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FlexPod XCS vs HPE Hyper Converged comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (6th)
HPE Hyper Converged
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
HCI (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. FlexPod XCS is designed for Converged Infrastructure and holds a mindshare of 9.4%, down 9.6% compared to last year.
HPE Hyper Converged, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 3.2% mindshare, up 3.1% since last year.
Converged Infrastructure
HCI
 

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.
Ray Baruwa - PeerSpot reviewer
Advantageous from a sustainability perspective since the networking, storage, and compute are all located within one unit
Hyperconverged is used in an environment where the footprint in the data center is restricted. It is advantageous from a sustainability perspective since the networking, storage, and compute are all located within one unit The most beneficial feature is the life cycle management. I haven't had…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The data is available, compressed, and deduped."
"ONTAP is the core of FlexPod, so its most valuable features are: FlexClone, Snapshot, and SnapCenter."
"FlexPod has improved our company as far as ease of management, stability, and redundancy."
"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 previous solution used to take 24 hours and now we're down to seven hours. It has really good performance."
"It runs very well lights out. Set it and forget it."
"It scales easily. We went through an upgrade of adding additional chassis, and it wasn't a big deal."
"The biggest lesson that I have learned from this solution is the ease of actually setting it up and learning it."
"It is easy to manage; the administration is simpler. It saves a lot of rack space in the data center because you can consolidate 20 servers into three to five nodes. The client will be able to benefit from power savings and cost savings as well."
"The most valuable feature is the in-built backup system. The backup speed is also excellent."
"It is a stable solution...Those who want flexibility, ease of use, and a simple support system can opt for HPE."
"There are multiple advantages. Typically, being an all-flash storage, which is available through either SimpliVity or dHCI, the performance is much better because the IOPS goes high, so it's more powerful in terms of performance. Secondly, if I'm talking of SimpliVity Hyper Convergence solution from HPE, unlike the competition, even if three hard drives fail, you are still running the solution."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The solution has many good features."
"The HPE Hyper Converged solution is used in a hybrid cloud configuration. We assess the disk space and partition additional capacity."
"The most valuable features are resiliency and data protection."
 

Cons

"If you have expertise setting up such environments, then you are good, but for customers or novices, it becomes a nightmare and stuff may actually be left out."
"The networking configurations with UCS need improvement."
"FlexPod can improve with a single control management interface to manage all aspects and components of the solution."
"On the UCS side, sometimes it is difficult to set up."
"With the UCS X-Series, I would like to see the fabric interconnects in the chassis. Instead of hanging out so the chassis is 7U, you are increasing your footprint to 9U with the fabric enhancer, where some of the competing solutions are 7U and have collapsed that network fabric into the chassis. This is another thing that I would like to see from Cisco, though not really on the NetApp side since that is pretty solid."
"The technical support is slightly above average. I would like them to have quicker escalation"
"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."
"The initial setup for FlexPod is complex."
"The solution can be improved on the management side. More management features should be added to future releases."
"One of the things that can be improved is that today, is supporting VMware, maybe as a hypervisor. But it would be good to have an open kind of platform for other hypervisors, maybe. Like Nutanix is doing, it's very open."
"Providing local technical support and improving the price are areas this service needs to consider improving."
"I would like to see improvement in the hardware underneath it. Currently, it's a Gen9 DL380. One day, there will be a Gen10 DL380 and maybe they will have bigger or smaller sizes."
"Though with HPE Hyper Converged, you get everything, the documentation part is very much required, especially if you opt for the solution's subscription-based licensing model."
"Could be more secure and more economical."
"The storage efficiency is weak and needs to be improved."
"Scalability is an issue because it becomes very expensive. When you need to upgrade memory, you have to upgrade memory across the nodes. Suppose a customer has gone with a three-node HCI solution, then to increase the memory, you have to do it across the three nodes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing can be interesting with the new version because of the Intersight integration. I don't know what that looks like yet. I have seen some of the different licensing models, but with the new purchasing, all customers are going to have to buy some sort of Intersight licensing with the Blades or FlexPod. I am curious to see how that option shakes out. Previous to the UCS X-Series, the licensing was the same."
"We purchased from CDW•G. They are great partners on the government side."
"The FlexPod licensing can adjust to your purse, i.e. there are different levels available for businesses of all sizes."
"Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year."
"We have seen an 80 percent improvement in application performance."
"The product's pricing is high and I would rate it a nine out of ten."
"It is expensive. My company is small. When you look at the price point, this is a big thing for us to invest in."
"Coming from a rack and stack server model to FlexPod, it has saved us a lot of time (approximately hundreds to thousands of hours)."
"I would rate the price at seven out of ten. There are no additional licensing fees, but it would be cheaper to go with a dHCI solution."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"It is a cost-effective solution."
"With this solution, I buy everything together, pre-packaged, pre-installed, and in just 15 minutes, it's installed."
"The solution is expensive - not only the hardware costs but server costs too. And the more you scale, the more expensive it gets."
"The solutions cost us a lot."
"It could be cheaper, everything could be cheaper."
"Pricing with Dell EMC is double the price which I paid for HPE. However, in the end, Dell EMC is double in performance. This is not an apple to apple comparison though, as I have a four node from Dell EMC and a three node."
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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
15%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

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 Hyper Converged?
The solution's most valuable features are scalability, easy migration, easy recovery, and flexible backup possibilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Hyper Converged?
The pricing is competitive. Initially, I misunderstood and rated it as higher, but on a scale of one to ten where one is cheap, I would rate it as a four.
What needs improvement with HPE Hyper Converged?
I haven't had issues personally. I've heard from other people that maybe there could be some improvements around technical support.
 

Also Known As

No data available
HPE Hyper Converged 380, HPE Hyper Converged 250, HPE Hyper Converged 250 for Microsoft CPS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
North Lindsey College, FireWhat?, HudsonAlpha
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