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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 5.8%, down 10.0% compared to last year.
FlexPod XCS, on the other hand, focuses on Converged Infrastructure, holds 12.7% mindshare, up 10.0% since last year.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerFlex5.8%
VxRail9.6%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)8.9%
Other75.7%
HCI
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.7%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.1%
Dell VxBlock System9.8%
Other66.4%
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

"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."
"We have been dealing with them for some time and we are happy with the product."
"All of the features are useful, and we found that the issue we were having in our previous environment, which was high latency on the storage, we are not experiencing anymore because the high IOPS on the storage are very good for us."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the storage space it offers."
"It was easy to deploy."
"The solution saves a lot of space in the data center and that is a key advantage for us."
"My overall product rating would be nine out of ten."
"The most valuable features are that the solution is vetted and validated and it's supported end-to-end."
"For the management side of our UCS, it is a single pane of glass for multiple people, whether it is data center, sysadmin, or server deployment."
"I would say that the interoperability matrix tool (IMT) is the most valuable feature as it helps us define versions and components we use in our configurations."
"The capacity to grow at a very rapid pace at a quarter of the cost in terms of physical hardware and staffing -- just put up rack, deploy FlexPod, and it’s up and running."
"The most valuable features are reliability and the ability to give our end-users a reliable system with the performance, the IOPS, and the latency that they want."
"Our previous solution used to take 24 hours and now we're down to seven hours. It has really good performance."
"The biggest lesson that I have learned from this solution is the ease of actually setting it up and learning it."
"The ability to converge a lot of different data and platforms into a single common platform, then scale horizontally and vertically."
 

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 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."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution. The product really needs better and more support."
"The solution is not as scalable as it should be."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."
"The level of support needs improvement as the front-line support staff lack knowledge when we raise cases."
"I had one problem at the site where I had an aggregate that would not shrink after I had deleted some stuff. It took a few tries to get the right guy on the call. We do have a NetApp SAM with our company, and it really took getting to him to get the solution fixed."
"We don't have the need or the capital for an all-flash cache, so we got a hybrid one that's limited to how many flash caches you can have on there."
"I think that a unified dashboard would be beneficial across all three of the components to show you the status of all three components."
"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."
"The downside is that the administration is a little bit complex."
"It is overkill for our environment."
"NetApp is a bit more complicated to set up than everything else."
"FlexPod XCS needs to improve its pricing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of this solution is fair."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive."
"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"The price could be improved."
"The solution's pricing could be much cheaper and affordable."
"We have a good contact in Dell and he prepared all the information and provided everything to us."
"The pricing for this solution is good."
"The product is expensive."
"We pay approximately $1,400 USD in total for between five-thousand and ten-thousand ports."
"As a startup, for the amount of budget we have and the amount we spend, we are getting what we expected."
"It seems very cost effective once it's in place, and it's easy to expand and easy to add capacity without a lot of extra money."
"Overall, the solution works pretty well. The biggest complaint I have from customers is the cost."
"We have saved time and money for new service deployments. Without FlexPod, it probably takes about ten hours. With FlexPod, within two hours, we are up and running. So, we have seen about an 80 percent time decrease."
"We have seen a five to ten percent savings on new service deployments."
"The solution has saved our customers' organization in terms of CapEx. E.g., with the cloud availability, it's turned into sort of a hybrid CapEx/OpEx model."
"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
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
 

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 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: August 2026.
912,753 professionals have used our research since 2012.