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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 overall product rating would be nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"The technical support for this solution is pretty good."
"Dell PowerFlex is a complete hyperconverge that makes automation easy to manage and extremely stable."
"It was easy to deploy."
"The solution is very scalable."
"The support team responds quickly."
"We have been dealing with them for some time and we are happy with the product."
"NetApp’s FAS system is an excellent line of product."
"In our circumstance, it fit our needs and has performed as advertised."
"We're in finance. I don't know if this solution is uniquely valuable in our industry but it works for us."
"Manual deployments of SAP workloads can take months, but with this automation that we have now, we can deploy within weeks or even hours in some cases."
"FlexPod has saved data center costs, due to the fact that we reduced our footprint for storage in a big way."
"It reduces the time required to dynamically provide applications to our end users and developers."
"It’s easy to deploy and easy to scale when you need, as it’s a proven architecture that works with tools for virtualization or a private cloud environment."
"The solution has decreased downtime incidents by close to 100% and with the resiliency built into the system, one component fails and the others still work."
 

Cons

"We've had some issues around the licensing. There were some issues in terms of using the VMware license."
"For customers with a budget, it is a ten out of ten for the product, though it becomes challenging for those with mid or low budgets since it is very costly compared to other solutions such as PowerStore."
"The solution needs to offer more documentation and educational materials."
"The solution is not as scalable as it should be."
"The tool needs to improve its storage. It should also make migration to the cloud easier."
"There should be more functionality available for routing."
"I think that stability is good for small and mid-level environments, but I don't think that it is suitable for high-end."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"On the NetApp side, there are definitely things to improve in terms of software updates."
"I would like to see easier day-zero setup. We're having to get other tools to try and set up everything."
"Unified management would be really nice, having one a single pane of glass to manage everything do with the solution."
"The solution has not reduced our data center costs. From the finance perspective, it doesn't save us money."
"They should cram more space in there and find a way to compress things more; dedupe better."
"We would like one-click upgrades."
"Both NetApp and Cisco need to do improvements in their day-to-day operations management upgrades, and they are working on it."
"I would also like to feel more support. NetApp has been pretty good, for the most part, but Cisco has more work to do."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's price is medium."
"The solution's pricing could be much cheaper and affordable."
"From my perspective, pricing is expensive. If they can reduce the pricing or offer more customer incentives, it would attract more users."
"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."
"The cost of this solution is fair."
"The price could be improved."
"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive."
"We have saved time and money for new service deployments."
"It is cheaper than other products. For example, Dell EMC VxBlock is more expensive."
"We have saved time with Snapshots, SnapMirrors, and backup and DR capabilities versus other platforms that we have looked at in the past."
"The main return on investment would be that instead of having to refresh all of our desktop hardware we have been able to go reimage existing machines and use those as thin clients, then also purchase new thin clients rather than buying actual hardware. It also reduces the overhead of having our technicians deploy those systems and maintain them."
"Pricing and licensing is very affordable from a FlexPod perspective."
"I find the licensing and pricing structure to be favorable."
"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."
"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
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
13%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
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
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