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FlexPod XCS vs HPE ConvergedSystem comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

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

FlexPod XCS
Ranking in Converged Infrastructure
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE ConvergedSystem
Ranking in Converged Infrastructure
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure for SAP HANA (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of FlexPod XCS is 12.8%, up from 9.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE ConvergedSystem is 11.2%, down from 17.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.8%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.2%
Other76.0%
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

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.
PF
Project Engineer at Astellas Pharma US
With good integration and expansion capabilities, the tool also offers good technical support
It is a solution that we could expand in our company. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. Our company has 400 users, all of whom have used it at one point or the other. All of the departments are involved in the usage of the tool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support has been good when we have contacted them in the past, and they have been helpful."
"I have never seen a more resilient HA product out there then NetApp's solution. If I want to know that I'm putting my workload on a solution, from a storage perspective, that is going to be up 100% of the time, I'm going to choose NetApp."
"It is a very well-thought-out solution with great virtualization. A good option we have is mapping a storage LUN onto an ESX cluster. That way, in case a particular ESX is down, it can migrate (using vMotion) to another host in the cluster, resulting in high-availability."
"The most significant benefit is storage flexibility. FlexPod is a reference design to build on and add the appropriate resources you need for your workloads. That's what differentiates it from something like HCI, where you have to buy certain size pieces when you want to expand."
"Honestly, it's making sure that you only have one upgrade path when various patches are released."
"The FlexPod technology is really reliable for us."
"Availability is the most valuable part of this solution. We have not had any trouble since we installed it."
"Finally, we have easily seen a 100 percent improvement in application performance over our previous platform."
"The most valuable features of HPE ConvergedSystem are scalability and resilience."
"The solution is incredibly stable; it's one of the great advantages of the product, and we've never faced any problems when it comes to stability."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the flexibility and the availability of the machines."
"The solution's technical support was good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"Consolidation and duplications features."
"The storage, BladeSystems, Virtual Connect, and simplicity with hyper-converged solutions are the most valuable features of this solution."
"I recommend this solution, I think it's easier to implement Converged than other solutions."
"It's a great solution that is very secure, and very easy to configure."
 

Cons

"It was complex to train people in with it. It was a newer technology for our resources, so it did take some time to get them up to speed."
"It's always the same: upgrade and expandability into the future; maybe a little more forethought on that versus having to have outages when you're going over to the next feature."
"The majority of the time, if we need more storage, then we need to work with customizing the NetApp deployment. Right now, we just do a generic deployment, then wherever we have a need for storage, we have to move some application out of the next FlexPod deployment. One thing is to customize based on the requirements, but the requirements change so frequently, they are absolutely obsolete in six months."
"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."
"Unified management would be really nice, having one a single pane of glass to manage everything do with the solution."
"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"Most of the implementations that I've seen don't take advantage of its features. Where I work now it's been more costly to implement it."
"FlexPod should focus more on automation. Integrating an automation tool with FlexPod would enable customers to leverage automation capabilities."
"The solution needs to add NFS features."
"HPE ConvergedSystem needs to improve its management. I would like the tool to add cloud management features so that the system can be accessed anywhere from the cloud."
"Perhaps they can work on providing faster allocation of memory or storage."
"The interface is not fully integrated with the ESXi, which is something that could be improved."
"I would like to see a full flash array added and the pricing improved, as HP is expensive."
"This is an expensive system and not every customer has the kind of budget to support it."
"Features that should be addressed concern the HPE functionality and the interaction with VMware."
"Technical support hasn't seemed to be that simple or that easy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is cost-effective."
"The product's pricing is high and I would rate it a nine out of ten."
"We can just swap in new equipment or hardware as we need, which has probably saved us several weeks."
"As a startup, for the amount of budget we have and the amount we spend, we are getting what we expected."
"The footprint in the data center is quite large, especially when you scale out. Maybe find some hardware in the future, where if a new blade comes out, then Cisco can say, "Look, we'll buy those blades back off you, and we'll give you this blade for X amount of money." A buyback scheme would be good for hardware, and even NetApp as well. Something like a buyback scheme for blades and stuff moving forward would be good, because I know that they're going to put more power into them. E.g., replacing four blades might equal one blade, which would be awesome, but we are still going to have those four blades around. Maybe having something where it will give you this much money for these blades so we can upgrade. That would be perfect."
"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."
"Pricing and licensing is very affordable from a FlexPod perspective."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"This is an expensive solution."
"I rate the product price an eight and a half on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"There are some extra costs in addition to the licensing costs for the yearly maintenance from professional third-party services."
"This is an expensive system and not every customer has the kind of budget to support it."
"Pricing is good. We have not calculated what hyper-converged infrastructure has brought us but I think there has to be some lower cost for us, compared to the public cloud. Obviously, there would be a lower cost, probably by more than half."
"The pricing is competitive. Not a major problem. We have a subscription model."
"The pricing is sensitive."
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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
16%
Construction Company
13%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise13
 

Also Known As

No data available
HPE ConvergedSystem 700, HPE ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA, CS500, HPE ConvergedSystem 900, HPE ConvergedSystem 500, HPE ConvergedSystem 300
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
FAW-Volkswagen, NICS, NBrIX, Pinpoint, HPE Technology Services, SWS, Ko Sistem, HPE
Find out what your peers are saying about FlexPod XCS vs. HPE ConvergedSystem and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
907,768 professionals have used our research since 2012.