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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 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

"Dell PowerFlex is a one-stop-shop solution. Storage, compute, network, application monitoring, and support cases are all combined into one solution. It's very easy to administer compared to when you have a reference architecture where you need to design and build everything yourself. You would also then have to work with multiple vendors."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage, and it provides great scalability and reliability."
"The resiliency and data protection are the most valuable features."
"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."
"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."
"It is more stable, more powerful, and has more integration features."
"The solution has the benefits of any hyper-converged infrastructure but also has good hardware integration."
"The API catalog helps us use Ansible automation."
"I see the most value in the UCS portion. I love Cisco UCS."
"The ease of expansion is the most valuable feature."
"The product is uniquely valuable because we were able to get everything up and running very quickly without having to consult with multiple teams across the IT infrastructure."
"If you have a passion for trying to create a better datacenter or if you have a passion for learning new things, FlexPod is the way to go."
"It has been a great product, primarily because of a lot of its deduplication features, and the out-of-the-box thinking on block level storage from NetApp, in particular."
"It is one of the best unified computing architectures out there, and is highly scalable."
"Finally, we have easily seen a 100 percent improvement in application performance over our previous platform."
"Our good luck with NetApp made the decision for us when it was time for a refresh."
 

Cons

"They need to work on improving the overhead for protecting the data."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"The solution’s automation and pricing could be improved."
"The solution is not as scalable as it should be."
"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 recommend adding some more monitoring tools."
"I think that stability is good for small and mid-level environments, but I don't think that it is suitable for high-end."
"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"A progress bar would...be pretty cool."
"The service catalogue and gallery. I find it difficult to go through documentation, and I would like to see user cases we can refer to."
"We have experienced issues with patching. When there are Cisco releases, there are some vulnerabilities, i.e., security vulnerabilities. We are as a financial company and need to be on top patching. As a company, we cannot have continuous downtime to do patching, which is a challenge that we have faced."
"There are certain things that are just hard to do on a physical infrastructure, like for instance you need to make petabytes of data available at high speed."
"The management interface of the UCS part of it is a little bit clunky. It uses Java, so when we're managing it, if I have a computer that doesn't have Java on it or has the wrong version of Java on it, there's some iterations that have to happen to get into the manager of it."
"I think that a unified dashboard would be beneficial across all three of the components to show you the status of all three components."
"This is where I have seen it get a bit distorted."
"We have had a few stability issues with some major bugs with it, with ONTAP. We had a particularly nasty bug with one of the QLogic CNA cards, which actually took, probably, seven months to resolve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive."
"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."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The solution's price is medium."
"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"The product is expensive."
"We purchased the solution through CDW. They are a partner and knowledgeable."
"It is not cheap, but there is a return on investment in time saved and efficiency."
"We have seen an 80 percent improvement in application performance."
"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."
"It is expensive. My company is small. When you look at the price point, this is a big thing for us to invest in."
"The investment has been great. We put our money into it and it has given us something that we have been able to rely on for years."
"We have saved 50 percent on new service deployments."
"Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year."
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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
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...
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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: June 2026.
904,146 professionals have used our research since 2012.