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Dell Vscale Architecture vs FlexPod XCS 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

Dell Vscale Architecture
Ranking in Converged Infrastructure
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
FlexPod XCS
Ranking in Converged Infrastructure
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Dell Vscale Architecture is 4.3%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FlexPod XCS is 12.6%, up from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Converged Infrastructure Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
FlexPod XCS12.6%
Dell Vscale Architecture4.3%
Other83.1%
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

AR
Solution Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Intuitive, robust, manageable, and agile
In terms of what could be improved, I particularly think the scope of automation is very much limited. So they should introduce some more STK's and APIs for automation first thing. Secondly, in terms of Vscale Architecture, they should have some evangelists. When I go to the community for VMware ESXi or NSX, I get lots of information online everywhere because community members are talking, evangelists are talking. Additionally, I usually have a lot of KV articles and lot of community articles I can read and sort out the minor issues. But, in terms of Vscale, you need to be very mature in all aspects of the technology and when you get disturbed, you have to go through the entire documentation to figure things out. I think I heard this from one or two customers as well. Their resources are not able to find much online support for Vscale. As for what should be included in future releases, customers are looking for a unified management console, which they have, but the console should be more user-friendly. Secondly, they should have more scope of orchestration. Thirdly, regarding monitoring, there should be a built-in monitoring engine like we have in Nutanix. These are the things customers complain about sometimes.
John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Vscale's scalability is super good. Vscale's scalability, manageability, and performance are all three areas that I emphasize when I sell Vscale Architectures to the customer."
"From the integration standpoint, it is a lot easier to integrate than a lot of people initially felt. Being able to leverage either block or file capabilities of the storage is something that has been beneficial."
"FlexPod is the primary solution we recommend for clients with high-availability server requirements. Our clients find FlexPod's management helpful. You can manage everything via plugins."
"It's a common platform, which provides for ease of use between all of the blade servers. It uses all the same tech, moving service profiles seamlessly across from one blade to the next. There is also combined support."
"The Validated Designs are very good because they act as a reference to see whether we have done things properly."
"We got the product and we have a small environment, but it was able to be scalable to when we started to grow."
"It is a very well-thought-out solution with great virtualization. A good option we have is mapping a storage LUN onto an ESX cluster. That way, in case a particular ESX is down, it can migrate (using vMotion) to another host in the cluster, resulting in high-availability."
"The data is available, compressed, and deduped."
"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."
 

Cons

"In terms of what could be improved, I particularly think the scope of automation is very much limited. So they should introduce some more STK's and API's for automation first thing."
"I think they are working on it, but I would like to be able to log into a portal and see the end-to-end solution and understand where it stands, from a supportability perspective."
"The interface is a little convoluted."
"Make it easier to refresh hardware. We got to the point where we couldn't fix vulnerabilities without refreshing the hardware, then that became a little too expensive for us to do."
"Sometimes, it can take awhile for support cases to get to the right people, especially if it's not a P1 case."
"We have had a bit of struggle on the support side. From a customer perspective, it has been up to us to make sure that we get both NetApp and Cisco involved when we have had an issue."
"I would like to see synchronous replication and easier automation in the next release."
"It takes a very sophisticated group of people to run and maintain NetApp and Cisco products."
"A progress bar would...be pretty cool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Make sure you are buying for performance, not just capacity."
"It is not cheap, but there is a return on investment in time saved and efficiency."
"You get better management and orchestration, but it still costs you money."
"Everything is purchased, so we do not do any leasing with this product."
"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."
"The scalability is very good. I wish it was a more cost-effective, but you get what you pay for."
"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 purchased the solution through CDW. They are a partner and knowledgeable."
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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
No data available
Manufacturing Company
20%
Performing Arts
10%
Educational Organization
9%
Transportation Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
 

Questions from the Community

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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...
 

Also Known As

VCE Vscale Architecture, Vscale Architecture
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in Converged Infrastructure. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.