FlexPod XCS vs Vblock [EOL] comparison

"All of our main applications run on this solution, and it has done a stellar job."

"The ease of expansion is the most valuable feature."

"FlexPod has improved our company as far as ease of management, stability, and redundancy."

"The product is easy to deploy and use."

"The fact that it can run the entire stack in terms of protocols. The integration for most of our customers is VMware; the full-stack integration. Also, the ability to do rapid cloning."

"Our footprint is lower than it used to be."

"Not a perfect ten because it could use better integration on the network side between UCS and the switching layerKnowing that everything works, having a single place to be able to find out compatibility and things like that are the biggest benefits of this solution. The fact that LACP is not supported on UCS blades isn't so great. It would be nice if it was."

"It's a common platform, which provides for ease of use between all of the blade servers. It uses all the same tech, moving service profiles seamlessly across from one blade to the next. There is also combined support."

"​It has improved system performance, batch times for off-hours processing, and reliability with production applications.​"

"The component integration means I don't have to worry about technology mismatches."

"​The XtremIO All-Flash array delivers​ performance, reliability, and deduplication."

"It's an integrated box Mac solution, so it's a plug and play. The deployment and build is pre-made and ready to deploy. It makes it easy to apply."

"UCS Manager worked well for net/blade management and has allowed fairly easy use of dedicated bare-metal blades."

"Finding a fully bundled, deployed, and configured solution with a short delivery time and unique support is really attractive."

"Systems run solidly."

"Access to VMs is now faster due to the centralized management console."

"I would like to see better operations, a single pane of glass to manage and monitor the entire design across VMware, Cisco, etc. I would also like the upgrade process to be a little smoother."

"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."

"Hardware stability needs improvement. We replaced a lot of RAM this past year. We had to replace the complete blade once after extensive troubleshooting. Any given time, we have approximately one blade down within the entire infrastructure, unfortunately."

"FlexPod will do very well on the average app, but there's room for improvement in performance and the data center side."

"I would like to see more interoperability within FlexPods. This comes into more of how we grow from multiple domains to a massive domain."

"I think they can always improve, whether it's dedupe or compression, those algorithms; and flash through better SSDs."

"We have experienced issues with patching. When there are Cisco releases, there are some vulnerabilities, i.e., security vulnerabilities. We are as a financial company and need to be on top patching. As a company, we cannot have continuous downtime to do patching, which is a challenge that we have faced."

"There is a history of issues with hardware availability. For example, we'll buy an array or a filer with a particular configuration and particular size of drive, sizing it appropriately. Then, as we grow, they're like, "Oh, you can always get more." Then when you go to get more, that model or type of disk is no longer available. It becomes this big process to try to figure out what we need to get, how it'll work, and how that'll integrate into the system. That could be simpler. They could do a bit more to guarantee the availability of parts. Obviously, not being the largest storage vendor, I know they can't sometimes control what the hardware vendors do. However, a bit more transparency and communication about this would be helpful."

"Troublesome relationships with VCE at the beginning of our use came undone quickly after we went live."

"Tighter alignment could simplify and speed up the configuration and delivery process.​"

"Improve the patching process and timeliness of updates/releases."

"RCM upgrades were not scripted, and you needed to roll on your own. We were led to believe this would be otherwise."

"I would like to see them improve their switching infrastructure and rely on Cisco configurations. They are a bit more complex and technical, but result in a slightly reduced cost in terms of switching on the network side of it."

"While most public clouds are deployed on Linux, there is current no certified Vblock working on KVM hypervisors."

"OEM services requires too much planning and low availability of certified engineers."

"VCE tools, like Vision or AMP were not stand alone, and depended too much on other management consoles."

"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."

"We have saved time and money for new service deployments. Without FlexPod, it probably takes about ten hours. With FlexPod, within two hours, we are up and running. So, we have seen about an 80 percent time decrease."

"FlexPod has saved data center costs, due to the fact that we reduced our footprint for storage in a big way. We went from three complete racks down to a 2U storage array for more than 300 terabytes of storage."

"We purchased from CDW•G. They are great partners on the government side."

"We pay approximately $1,400 USD in total for between five-thousand and ten-thousand ports."

"The FlexPod licensing can adjust to your purse, i.e. there are different levels available for businesses of all sizes."

"We have a lease for approximately $10,000 USD per month."

"In terms of the cost, the last bill I saw was about $3.5 million, from the latest contract. That might have been for a five-year contract."

"Vblock appears from the first while to be very expensive. There are more items you cannot see in the BOQ: customer service, support, delivery short time, and highly experienced VCE engineers."

"Vblock is priced at a premium because people don't want the headache of managing and deploying different products."

"I think the pricing is on the higher end of the spectrum. There could be some adjustments that could be made there. Regarding licensing, watch compatibility with external products that you run on Vblock. It has got to be properly architected, otherwise, you will run into licensing issues."

"The paid support for Vblock is expensive."

"It is not cheap."

"Related to tech support: I believe it is too expensive."

"Strive for a consolidated ELA."

"I would not say the pricing is not good value. It is still on the expensive side, near the top-end of cost compared to what's available now. Also, the licensing has to be improved. There has to be a clear definition of the licensing from the initial set-up so the customer knows what they are paying for, without being hit later on with extra licensing. The licensing definitions should be clearer and, perhaps, have one set of licenses rather than multiple licenses."