FlexPod XCS vs Oracle Private Cloud Appliance comparison

NetApp and Oracle are both solutions in the Converged Infrastructure category. NetApp is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.4, while Oracle is ranked #4 with an average rating of 10.0. NetApp holds a 9.4% mindshare in CI, compared to Oracle’s 14.9% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

FlexPod XCS

Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews

533 Views
209 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

Read 6 Oracle Private Cloud Appliance reviews

651 Views
286 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

FlexPod XCS

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

FlexPod XCS and Oracle Private Cloud Appliance compete in the private cloud infrastructure category. FlexPod XCS is advantageous with pricing and support satisfaction, while Oracle Private Cloud Appliance is highlighted for its feature set that many find justifies its cost.

Features: FlexPod XCS is notable for scalability, versatile integration, and robust data management systems. Oracle Private Cloud Appliance features powerful automation, streamlined configuration, and comprehensive solution orchestration.

Room for Improvement: FlexPod XCS could enhance its setup process and streamline deployment. Oracle Private Cloud Appliance might benefit from improving initial cost barriers and expanding support for a wider range of integrations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Oracle Private Cloud Appliance offers a simplified deployment model with efficient customer service, while FlexPod XCS provides a more extensive setup process with responsive support services.

Pricing and ROI: FlexPod XCS ensures competitive setup costs and attractive ROI through cost-effective scaling. Oracle Private Cloud Appliance, though higher in initial investment, offers substantial returns by handling demanding workloads, promising long-term savings.

To learn more, read our detailed FlexPod XCS vs. Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS vs. Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

June 2025

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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

Ranking in Converged Infrastructure

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

295

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

Ranking in Converged Infrastructure

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of FlexPod XCS is 9.4%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Private Cloud Appliance is 14.9%, up from 10.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Converged Infrastructure

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

Mir Gulzar Ahmed

IT Manager at Synergy Computers

Offers comprehensive support and performance but initial deployment requires expertise

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance ( /products/oracle-private-cloud-appliance-reviews ) is a complete solution that includes built-in hypervisor management and Appliance Manager, and integrates with Oracle Cloud ( /products/oracle-cloud-infrastructure-oci-reviews ) Infrastructure. It simplifies the management of virtual machines, networking, compute, and storage, allowing me to create multiple virtual machines easily without logging into the storage system. It offers free licensing of Oracle Linux ( /products/oracle-linux-reviews ) and Solaris, and provides high-performance capabilities through extreme performance storage options. Additionally, the product ensures comprehensive customer support.

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

"The main advantage is consolidating everything into a single rack, which helps optimize power consumption, especially in CRM."

"Provides unified support: Being able to get a vendor from one company or another company on the line without having to go back through the call queue."

"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."

"Our customers get their applications to market more quickly, and it has taken the risk out of their business, because there is less for them to try to figure out."

"The most valuable feature is that it is all-in-one, and it is easy to get support on it."

"The solution suits converged infrastructures, where the customer gets a complete system with Cisco servers, NetApp Storage, and Cisco switches."

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

"The most valuable feature is ease of deployment. Once I deploy the chassis and I have the back-end storage, configuring more UCS servers is very quick. I can deploy a new UCS server within minutes."

More FlexPod XCS pros

"It has helped us to reduce Oracle licensing costs for database and applications."

"You will find the high availability and License Team with Oracle very valuable."

"The most valuable features include distinct storage within the Oracle PCA."

"It is scalable as the box can be increased by one compute node, if required."

"Oracle Private Cloud Appliance is a complete solution that includes built-in hypervisor management and Appliance Manager, and integrates with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure."

"Supports connection to most of network topology, such as VLAN and network segmentation."

Cons

"It would be very helpful if the upgrades for Cisco, VMware, and NetApp could be bundled together and performed at the same time."

"The cost may be high compared to other solutions."

"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."

"I think they can always improve, whether it's dedupe or compression, those algorithms; and flash through better SSDs."

"The ability to manage the templates across sites. We would like to easily take out the configuration of one FlexPod and copy it over, just making minor changes. There is a way to do it, but it's clumsy."

"The last two calls that I have made to NetApp support have been handled too casually. People are too lax, not quite as professional as I would have liked."

"If they could reduce some of the complexity at the system manager level for ONTAP. I find it gives a lot of flexibility. You can do as much or as little as you want. But to be able to do as little as you want, you do have to do a lot. So, if they could bring that down to a more manageable effort level, that would be nice and simplify it a bit."

"The biggest thing that I would like to see is more cost-effective FlexPod solutions."

More FlexPod XCS cons

"OVM Manager Interface is using HTML5. It should be reconverted to be a Java interface."

"In comparison to competitors like VMware, there's a perceived need for Oracle to enhance OVM, making it more flexible and user-friendly."

"The deployment process of Oracle Private Cloud Appliance is complicated and requires significant knowledge for initial configuration."

"Patching processing takes a long time. Only one compute node is patched at a time."

"The initial setup was very complex."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"We have a lease for approximately $10,000 USD per month."

"The FlexPod licensing can adjust to your purse, i.e. there are different levels available for businesses of all sizes."

"We purchased the solution through CDW. They are a partner and knowledgeable."

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

"FlexPod has saved data center costs, due to the fact that we reduced our footprint for storage in a big way. We went from three complete racks down to a 2U storage array for more than 300 terabytes of storage."

"The NetApp portion was a $5 million investment five years ago. That has served the customer well over five and a half years."

More FlexPod XCS pricing and cost advice

"It is more expensive than the normal solution or the hyper-converged system."

"No licenses for the shipped software or firmware."

"If you have many Oracle products, such as databases, middleware, and apps, it will help you reduce Oracle app licences and support costs."

"It is relatively cost-effective."

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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

18%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Computer Software Company

26%

Government

15%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

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.

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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...

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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...

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What do you like most about Oracle Private Cloud Appliance?

The most valuable features include distinct storage within the Oracle PCA.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Oracle Private Cloud Appliance?

The deployment process of Oracle Private Cloud Appliance is complicated and requires significant knowledge for initial configuration. Streamlining and simplifying the deployment process would make ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Oracle Private Cloud Appliance?

I use Oracle Private Cloud Appliance ( /products/oracle-private-cloud-appliance-reviews ) as a complete solution for hypervisor management. It includes a built-in hypervisor, Appliance Manager, and...

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Comparisons

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Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 11% of the time

VMware vSAN vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 9% of the time

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HPE ConvergedSystem vs Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

Compared 25% of the time

Rackspace OpenStack vs Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

Compared 21% of the time

Dell VxBlock System vs Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

Compared 20% of the time

Oracle SuperCluster vs Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

Compared 17% of the time

More Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

June 2025

Download FlexPod XCS product report

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

May 2025

Download Oracle Private Cloud Appliance product report

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

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance, is an integrated infrastructure system engineered to enable rapid deployment of converged compute, network, and storage technologies for hosting applications or workloads on a guest OS. It is a data center-class system that provides incremental and scalable performance optimized for consolidation of mixed workloads.

Oracle

Sample Customers

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

Agnitum Information Technologies, Mediacloud, Xait AS, Atos Global Managed Services, CaixaBI, ICA AB, BT Spain, Secure-24, Xait

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS vs. Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

June 2025

Free Report: FlexPod XCS vs. Oracle Private Cloud Appliance

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