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Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS vs Oracle Private Cloud Appliance 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Dell VxBlock System is 12.4%, down from 16.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FlexPod XCS is 9.2%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Private Cloud Appliance is 15.2%, up from 10.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

AKINJIDE OKE - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for virtualized environment, node management, configuration deployment, and system management with artificial intelligence
I've worked with Dell and had the privilege of working with many OEMs. I started my career as a system engineer, working with HPE as a partner, and then moved to other OEMs like IBM and Lenovo. Currently, I work with a small team. I don't believe any solution is bad. It's just that you might not have identified what the solution is addressing. It's about choosing the right solution for your needs. In terms of hardware or infrastructure, it's an Intel platform. What differentiates everyone is the additional value they can provide. Dell has many values that meet customer needs. I look at the customer's objectives and requirements as an IT professional to find the best solution. I haven't seen any drawbacks regarding the infrastructure deliverables or the value built into the tool. However, Dell as an organization could improve its channel management. For example, we've been trying to resolve an issue with our portal for two weeks. I'd like to see more simplification regarding integration, deployment, and connectivity for future releases. In deployment, I'd like to see simplification in creating VNets and positioning VMware across nodes. I want a template that simplifies the creation of VNets and VMware positioning. I'd push for more simplification and an intuitive graphical GUI that simplifies things with just a click.
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.
Mir Gulzar Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers comprehensive support and performance but initial deployment requires expertise
Oracle Private Cloud Appliance ( /products/oracle-private-cloud-appliance-reviews ) is a complete solution that includes built-in hypervisor management and Appliance Manager, and integrates with Oracle Cloud ( /products/oracle-cloud-infrastructure-oci-reviews ) Infrastructure. It simplifies the management of virtual machines, networking, compute, and storage, allowing me to create multiple virtual machines easily without logging into the storage system. It offers free licensing of Oracle Linux ( /products/oracle-linux-reviews ) and Solaris, and provides high-performance capabilities through extreme performance storage options. Additionally, the product ensures comprehensive customer support.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Customers use the Dell VxBlock System for new applications or solutions. For example, I'm working on a new mixing solution for a whole country in Africa. When we talk about it, there are many locations, and we're looking for efficiency, utilization, and solutions that can expand the application database we're deploying. It's used a lot for server consolidation and to consolidate environments into new ones for easy management. It's also used in health environments where they need to create infrastructure for products or solutions they want to launch to the market quickly."
"Virtual machines for the infrastructure."
"In comparison to traditional file load systems, Dell VxBlock System can be deployed quickly and results in monthly cost savings."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the speed."
"Everything is delivered to me in a single box, which simplifies management."
"VxBlock has good performance, so that is an advantage."
"Its performance is very good."
"Good default features."
"The most valuable features are the CVDs and the support behind it from both companies."
"I see the most value in the UCS portion. I love Cisco UCS."
"It can scale, compute, and storage independently by what we need."
"We’ve seen an improvement in application performance."
"I have found the platform to be resilient, mainly because all the hardware is fault-tolerant. It has built-in HA, so if one of the components goes down, you're covered by the platform itself."
"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."
"The biggest lesson that I have learned from this solution is the ease of actually setting it up and learning it."
"CVDs reduce risks for implementations. We always make sure that all installations are based on best practices."
"You will find the high availability and License Team with Oracle very valuable."
"It is scalable as the box can be increased by one compute node, if required."
"It has helped us to reduce Oracle licensing costs for database and applications."
"The most valuable features include distinct storage within the Oracle PCA."
"Supports connection to most of network topology, such as VLAN and network segmentation."
"Oracle Private Cloud Appliance is a complete solution that includes built-in hypervisor management and Appliance Manager, and integrates with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure."
 

Cons

"Lacks flexibility with third-party applications."
"It is a good product, but for us, it is like a black box. We are not really sure about its internal components, and how to do the terminal upgrade, and how to make sure about the security of the device. We understand how it works, but in order to do the upgrades, we have to get help from the company. We cannot do it ourselves. In another model that we had, the internal team could do the upgrade but not in this one. There is no clear process for a new upgrade or update. They should provide a software intelligence tool that has a dashboard where you can see the current firmware, the latest firmware, and the documentation and the process for the upgrade. For VxBlock, we have different management consoles. There is no single management console that you can use to manage all components inside VxBlock. Their scale up and scale out process is also not clear. Their support is also a little bit slow in responding to the cases."
"There are components of VxBlock that are not managed or supported by Dell because some of the components are from Cisco. Thus, when there are problems with compute nodes, though Dell was managing the interaction, we had to rely on Cisco to solve the issue. When Cisco was not responding as quickly as Dell would for their components, it made it difficult for us because we needed to have the failed nodes back up and running. As such, the disparate ownership of components in the equipment is an issue."
"The hardware lifecycle is not documented very well. For example, now you can buy a piece of equipment, but you don't know if the hardware is going to be a team production next month or next year."
"Scalability is an area that needs to be improved."
"The consistency of disc quality could be improved."
"This solution does not support Hyper-V, and we would like the new version to be supported and certified to work with Hyper-V."
"We are finding it a bit challenging in terms of the management of a specific VxBlock component. Currently, we have different units as a part of the block storage. We have one for Cisco equipment and one for Dell. When we have an issue in the infrastructure, Dell EMC VxBlock System should automatically detect it and send a notification to VC support, but, unfortunately, it is doing that only for one unit. It is not working for Cisco components. We have informed them about this area of improvement, and they are working on this. The way different parts are integrated should be improved. We should have one console to log in to see all the infrastructure in terms of each machine and hardware."
"NetApp has some tools that you can purchase to do performance management, or you can go with another vendor and buy a product which does the same thing. It would be nice if there was more of these features with the product, not add-ons."
"It could be more innovative."
"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"Sometimes, it can take awhile for support cases to get to the right people, especially if it's not a P1 case."
"There are certain things that are just hard to do on a physical infrastructure, like for instance you need to make petabytes of data available at high speed."
"Possibly the UCS could get a bit better. Other than that, overall I don't necessarily have any sorts of constraints or issues with it. It's done the job that it's been bought to do."
"We want always more speed, capacity, fluidity, and growth that we can easily integrate."
"They need to improve the user interface to make it easier to work in this environment. The older version is poor."
"Patching processing takes a long time. Only one compute node is patched at a time."
"OVM Manager Interface is using HTML5. It should be reconverted to be a Java interface."
"The deployment process of Oracle Private Cloud Appliance is complicated and requires significant knowledge for initial configuration."
"In comparison to competitors like VMware, there's a perceived need for Oracle to enhance OVM, making it more flexible and user-friendly."
"The initial setup was very complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We purchased this solution with a ten-year manufacturer warranty, and we have a three-year warranty with our local partner."
"Its price is high. That's why people are now moving to hyper-converge."
"Compared to other solutions, Dell VxBlock System is more expensive."
"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 have saved 50 percent on new service deployments."
"Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year."
"As a startup, for the amount of budget we have and the amount we spend, we are getting what we expected."
"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."
"Make sure you are buying for performance, not just capacity."
"We have seen an 80 percent improvement in application performance."
"I have saved time on new service deployments. I've done deployments in under a week, and if it's a cloud-based deployment, it's even faster."
"It is more expensive than the normal solution or the hyper-converged system."
"If you have many Oracle products, such as databases, middleware, and apps, it will help you reduce Oracle app licences and support costs."
"It is relatively cost-effective."
"No licenses for the shipped software or firmware."
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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
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
University
6%
Manufacturing Company
20%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
25%
Government
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC VxBlock System?
The cost is not overly expensive but not cheap either. Considering the features and everything, it is very good. Pric...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC VxBlock System?
There is a need for single console management. Everything should be accessible through a single console to ensure eas...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC VxBlock System?
I am currently using it for the converse infrastructure. Before the VxBlock from Dell, everything was integrated into...
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 appl...
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 number...
What needs improvement with FlexPod?
FlexPod should focus more on automation. Integrating an automation tool with FlexPod would enable customers to levera...
What do you like most about Oracle Private Cloud Appliance?
The most valuable features include distinct storage within the Oracle PCA.
What needs improvement with Oracle Private Cloud Appliance?
The deployment process of Oracle Private Cloud Appliance is complicated and requires significant knowledge for initia...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Private Cloud Appliance?
I use Oracle Private Cloud Appliance ( /products/oracle-private-cloud-appliance-reviews ) as a complete solution for ...
 

Also Known As

VxBlock, VCE VxBlock System, Dell EMC VxBlock, VxBlock 1000
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Atos, Canadian Pacific, IDS, City of Denton, CenturyLink, BNP Paribas, Asyaport, EDF, CSC, Fox Sports, Insight, Hunter, KPIT, Paetec, Rosetta Stone, Sonda, Switch, Xerox
University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
Agnitum Information Technologies, Mediacloud, Xait AS, Atos Global Managed Services, CaixaBI, ICA AB, BT Spain, Secure-24, Xait
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle and others in Converged Infrastructure. Updated: July 2025.
862,077 professionals have used our research since 2012.