Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS comparison

The compared Dell Technologies and NetApp solutions aren't in the same category. Dell Technologies is ranked #5 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 12.6% mindshare in the category. NetApp is ranked #6 in CI , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 9.4% 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 27 Dell PowerFlex reviews

10,404 Views
6,669 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

FlexPod XCS

Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews

500 Views
228 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Dell PowerFlex

FlexPod XCS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

March 2025

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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

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

HCI (5th)

FlexPod XCS

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

295

Ranking in other categories

Converged Infrastructure (6th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. Dell PowerFlex is designed for HCI and holds a mindshare of 12.6%, up 8.7% compared to last year.
FlexPod XCS, on the other hand, focuses on Converged Infrastructure, holds 9.4% mindshare, down 9.6% 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…

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Chris Haight

Sr. Solutions Architect at CDW Canada Inc.

Integrates everything so you are using fewer tools

The traditional UCS Blades do not take much storage internally. You would be challenged to create an HCI (Hype converged Infrastructure) solution on FlexPod / UCS or any other solution that pools internal storage. Now, with UCS X-Series, you can carve off an HCI solution, software defined pooled solution if you want. This was one area of improvement that I wanted to see and can now realize with the refresh of the Cisco UCS infrastructure. With modern modular infrastructure, RESTful API has been added, there are more integrations, ServiceNow and vCenter along with tighter plug-ins. There is cross-user interface launching, for example with Windows Admin Center. The solutions are using Ansible and Terraform for deploying infrastructure as code. All the improvements that I wanted from the last gen are here or coming. With modern workloads and GPU use on the rise, adding GPUs to modern modular infrastructure will have some pros and cons. Typically, you can add one or two GPU's to a blade with no or little trade off. With the UCS X-Series, if you are doing a GPU farm, then you may have to sacrifice compute blades in the front slots to put in a GPU tray / module. A chassis holds eight compute blades, but if you are adding a ton of GPUs, a single GPU tray or more will reduce your blade count by as many GPU trays you add. This is not just a Cisco UCS X-Series problem. It is an industry problem with modular infrastructure and one that I would like to see get solved! I am looking into one such solution, VMware BITFUSION where you can send CUDA requests over the network to a BITFUSION server with the results sent back to the requestor, early stages here and only scratched the surface thus far. With Cisco UCS X-Series, I would like to see the fabric interconnects built into the chassis instead of being external. With the fabric interconnects, the real footprint of UCS X-Series is 9U, where some of the competing solutions are 7U and have collapsed the network fabric into the chassis. This is another thing that I would like to see from Cisco, though, not really on the NetApp side of the fence, NetApp is solid storage.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 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."

"Saves us a lot of space in the data center."

"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."

"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."

"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."

"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."

"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."

More Dell PowerFlex pros

"The most valuable feature is the one call number for support and the fact that all the documentation comes with it. They have all of the preprepared plans for the deployment model and we can just choose which one we want for VMware, etc. The hardware is all listed. We buy that and away we go. It's called validated design."

"I live by the Validated Designs. I do exactly what those designs say and I haven't had a problem as a result. For example, they used to do the FCoE. They figured out there was a problem and they went over to the NFS. I moved over and I agreed with them. It worked better."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the flexibility in configuration and the setup."

"It is easy to add-on to the tool. If we need to add a new switch, a new server, or a new chassis for Blades, it is easy. It is not disruptive. You just do it."

"The most valuable feature for me is that you can swap out pieces when you have to lifecycle your equipment."

"The storage efficiency and performance are valuable."

"The solution was simple to deploy."

"It simplifies everything. It gives you a single place to go if you need support or if you need to expand."

More FlexPod XCS pros

Cons

"They should provide continuous support for data migration."

"Needs some more monitoring tools."

"The tool needs to improve its storage. It should also make migration to the cloud easier."

"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."

"We are still hoping for better ways to incorporate AI. We have to extend third-party access to PowerFlex by calling the API. It would be easier if the product had built-in AI integration. If PowerFlex can contribute more to AI, it would be more useful."

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

"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."

"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."

More Dell PowerFlex cons

"Updates are not frequent enough."

"There are too many management products: System Insight Manager, Oakum, etc. There are a lot of them and you have to know which one to use at which time. Whereas, with competitors, they have a single pane of glass view which has everything in it."

"I'd like to see a little more on the provisioning and the replication piece... Also, I don't want to say analytics are lacking but I'd like to see more analytics."

"As we do much of the Tier-I support ourselves, and thus don't normally need it, there is time wasted in moving up to the next level."

"For the next release, because I know that we are using Pure Storage, what I want to see is the GUI interfaces on this UCS monitor."

"It is not as easy as a hyperconverged solution, but you are going to have a hard time finding that anywhere, where you can just plugin and run a deployment app."

"We don't see the much DR capability within the FlexPod so for that, we have to maintain our own DR capability with DSRM."

"We have had some problems with SnapSuite and the replication functionality."

More FlexPod XCS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

"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."

"The solution's price is medium."

"The product is expensive."

"The price could be improved."

"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."

More Dell PowerFlex pricing and cost advice

"We pay approximately $1,400 USD in total for between five-thousand and ten-thousand ports."

"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."

"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."

"The scalability is very good. I wish it was a more cost-effective, but you get what you pay for."

"We can just swap in new equipment or hardware as we need, which has probably saved us several weeks."

"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."

"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."

More FlexPod XCS pricing and cost advice

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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

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

20%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Educational Organization

11%

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?

I don't know the cost of PowerFlex. I understand it 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 45% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 14% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 1% of the time

More Dell PowerFlex Competitors

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 11% of the time

Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 10% of the time

Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 10% of the time

VMware vSAN vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 9% of the time

More FlexPod XCS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerFlex

April 2025

Download Dell PowerFlex product report

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

April 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: March 2025.

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