Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS comparison

Dell Technologies and NetApp are both solutions in the Converged Infrastructure category. Dell Technologies is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.7, while NetApp is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.4. Dell Technologies holds a 12.4% mindshare in CI, compared to NetApp’s 9.4% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Dell VxBlock System

Read 14 Dell VxBlock System reviews

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364 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

FlexPod XCS

Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews

500 Views
228 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Dell VxBlock System

FlexPod XCS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

FlexPod XCS and Dell VxBlock System are leading solutions in the integrated IT infrastructure market, known for simplifying IT management. FlexPod XCS is favored for its holistic support model that unifies NetApp, Cisco, and VMware, reducing troubleshooting complexity. Dell VxBlock's edge is its performance capabilities and scalability, suitable for substantial enterprise requirements.

Features: FlexPod XCS offers seamless integration with a pre-tested, certified design that ensures compatibility and reduces integration challenges. Its unified support model across major vendors minimizes troubleshooting downtime. Dell VxBlock System is recognized for its high performance, consolidated architecture, and ability to scale easily, supporting enterprises with varied compute, storage, and networking demands.

Room for Improvement: FlexPod XCS could improve by developing a unified management interface and streamlining vendor certifications for enhanced reporting features and customer clarity. Dell VxBlock System could be more flexible with third-party applications and simplify management interfaces while improving its cross-vendor support coordination.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FlexPod XCS supports both on-premises and hybrid cloud deployments, aided by its collaboration with Cisco and NetApp, offering superior customer service through a unified support model. Dell VxBlock focuses on strong on-premises deployment with a single-console management approach, though it could be more intuitive for some users.

Pricing and ROI: Both FlexPod XCS and Dell VxBlock are considered significant financial investments. FlexPod's high upfront costs are offset by long-term savings due to improved efficiency and scalability, while Dell VxBlock's competitive pricing is balanced by its advanced functionalities, offering substantial ROI depending on enterprise-scale deployments.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell VxBlock System vs. FlexPod XCS Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell VxBlock System vs. FlexPod XCS

April 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 VxBlock System

Ranking in Converged Infrastructure

4th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

FlexPod XCS

Ranking in Converged Infrastructure

6th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

295

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Dell VxBlock System is 12.4%, down from 18.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FlexPod XCS is 9.4%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Converged Infrastructure

Featured Reviews

AKINJIDE OKE

Senior Sales Engineer / Team Lead Datacentre Solutions & Applications at ARIT OF AFRICA

Useful for virtualized environment, node management, configuration deployment, and system management with artificial intelligence

I've worked with Dell and had the privilege of working with many OEMs. I started my career as a system engineer, working with HPE as a partner, and then moved to other OEMs like IBM and Lenovo. Currently, I work with a small team. I don't believe any solution is bad. It's just that you might not have identified what the solution is addressing. It's about choosing the right solution for your needs. In terms of hardware or infrastructure, it's an Intel platform. What differentiates everyone is the additional value they can provide. Dell has many values that meet customer needs. I look at the customer's objectives and requirements as an IT professional to find the best solution. I haven't seen any drawbacks regarding the infrastructure deliverables or the value built into the tool. However, Dell as an organization could improve its channel management. For example, we've been trying to resolve an issue with our portal for two weeks. I'd like to see more simplification regarding integration, deployment, and connectivity for future releases. In deployment, I'd like to see simplification in creating VNets and positioning VMware across nodes. I want a template that simplifies the creation of VNets and VMware positioning. I'd push for more simplification and an intuitive graphical GUI that simplifies things with just a click.

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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

"Good flexibility and speed."

"Good default features."

"In comparison to traditional file load systems, Dell VxBlock System can be deployed quickly and results in monthly cost savings."

"With a converged infrastructure, it's easy to troubleshoot from network to server issues from a single point of reference."

"It's a highly optimized piece of equipment that doesn't give us any problems."

"Integration with VMware and VMotion definitely brings a lot of value."

"Its performance is very good."

"Everything is delivered to me in a single box, which simplifies management."

More Dell VxBlock System pros

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

"The solution has decreased the unplanned downtime incidents in our organization by 25 to 30 percent."

"We’ve seen an improvement in application performance."

"Performance-wise, it is actually doing quite well. The end users are very happy with it."

"It is innovative when it comes to compute, storage, and networking, because there are a lot of the storage efficiencies which allow us to keep a smaller footprint."

"FlexPod’s prevalidated architectures are very important to our organization... Especially in healthcare, it is absolutely critical that we have a validated performance platform. It has to work every time."

"You can add more boxes and you can have more IOPS available if you want. It's very easy to add new hardware to the cluster."

"Our previous solution used to take 24 hours and now we're down to seven hours. It has really good performance."

More FlexPod XCS pros

Cons

"The hardware lifecycle is not documented very well. For example, now you can buy a piece of equipment, but you don't know if the hardware is going to be a team production next month or next year."

"The consistency of disc quality could be improved."

"There is a need for single console management."

"We are finding it a bit challenging in terms of the management of a specific VxBlock component. Currently, we have different units as a part of the block storage. We have one for Cisco equipment and one for Dell. When we have an issue in the infrastructure, Dell EMC VxBlock System should automatically detect it and send a notification to VC support, but, unfortunately, it is doing that only for one unit. It is not working for Cisco components. We have informed them about this area of improvement, and they are working on this. The way different parts are integrated should be improved. We should have one console to log in to see all the infrastructure in terms of each machine and hardware."

"I'd like to see more simplification regarding integration, deployment, and connectivity for future releases. In deployment, I'd like to see simplification in creating VNets and positioning VMware across nodes. I want a template that simplifies the creation of VNets and VMware positioning. I'd push for more simplification and an intuitive graphical GUI that simplifies things with just a click."

"There are components of VxBlock that are not managed or supported by Dell because some of the components are from Cisco. Thus, when there are problems with compute nodes, though Dell was managing the interaction, we had to rely on Cisco to solve the issue. When Cisco was not responding as quickly as Dell would for their components, it made it difficult for us because we needed to have the failed nodes back up and running. As such, the disparate ownership of components in the equipment is an issue."

"The only thing that I can say is when you procure the VxBlock, obviously you have to complete detailed questionnaires about your architecture including the configuration, et cetera. If you make a mistake on the implementation, then you need to rebuild the entire VxBlock. That is just a point of consideration rather than a flaw. You need to be absolutely sure and validate the upfront configuration information that you provide because your VxBlock comes delivered and built, according to that exact information."

"It is a good product, but for us, it is like a black box. We are not really sure about its internal components, and how to do the terminal upgrade, and how to make sure about the security of the device. We understand how it works, but in order to do the upgrades, we have to get help from the company. We cannot do it ourselves. In another model that we had, the internal team could do the upgrade but not in this one. There is no clear process for a new upgrade or update. They should provide a software intelligence tool that has a dashboard where you can see the current firmware, the latest firmware, and the documentation and the process for the upgrade. For VxBlock, we have different management consoles. There is no single management console that you can use to manage all components inside VxBlock. Their scale up and scale out process is also not clear. Their support is also a little bit slow in responding to the cases."

More Dell VxBlock System cons

"I would like to see increased performance."

"They could improve their technical support team. They need to have a specific phone number for you to call in for the FlexPod solution. Some of the partner support knows if it is for FlexPod, they will get you to the right department."

"I would like to see them reduce the complexity, that would be my number one request because. Right now, doing simple things is pretty complex. You have so many options. It might be better if it were more wizard-driven, as opposed to going through five hundred dials. It's not very easy or intuitive."

"I would like to see the following: Support for multiple vendors' hardware; support for SAN with Cisco 9000 switches; automated deployment and configuration with respect to CVD."

"I would like to see more cloud-centric modules that are specific to applications and more software-based solutions. That's all that is missing."

"FlexPods can include the new networking and new virtualization of storage and data center interconnectivity with the networking side of it. They can evolve and grow by connecting pods together."

"There is always room for improvement. I believe we can do hot swaps on the fly. On the release upgrades, if there was a way to do a release on the fly, that would really be cool because it does take some downtime. It takes restarting. It is more of a software thing. Customers hate doing releases."

"We have had bugs which have been released, even though they have been minor."

More FlexPod XCS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We purchased this solution with a ten-year manufacturer warranty, and we have a three-year warranty with our local partner."

"Its price is high. That's why people are now moving to hyper-converge."

"Compared to other solutions, Dell VxBlock System is more expensive."

"We have seen a five to ten percent savings on new service deployments."

"The scalability is very expensive."

"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."

"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."

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

"We have seen our data center rack space collapse about 90 percent. We have a data center which only has two racks now out of the 20 that were there previously."

"It is expensive. My company is small. When you look at the price point, this is a big thing for us to invest in."

"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."

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

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

21%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Educational Organization

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell EMC VxBlock System?

With a converged infrastructure, it's easy to troubleshoot from network to server issues from a single point of reference.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC VxBlock System?

The cost is not overly expensive but not cheap either. Considering the features and everything, it is very good. Price-wise, it is reasonable but not the least expensive option.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell EMC VxBlock System?

There is a need for single console management. Everything should be accessible through a single console to ensure ease of management. So far, there are no issues since the storage and other systems...

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

Dell PowerFlex vs Dell VxBlock System

Compared 35% of the time

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance vs Dell VxBlock System

Compared 19% of the time

Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs Dell VxBlock System

Compared 15% of the time

Dell Vscale Architecture vs Dell VxBlock System

Compared 14% of the time

More Dell VxBlock System Competitors

Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 27% of the time

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 11% 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 VxBlock System

April 2025

Download Dell VxBlock System product report

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

April 2025

Download FlexPod XCS product report

Also Known As

VxBlock, VCE VxBlock System, Dell EMC VxBlock, VxBlock 1000

No data available

Overview

VxBlock and Vblock Systems simplify all aspects of IT and enable organizations to achieve better business outcomes faster. Seamlessly integrating enterprise-class compute, network, storage and virtualization technologies from industry leaders Cisco, Dell EMC, and VMware, VxBlock and Vblock Systems, powered by Intel Xeon processors, deliver the world's most advanced converged infrastructure: engineered, manufactured, managed, supported and sustained as one, allowing you to focus on your business.

The Dell EMC Converged Systems portfolio offers choice, flexibility, and reliability for accelerating IT transformation - VxBlock System offers additional levels of flexibility with a choice of network virtualization from VMware NSX or Cisco ACI.

Dell EMC VxBlock System Will Help You:

Protect and consolidate your high-value workloads
Deliver cloud operations faster
Simplify life cycle management
Simplify operations
Modernize IT
Protect critical business data

With Dell EMC VxBlock System You Can:

Automate key processes
Move to a VMware-based private or hybrid cloud model
Gain ongoing validation for technologies across the stack
Mix and match SAN/LAN switches, different storage arrays, blade and rack servers, and more
Reduce patching and upgrade efforts using a turnkey system

Dell EMC VxBlock System Features:

Native data protection: Dell EMC’s data protection suite includes backup and recovery, centralized management, and replication.
Cisco C-Series servers: Dell EMC VxBlock System is now integrated with Cisco UCS C-Series rack servers, including the C220 and C240 in the M4 and M5 server lines.
Server scalability boost: You can increase server scalability by approximately 56%.
Storage mix: Dell EMC’s VxBlock System gives you the ability to mix four different types of storage arrays (Unity, VMAX, XtremIO, Isilon). It also includes multiple all-flash storage options (Unity 350F, 350F, 550F, 650F), and more.
Data center efficiency: The solution simplifies lifecycle assurance - which reduces time spent managing upgrades - and it can also reduce rack space and lower power costs.
Simpler RCM compliance: You will have simpler RCM compliance and your upgrades will feature an RCM dashboard showing the release level status of all components; You will also have access to RCM compliance score, RCM summary and detail reports, and RCM pre-positioning.
Deep CI context KPI metrics This feature includes capacity reporting and performance analytics with historical perspective.
Advanced, real-time CI-level alerting Dell EMC VxBlock System’s alerting feature includes operational state alerts, performance alerts, call home alerts, custom alerts and alert forwarding.

Dell EMC VxBlock System Benefits:

Manage more efficiently
Reduce operational risk
Simplify upgrades and assure compliance
Focus more on added-value projects
Be more agile
Reduce OPEX
Proactively manage workload health
Improve capacity planning
Resolve incidents and problems faster

Reviews from Real Users:

“It's a highly optimized piece of equipment that doesn't give us any problems." - Architect at a manufacturing company

"It's at least 99 percent problem-free because it's factory-built. So from an informational point of view, everyone trusts that VxBlock has been tested well at the factory and has been configured to their requirements.” - General Manager, Enterprise Technical Solution at a tech services company

"The monitoring and management parts are the most valuable. Monitoring is specifically valuable because you have one console to monitor everything. This console is called Vision.” - Data center Manager at a financial services firm

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

Atos, Canadian Pacific, IDS, City of Denton, CenturyLink, BNP Paribas, Asyaport, EDF, CSC, Fox Sports, Insight, Hunter, KPIT, Paetec, Rosetta Stone, Sonda, Switch, Xerox

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group

Buyer's Guide

Dell VxBlock System vs. FlexPod XCS

April 2025

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