FlexPod XCS vs HPE Hyper Converged comparison

The compared NetApp and Hewlett Packard Enterprise solutions aren't in the same category. NetApp is ranked #1 in CI , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 12.3% mindshare in the category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #11 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 2.9% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

FlexPod XCS

Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews

3,176 Views
1,493 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

HPE Hyper Converged

Read 38 HPE Hyper Converged reviews

2,248 Views
2,158 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

FlexPod XCS

HPE Hyper Converged

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

FlexPod XCS and HPE Hyper Converged are advanced data center solutions. FlexPod XCS appears to have the upper hand due to better pricing and support, while HPE Hyper Converged is noted for superior features and management.

Features: FlexPod XCS offers robust hardware integration, exceptional performance, and scalability. HPE Hyper Converged provides simplified management, flexibility, and a comprehensive solution set.

Room for Improvement: FlexPod XCS needs better software updates, more intuitive management tools, and enhanced analytics. HPE Hyper Converged requires improved analytical capabilities, more streamlined support, and stronger software updates.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FlexPod XCS is known for straightforward deployment and mixed support reviews. HPE Hyper Converged offers quick deployment and responsive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: FlexPod XCS is competitively priced with a good ROI. HPE Hyper Converged, although more expensive, offers significant value in terms of features and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Converged Infrastructure Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Converged Infrastructure

January 2026

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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

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

295

Ranking in other categories

Converged Infrastructure (1st)

HPE Hyper Converged

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

HCI (11th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. FlexPod XCS is designed for Converged Infrastructure and holds a mindshare of 12.3%, up 8.6% compared to last year.
HPE Hyper Converged, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 2.9% mindshare, down 2.9% since last year.

Converged Infrastructure Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
FlexPod XCS	12.3%
HPE ConvergedSystem	11.7%
Dell VxBlock System	9.4%
Other	66.6%

Converged Infrastructure

HCI Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HPE Hyper Converged	2.9%
VxRail	13.2%
VMware vSAN	10.7%
Other	73.2%

HCI

Featured Reviews

John Kevin

Deputy IT Manager at MBBank

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.

Read full review

GosayeErko

System Engineer at BIOS Engineering

Infrastructure management simplifies for clients with integrated interface and enhanced resource utilization

Currently, the HPE HCI is based on the VMware solution, and most clients are skipping VMware because VMware has changed its licensing method. If HPE starts to use its own hypervisor for its HCI solutions, it will be the best solution. We push a different vendor for the backup and replication, so we only use the HCI, then we use Veeam for the backup and replication section.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"FlexPod’s prevalidated architectures are very important to our organization... Especially in healthcare, it is absolutely critical that we have a validated performance platform. It has to work every time."

"It is extremely stable and well-supported because of the leadership and partnerships put in place."

"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."

"We have had great support, and this is when we have called for any problems, which have been very minimal to start with."

"It runs our VMs. Our SQL databases are all on VMs, so everything is virtualized."

"For our DR, we rely heavily on SnapMirror technologies to accomplish our disaster recovery in VMware SRM."

"The solution can be innovative when it comes to compute storage and networking. FlexPod is very flexible and innovative. We can design it as we like."

"This solution has given us a great deal of on-site storage that we didn't have before."

More FlexPod XCS pros

"The features of HPE Hyper Converged that are most effective and beneficial are its simplicity as well as its scalability."

"It provides unmatched performance, productivity and reliability."

"HPE Hyper Converged is stable."

"The provisioning is very fast. It’s not a problem for us to achieve the goals of the client."

"The most beneficial feature is the life cycle management."

"The solution has good backup resolution updates."

"It's a very complete product with residencies to protect data and secure it end-to-end. It includes storage, computing, and networking, offering a fully ten-key solution."

"The most valuable features are resiliency and data protection."

More HPE Hyper Converged pros

Cons

"The initial learning curve is pretty steep."

"As we do much of the Tier-I support ourselves, and thus don't normally need it, there is time wasted in moving up to the next level."

"The initial setup was complex. UCS is not the easiest thing to configure from the ground up. The networking pieces can get confusing, especially when you are talking about virtual segmentation. It is not as easy as other things now on the market, such as hyperconverged."

"I'd like to see a little bit simpler management pane. Using UCS Director to front everything is good but for a lot of that upper mid-market, it's probably a little bit of overkill for what they need. They just want a nice, simply portal to go through and see what's going on. So if there was something that was middle of the road, it would be well received."

"I would like to see programmability into a SaaS-based offering, as I know Cisco's going in a lot of directions with their Intersight application."

"Make it easier to refresh hardware. We got to the point where we couldn't fix vulnerabilities without refreshing the hardware, then that became a little too expensive for us to do."

"It would be great to see some form of interoperability between the FAS units and the E-Series, specifically for replication, even if it is just one more replication from a FAS to an E-Series. That would be amazing."

"I would like to see drag and drop connectivity to Azure and Amazon."

More FlexPod XCS cons

"The solution is not very stable."

"In the Hyper Converged environment, some of the brands only support the OS VMware and not Hyper-V from Microsoft or even Red Hat or KVM."

"Though with HPE Hyper Converged, you get everything, the documentation part is very much required, especially if you opt for the solution's subscription-based licensing model."

"Data protection and optimization: It is really weak. They do not offer deduplication or compression."

"The software version on the HC380s we are using is version 1. It does not support spanned vCenter which we use since we have multiple sites."

"We have faced some challenges when upgrading. With Hyper Converged, you have to fully upgrade because there are no incremental upgrades available in this solution. For example, let's say we have two nodes. If we want to upgrade storage, we also need to upgrade computing. That means a full upgrade EME."

"The price can be improved. We would like to see support for some open source virtualization technology like for example KVM."

"I think that OneView should be replaced by something else for the management."

More HPE Hyper Converged cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Overall, the solution works pretty well. The biggest complaint I have from customers is the cost."

"If your company really needs to be up 100% of the time, and you need to do a private data center, I don't know if I could realistically actually recommend another blueprint."

"We immediately saw a return on investment due to the fact that replacing our legacy storage arrays with the new AFFs reduced the footprint and maintenance costs. Overall, we saw an almost immediate ROI."

"We have saved 50 percent on new service deployments."

"You get better management and orchestration, but it still costs you money."

"It is expensive. My company is small. When you look at the price point, this is a big thing for us to invest in."

"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."

"We pay approximately $1,400 USD in total for between five-thousand and ten-thousand ports."

More FlexPod XCS pricing and cost advice

"If I'm comparing with Dell, HPE Hyper Converged is definitely cheaper in my experience."

"The solutions cost us a lot."

"It is a cost-effective solution."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."

"I would rate the price at seven out of ten. There are no additional licensing fees, but it would be cheaper to go with a dHCI solution."

"The solution is expensive - not only the hardware costs but server costs too. And the more you scale, the more expensive it gets."

"Pricing with Dell EMC is double the price which I paid for HPE. However, in the end, Dell EMC is double in performance. This is not an apple to apple comparison though, as I have a four node from Dell EMC and a three node."

"With this solution, I buy everything together, pre-packaged, pre-installed, and in just 15 minutes, it's installed."

More HPE Hyper Converged pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user244362

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

20%

Performing Arts

10%

Educational Organization

Transportation Company

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	34
Midsize Enterprise	66
Large Enterprise	182

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	18
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	18

Questions from the Community

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Earn 20 points

What do you like most about HPE Hyper Converged?

The solution's most valuable features are scalability, easy migration, easy recovery, and flexible backup possibilities.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Hyper Converged?

The product is intermediate in price, neither expensive nor cheap. We are talking about an on-premises solution without licensing for years. Currently, licensing is required for VMs and CPU cores. ...

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What needs improvement with HPE Hyper Converged?

The initial setup of HPE Hyper Converged requires study and a comprehensive understanding of virtualization. The second step is to follow instructions step by step, as it can be complex to understa...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 16% of the time

HPE ConvergedSystem vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 11% of the time

Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 8% of the time

Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 8% of the time

More FlexPod XCS Competitors

VxRail vs HPE Hyper Converged

Compared 24% of the time

VMware vSAN vs HPE Hyper Converged

Compared 13% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs HPE Hyper Converged

Compared 12% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs HPE Hyper Converged

Compared 8% of the time

Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure vs HPE Hyper Converged

Compared 3% of the time

More HPE Hyper Converged Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

HPE Hyper Converged

January 2026

Download HPE Hyper Converged product report

Also Known As

No data available

HPE Hyper Converged 380, HPE Hyper Converged 250, HPE Hyper Converged 250 for Microsoft CPS

Overview

FlexPod XCS is the secure platform your applications need from edge to cloud. Easily manage your suite of cloud-native, edge, and enterprise apps. Integrate advanced cloud services without compromising performance, security, reliability, or scale.

NetApp

HPE Hyper Converged solutions combine intuitive software with the reliability of a world class platform to deliver cloud-like simplicity to your business.

Now, IT can become an internal service provider to end-users by quickly delivering the resources they need for application development and consumption. With HPE Hyper Converged systems companies can operate with cloud efficiency to simplify IT operations with one comprehensive control panel to deploy, monitor, analyze and update – with a single generalist; consume with cloud flexibility to deliver a cloud-like experience, with multi-tenant workspaces that eliminate stranded resources and flexes on demand; and deploy at cloud speed to empower developers and lines-of-business with a self-service portal that can instantly compose and recompose VMs in minutes. Built-in enterprise grade features, such as performance and resiliency enable HPE Hyper Converged systems to easily handle a wide variety of virtualized workloads, including general purpose virtualization, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and cloud.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group

North Lindsey College, FireWhat?, HudsonAlpha

Buyer's Guide

Converged Infrastructure

January 2026

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