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Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Dell PowerFlex
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
HCI (5th)
FlexPod XCS
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. Dell PowerFlex is designed for HCI and holds a mindshare of 5.9%, down 10.7% compared to last year.
FlexPod XCS, on the other hand, focuses on Converged Infrastructure, holds 12.8% mindshare, up 9.3% since last year.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerFlex5.9%
VxRail9.9%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.0%
Other75.2%
HCI
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.8%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.2%
Dell VxBlock System9.4%
Other66.6%
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

Serdar De - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at ÜÇGE Shopfitting & Design
Initial setup has been straightforward and it has reasonable pricing
We are new to this, so we are still learning about the valuable features The solution is okay overall. It could be easier to learn. We haven't had any issues. They could have more AI functionality in the future.  I have been using the solution for six months. I have not encountered any problems…
John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Director at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Enforces standardized setup procedures following Certified Validated Design (CVD) guidelines and offers greater flexibility and control over the system compared to traditional systems
The GUI setup follows the right setup, meaning we have to follow the CVDi.e. Certified Validated Design. Everything is clear, because you can build CI yourself, but without rules, it can be messy. With FlexPod, there are rules to follow, making it more standardized. This helps with troubleshooting and compatibility assessments, simplifying troubleshooting significantly. We also use FlexPod pre-validated architectures to validate the design. It is very, very important to us because we had a bad case in 2015 where separate items integrated poorly due to no version or firmware compatibility certification. Troubleshooting became a nightmare. So, standards are crucial for us, and everything entering production should be verified or at least documented for certification.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the overall integration and just seeing the three different layers which make up the machine software. Altogether, it's something that I would say is much better than any other solution that I have experienced before."
"The solution was connected to alternate storage, and it provides great scalability and reliability."
"All of the features are useful, and we found that the issue we were having in our previous environment, which was high latency on the storage, we are not experiencing anymore because the high IOPS on the storage are very good for us."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"The solution is very scalable."
"The tool's most valuable features are its price and flexibility. It has high performance."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"The solution saves a lot of space in the data center and that is a key advantage for us."
"Delivery speed and integration speeds have increased. The solution has enabled us to run mission-critical workloads. Our SQL cluster is on there, which is high IOPS. All-in-one solution is great for when you don't have a lot of staff, with multiple disciplines."
"For me, the most valuable feature is probably just the orchestration and automation that can be done around the whole solution from top to bottom, from servers to storage, networking, and using UCS Director."
"Our private cloud sector of our company has grown exponentially thanks to the ease of deployment of the FlexPod architecture."
"For FlexPod, it is always trustworthy. I had previously never seen flex machines from other brands or associated with other products. FlexPod is a large investment and they are good enough to support it."
"Any single point of failure has been removed from the FlexPods, so they all have multiple redundancies built-in."
"It has never fallen out from under us when we were trying to do a critical push."
"Our footprint is lower than it used to be."
"I think the most valuable features are the architecture and the support from Cisco and NetApp."
 

Cons

"The support of containers needs to be improved. At present, it is limited to VMware. There needs to be direct communication with the hardware rather than through a hypervisor."
"For customers with a budget, it is a ten out of ten for the product, though it becomes challenging for those with mid or low budgets since it is very costly compared to other solutions such as PowerStore."
"The installation is complex."
"I think that stability is good for small and mid-level environments, but I don't think that it is suitable for high-end."
"In terms of improvements, I think it would help to have easier access to the cost of installing VxRack infrastructure."
"Including instrumentation would be a helpful improvement."
"I think there might be some room for improvement when it comes to pricing, because although I know how to convert customers, at the end of day, it's quite expensive. Sometimes your feature architecture is still coming out much cheaper than hardware costs for your infrastructure."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"At the beginning, there was a little bit of confusion among the support folks on how to open up tickets with the others."
"We do feel with the whole FlexPod solution that we were actually sold more than we needed as far as extra parts."
"The service catalogue and gallery. I find it difficult to go through documentation, and I would like to see user cases we can refer to."
"I would like to see improvements in the documentation."
"According to the product managers, there are some new products coming which will address some of our concerns around portability and compliance."
"Simplification of configurations. Easy instructions/configurability for adding components and expansion. It loses points because it could get simpler."
"The UCS firmware code upgrade can totally stall- it’s a brick. Cisco support has been able to help us, but this can be better."
"In the config advisor tool, it could be more specific in pointing out or letting you know what to fix when it confronts issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"From my perspective, pricing is expensive. If they can reduce the pricing or offer more customer incentives, it would attract more users."
"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive."
"The pricing for this solution is good."
"The price could be improved."
"We have a good contact in Dell and he prepared all the information and provided everything to us."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"Pricing is always tough. We need to get to a point where the customer's happy. Then, as partners, we are also happy."
"We have seen a five to ten percent savings on new service deployments."
"We have saved 50 percent on new service deployments."
"We would like everything in one piece of hardware. This way we can just sell the product like a silo by putting everything in a stack together."
"Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year."
"We have seen an 80 percent improvement in application performance."
"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."
"We pay approximately $1,400 USD in total for between five-thousand and ten-thousand ports."
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees
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
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
13%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
 

Questions from the Community

What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?
VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company to invest in. Even if the user is working with a l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerFlex?
Dell PowerFlex is a premium software-defined infrastructure solution and while the initial investment may seem higher than traditional SAN or mid-tier HCI solutions, the long-term TCO is competitive.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerFlex?
Area of Improvement: While PowerFlex Manager is powerful, the UI could be more intuitive, especially for first-time users or non-technical admins. Streamlined navigation, contextual help and guided...
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Also Known As

VxFlex, VxRack FLEX, PowerFlex
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Canopy, 8x8Inc., Atos, Canadian Pacific, City of Denton, CenturyLink, BNP Paribas, Asyaport, EDF, CSC, Fox Sports, Insight, Hunter, KPIT, Paetec, Rosetta Stone, Sonda, Xerox
University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, Broadcom and others in HCI. Updated: July 2026.
910,454 professionals have used our research since 2012.