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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

"The FlexPod solution is one of the easiest solutions to implement, maintain, and scale."
"It provides ease of automation."
"Honestly, it's making sure that you only have one upgrade path when various patches are released."
"Because of this solution, we now don't have very many problems."
"I live by the Validated Designs. I do exactly what those designs say and I haven't had a problem as a result. For example, they used to do the FCoE. They figured out there was a problem and they went over to the NFS. I moved over and I agreed with them. It worked better."
"The most valuable feature are probably the inter-app ability that it offers; knowing that everything is compatible; and the validated designs that we get with that."
"UCS Profiles enable recovering a physical server in less than 15 minutes."
"The flexibility, operational efficiency, and scalability of FlexPod are amazing."
"The best feature of this solution is the backup system."
"Previously, with a traditional extract transform load process, it would take us three hours to load our large volume tables, now it takes us about ten minutes on SAP HANA on a ConvergedSystem platform."
"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."
"The storage, BladeSystems, Virtual Connect, and simplicity with hyper-converged solutions are the most valuable features of this solution."
"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."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to restore lost machines. Essentially its high availability capabilities are extremely valuable to us."
"Consolidation and duplications features."
"The best value was in the service because we receive the solution as a managed service from HPE, so it's a box somewhere in the data center that we don't care about, it's always running and so far, no problems."
 

Cons

"Parts of the initial setup were complex, especially on the networking side."
"Perhaps the automation interface could be improved."
"This is where I have seen it get a bit distorted."
"The solution could be improved by including automation for user updates."
"Add more automation into the Cisco UCS firmware upgrade process to make it more streamlined than it is today."
"Setting up a Cisco USC environment can be complex."
"The management interface of the UCS part of it is a little bit clunky. It uses Java, so when we're managing it, if I have a computer that doesn't have Java on it or has the wrong version of Java on it, there's some iterations that have to happen to get into the manager of it."
"We would like to have more monitoring and reporting, because today some of the reporting, and if you purchase it separately is expensive. We use OnCommand Unified Manager today, which is great, but we are looking for more of that."
"This is an expensive solution and could be improved with lower pricing."
"My biggest pet peeve with the HC250 are the descriptions that they put on our parts list."
"I would like to see better manageability and integration with third-party tools."
"The solution needs to be easier to use."
"Technical support hasn't seemed to be that simple or that easy."
"HPE ConvergedSystem needs to improve its price."
"I think the MTG inside HP could be improved."
"It could be enhanced by improving the built-in backup solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a lease for approximately $10,000 USD per month."
"We definitely saw a lot of operational cost savings using FlexPod. As far as capital outlay goes, that was a little bit too much for us to swallow and we weren't able to recognize enough savings in that area to afford it."
"The pricing is not cheaper, but stability is more important for us now. We focus on business gains, not static numbers."
"It created lower total cost of ownership. Previously, we had disparate storage and servers, and there were bits of kits everywhere. Now, we have two data centers with almost identical setups in both."
"We pay approximately $1,400 USD in total for between five-thousand and ten-thousand ports."
"The FlexPod licensing can adjust to your purse, i.e. there are different levels available for businesses of all sizes."
"The solution has saved our customers' organization in terms of CapEx. E.g., with the cloud availability, it's turned into sort of a hybrid CapEx/OpEx model."
"The total cost of ownership with this solution is good."
"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."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is competitive. Not a major problem. We have a subscription model."
"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."
"There are some extra costs in addition to the licensing costs for the yearly maintenance from professional third-party services."
"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
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.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.