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FlexPod XCS vs HPE ConvergedSystem comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

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

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
HPE ConvergedSystem
Ranking in Converged Infrastructure
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure for SAP HANA (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of FlexPod XCS is 9.4%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE ConvergedSystem is 19.5%, up from 16.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

Chris Haight - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Fatai Akinwande - PeerSpot reviewer
Has the ability to easily scale resources and redistribute workloads across multiple hosts
HPE ConvergedSystem could be enhanced by improving the built-in backup solution, as the current one fell short of our needs and led us to opt for third-party tools like Veeam. Additionally, addressing challenges related to remote copy functionality, especially in low-bandwidth conditions, would significantly improve the overall usability and effectiveness of HPE solutions in our setup.

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 ability to integrate different products into one validated design. That allows customers to understand and get the value out of the hardware, as it was designed."
"It has been very stable. There has been no downtime."
"It is the overall collaboration between NetApp and Cisco to come up with a product that is best in class and best in breed. You are bringing together the best things about UCS and NetApp, as well as you are tying it together with the Nexus fabric."
"Validate designs are a good. They work in the background to combine all the infrastructure and storage. They create automation which can create volumes and attach VMs directly to massive CIFS."
"I have found the platform to be resilient, mainly because all the hardware is fault-tolerant. It has built-in HA, so if one of the components goes down, you're covered by the platform itself."
"It allowed us to scale out as our business grew without any issues."
"We initially started out with siloed clusters and now we've been able to cluster everything together so that we have multiple nodes in our clusters. We have multiples on different data in different data centers. We've able to do replication between data centers. That's been very beneficial for us as we look to derive a mature DR model."
"This solution has given us a great deal of on-site storage that we didn't have before."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to restore lost machines. Essentially its high availability capabilities are extremely valuable to us."
"The solution's technical support was good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"We find the deduplication and compression features to be most valuable, as well as that of the backup solution inside."
"The storage, BladeSystems, Virtual Connect, and simplicity with hyper-converged solutions are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The most valuable features of HPE ConvergedSystem are scalability and resilience."
"We use the solution for DDI."
"This is a scalable solution. Our customers begin with an initial configuration and later add more servers, memory and other options to meet the demands of increased processing."
"The user interface, reporting, and management are good, and we are quite happy with the performance."
 

Cons

"Areas for improvement would be the support for the engineering team, who seem to have no clue when you open a case, the communication with and recognition of resellers, and the documentation, with could be more detailed."
"Cisco support is much slower. Opening cases with Cisco tech is sometimes a bit tedious. The return time for less important calls can be slower. Even Priority 1 calls can sometimes be a bit long and they will have to call me back."
"Some of the define features could use improvement."
"Make it easier to refresh hardware. We got to the point where we couldn't fix vulnerabilities without refreshing the hardware, then that became a little too expensive for us to do."
"The solution could be improved by including automation for user updates."
"FlexPod can improve with a single control management interface to manage all aspects and components of the solution."
"I would like to see more orchestration tools in FlexPod because we virtually end up with integrating the v-orchestration tool within FlexPod. I would like to see something like that included within FlexPod."
"I would like to have the installation of the top virtualization on its own rather than doing it through the admin. For example, if FlexPod is configured after the configuration of the host, the ESXi is installed also, but it should be part of it rather than doing it as a separate system."
"I would like to see monitoring solutions included, as well as brand support."
"Pricing is an area of concern in the solution where improvements are required."
"The solution has a complicated front-end."
"The solution needs to add NFS features."
"The interface is not fully integrated with the ESXi, which is something that could be improved."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Perhaps they can work on providing faster allocation of memory or storage."
"HPE ConvergedSystem needs to improve its management. I would like the tool to add cloud management features so that the system can be accessed anywhere from the cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year."
"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."
"Everything is purchased, so we do not do any leasing with this product."
"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."
"Pricing and licensing is very affordable from a FlexPod perspective."
"We can just swap in new equipment or hardware as we need, which has probably saved us several weeks."
"We purchased the solution through CDW. They are a partner and knowledgeable."
"If your company really needs to be up 100% of the time, and you need to do a private data center, I don't know if I could realistically actually recommend another blueprint."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"The pricing is competitive. Not a major problem. We have a subscription model."
"I rate the product price an eight and a half on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"My company has a five year contract for HPE ConvergedSystem. The contracts depend on companies and sometimes it can be three years. The solution is worth its price."
"There are some extra costs in addition to the licensing costs for the yearly maintenance from professional third-party services."
"This is an expensive solution."
"This is an expensive system and not every customer has the kind of budget to support it."
"Pricing is good. We have not calculated what hyper-converged infrastructure has brought us but I think there has to be some lower cost for us, compared to the public cloud. Obviously, there would be a lower cost, probably by more than half."
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Manufacturing Company
20%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
10%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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...
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...
What do you like most about HPE ConvergedSystem?
The most valuable features of the solution are the flexibility and the availability of the machines.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE ConvergedSystem?
I rate the product price an eight and a half on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with HPE ConvergedSystem?
Pricing is an area of concern in the solution where improvements are required.
 

Also Known As

No data available
HPE ConvergedSystem 700, HPE ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA, CS500, HPE ConvergedSystem 900, HPE ConvergedSystem 500, HPE ConvergedSystem 300
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
FAW-Volkswagen, NICS, NBrIX, Pinpoint, HPE Technology Services, SWS, Ko Sistem, HPE
Find out what your peers are saying about FlexPod XCS vs. HPE ConvergedSystem and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.