affordable from a FlexPod perspective."

More FlexPod XCS pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

20%

Educational Organization

13%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

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?

The cost of this tool is reasonable.

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 40% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 14% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 9% 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

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 17% of the time

Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 15% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 15% of the time

VMware vSAN vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 10% of the time

Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 10% of the time

More FlexPod XCS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerFlex

July 2025

Download Dell PowerFlex product report

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

July 2025

Download FlexPod XCS product report

Also Known As

VxFlex, VxRack FLEX, PowerFlex

No data available

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.

Dell Technologies

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.

NetApp

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: July 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.

We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.