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FlexPod XCS vs Vblock [EOL] comparison

NetApp and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the Converged Infrastructure category. Additionally, 96% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 84% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.
FlexPod XCS
Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews
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  • 228 Comparison Views
96% willing to recommend
Vblock [EOL]
Read 24 Vblock [EOL] reviews
    84% willing to recommend
     

    Comparison Buyer's Guide

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    Executive Summary
    We performed a comparison between FlexPod XCS and Vblock [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle and others in Converged Infrastructure.

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    Buyer's Guide
    Converged Infrastructure
    March 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

    FlexPod XCS
    Average Rating
    8.6
    Reviews Sentiment
    6.9
    Number of Reviews
    295
    Ranking in other categories
    Converged Infrastructure (6th)
    Vblock [EOL]
    Average Rating
    8.0
    Number of Reviews
    24
    Ranking in other categories
    No ranking in other categories
     

    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.
    Read full review
    FA
    The VCE VBlocks came along and it was the best combination of an all-in-one virtual data center in a box Converged SAN, Network, and Compute that used VMware to drive the whole package.
    The original pair of VBlock’s were purchased to replace a hodgepodge of small VM clusters of 3 to 4 VM hosts and an outdated SAN, in addition to moving from an old data center to a new data center. Moving the VM’s from the old systems to the new VBlock --which had more shared resources and a newer VMware version-- was a big win. Once in place, we virtualized as many servers as could be converted from freestanding servers to a VM. The only exception was when the licensing of an application was cost prohibitive; we keep these on stand-alone hosts. This was mainly due to application licensing bias, rather than limits on virtualization.
    Read full review

    Quotes from Members

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

    Pros

    "It reduced the total cost of ownership."
    "It is a complete solution."
    "The solution's granular scalability and broad application support helps us to meet the needs of diverse workloads."
    "It is definitely easier for us to maintain and do build-outs, so it takes a lot less time to set things up for the customer."
    "The ease of expansion is the most valuable feature."
    "Our time from customer interest to time of deployment has shrunk a lot."
    "The initial setup was very straightforward. They provided a lot of documentation."
    "It is a very well-thought-out solution with great virtualization. A good option we have is mapping a storage LUN onto an ESX cluster. That way, in case a particular ESX is down, it can migrate (using vMotion) to another host in the cluster, resulting in high-availability."
    More FlexPod XCS pros
    "Access to VMs is now faster due to the centralized management console."
    "Systems run solidly."
    "VMware NSX: Provides the ability for our organisation to deliver true DR."
    "Finding a fully bundled, deployed, and configured solution with a short delivery time and unique support is really attractive."
    "The component integration means I don't have to worry about technology mismatches."
    "The most valuable feature is that it is centrally managed, as it is quite easy for our customers to manage everything, end-to-end."
    "UCS Manager worked well for net/blade management and has allowed fairly easy use of dedicated bare-metal blades."
    "​The XtremIO All-Flash array delivers​ performance, reliability, and deduplication."
    More Vblock [EOL] pros
     

    Cons

    "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."
    "They should cram more space in there and find a way to compress things more; dedupe better."
    "The biggest problem we have seen is, we were using the vStorage which comes with the NetApp environment, a kind of fiber connect. We were missing fibre channel connectivity and we got lots of I/O errors."
    "FlexPod XCS needs to improve its pricing."
    "It would be very helpful if the upgrades for Cisco, VMware, and NetApp could be bundled together and performed at the same time."
    "The upgrades should be improved. We would like to have the ability to do unified upgrades of the whole infrastructure from beginning to end."
    "We use technical support from time to time. Most of the time if we really need assistance we end up having to get above the tier one support. We're able to do a lot of the tier one troubleshooting on our own."
    "It would be helpful if they sold a pre-boxed option so that you can buy a rack and everything's already there, everything's connected."
    More FlexPod XCS cons
    "VCE tools, like Vision or AMP were not stand alone, and depended too much on other management consoles."
    "RCM upgrades are painful."
    "The integration with other vendors' products needs to be looked at. It's not as flexible as we would like it to be."
    "Troublesome relationships with VCE at the beginning of our use came undone quickly after we went live."
    "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."
    "In the next release, I would like to see a smaller footprint in the data center and have improvements to disk performance."
    "The user control could be more advanced. They should work to improve this in future releases."
    More Vblock [EOL] cons
     

    Pricing and Cost Advice

    "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."
    "Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year."
    "The main return on investment would be that instead of having to refresh all of our desktop hardware we have been able to go reimage existing machines and use those as thin clients, then also purchase new thin clients rather than buying actual hardware. It also reduces the overhead of having our technicians deploy those systems and maintain them."
    "The solution has saved our customers' organization in terms of CapEx. E.g., with the cloud availability, it's turned into sort of a hybrid CapEx/OpEx model."
    "Cost is the primary factor behind why I would not give this product a perfect rating."
    "Storage is very expensive. To buy MIC cards and additional storage either on-prem or in the cloud, the IT department does not have money for it, so you need a more niche product or a more flexible way to store your data. That is the benefit that you get from this product."
    "We have saved money using FlexPod. We have saved time and money for new service deployments."
    "It seems very cost effective once it's in place, and it's easy to expand and easy to add capacity without a lot of extra money."
    More FlexPod XCS pricing and cost advice
    "Vblock is priced at a premium because people don't want the headache of managing and deploying different products."
    "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."
    "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."
    "Related to tech support: I believe it is too expensive."
    "Strive for a consolidated ELA."
    "It is not cheap."
    "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."
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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…
    Read full review
     

    Top Industries

    By visitors reading reviews
    Manufacturing Company
    20%
    Computer Software Company
    12%
    Financial Services Firm
    11%
    Educational Organization
    10%
    No data available
     

    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.
    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
    Ask a question
    Earn 20 points
     

    Comparisons

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    Compared 13% of the time
    Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS Logo
    Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS
    Compared 10% of the time
    Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs FlexPod XCS Logo
    Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs FlexPod XCS
    Compared 10% of the time
    HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS Logo
    HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS
    Compared 10% of the time
    More FlexPod XCS Competitors
    Dell VxBlock System vs Vblock [EOL] Logo
    Dell VxBlock System vs Vblock [EOL]
    Compared 100% of the time
    More Vblock [EOL] Competitors
     

    Product Reports

    Buyer's Guide
    FlexPod XCS
    March 2025
    FlexPod XCS reportDownload FlexPod XCS product report
    Buyer's Guide
    Vblock [EOL]
    March 2025
    Vblock [EOL] reportDownload Vblock [EOL] product report
     

    Also Known As

    No data available
    VCE Vblock
     

    Overview

    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

    VCE Vblock Systems is an all-in-one virtualization platform that integrates the leading storage, network, and compute technologies from the likes of EMC, VMware and Cisco. VCE Vblock allows organizations to easily and securely deploy cloud computing and virtualization in their environments, supporting these multiple technologies and providing flexibility and agility for changing business needs.

    Dell Technologies
     

    Sample Customers

    University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
    Xerox, ACS, and Columbia Sportswear.
    Buyer's Guide
    Converged Infrastructure
    March 2025
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