No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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.
Charu Mazumdar - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Architect at DXC Technology
A robust product that offers great flexibility
The initial setup process was neither easy nor difficult, as it is somewhere in the middle, but at times, it is difficult to make certain decisions. The availability of the product is high. The deployment model of the product is chosen depending on the requirements of the customers, but our company does sea consultancy to figure out what the advantages and disadvantages of both deployment models are. The discussions mostly led my company to opt for a hybrid cloud deployment model. It doesn't take more than two days to complete if the installation is only for a couple of systems, or else if there are multiple ways to decide, then the installation part depends on the rate type.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is uniquely valuable for the industry because we've had some experience with a competing solution from another storage vending solution, and it was not nearly as stable."
"The most valuable feature is the one support. Anytime that a customer buys a solution for a server, storage, or network, once they have trouble in their environment, everyone wants to find out who was wrong. With FlexPod, everyone is wrong and there is unified support. The best way to solve the problem is have it be everyone's problem, not just one person's problem. For FlexPod, you can call NetApp or Cisco, and I think it's the best way to solve the problem that the customer has."
"The most valuable thing for me as a partner, as well as our customers, is the shorter time to market."
"It runs our VMs. Our SQL databases are all on VMs, so everything is virtualized."
"The struggle was their speed of deployment (contacting different vendors that took time through the internal authorization procedure), and FlexPod sped up this process by 50-60%."
"Our footprint is lower than it used to be."
"You can just take out blades and replace them, and you're back up and running in no time."
"It's flexible; it's adaptable; it's pretty fast; and it's non-disruptive."
"After we migrated to this environment, everything changed."
"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."
"This solution is very simple to use."
"Consolidation and duplications features."
"It's a great solution that is very secure, and very easy to configure."
"The best feature of this solution is the backup system."
"The user interface, reporting, and management are good, and we are quite happy with the performance."
"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."
 

Cons

"FlexPod XCS needs to improve its pricing."
"Before the ONTAP 9 release, NetApp was cumbersome and not easy to manage."
"Add more automation into the Cisco UCS firmware upgrade process to make it more streamlined than it is today."
"There is always room for improvement. I believe we can do hot swaps on the fly. On the release upgrades, if there was a way to do a release on the fly, that would really be cool because it does take some downtime. It takes restarting. It is more of a software thing. Customers hate doing releases."
"Supporting it is a little more challenging only because of the familiarity with the GUIs."
"Both NetApp and Cisco need to do improvements in their day-to-day operations management upgrades, and they are working on it."
"Maybe some of the graphical interfaces could be a little more user-friendly from the Cisco side of things."
"Perhaps the automation interface could be improved."
"The interface is not fully integrated with the ESXi, which is something that could be improved."
"The tool has shortcomings in its performance monitoring part."
"Perhaps they can work on providing faster allocation of memory or storage."
"There is some scope for improvement in support. The response time could be better."
"It could be enhanced by improving the built-in backup solution."
"This is an expensive solution and could be improved with lower pricing."
"The solution needs to be easier to use."
"Pricing is an area of concern in the solution where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is not cheaper, but stability is more important for us now. We focus on business gains, not static numbers."
"It's expensive, but when you pay for enterprise support and enterprise products, you have to pay the big bucks."
"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."
"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."
"We have saved time and money for new service deployments. Without FlexPod, it probably takes about ten hours. With FlexPod, within two hours, we are up and running. So, we have seen about an 80 percent time decrease."
"It is not cheap, but there is a return on investment in time saved and efficiency."
"Cost is the primary factor behind why I would not give this product a perfect rating."
"We purchased FlexPod though Datalink."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"There are some extra costs in addition to the licensing costs for the yearly maintenance from professional third-party services."
"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."
"The pricing is sensitive."
"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 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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Converged Infrastructure solutions are best for your needs.
909,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
15%
Construction Company
13%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software 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: August 2026.
909,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.