FlexPod XCS vs HPE StoreVirtual comparison

The compared NetApp and Hewlett Packard Enterprise solutions aren't in the same category. NetApp is ranked #6 in CI , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 9.2% mindshare in the category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #21 in SDS , and holds a 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

FlexPod XCS

Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews

1,703 Views
630 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

HPE StoreVirtual

Read 50 HPE StoreVirtual reviews

761 Views
426 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

FlexPod XCS

HPE StoreVirtual

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between FlexPod XCS and HPE StoreVirtual based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle and others in Converged Infrastructure.

To learn more, read our detailed Converged Infrastructure Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Converged Infrastructure

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 864,574 peers since 2012

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 (6th)

HPE StoreVirtual

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (21st)

Mindshare comparison

FlexPod XCS and HPE StoreVirtual aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. FlexPod XCS is designed for Converged Infrastructure and holds a mindshare of 9.2%, down 10.0% compared to last year.
HPE StoreVirtual, on the other hand, focuses on Software Defined Storage (SDS), holds 1.3% mindshare, down 1.4% since last year.

Converged Infrastructure

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

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

Vebjorn Nergaard

Senior IT Engineer at Guard Automation AS

Reliable with helpful support and good replication

The setup is okay, however, it comes with a moderate amount of difficulty. If you are new to the product, it is difficult. You do get used to the process over time and it gets easier. A company just needs one person to maintain the solution as it just runs. You don't need any support staff. It's very, very hands-off except when you do updates. The product is living its own life.

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

"It definitely streamlined operations. TCO-wise, it reduced cabling in the architecture. So, there has definitely been some savings. There have been a lot of reductions in the IT admin's time: reduced time to troubleshoot, reduced time to inventory the infrastructure, and reduced time to set up a host with templates and storage. The solution is saving easily 10 hours a week in time."

"If the network or site is down, you just need to go to a single vendor. You don't have to open up multiple cases with each vendor to get things done. That is one of the financial benefits of this solution."

"We like it because everything is 10 Gig all the way through, from the storage to the switches to everything else, which is more than we need, and that's great."

"Things got a lot faster. We can pull and test in DEV systems much more rapidly and are clearing up a lot of DBA time. In the past, every time we tested it, we needed to be refreshed. In the past, it would take a day of our DBA's time, and now it's just point, click, and ten minutes later it's done."

"High availability is outstanding. We haven't had any problems with that."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the integration and ease of use."

"It scales easily. We went through an upgrade of adding additional chassis, and it wasn't a big deal."

"The most valuable feature is the one call number for support and the fact that all the documentation comes with it. They have all of the preprepared plans for the deployment model and we can just choose which one we want for VMware, etc. The hardware is all listed. We buy that and away we go. It's called validated design."

More FlexPod XCS pros

"A very flexible solution."

"It's very stable and it's easy to use."

"It allows compute and storage to operate separately, and has the ability to take SAN nodes out of production for maintenance with little effort and zero downtime."

"The solution is very stable."

"The initial setup is straightforward, not a complex procedure."

"he interface and the installation makes it easy as it's all in one piece of hardware and it doesn't need to be connected to anything else."

"The seamlessness behind the scenes of block management."

"A company can scale it easily."

More HPE StoreVirtual pros

Cons

"Perhaps the automation interface could be improved."

"We dislike going online with the robot stuff. Many times, it has delayed our reaching out to a real support engineer."

"It would be helpful if they sold a pre-boxed option so that you can buy a rack and everything's already there, everything's connected."

"In the SolidFire interface, if you use the GUI, you have to create one run at a time, or one device at a time, which is something that needs to be fixed."

"There is a history of issues with hardware availability. For example, we'll buy an array or a filer with a particular configuration and particular size of drive, sizing it appropriately. Then, as we grow, they're like, "Oh, you can always get more." Then when you go to get more, that model or type of disk is no longer available. It becomes this big process to try to figure out what we need to get, how it'll work, and how that'll integrate into the system. That could be simpler. They could do a bit more to guarantee the availability of parts. Obviously, not being the largest storage vendor, I know they can't sometimes control what the hardware vendors do. However, a bit more transparency and communication about this would be helpful."

"It is not as easy as a hyperconverged solution, but you are going to have a hard time finding that anywhere, where you can just plugin and run a deployment app."

"We have had bugs which have been released, even though they have been minor."

"We have had a bit of struggle on the support side. From a customer perspective, it has been up to us to make sure that we get both NetApp and Cisco involved when we have had an issue."

More FlexPod XCS cons

"Product looks like it is in the end of development."

"Configuration of application integrated snapshots for VMware is convoluted and it did not work immediately."

"It would be nice if there were more parts available in Brazil and HPE could swap out faulty equipment quicker."

"The product is coming to end-of-life in the next three years."

"I would like to have this solution easily integrate with VMware."

"One of the areas that need improvement is the consolidated management platform, to manage all of the nodes from one place and the licensing around that."

"it would nice to have deduplication or compression, things that you have in some of the higher end products."

"The solution needs to ensure it is on par with the industry in terms of availability of features and various other options."

More HPE StoreVirtual cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We fear high availability so we can't buy from different providers."

"As a whole, it is inexpensive, and it uses the least amount of parts."

"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."

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

"Licensing can be interesting with the new version because of the Intersight integration. I don't know what that looks like yet. I have seen some of the different licensing models, but with the new purchasing, all customers are going to have to buy some sort of Intersight licensing with the Blades or FlexPod. I am curious to see how that option shakes out. Previous to the UCS X-Series, the licensing was the same."

"Coming from a rack and stack server model to FlexPod, it has saved us a lot of time (approximately hundreds to thousands of hours)."

"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."

"Make sure that you engage as much with whom you are buying from as a partnership, not just as a purchase."

More FlexPod XCS pricing and cost advice

"Licensing is not exactly straightforward, but not the worst I have ever seen."

"The prices are OK, so we don't have much difficulty selling HPE in Brazil."

"For our organization, I believe the cost is 16,000 Euros for a three-year license. It costs a bit more to do the maintenance on our servers as well. It's also on an HP ProLiant server and an organization will need to do the maintenance there also. I believe the price for that is around 2000 Euros a year."

"If you buy a five-year license, not only does the technical support expire after five years, but you also lose the ability to change and expand the VSA, and the systems won't go down."

"It costs less than $10,000 for one machine. If it costs more than 15% higher than this, then the customer may change to another solution."

"One of the key features about it is that when you buy either a VSA license or a StoreVirtual appliance, all your software's included."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Converged Infrastructure solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

864,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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

21%

Educational Organization

14%

Performing Arts

Computer Software Company

20%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Government

13%

Performing Arts

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about FlexPod?

The system is designed for easy scaling. Because we define everything clearly. So when we plug the system in, we apply the profile, and it scales easily.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FlexPod?

The pricing is not cheaper, but stability is more important for us now. We focus on business gains, not static numbers. Following XCS rules ensures a stable environment, which is crucial. For me, C...

See all answers

What needs improvement with FlexPod?

FlexPod should focus more on automation. Integrating an automation tool with FlexPod would enable customers to leverage automation capabilities. More automation would be helpful. Currently, we cont...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 37% of the time

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 18% of the time

Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 17% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 15% of the time

VxRail vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 12% of the time

More FlexPod XCS Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 56% of the time

VMware vSAN vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 44% of the time

More HPE StoreVirtual Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

August 2025

Download FlexPod XCS product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual

July 2025

Download HPE StoreVirtual product report

Also Known As

No data available

HPE StoreVirtual, HPE VSA

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 StoreVirtual storage ensures that organisations can optimise the benefits of server virtualisation with cost-effective high availability and disaster recovery. The iSCSI-based, scale-out storage platform is easy to manage and change – meeting ongoing business demands without creating IT bottlenecks or application downtime. Overcoming the cost and management limitations of traditional storage area networks (SANs), HPE StoreVirtual nodes use storage clustering to form a single pool of resources that enable organisations to buy only what they need today, scaling non-disruptively to meet requirements in the future.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

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

NBrIX, WIND Telecom, Netrics

Buyer's Guide

Converged Infrastructure

July 2025

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle and others in Converged Infrastructure. Updated: July 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

864,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.

We monitor all Converged Infrastructure reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.