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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

"The solution is scalable."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the storage space it offers."
"Dell PowerFlex is a complete hyperconverge that makes automation easy to manage and extremely stable."
"The solution has the benefits of any hyper-converged infrastructure but also has good hardware integration."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"All of the features are useful, and we found that the issue we were having in our previous environment, which was high latency on the storage, we are not experiencing anymore because the high IOPS on the storage are very good for us."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"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."
"In almost five years of operation, we have never had a single hour of downtime that was directly related to a storage problem."
"Our previous solution used to take 24 hours and now we're down to seven hours. It has really good performance."
"FlexPod's validated designs for major enterprise apps in our company are important because there is stability, there are zero downtimes and high availability, and there is good support for the systems that you can run on the platform."
"Software flexibility. Everything is fully configurable."
"Our experience using this tool is that we have been very happy with it for over six years."
"For the management side of our UCS, it is a single pane of glass for multiple people, whether it is data center, sysadmin, or server deployment."
"The most valuable features are the CVDs and the support behind it from both companies."
"Things got a lot faster. We can pull and test in DEV systems much more rapidly and are clearing up a lot of DBA time. In the past, every time we tested it, we needed to be refreshed. In the past, it would take a day of our DBA's time, and now it's just point, click, and ten minutes later it's done."
 

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."
"The solution must be more flexible."
"I recommend adding some more monitoring tools."
"The tool is a bit difficult to configure, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"When we are positioning against a cheaper solution it's really difficult to sell NetApp to our small customers, so it's really difficult to position."
"There have been issues upgrading the firmware."
"I would like to see improvements in the documentation."
"The thing that stops us from jumping in more is that we are resource constrained; I have to piecemeal what we have, and I can’t stop using something because it’s old."
"Sometimes, it can take awhile for support cases to get to the right people, especially if it's not a P1 case."
"This is where I have seen it get a bit distorted."
"Our environment does not always require this solution, so we are not reaping the optimal ROI."
"In the config advisor tool, it could be more specific in pointing out or letting you know what to fix when it confronts issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"The product is expensive."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive."
"From my perspective, pricing is expensive. If they can reduce the pricing or offer more customer incentives, it would attract more users."
"The solution's price is medium."
"The total cost of ownership with this solution is good."
"We pay approximately $1,400 USD in total for between five-thousand and ten-thousand ports."
"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."
"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."
"It's expensive, but when you pay for enterprise support and enterprise products, you have to pay the big bucks."
"The scalability is very good. I wish it was a more cost-effective, but you get what you pay for."
"We definitely saw a lot of operational cost savings using FlexPod. As far as capital outlay goes, that was a little bit too much for us to swallow and we weren't able to recognize enough savings in that area to afford it."
"It is cost-effective."
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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%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
13%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing 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: July 2026.
906,960 professionals have used our research since 2012.