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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 6.0%, down 12.1% 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 PowerFlex6.0%
VxRail10.6%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.2%
Other74.2%
HCI
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.8%
HPE ConvergedSystem10.9%
Oracle Private Cloud Appliance8.3%
Other68.0%
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

MS
System & Network Specialist at Alfaisal University
Has supported seamless integration and offers fast implementation
This needs to be checked for the most valuable features in Dell PowerFlex for data management. It is more stable, more powerful, and has more integration features. The scalability is very good and is one of the key features of Dell PowerFlex. Its flexibility and scalability are the main reasons we can use Dell PowerFlex.
John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Manager 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

"Dell PowerFlex improves our latency which allowed us to reduce a lot of our Microsoft Enterprise SQL licenses."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the storage space it offers."
"The support is highly responsive."
"The support team responds quickly."
"The solution is scalable."
"It is more stable, more powerful, and has more integration features."
"Our primary use case of this solution is for storage nodes and compute nodes and I like that it is all in one box."
"The most important aspects are ease of management, as well as ease of configuration, allowing them to attach additional nodes and resources for the applications."
"The struggle was their speed of deployment (contacting different vendors that took time through the internal authorization procedure), and FlexPod sped up this process by 50-60%."
"It can scale, compute, and storage independently by what we need."
"If you need a refresh on the whole infrastructure, it helps immensely."
"My favorite part is the storage side, allocating the storage, it's very easy."
"This is the best hyperconverged infrastructure."
"I think that the most valuable feature is the pre-validated design, the reference configuration, as all the integrations have been done, and you don’t need to go through a teething phase."
"It is extremely stable; that is the reason that I love the platform, as it allows us to leave during the day while at night the system continues to run so we can come back the next day and it gives us the flexibility of adding more users, supporting more than 20 high-end clients and almost 5000 virtual machines on ten domains, which enables us to provide our clients with a completely stable, versatile platform."
"The hardware has been rock solid so far. It has gone up easy. It runs well. We have not had issues with it."
 

Cons

"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."
"I think that stability is good for small and mid-level environments, but I don't think that it is suitable for high-end."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"The installation is complex."
"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."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface."
"I am not really impressed by the technical support of this solution."
"We've had some issues around the licensing. There were some issues in terms of using the VMware license."
"I would like to see easier day-zero setup. We're having to get other tools to try and set up everything."
"FlexPod was born to be used like building-block elements, to create large EDP premises. If used to create a single FlexPod CED, optional operational collaterals (backup, management, etc.) are missing, both in docs and in design."
"Mainly, the interface needs improvement. I'm not a big fan of UCS Manager, sometimes. I believe they released the new one, and it seems like in every version something changes and something else doesn't work. When they switched to HTML5, I believe we had issues in version 3.2. They fixed it in the next version. The amount of work to upgrade a system for change control is tedious to have issues every time. I would recommend more regression testing, then testing the different browsers in that."
"I'd like to see a little bit simpler management pane. Using UCS Director to front everything is good but for a lot of that upper mid-market, it's probably a little bit of overkill for what they need. They just want a nice, simply portal to go through and see what's going on. So if there was something that was middle of the road, it would be well received."
"We would like more security features."
"I would like to see increased performance."
"There is a lot of documentation that has to be reviewed before you go through an upgrade. It is not as straightforward as some other solutions."
"The technical support is slightly above average. I would like them to have quicker escalation"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for this solution is good."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."
"The product is expensive."
"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"The price could be improved."
"The solution's price is medium."
"The cost of this solution is fair."
"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."
"We have saved time and money for new service deployments."
"We have saved time, money, space, and power consumption on new service deployments. We have a data center in Toronto which had ten racks on one of the new servers. This was all reduced to two racks with six chassis, which is amazing."
"It is cheaper than other products. For example, Dell EMC VxBlock is more expensive."
"The pricing and licensing are quite expensive. However, compared to other solutions, it is okay."
"Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year."
"Overall, the solution works pretty well. The biggest complaint I have from customers is the cost."
"The scalability is very good. I wish it was a more cost-effective, but you get what you pay for."
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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
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Marketing Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise15
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, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: April 2026.
892,678 professionals have used our research since 2012.