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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.

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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 is extremely stable and well-supported because of the leadership and partnerships put in place."
    "Since the addition of nodes, it is all automated now. What would normally take us around three to five hours in the past, has come down to 15 minutes to half an hour, creating a significant gain in time."
    "The best thing about this solution is the tight integration with VMware, Cisco, and NetApp from both a hardware and software perspective."
    "We have had great support, and this is when we have called for any problems, which have been very minimal to start with."
    "Our customers get their applications to market more quickly, and it has taken the risk out of their business, because there is less for them to try to figure out."
    "From the integration standpoint, it is a lot easier to integrate than a lot of people initially felt. Being able to leverage either block or file capabilities of the storage is something that has been beneficial."
    "It's less resource-intensive, given that it comes in a package."
    "It has never fallen out from under us when we were trying to do a critical push."
    More FlexPod XCS pros
    "Some of the key features are the ease of operation and access, without constraining actions. The tool is available to actually move things around, do things quickly quickly."
    "Capability for scale and growth within a single rack brings strong possibilities for capacity planning."
    "VMware NSX: Provides the ability for our organisation to deliver true DR."
    "The most valuable feature is that it is centrally managed, as it is quite easy for our customers to manage everything, end-to-end."
    "​It has improved system performance, batch times for off-hours processing, and reliability with production applications.​"
    "The most valuable features are reliability and high availability."
    "Finding a fully bundled, deployed, and configured solution with a short delivery time and unique support is really attractive."
    "The high redundancy of components has minimized frequent service degradation/failure."
    More Vblock [EOL] pros
     

    Cons

    "FlexPod will do very well on the average app, but there's room for improvement in performance and the data center side."
    "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."
    "The upgrade process needs to be improved and it would be nice to manage everything from a single pane of glass."
    "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."
    "I'd like them to bring back the GUI for NetApp ONTAP. They changed the interface in version 9.8, and it's not great. In 9.9 they've tried to bring it back a little bit, but it's still not great."
    "I would like to see programmability into a SaaS-based offering, as I know Cisco's going in a lot of directions with their Intersight application."
    "Parts of the initial setup were complex, especially on the networking side."
    "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."
    More FlexPod XCS cons
    "The implementation and support could be better."
    "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."
    "Improve the patching process and timeliness of updates/releases."
    "The user control could be more advanced. They should work to improve this in future releases."
    "RCM upgrades are painful."
    "VCE tools, like Vision or AMP were not stand alone, and depended too much on other management consoles."
    "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."
    More Vblock [EOL] cons
     

    Pricing and Cost Advice

    "Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year."
    "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."
    "We definitely saw a lot of operational cost savings using FlexPod. As far as capital outlay goes, that was a little bit too much for us to swallow and we weren't able to recognize enough savings in that area to afford it."
    "Make sure you are buying for performance, not just capacity."
    "The pricing and licensing are quite expensive. However, compared to other solutions, it is okay."
    "It is cheaper than other products. For example, Dell EMC VxBlock is more expensive."
    "The cost is a little high."
    "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."
    More FlexPod XCS pricing and cost advice
    "Related to tech support: I believe it is too expensive."
    "Strive for a consolidated ELA."
    "The paid support for Vblock is expensive."
    "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."
    "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."
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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
    21%
    Computer Software Company
    12%
    Financial Services Firm
    12%
    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 12% of the time
    HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS Logo
    HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS
    Compared 11% of the time
    Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs FlexPod XCS Logo
    Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs FlexPod XCS
    Compared 10% of the time
    Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS Logo
    Dell VxBlock System 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
    April 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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