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FlexPod XCS vs Rackspace OpenStack comparison

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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
Rackspace OpenStack
Ranking in Converged Infrastructure
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of FlexPod XCS is 12.7%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rackspace OpenStack is 7.1%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.7%
Rackspace OpenStack7.1%
Other80.2%
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Director 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.
SS
Manager Dev Ops at MSD
Private cloud control has deepened my DevOps automation and strengthened security practices
For improvement, I feel the documentation available for setting up and creating infrastructure using Rackspace OpenStack could be enhanced, as I personally find the existing documents are not sufficient for new learners or beginners. We can also work on improving the user interface; the Horizon dashboard is functional, but compared to AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, the UI feels somewhat dated. A more modern, intuitive interface with better navigation would enhance the overall user experience, especially for new users. Improving the documentation, including more real-world deployment examples, troubleshooting guides, and architecture best practices, would make onboarding much easier. Faster upgrades would also help; Rackspace OpenStack upgrades can sometimes be complex, so simplifying the upgrade process and minimizing downtime would assist organizations in maintaining their environments more easily. Additionally, improving monitoring capabilities would be beneficial, with advanced monitoring and analytics dashboards providing administrators deeper visibility into performance, capacity, and potential issues without relying heavily on third-party tools. Adding more managed services, similar to what public cloud providers offer, could reduce operational overhead while still allowing customers to retain the flexibility of a private cloud. Lastly, integrating AI could be valuable, with AI-driven recommendations for capacity planning, security monitoring, and automated troubleshooting improving platform management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can already see that the most valuable features is that everything is tested and certified to work together."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility because it scales to meet your needs."
"Validate designs are a good. They work in the background to combine all the infrastructure and storage. They create automation which can create volumes and attach VMs directly to massive CIFS."
"Finally, we have easily seen a 100 percent improvement in application performance over our previous platform."
"It's a kind of one-stop shop as far as support goes."
"FlexPod has enabled our staff to be more efficient; they spend less time managing multiple tickets with multiple vendors."
"The application that is running on the FlexPod that we are working with runs better on FlexPod because of the technology itself."
"FlexPod gives us the opportunity to deploy a product which is fully built and racked with minimal touch installation when it arrives onsite, so we can do all the configuration remotely."
"The most valuable feature is the customization, and with the customization you can really give the customers what they want."
"Rackspace OpenStack positively impacts my organization by making processes easier since I do not need to manage all servers manually because it efficiently manages server operations and maintains proper data, which saves time."
"Rackspace OpenStack impacted my organization positively in that the drive helped me keep files in an organized folder, and obviously we needed email addresses to be able to communicate with each other and for outsiders to be able to email us."
"In my experience, Rackspace OpenStack delivered a stable, flexible, and reliable private cloud environment."
"I like its integration with GitLab and its simplicity. OpenStack has a lot of third-party libraries that it uses."
"Administrators are very comfortable with the functionality and services OpenStack offers."
"The open-source nature of OpenStack provides significant value."
"There are many services that can be directly used which are not available in VMware."
 

Cons

"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."
"We switched to the new NetApp clustered environment and discovered that the monitoring and reporting features are a little behind the older versions."
"I would like them to simplify the UCS configuration. I appreciate that they have about a billion options and a million switches that you can mess with, but this creates a lot of confusion sometimes. I feel like you almost need a Master's course to figure out what you're doing with UCS."
"There could be room for improvement in terms of offering more flexibility in CBD options."
"We would like more security features."
"In a perfect world, I would also love to be able to manage everything from a single pane of glass."
"With the UCS X-Series, I would like to see the fabric interconnects built into the chassis instead of being external."
"FlexPod should focus more on automation. Integrating an automation tool with FlexPod would enable customers to leverage automation capabilities."
"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."
"The line migration is a problem."
"It could use more examples in different languages (API use cases).​"
"The seamless integration between MySQL services and the rabbitMQ database can be revised during the debugging phase."
"In terms of what needs to be improved, I would say the support. Rackspace might have some good support but the open source OpenStack doesn't have support because there are too many versions coming and too many people are customizing it."
"I cannot comment comprehensively on how Rackspace OpenStack can be improved, as I do not find that much difference; however, some areas can be improved, such as support for OEMs deploying highly specialized real-time telecom and media workloads."
"It should have a single dashboard for cloud management and on-premises systems"
"The deployment process could be easy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We purchased from CDW•G. They are great partners on the government side."
"We have saved time and money for new service deployments. Without FlexPod, it probably takes about ten hours. With FlexPod, within two hours, we are up and running. So, we have seen about an 80 percent time decrease."
"The pricing and licensing are quite expensive. However, compared to other solutions, it is okay."
"I have saved time on new service deployments. I've done deployments in under a week, and if it's a cloud-based deployment, it's even faster."
"The total cost of ownership with this solution is good."
"We pay approximately $1,400 USD in total for between five-thousand and ten-thousand ports."
"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."
"We purchased the solution through CDW. They are a partner and knowledgeable."
"I use it as an open-source tool."
"The pricing is low."
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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
14%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

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 Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Rackspace OpenStack?
I cannot comment comprehensively on how Rackspace OpenStack can be improved, as I do not find that much difference; however, some areas can be improved, such as support for OEMs deploying highly sp...
What is your primary use case for Rackspace OpenStack?
My main use case for Rackspace OpenStack is that we are particularly using it for our OpenStack applications, where we are putting our applications on Rackspace OpenStack software day-to-day. A spe...
What advice do you have for others considering Rackspace OpenStack?
I rate Rackspace OpenStack an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. I chose 8 out of 10 for Rackspace OpenStack because every product has some space to improve. Regarding Rackspace OpenStack's AI capabilities, ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
OpenStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
X.commerce
Find out what your peers are saying about FlexPod XCS vs. Rackspace OpenStack and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.