FlexPod XCS vs Vblock [EOL] comparison

NetApp and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the Converged Infrastructure category. Additionally, 96% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 84% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

FlexPod XCS

Read 295 FlexPod XCS reviews

2,096 Views
859 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Vblock [EOL]

Read 24 Vblock [EOL] reviews

84% willing to recommend

FlexPod XCS

Vblock [EOL]

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between FlexPod XCS and Vblock [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle, NetApp and others in Converged Infrastructure.

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Converged Infrastructure

October 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

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

295

Ranking in other categories

Converged Infrastructure (3rd)

Vblock [EOL]

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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.

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Fred Armantrout

Senior System Specialist at Burns & McDonnell

A reliable and highly-available solution with good technical support

It's difficult to think of anything that needs to be improved because it's a good stable system, but paid support is expensive so the cost of operation could be lowered. In the next release, I would like to see a smaller footprint in the data center and have improvements to disk performance.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"Going from the old monolithic server and silo storage that they used to use is an improvement. With the FlexPod solution, just being able to manage and monitor the overall environment helps."

"Things got a lot faster. We can pull and test in DEV systems much more rapidly and are clearing up a lot of DBA time. In the past, every time we tested it, we needed to be refreshed. In the past, it would take a day of our DBA's time, and now it's just point, click, and ten minutes later it's done."

"We enjoy the standardization and having things consistent across the whole data center sphere."

"It is definitely easier for us to maintain and do build-outs, so it takes a lot less time to set things up for the customer."

"I really like the architecture and I like the fact that on the storage side I can swap it out. Right now I'm on NetApp, I might go to Pure Storage. I have the flexibility. But as far as the equipment itself, the way it's all bundled together, from the UCS perspective, its rock solid."

"We have seen a 20 percent improvement in application performance."

"The solution's granular scalability and broad application support helps us to meet the needs of diverse workloads."

More FlexPod XCS pros

"We have seen measurable increases in our system performance. Those increases have been directly measurable in application performance and the delivery of critical business information to our users."

"It's an integrated box Mac solution, so it's a plug and play. The deployment and build is pre-made and ready to deploy. It makes it easy to apply."

"The component integration means I don't have to worry about technology mismatches."

"Access to VMs is now faster due to the centralized management console."

"The high redundancy of components has minimized frequent service degradation/failure."

"The most valuable feature is that it is centrally managed, as it is quite easy for our customers to manage everything, end-to-end."

"It has improved system performance, batch times for off-hours processing, and reliability with production applications."

"Some of the key features are the ease of operation and access, without constraining actions. The tool is available to actually move things around, do things quickly quickly."

More Vblock [EOL] pros

Cons

"The FlexPod service and support could be improved."

"I would like to see more CVDs and more published designs around a multi-hypervisor approach within a single pod."

"The upgrade process needs to be improved and it would be nice to manage everything from a single pane of glass."

"I would also like to feel more support. NetApp has been pretty good, for the most part, but Cisco has more work to do. I've had very good experience with NetApp. Instead of having to call three different areas and saying, "I'm a FlexPod customer." It would be nice if it could be just one that gets routed. I know it would require three large companies to work together, but that's what would make this product a ten. They could definitely use with making it more user-friendly."

"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."

"Cisco support is much slower. Opening cases with Cisco tech is sometimes a bit tedious. The return time for less important calls can be slower. Even Priority 1 calls can sometimes be a bit long and they will have to call me back."

"They just announced that they are going to move it along with Intersight from Cisco. That can be a private or public cloud, which is one of the areas where it can grow more and has a lot of potential."

"The procedure for contacting technical support could be simplified."

More FlexPod XCS cons

"VCE tools, like Vision or AMP were not stand alone, and depended too much on other management consoles."

"With respect to the technical support, there is room for improvement."

"OEM services requires too much planning and low availability of certified engineers."

"I would like to see them improve their switching infrastructure and rely on Cisco configurations. They are a bit more complex and technical, but result in a slightly reduced cost in terms of switching on the network side of it."

"Troublesome relationships with VCE at the beginning of our use came undone quickly after we went live."

"Improve the patching process and timeliness of updates/releases."

"In the next release, I would like to see a smaller footprint in the data center and have improvements to disk performance."

"It needs more customer/client involvement in back-end management."

More Vblock [EOL] cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 fear high availability so we can't buy from different providers."

"It's expensive, but when you pay for enterprise support and enterprise products, you have to pay the big bucks."

"Pricing and licensing is very affordable from a FlexPod perspective."

"The main return on investment would be that instead of having to refresh all of our desktop hardware we have been able to go reimage existing machines and use those as thin clients, then also purchase new thin clients rather than buying actual hardware. It also reduces the overhead of having our technicians deploy those systems and maintain them."

"As a whole, it is inexpensive, and it uses the least amount of parts."

"It is not cheap, but there is a return on investment in time saved and efficiency."

"We have seen our data center rack space collapse about 90 percent. We have a data center which only has two racks now out of the 20 that were there previously."

More FlexPod XCS pricing and cost advice

"Related to tech support: I believe it is too expensive."

"Vblock is priced at a premium because people don't want the headache of managing and deploying different products."

"It is not cheap."

"Strive for a consolidated ELA."

"I would not say the pricing is not good value. It is still on the expensive side, near the top-end of cost compared to what's available now. Also, the licensing has to be improved. There has to be a clear definition of the licensing from the initial set-up so the customer knows what they are paying for, without being hit later on with extra licensing. The licensing definitions should be clearer and, perhaps, have one set of licenses rather than multiple licenses."

"I think the pricing is on the higher end of the spectrum. There could be some adjustments that could be made there. Regarding licensing, watch compatibility with external products that you run on Vblock. It has got to be properly architected, otherwise, you will run into licensing issues."

"Vblock appears from the first while to be very expensive. There are more items you cannot see in the BOQ: customer service, support, delivery short time, and highly experienced VCE engineers."

"The paid support for Vblock is expensive."

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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

23%

Performing Arts

10%

Educational Organization

10%

Computer Software Company

No data available

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	10
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	15

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Comparisons

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Compared 27% of the time

Dell VxBlock System vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 14% of the time

HPE ConvergedSystem vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 13% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs FlexPod XCS

Compared 13% of the time

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Dell VxBlock System vs Vblock [EOL]

Compared 100% of the time

More Vblock [EOL] Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FlexPod XCS

October 2025

Download FlexPod XCS product report

Buyer's Guide

Vblock [EOL]

September 2025

Download Vblock [EOL] product report

Also Known As

No data available

VCE Vblock

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

VCE Vblock Systems is an all-in-one virtualization platform that integrates the leading storage, network, and compute technologies from the likes of EMC, VMware and Cisco. VCE Vblock allows organizations to easily and securely deploy cloud computing and virtualization in their environments, supporting these multiple technologies and providing flexibility and agility for changing business needs.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

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

Xerox, ACS, and Columbia Sportswear.

Buyer's Guide

Converged Infrastructure

October 2025

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