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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 12.1% compared to last year.
FlexPod XCS, on the other hand, focuses on Converged Infrastructure, holds 12.8% mindshare, up 9.3% since last year.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerFlex6.0%
VxRail10.6%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.2%
Other74.2%
HCI
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.8%
HPE ConvergedSystem10.9%
Oracle Private Cloud Appliance8.3%
Other68.0%
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

MS
System & Network Specialist at Alfaisal University
Has supported seamless integration and offers fast implementation
This needs to be checked for the most valuable features in Dell PowerFlex for data management. It is more stable, more powerful, and has more integration features. The scalability is very good and is one of the key features of Dell PowerFlex. Its flexibility and scalability are the main reasons we can use Dell PowerFlex.
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

"The solution is very scalable."
"We have been dealing with them for some time and we are happy with the product."
"It was easy to deploy."
"Dell PowerFlex is a complete hyperconverge that makes automation easy to manage and extremely stable."
"We are planning to upgrade this system in three years, but in the meantime, we are happy with VxFlex."
"Dell PowerFlex is a highly scalable 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."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"A valuable feature of the FlexPod solution is that it is all one architecture and I can call one number and get support for Cisco and NetApp without having to jump through open TAC (Technical Assistance Center) cases and do multiple things to get issues addressed."
"The real benefit of this solution is that it is pre-architected with the ability to scale-up and scale-out."
"It is enterprise storage, we have seen an 80 percent improvement in application performance."
"I like the fact that it is all integrated; that is the biggest thing, as you get everything all in one shot in one big, solid unit."
"FlexPod's unified support for the entire stack is very important. Before, the customers would log a ticket by Cisco and a ticket by NetApp. It's better when vendors can parter and look for a solution together."
"The nice thing about NetApp is the ease of administration. We have a new storage admin who did not do storage at all, and he has fallen right in with it. There are no real issues."
"I run all the critical applications for the university on my FlexPod solution; it needs to be up 24/7, 365, I don't need "five nines," I need "eight nines" - and it stays up."
"It is innovative because it's bare metal and you can customize it easily. This brings a lot of benefits to the solution."
 

Cons

"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"Licensing restrictions can be frustrating."
"We're also running Hyper-V virtual machines. But we recently discovered that migration of the Hyper-V virtual machines is a bit challenging. Maybe if Dell EMC can come out with a tool that will make it very easy for us to migrate the Microsoft Hyper-V machine, that may be an improvement."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."
"The solution is not as scalable as it should be."
"They need to work on improving the overhead for protecting the data."
"We're also running Hyper-V virtual machines. But we recently discovered that migration of the Hyper-V virtual machines is a bit challenging."
"We would like something like a FlexPod Express; we want a smaller version for small offices."
"On the UCS side, sometimes it is difficult to set up."
"One of the things that I've wanted would be availability of a health status, similar to Active IQ from my converged platform, on an app. I have dashboards so I can see the health of the system when I'm in the office, but when I'm not in the office I can't."
"The FlexPod service and support could be improved."
"There are apparently some new products coming around the whole FlexPod side of things with regards to auditing, to ensure everything is configured correctly."
"I would like to see if it could come down in price a little bit."
"I would like to see improvements in the documentation. I understanding how things are coming together and a lot of that is from the UCS side."
"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

"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"The solution's pricing could be much cheaper and affordable."
"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."
"The price could be improved."
"The product is expensive."
"We have a good contact in Dell and he prepared all the information and provided everything to us."
"The solution's price is medium."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive."
"Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year."
"We would like everything in one piece of hardware. This way we can just sell the product like a silo by putting everything in a stack together."
"Make sure that you engage as much with whom you are buying from as a partnership, not just as a purchase."
"Everything is purchased, so we do not do any leasing with this product."
"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."
"Sometimes you may end up spending a little more to get it in the first place, but you gain it back in terms of infrastructure upgrade costs and troubleshooting costs. The solution also lasts a surprisingly long time."
"We have reduced our manpower with the solution."
"The NetApp portion was a $5 million investment five years ago. That has served the customer well over five and a half years."
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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%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Marketing Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise15
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, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.