FlexPod XCS vs Vblock [EOL] comparison

"SolidFire all-flash block storage system in an existing FlexPod data center environment. This improves the agility and performance, including the additional load of cabling."

"The Cisco Validated Designs are the most valuable feature along with the Industry-leading technology, put together; and the fact that it just works."

"For us as an IT department, it helped us a lot. Before we implemented FlexPod, we were using different solutions all based on a virtual infrastructure. On VMware, before implementing FlexPod, we had a lot of problems doing backups with disaster recovery. After integrating it, it enabled us to have shorter maintenance windows, instant backups, instant recovery, which also minimized the number of alerts that we get from the application team and from the employees who were working on the application that something is not working."

"It is innovative because it's bare metal and you can customize it easily. This brings a lot of benefits to the solution."

"The flexibility, operational efficiency, and scalability of FlexPod has been a huge factor for us because our customers have workloads that need to run on classical HTTPs, flash storage, or possibly in the cloud. This flexibility and enhanced ability of the solution is very important for this. We trust in it."

"The most valuable feature of FlexPod is that it allows you to get the old compute storage and the network switch or the fabric of the network in one box. You can use pods to have a tiny cloud in the box, which is one of its best features."

"The initial setup is not complex. It is user-friendly since it is a single solution with all the components delivered in one package."

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

"VMware NSX: Provides the ability for our organisation to deliver true DR."

"The most valuable features are reliability and high availability."

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

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

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

"The most valuable feature is that it is centrally managed, as it is quite easy for our customers to manage everything, end-to-end."

"Systems run solidly."

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

"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."

"With the next solution, if there is a virtual Flex part where we can deploy it to private clouds or in public clouds rather tying up the hardware, it would reduce costs and complexity. Then, we could do a lot more automation."

"The GPU based VDA solutions could use improvement."

"There are certain things that are just hard to do on a physical infrastructure, like for instance you need to make petabytes of data available at high speed."

"If there were going to be any improvements, they should probably be UI improvements, overall. It can get a little kludgy sometimes when trying to figure out what to do."

"It would be helpful to have more flexibility for adding other components."

"The solution could be improved by including automation for user updates."

"The upgrade process needs to be improved and it would be nice to manage everything from a single pane of glass."

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

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

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

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

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

"In the next release, I would like to see a smaller footprint in the data center and have improvements to disk performance."

"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."

"With respect to the technical support, there is room for improvement."

"We purchased FlexPod though Datalink."

"We have saved money using FlexPod. We have saved time and money for new service deployments."

"Cost is the primary factor behind why I would not give this product a perfect rating."

"The footprint in the data center is quite large, especially when you scale out. Maybe find some hardware in the future, where if a new blade comes out, then Cisco can say, "Look, we'll buy those blades back off you, and we'll give you this blade for X amount of money." A buyback scheme would be good for hardware, and even NetApp as well. Something like a buyback scheme for blades and stuff moving forward would be good, because I know that they're going to put more power into them. E.g., replacing four blades might equal one blade, which would be awesome, but we are still going to have those four blades around. Maybe having something where it will give you this much money for these blades so we can upgrade. That would be perfect."

"We fear high availability so we can't buy from different providers."

"It's expensive, but when you pay for enterprise support and enterprise products, you have to pay the big bucks."

"Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year."

"We can just swap in new equipment or hardware as we need, which has probably saved us several weeks."

"The paid support for Vblock is expensive."

"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."

"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."

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

"Strive for a consolidated ELA."

"It is not cheap."

"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."