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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
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure for SAP HANA (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of FlexPod XCS is 12.5%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE ConvergedSystem is 11.1%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.5%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.1%
Other76.4%
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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

"It has been very scalable – our guys scale it across six sites right now."
"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."
"The solution is trustworthy, and it has proven itself too."
"Our return on investment is that the solution has made us more efficient."
"Validate designs are a good. They work in the background to combine all the infrastructure and storage. They create automation which can create volumes and attach VMs directly to massive CIFS."
"It solved a big problem for us; it solved a big user contention issue that we had with file stores and user data all over the place, and now it's all centralized."
"The validated design is a huge bit; it means that it's supportable by both NetApp and Cisco, and that means that we're doing it the industry best-practice way."
"From all of the feedback that I have received, it is an easy, straightforward system to set up and maintain."
"One of the valuable components in this solution is HPE Synergy, which is a useful tool for deployments and updates."
"We use the solution for DDI."
"The best feature of this solution is the backup system."
"We used to use Dell blades and we didn't have Virtual Connect, so configuring the networks and all of that for our servers took a lot longer."
"I recommend this solution, I think it's easier to implement Converged than other solutions."
"Most of the HP products I come across are they are easy to install. That's not very complex."
"We find the deduplication and compression features to be most valuable, as well as that of the backup solution inside."
"The tool's most valuable features are stability and scalability."
 

Cons

"At the beginning, there was a little bit of confusion among the support folks on how to open up tickets with the others."
"Hardware stability needs improvement. We replaced a lot of RAM this past year."
"They could improve their technical support team. They need to have a specific phone number for you to call in for the FlexPod solution. Some of the partner support knows if it is for FlexPod, they will get you to the right department."
"A piece where FlexPod has come up short in the past and an area for them to improve upon: single pane of glass management and single pane of glass upgrade process."
"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."
"I would like to see more CVDs and more published designs around a multi-hypervisor approach within a single pod."
"The tool is obsolete and we are migrating to HPE. It should improve the pricing."
"I would also like to feel more support. NetApp has been pretty good, for the most part, but Cisco has more work to do."
"I would like to see a full flash array added and the pricing improved, as HP is expensive."
"Perhaps they can work on providing faster allocation of memory or storage."
"The tool has shortcomings in its performance monitoring part."
"Pricing is an area of concern in the solution where improvements are required."
"Something that we think should be better in the HANA converged solutions is all of the monitoring of the solutions."
"My biggest pet peeve with the HC250 are the descriptions that they put on our parts list."
"HPE ConvergedSystem needs to improve its price."
"Currently, we have problems with the HPE StoreOnce module in regards to the backup operations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is a little high."
"Sometimes you may end up spending a little more to get it in the first place, but you gain it back in terms of infrastructure upgrade costs and troubleshooting costs. The solution also lasts a surprisingly long time."
"It's expensive, but when you pay for enterprise support and enterprise products, you have to pay the big bucks."
"The NetApp portion was a $5 million investment five years ago. That has served the customer well over five and a half years."
"The product's pricing is high and I would rate it a nine out of ten."
"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."
"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."
"It is cheaper than other products. For example, Dell EMC VxBlock is more expensive."
"The pricing is sensitive."
"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."
"This is an expensive system and not every customer has the kind of budget to support it."
"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."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"My company has a five year contract for HPE ConvergedSystem. The contracts depend on companies and sometimes it can be three years. The solution is worth its price."
"There are some extra costs in addition to the licensing costs for the yearly maintenance from professional third-party services."
"The pricing is competitive. Not a major problem. We have a subscription model."
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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
17%
Construction Company
14%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

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.
902,495 professionals have used our research since 2012.