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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 April 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 10.8%, down from 19.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.8%
HPE ConvergedSystem10.8%
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

"The most valuable feature is the defined architecture, so you know you're going to be using best practices."
"The product is very stable and it does what it needs to do."
"If you're looking for a solution that you know is going to work and that you're going to get some solid support and backing from the vendor throughout your process from start to finish, it's going to be the NetApp guys."
"Overall, as an entire package, it has everything that we need and support is very helpful when needed."
"I think that the most valuable feature is the pre-validated design, the reference configuration, as all the integrations have been done, and you don’t need to go through a teething phase."
"The vendor delivers a fully-configured prebuilt system with a certain baseline on it; we can ship it to five continents, roll them into place, plug in two power cords and six network cables, and we are off to the races."
"The ability to converge a lot of different data and platforms into a single common platform, then scale horizontally and vertically."
"The nice thing about NetApp is the ease of administration. We have a new storage admin who did not do storage at all, and he has fallen right in with it. There are no real issues."
"The user interface, reporting, and management are good, and we are quite happy with the performance."
"After we migrated to this environment, everything changed."
"We find the deduplication and compression features to be most valuable, as well as that of the backup solution inside."
"The solution's technical support was good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"As far as what we are doing now, there is no problem with stability; it's pretty flexible, it's efficient, and it is centralized management, cost-effective."
"We use the solution for DDI."
"This is a scalable solution. Our customers begin with an initial configuration and later add more servers, memory and other options to meet the demands of increased processing."
"Most of the HP products I come across are they are easy to install. That's not very complex."
 

Cons

"They should cram more space in there and find a way to compress things more; dedupe better."
"However, for a lot of our customers, the complexity of FlexPod can be a little overwhelming."
"I would like to see more interoperability within FlexPods. This comes into more of how we grow from multiple domains to a massive domain."
"The management interface of the UCS part of it is a little bit clunky."
"FlexPod should focus more on automation. Integrating an automation tool with FlexPod would enable customers to leverage automation capabilities."
"With the next solution, if there is a virtual Flex part where we can deploy it to private clouds or in public clouds rather tying up the hardware, it would reduce costs and complexity. Then, we could do a lot more automation."
"Not a perfect ten because it could use better integration on the network side between UCS and the switching layer. The fact that LACP is not supported on UCS blades isn't so great. It would be nice if it was."
"The integration between both companies, Cisco and NetApp, is very good but it still needs to be enhanced in terms of visibility and observability."
"There is some scope for improvement in support. The response time could be better."
"This is an expensive solution and could be improved with lower pricing."
"I think the MTG inside HP could be improved."
"My biggest pet peeve with the HC250 are the descriptions that they put on our parts list."
"The MTG inside HP could be improved."
"It was a very rough ride. The people they sent, I don't think they had experience in doing these kinds of implementations before."
"The interface is not fully integrated with the ESXi, which is something that could be improved."
"With ConvergedSystem, we'd like to see just how portable and scalable HP can make it. Is it really just an add-on each time and not a complete redesign?"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."
"Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year."
"We have saved 50 percent on new service deployments."
"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's expensive, but when you pay for enterprise support and enterprise products, you have to pay the big bucks."
"The investment has been great. We put our money into it and it has given us something that we have been able to rely on for years."
"As a whole, it is inexpensive, and it uses the least amount of parts."
"The NetApp portion was a $5 million investment five years ago. That has served the customer well over five and a half years."
"There are some extra costs in addition to the licensing costs for the yearly maintenance from professional third-party services."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is competitive. Not a major problem. We have a subscription model."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"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."
"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."
"This is an expensive system and not every customer has the kind of budget to support it."
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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
20%
Marketing Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Performing Arts
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: April 2026.
890,124 professionals have used our research since 2012.