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FlexPod XCS vs VxRail comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 (2nd)
VxRail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
HCI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. FlexPod XCS is designed for Converged Infrastructure and holds a mindshare of 12.7%, up 12.0% compared to last year.
VxRail, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 9.3% mindshare, down 14.8% since last year.
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.7%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.0%
Dell VxBlock System9.5%
Other66.8%
Converged Infrastructure
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VxRail9.3%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.0%
VMware vSAN7.8%
Other73.9%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Scientist Assistant 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.
AO
Technical architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Streamlines resource management through centralized automation and automatic upgrades
The most valuable feature of VxRail is the VxRail Manager, which centralizes resources like storage built with vSAN. It provides a unified way to access these resources, making management straightforward. Another benefit is the fully automated upgrade process, which is completed with just one click through the VxRail Manager. This centralization and automation enhance efficiency significantly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For the management side of our UCS, it is a single pane of glass for multiple people, whether it is data center, sysadmin, or server deployment."
"FlexPod has improved our application performance by 40%."
"The technical support is amazing."
"I would say that the most valuable feature is the single-vendor support model."
"The ease of set up is probably the most valuable feature for us."
"We enjoy the standardization and having things consistent across the whole data center sphere."
"Our data center rack space collapsed and our manpower decreased."
"The FlexPod solution is one of the easiest solutions to implement, maintain, and scale."
"The VxRail is built on two specific platforms that have been in the industry for the last 15 to 20 years: the 1-U socket and the 2-U socket platforms from Dell. They're in their sixteenth generation of those platforms, I believe, so they're very stable."
"The stability of VxRail is good, we have not had any issues."
"We deploy VxRail systems to provide our customers with a distributed information solution. The customer was impressed because we delivered a serious data reduction. For example, we showed them that 10 terabytes on their traditional storage solution could be reduced to 1.5 terabytes in the VxRail systems. That's why the customers also like it so much,"
"We have seen a return on our investment; we see it mainly in the fact that we are saving money in space and storage, we can use two and a half racks for something else, we also cut down on power consumption because now we have an empty rack that isn't powered on, and we haven't had to replace it, fix it, or do anything that has cost us any money."
"The most compelling aspect of VxRail lies in its unwavering guarantee of sustained performance for my systems, regardless of their geographical distribution."
"We enjoy the ease of management since all of the resources are located on one box — one single point of support."
"The low latency and response times and having a virtualized environment within a single computer are valuable. I have no physical elements, and I can optimize or balance my data depending on the sales volume that I have in a specific store."
"VxRail is a comfortable solution for VMware users."
 

Cons

"Automatic tiering would be good to have."
"Support could be more integrated. For example, you might call NetApp, and they'll determine that VMware is the issue. It would be helpful if they could automatically engage VMware and bring them onto the same call to transfer ticket information and work together."
"According to the product managers, there are some new products coming which will address some of our concerns around portability and compliance."
"A couple things could be improved, for example, the interconnect switching. They need to be more flexible."
"This is an expensive solution."
"There are too many management products: System Insight Manager, Oakum, etc. There are a lot of them and you have to know which one to use at which time. Whereas, with competitors, they have a single pane of glass view which has everything in it."
"I would like to see a single upgrade download, so you could download an upgrade that would upgrade the NetApps that would have all the parts."
"Most of the implementations that I've seen don't take advantage of its features. Where I work now it's been more costly to implement it."
"The software that comes on VxRail doesn't work smoothly because they have problems with updates."
"We're not comfortable with the cost of VxRail and neither are our clients."
"When using hybrid nodes, such as VxRail, there should not be compression and deduplication, only in All-Flash nodes."
"What I did not like so much was the amount of VMware that you have to put in your system related to the VxRail."
"It might offer better integration with other products."
"Dell wants to implement the disaster recovery site in the new year, but they haven't decided yet."
"A disadvantage is that the initial first deployment can be complicated."
"The solution should facilitate the separate expansion of computing and storage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Sometimes you may end up spending a little more to get it in the first place, but you gain it back in terms of infrastructure upgrade costs and troubleshooting costs. The solution also lasts a surprisingly long time."
"Coming from a rack and stack server model to FlexPod, it has saved us a lot of time (approximately hundreds to thousands of hours)."
"We fear high availability so we can't buy from different providers."
"The NetApp portion was a $5 million investment five years ago. That has served the customer well over five and a half years."
"It is not going to save you money, but that is not the point. The opportunity to stay competitive in the marketplace is not a cost."
"The scalability is very expensive."
"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."
"Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year."
"The solution is on the higher end of the price range."
"The VMware licenses are included and we do not have to worry about the license, everything is integrated."
"It's a mandatory cost with everything included"
"The price would be in the middle to the expensive range. It is not cheap."
"VxRail is expensive because it's based on VMware and V-SAN. The price is not the cheapest. The technical support is expensive, but it is a good service."
"VxRail does raise the price, but overall, it's well-priced. It's not more expensive than other similar solutions. If you were to create an in-house, tailor-made solution, you could potentially do it at a lower cost. However, I think a fully integrated solution like VxRail should be priced appropriately."
"Though somewhat expensive. But in terms of performance and stability, it's worth it."
"There is an administrative cost savings. Instead of having seven to 15 separate boxes that someone has to administer on 15 different terminals, you can do the majority of it from one interface. Therefore, it saves on manpower costs."
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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
18%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

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Also Known As

No data available
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
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