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 8.5, and holds a 12.9% mindshare in the category. NetApp is ranked #5 in CI , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 8.5% 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

11,148 Views
7,080 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

FlexPod XCS

Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews

516 Views
261 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: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

February 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 (5th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. Dell PowerFlex is designed for HCI and holds a mindshare of 12.9%, up 7.9% compared to last year.
FlexPod XCS, on the other hand, focuses on Converged Infrastructure, holds 8.5% mindshare, down 10.3% 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 solution is scalable."

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

"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 support team responds quickly."

"The solution's most valuable feature is the storage space it offers."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."

"The support is highly responsive."

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

More Dell PowerFlex pros

"The agility is probably the most valuable feature for us. It's very easy to send out resources."

"For FlexPod, it is always trustworthy. I had previously never seen flex machines from other brands or associated with other products. FlexPod is a large investment and they are good enough to support it."

"It scales well. It allows us to have very flexible architecture but to have the same level of simplicity that we'd normally expect in hyper-converged environments."

"Our performance increase has been about 15 percent from what we previously used."

"I see the most value in the UCS portion. I love Cisco UCS."

"It provides ease of automation."

"We have seen a 20 percent improvement in application performance."

"Large and small companies do not have time to design the compute, the amount of storage, and how it works together. They are buying pre-proven, pretested solutions with reference architectures already in place."

More FlexPod XCS pros

Cons

"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."

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

"They need to work on improving the overhead for protecting the data."

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

"The tool is a bit difficult to configure, making it an area where improvements are required."

"There should be more functionality available for routing."

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

"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."

More Dell PowerFlex cons

"We would like more security features."

"The cost may be high compared to other solutions."

"Setting up a Cisco USC environment can be complex."

"The upgrades should be improved. We would like to have the ability to do unified upgrades of the whole infrastructure from beginning to end."

"We would like FlexPod to have more power, though it is not lacking in power now."

"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 graphical interface could be made easier to use and more intuitive."

"We use technical support from time to time. Most of the time if we really need assistance we end up having to get above the tier one support. We're able to do a lot of the tier one troubleshooting on our own."

More FlexPod XCS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two 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 solution's price is medium."

"The solution's pricing could be much cheaper and affordable."

"The price could be improved."

"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 have reduced our manpower with the solution."

"The product's pricing is high and I would rate it a nine out of ten."

"We purchased FlexPod though Datalink."

"The pricing and licensing are quite expensive. However, compared to other solutions, it is okay."

"In terms of the cost, the last bill I saw was about $3.5 million, from the latest contract. That might have been for a five-year contract."

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

"As a startup, for the amount of budget we have and the amount we spend, we are getting what we expected."

"Overall, the solution works pretty well. The biggest complaint I have from customers is the cost."

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%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

20%

Computer Software Company

12%

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?

From my perspective, pricing is expensive. If they can reduce the pricing or offer more customer incentives, it would attract more users.

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 47% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 15% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs Dell PowerFlex

Compared 1% of the time

More Dell PowerFlex Competitors

Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 11% of the time

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance 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

VxRail vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 9% of the time

More FlexPod XCS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerFlex

February 2025

Download Dell PowerFlex product report

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

February 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: February 2025.

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