FlexPod XCS vs Rackspace OpenStack comparison

NetApp and Rackspace Technology are both solutions in the Converged Infrastructure category. NetApp is ranked #2, while Rackspace Technology is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.0. NetApp holds a 12.5% mindshare in CI, compared to Rackspace Technology’s 7.4% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of Rackspace Technology users who would recommend it.

FlexPod XCS

Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews

9,680 Views
6,486 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Rackspace OpenStack

Read 16 Rackspace OpenStack reviews

2,200 Views
1,386 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

FlexPod XCS

Rackspace OpenStack

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

Rackspace OpenStack and FlexPod XCS are competing in the cloud infrastructure category. Rackspace OpenStack has the upper hand in scalability and flexibility due to its open-source nature, while FlexPod XCS shines in performance and integration through its pre-engineered solutions.

Features: Rackspace OpenStack offers an open-source architecture with a high degree of customization options, making it ideal for those needing extensive control over their cloud environments. It supports scalability and seamless integration with various third-party tools, enhancing cloud deployment flexibility. FlexPod XCS provides integrated infrastructure utilizing Cisco and NetApp technologies, ensuring performance optimization and reliability. Its design enables simplified deployment and excellent scalability, supporting robust performance for high-demand workloads.

Room for Improvement: Rackspace OpenStack could improve by simplifying its deployment process and enhancing user interface usability for less tech-savvy users. Supporting more out-of-the-box integrations with popular enterprise applications could also increase its attractiveness. Additionally, offering better documentation and educational resources might help users maximize the platform's capabilities. FlexPod XCS might benefit from more competitive pricing models to reach a broader audience. Its hardware dependence may limit customization options, suggesting potential enhancements towards software-defined configurations. Furthermore, expanding its integration capabilities with non-Cisco or NetApp solutions could also add value for diverse IT environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Rackspace OpenStack requires a more intricate deployment process due to its customization options; however, it excels in offering tailored customer support that helps users address specific needs. FlexPod XCS boasts a simpler deployment process due to its pre-integrated design, reducing the time and complexity involved in setup. Its customer service benefits from industry partnerships, providing a robust support network.

Pricing and ROI: Rackspace OpenStack typically features lower upfront costs owing to its open-source nature, presenting a favorable ROI for businesses capable of managing in-house solutions. On the other hand, FlexPod XCS demands a higher initial investment due to its engineered infrastructure but potentially offers better ROI over time by minimizing operational complexities and maximizing efficiency. Businesses should weigh the cost savings of OpenStack's flexibility against FlexPod's reduced management overhead and enhanced productivity.

To learn more, read our detailed FlexPod XCS vs. Rackspace OpenStack Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS vs. Rackspace OpenStack

June 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 900,644 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

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

Rackspace OpenStack

Ranking in Converged Infrastructure

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

5.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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 Rackspace OpenStack is 7.4%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS	12.5%
Rackspace OpenStack	7.4%
Other	80.1%

Converged Infrastructure

Featured Reviews

John Kevin

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.

Read full review

Office Manager

Office and marketing manager at a non-profit with 201-500 employees

Cloud storage and email have supported our association but usability and search still need work

Rackspace OpenStack can be improved because it wasn't clear that you have to cancel 30 days before; otherwise they charge you for the month. I didn't really feel there was anywhere I could go if I had questions in order to live chat or reach out to someone; if that exists, it wasn't made apparent to me. Being able to search keywords and having what you're looking for come up, whether it's an email or in the drive, could definitely be improved, and making it work better with cell phones and improving the setup to be more user-friendly would be helpful.

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

"With the all-flash array, I think it did improve application performance in our organization."

"The amount of time it saved us on the setup, maintaining the system and the fact that we haven't had to do a whole lot of troubleshooting with it makes it valuable."

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

"Batch jobs which used to take two or three hours in the evening are now running in ten to fifteen minutes."

"It has had a big, positive impact, because now everything is centralized."

"The biggest lesson that I have learned from this solution is the ease of actually setting it up and learning it."

"For me, the most valuable feature is probably just the orchestration and automation that can be done around the whole solution from top to bottom, from servers to storage, networking, and using UCS Director."

"Large and small companies do not have time to design the compute, the amount of storage, and how it works together. They are buying pre-proven, pretested solutions with reference architectures already in place."

More FlexPod XCS pros

"The most useful opinion about Rackspace OpenStack is that it is very flexible, first of all, and the most important feature is that it is feature-rich."

"The solution is stable."

"The initial setup isn't too difficult."

"It created a reusable library with OpenStack features."

"It was a very flexible and scalable solution. It was very useful because we were not dependent on a single vendor's solution. Increasing the number of machines or changing the hardware configuration was very easy."

"I like its integration with GitLab and its simplicity. OpenStack has a lot of third-party libraries that it uses."

"OpenStack allowed for mass uploading of images to Akamai cloud services."

"The documentation was plentiful and very helpful."

More Rackspace OpenStack pros

Cons

"The initial setup was complex. UCS is not the easiest thing to configure from the ground up."

"The downside is that the administration is a little bit complex."

"I get caught in the upgrade matrix quite a bit, which is an indication that it hasn’t been tested."

"The initial setup for FlexPod is complex."

"We used an integrator. That experience was not as good as it could have been."

"I guess the training availability and infinite scalability could be better, and it’s getting there."

"Before the ONTAP 9 release, NetApp was cumbersome and not easy to manage."

"The nature of running FlexPod in its pre-defined infrastructure is that it's not pre-configured."

More FlexPod XCS cons

"The deployment process could be easy."

"The seamless integration between MySQL services and the rabbitMQ database can be revised during the debugging phase."

"It could use more examples in different languages (API use cases)."

"Rackspace OpenStack can be improved because it wasn't clear that you have to cancel 30 days before; otherwise they charge you for the month."

"As a beginner, I find some difficulties in understanding Rackspace OpenStack, as it can be complex without a foundational grasp of cloud and networking concepts."

"We are moving from Rackspace OpenStack to CloudStack due to the requirement of human resources and technicality. There are lots of moving parts in Rackspace OpenStack."

"VMware has a side-to-side replication feature, which is still more mature than Rackspace OpenStack's which can't be used in a production environment."

"OpenStack is difficult for the novice in terms of beginning to use cloud tools."

More Rackspace OpenStack cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Buy storage based on the solutions you need, the technologies you need, and what will make your life a lot easier down the road."

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

"We purchased from CDW•G. They are great partners on the government side."

"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 time, money, space, and power consumption on new service deployments. We have a data center in Toronto which had ten racks on one of the new servers. This was all reduced to two racks with six chassis, which is amazing."

"Anytime that you are buying any storage make sure you understand storage. Do not just buy storage based on what somebody sells you in terms of IO or throughput."

"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."

"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."

More FlexPod XCS pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is low."

"I use it as an open-source tool."

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

900,644 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

Financial Services Firm

17%

Construction Company

13%

Marketing Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

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	8
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	6

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What needs improvement with Rackspace OpenStack?

For Rackspace OpenStack security features, we currently opted for ShapeBlue one, which will be installing CloudStack. ShapeBlue is helping us in training. So, we are moving away from Rackspace Open...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Rackspace OpenStack?

I mainly use Rackspace OpenStack for my virtual environment, for the KVM environment, such as hosting VMs. That is what we use it mainly for. You can say it is just like VMware; we are using Racksp...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Rackspace OpenStack?

I help my clients with Rackspace OpenStack as a consultant. I work with my clients as a consultant with Rackspace OpenStack. I am not involved in the purchase process of the platform. The pricing f...

See all answers

Comparisons

Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 9% of the time

HPE ConvergedSystem vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 9% of the time

IBM VersaStack vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 8% of the time

AMAX CloudMax OpenStack vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 8% of the time

More FlexPod XCS Competitors

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance vs Rackspace OpenStack

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs Rackspace OpenStack

Compared 14% of the time

HPE ConvergedSystem vs Rackspace OpenStack

Compared 12% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Rackspace OpenStack

Compared 9% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Rackspace OpenStack

Compared 9% of the time

More Rackspace OpenStack Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

June 2026

Download FlexPod XCS product report

Buyer's Guide

Rackspace OpenStack

June 2026

Download Rackspace OpenStack product report

Also Known As

No data available

OpenStack

Overview

FlexPod XCS offers a seamless integration with existing IT systems, enhancing both scalability and usability. It simplifies complex IT environments with unified support and a pre-validated design, making it invaluable for mission-critical applications.

FlexPod XCS effectively manages diverse IT infrastructures by providing a comprehensive end-to-end solution. Its integration capabilities allow for efficient storage and compute operations, while users value its flexibility and high reliability. The platform ensures significant time savings and operational efficiency by reducing troubleshooting and facilitating seamless expansion. Known for supporting varied environments and workloads, FlexPod XCS optimizes resource management and is compatible with prominent cloud systems like AWS and Azure, thus supporting cloud, private, and multi-cloud strategies.

What are the key features of FlexPod XCS?

Integration: Connects efficiently with existing systems for smoother operations.
Scalability: Allows seamless expansion to accommodate growing demands.
End-to-End Solution: Reduces complexity via unified support and pre-validated designs.
Flexibility: Manages both storage and compute effectively.
Cloud Compatibility: Integrates with AWS, Azure, and other cloud environments.

What benefits should users look for when evaluating FlexPod XCS?

Reliability: High dependability ensures uninterrupted operations.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlined processes lead to time savings.
Resource Optimization: Better management across IT infrastructures.
Seamless Expansion: Easily scales without excessive reconfiguration.

FlexPod XCS is widely used in industries like finance, healthcare, and education for data center virtualization and telecom operations. It enhances IT consolidation, optimizes resource utilization, and supports efficient disaster recovery solutions in diverse environments, making it a favored choice for hosting data storage and hybrid cloud infrastructure.

NetApp

Rackspace OpenStack offers potent infrastructure concepts, customization options, and scalability with commodity servers, supporting microservices, virtualization, and numerous integrations, all beneficial for advanced IT deployments.

Known for its robust infrastructure and flexible deployments, Rackspace OpenStack caters to enterprises with complex IT management needs. It excels in virtualization and data analytics while enhancing server management with microservices architecture. Companies leverage it for effective infrastructure as code management, integrating tools like GitLab and Jenkins, offering a sought-after platform for deploying private clouds and managing diverse workloads efficiently.

What are the standout features of Rackspace OpenStack?

Infrastructure Flexibility: Easily configurable infrastructure with commodity servers.
Customization Options: Adaptable for unique enterprise needs.
Scalability: Supports increasing workloads effectively.
Integrations: Seamless integration with tools like GitLab and Jenkins.
Virtualization Capabilities: Lowers operational expenses and simplifies hardware changes.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Cost Efficiency: Lower operational costs through virtualization.
Enhanced Flexibility: Microservices architecture offers advanced adaptability.
Data Management: Effective for big data services and data analytics.
Migration Support: Facilitates on-premises migration from the cloud.

Enterprises utilize Rackspace OpenStack across industries for tasks like large data management and private cloud deployment. It supports streamlined infrastructure management and eCommerce integration with Akamai. Often chosen for website development and deploying managed services, it meets diverse deployment needs efficiently.

Rackspace Technology

Sample Customers

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

X.commerce

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS vs. Rackspace OpenStack

June 2026

Free Report: FlexPod XCS vs. Rackspace OpenStack

Find out what your peers are saying about FlexPod XCS vs. Rackspace OpenStack and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our FlexPod XCS vs. Rackspace OpenStack report.

See our list of best Converged Infrastructure vendors.

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.