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Dell Vscale Architecture 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 Vscale Architecture
Ranking in Converged Infrastructure
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
FlexPod XCS
Ranking in Converged Infrastructure
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Dell Vscale Architecture is 3.3%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FlexPod XCS is 10.1%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Converged Infrastructure Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
FlexPod XCS10.1%
Dell Vscale Architecture3.3%
Other86.6%
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

AR
Intuitive, robust, manageable, and agile
In terms of what could be improved, I particularly think the scope of automation is very much limited. So they should introduce some more STK's and APIs for automation first thing. Secondly, in terms of Vscale Architecture, they should have some evangelists. When I go to the community for VMware ESXi or NSX, I get lots of information online everywhere because community members are talking, evangelists are talking. Additionally, I usually have a lot of KV articles and lot of community articles I can read and sort out the minor issues. But, in terms of Vscale, you need to be very mature in all aspects of the technology and when you get disturbed, you have to go through the entire documentation to figure things out. I think I heard this from one or two customers as well. Their resources are not able to find much online support for Vscale. As for what should be included in future releases, customers are looking for a unified management console, which they have, but the console should be more user-friendly. Secondly, they should have more scope of orchestration. Thirdly, regarding monitoring, there should be a built-in monitoring engine like we have in Nutanix. These are the things customers complain about sometimes.
John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Vscale's scalability is super good. Vscale's scalability, manageability, and performance are all three areas that I emphasize when I sell Vscale Architectures to the customer."
"We save days of work when doing new service deployments. With LUN clones we have a template provisioned for the image of our hypervisor on our NetApps, and we can deploy a brand new hypervisor in under an hour. Everything is scripted. We just clone a template LUN and boot from SAN, so there are no single points of failure."
"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."
"It reduces the time required to dynamically provide applications to our end users and developers."
"The best thing about this solution is the tight integration with VMware, Cisco, and NetApp from both a hardware and software perspective."
"The most valuable feature is the one call number for support and the fact that all the documentation comes with it. They have all of the preprepared plans for the deployment model and we can just choose which one we want for VMware, etc. The hardware is all listed. We buy that and away we go. It's called validated design."
"The most valuable thing for me is the shorter time to market."
"FlexPod gives us the opportunity to deploy a product which is fully built and racked with minimal touch installation when it arrives onsite, so we can do all the configuration remotely."
"When our clients choose to call NetApp or Cisco directly, the cooperative support model means they can get passed back and forth between the two organizations freely. It works really well."
 

Cons

"In terms of what could be improved, I particularly think the scope of automation is very much limited. So they should introduce some more STK's and API's for automation first thing."
"If they could reduce some of the complexity at the system manager level for ONTAP. I find it gives a lot of flexibility. You can do as much or as little as you want. But to be able to do as little as you want, you do have to do a lot. So, if they could bring that down to a more manageable effort level, that would be nice and simplify it a bit."
"In the SolidFire interface, if you use the GUI, you have to create one run at a time, or one device at a time, which is something that needs to be fixed."
"The upgrade process needs to be improved and it would be nice to manage everything from a single pane of glass."
"The initial setup was complex. UCS is not the easiest thing to configure from the ground up. The networking pieces can get confusing, especially when you are talking about virtual segmentation. It is not as easy as other things now on the market, such as hyperconverged."
"I would like to have the installation of the top virtualization on its own rather than doing it through the admin. For example, if FlexPod is configured after the configuration of the host, the ESXi is installed also, but it should be part of it rather than doing it as a separate system."
"​Newer platform reference architectures take a long time to harden and be publicly available.​"
"I would like to see more storage-related features."
"The GPU based VDA solutions could use improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Pricing is always tough. We need to get to a point where the customer's happy. Then, as partners, we are also happy."
"Licensing can be interesting with the new version because of the Intersight integration. I don't know what that looks like yet. I have seen some of the different licensing models, but with the new purchasing, all customers are going to have to buy some sort of Intersight licensing with the Blades or FlexPod. I am curious to see how that option shakes out. Previous to the UCS X-Series, the licensing was the same."
"It's expensive, but when you pay for enterprise support and enterprise products, you have to pay the big bucks."
"FlexPod has saved data center costs, due to the fact that we reduced our footprint for storage in a big way. We went from three complete racks down to a 2U storage array for more than 300 terabytes of storage."
"Cost is the primary factor behind why I would not give this product a perfect rating."
"We purchased from CDW•G. They are great partners on the government side."
"The NetApp portion was a $5 million investment five years ago. That has served the customer well over five and a half years."
"It is not cheap, but there is a return on investment in time saved and efficiency."
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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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
20%
Educational Organization
15%
Performing Arts
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
 

Questions from the Community

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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.
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

VCE Vscale Architecture, Vscale Architecture
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle, NetApp and others in Converged Infrastructure. Updated: August 2025.
867,445 professionals have used our research since 2012.