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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
9th
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
5th
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 June 2025, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Dell Vscale Architecture is 3.1%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FlexPod XCS is 9.4%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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."
"With the components that come in FlexPod, it has enabled us to reduce connectivity down to one wire, whereas before, we had eight, 12, or 20 wires going to one server."
"The most valuable feature is ease of deployment. Once I deploy the chassis and I have the back-end storage, configuring more UCS servers is very quick. I can deploy a new UCS server within minutes."
"The storage efficiency and performance are valuable."
"The assurance and the peace of mind that we get from knowing if we had an issue with either the NetApp equipment, Cisco equipment, or our VMware enviroment, we can call one number for support, then everyone works together and nobody is pointing fingers all over the place."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the flexibility in configuration and the setup."
"We like it because everything is 10 Gig all the way through, from the storage to the switches to everything else, which is more than we need, and that's great."
"The benefit is the speed, it's the performance. That's what it comes down to is the performance of the solution."
"You can add more boxes and you can have more IOPS available if you want. It's very easy to add new hardware to the cluster."
 

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."
"We dislike going online with the robot stuff. Many times, it has delayed our reaching out to a real support engineer."
"There are times where we have had issues with technical support."
"As the industry as a whole is moving more toward the simplification of IT, that is something where both Cisco and NetApp could look to improve further. Just simplifying the day to day management, the day to day issues that arise, and building more intuitiveness into the interfaces would help."
"You must build each block separately, that's a disadvantage sometimes."
"There are too many management products: System Insight Manager, Oakum, etc. There are a lot of them and you have to know which one to use at which time. Whereas, with competitors, they have a single pane of glass view which has everything in it."
"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."
"The initial setup is complex because it has to be done in a certain way."
"Upgrades are always scary because you just don't know. Nobody has six or seven different systems sitting around that you can test on before you go into production data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It created lower total cost of ownership. Previously, we had disparate storage and servers, and there were bits of kits everywhere. Now, we have two data centers with almost identical setups in both."
"We have saved money using FlexPod. We have saved time and money for new service deployments."
"The scalability is very expensive."
"Everything is purchased, so we do not do any leasing with this product."
"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."
"Pricing and licensing is very affordable from a FlexPod perspective."
"We have seen our data center rack space collapse about 90 percent. We have a data center which only has two racks now out of the 20 that were there previously."
"Make sure you are buying for performance, not just capacity."
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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
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle and others in Converged Infrastructure. Updated: June 2025.
859,579 professionals have used our research since 2012.