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FlexPod XCS vs Huawei FusionStorage comparison

 

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 (5th)
Huawei FusionStorage
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (16th), File and Object Storage (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

FlexPod XCS and Huawei FusionStorage 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 9.7% compared to last year.
Huawei FusionStorage, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Storage, holds 1.9% mindshare, up 1.1% since last year.
Converged Infrastructure
Cloud Storage
 

Featured Reviews

John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Wondwossen Abebe Kebede - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable platform that integrates well with different IT infrastructures and systems
The product integrates well with different IT infrastructures and systems in the telecom sector. Our partners manage services, including detailed integration and migration-related operations. The platform upholds the uptime and reliability of our business applications. We classify our systems into different tiers, ranging from machine-critical to business-critical, and FusionStorage helps us run all the services. It delivers a remarkable uptime of 99.9%. With our expectations for continuous service availability, we are operating 24/7. In cases where system interruptions occur, it enables rapid restoration, ensuring a prompt return to normal service levels. I rate it an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We initially started out with siloed clusters and now we've been able to cluster everything together so that we have multiple nodes in our clusters. We have multiples on different data in different data centers. We've able to do replication between data centers. That's been very beneficial for us as we look to derive a mature DR model."
"It scales well. It allows us to have very flexible architecture but to have the same level of simplicity that we'd normally expect in hyper-converged environments."
"It's amazingly scalable. It just works. It can expand to large MetroClusters and keep expanding."
"The vendor delivers a fully-configured prebuilt system with a certain baseline on it."
"When our clients choose to call NetApp or Cisco directly, the cooperative support model means they can get passed back and forth between the two organizations freely. It works really well."
"It is easy to deploy, works well, the reps are good, and the support is great."
"FlexPod’s prevalidated architectures are very important to our organization... Especially in healthcare, it is absolutely critical that we have a validated performance platform. It has to work every time."
"We save days of work when doing new service deployments. With LUN clones we have a template provisioned for the image of our hypervisor on our NetApps, and we can deploy a brand new hypervisor in under an hour. Everything is scripted. We just clone a template LUN and boot from SAN, so there are no single points of failure."
"It is a stable solution."
"The product has a very simple GUI-based management platform and it is very simple to use. There is a very easy step-by-step configuration procedure that guides you through, and you can configure it very easily."
"Provides easy access to our data."
"Huawei FusionStorage does well in its basic functions and offers broad utility."
"The solution’s most valuable feature is its performance."
"In cases where system interruptions occur, it enables rapid restoration, ensuring a prompt return to normal service levels."
 

Cons

"I have noticed a lot of customers, they will kick it over the fence. It is FlexPod; it is that mystery animal. The room for improvement is to better present it to those users, so they will not have to be afraid of it."
"A progress bar would...be pretty cool."
"We would like them to have better features to integrate with the cloud."
"I'd like them to bring back the GUI for NetApp ONTAP. They changed the interface in version 9.8, and it's not great. In 9.9 they've tried to bring it back a little bit, but it's still not great."
"They need to improve the user interface to make it easier to work in this environment. The older version is poor."
"I would like more orchestration and networking in-between the VMs, the virtualization layer for networking. I would like to see better tools for this."
"They could improve their technical support team. They need to have a specific phone number for you to call in for the FlexPod solution. Some of the partner support knows if it is for FlexPod, they will get you to the right department."
"I would like to see improvements in the documentation. I understanding how things are coming together and a lot of that is from the UCS side."
"The solution’s support could be improved."
"The initial setup and installation is not that straightforward. It should be made easier and the time to install should be reduced."
"The product needs improvement in terms of affordability."
"The problem with Huawei is that it generally oversells. As a principle, Huawei does not educate the partner or the end user enough to scale up their solution correctly."
"I hope for improvements in the product's processing ability and performance."
"Their cloud services could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is always tough. We need to get to a point where the customer's happy. Then, as partners, we are also happy."
"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 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."
"We have reduced our manpower with the solution."
"It is expensive. My company is small. When you look at the price point, this is a big thing for us to invest in."
"We have saved 50 percent on new service deployments."
"It is not cheap, but there is a return on investment in time saved and efficiency."
"The cost is a little high."
"If one is a cheap solution and ten means it is a very expensive product, I would rate the price as two or three."
"It is expensive but might be optimal based on the partnership."
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Manufacturing Company
20%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Computer Software Company
13%
Retailer
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
 

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.
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...
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...
What do you like most about Huawei FusionStorage?
In cases where system interruptions occur, it enables rapid restoration, ensuring a prompt return to normal service levels.
What needs improvement with Huawei FusionStorage?
The solution’s support could be improved.
What is your primary use case for Huawei FusionStorage?
Huawei FusionStorage provides a scalable, high-performance, and highly available distributed storage solution designed to support critical enterprise applications and big data workloads. We deploye...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
China Merchants Bank, Liaoning, Zhejiang
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle and others in Converged Infrastructure. Updated: June 2025.
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